by J M Gregson
The cars in front of him were more cautious about the narrow gap left by the approaching bus. They slowed, almost stopped. Booth wasn’t too frustrated by that, now that he knew that the VW was to be intercepted. Force of numbers would defeat the enemy, as it almost always did.
At that moment, the VW turned off the appointed route. It swung at the last possible minute and without use of its indicator on to a road which forked left, away towards Royton and the trans-Pennine M62. Booth had to fling the Mondeo from the outside lane where he’d been overtaking sharply across the traffic on his left, accelerating hard to avoid contact but provoking blaring horns from his rear.
He was immediately behind the VW, some forty yards back from it. Its driver and passenger knew now that they were being followed and knew that it was the Mondeo that bore their hunter. Booth radioed the change of route urgently to the Armed Response Unit, which was now waiting uselessly in the wrong place. He knew from the sound that an Armalite had been used in the assault upon James Fitzpatrick. Now his blood chilled as he saw the man in the passenger seat of the VW preparing to use it again, on him.
The end was swift and decisive, as it usually was in counter-terrorist operations. Booth was amazed by the way time seemed suddenly to be suspended and things to happen in exceptionally vivid slow motion. Death came like this, whether to you or to the enemy, he supposed. You joined security for the excitement, yet in the crisis it was never exciting. Whatever was happening just seemed inevitable.
The speeding VW suddenly screeched to an agonised halt, slewing half sideways across the road in front of Booth’s Mondeo. He would have hit it had he not had his forty yards of leeway. Then the men were out of it, with the man from the passenger seat firing a quick burst from the Armalite at the Mondeo as Booth stood on the brake pedal. He saw the windscreen to his left shatter as he flung himself sideways and downwards. It was a surprise to find that he had not been hit.
As he half-scrambled and half-fell out of the car, trying to keep the cool metal of its body between him and the bullets from the Armalite, Booth realised what was happening. The men were leaving the stolen VW, deserting it in the middle of the road where it would cause traffic chaos and impede pursuit. They were transferring to a Ford Focus, which a third man was already driving out of the parking bay and on to the road ahead of the abandoned VW. Had it not been for Booth, they would have got clean away, leaving security and police services fruitlessly tracking down the stolen VW.
The man with the Armalite could have seen him off; the firepower odds were overwhelmingly in his favour. But he had downed his target in a hall three miles away; he was intent now upon escape. Patrick Riordan snatched a look at Booth, but decided he was not a percentage target as he crouched behind the wing of the Mondeo. Cafferty was already wrenching open the door of the Focus, yelling at him from ten yards away to be quick.
It was good that these things happened in slow motion, thought Booth, as he pressed himself hard against the metal shield of his car. Your brain worked coolly and well when events were slowed down like this. He would get one chance of hitting the man with the Armalite, he reckoned, before he was in the car and away. This was the man he wanted. The other one was just his driver and probably not a killer at all.
He was close enough to have a good chance of a hit, even with a pistol. He held it in both hands and rested it on the top of the Mondeo’s wing. It felt firm and steady in his hands, firmer even than the weapons they held in the controlled environment of the shooting gallery, where they did their regular shooting exercises and examined the targets afterwards.
Riordan had almost reached the car when he was hit. He felt the enemy bullet in his body, didn’t know whether it was one slug or two, whirled with the impact, heard himself screaming as he had never thought he would scream as he hit the ground, felt the subsidiary blow of the tarmac upon the side of his face. The Armalite clattered down beside him, tantalisingly beyond his failing reach. He raised one arm hopelessly towards Cafferty, heard the car accelerate away from him and leave him to the enemy. It was the rule that they should get away. But he felt nevertheless deserted as he lay and waited for death.
It took Riordan a second or two to feel the severity of the pain. He surely couldn’t stand this for long. In the same instant, he realised that his hunter was standing over him, kicking the Armalite even further away, pointing the pistol steadily at his stricken head, uttering words he could not hear and did not want to understand.
The ambulance was there within twelve minutes. The crumpled assassin was lifted gently and stowed carefully within its protecting womb, treated as tenderly as if he had been a pregnant woman. The paramedics fought to save the life of the man who had come to their city to kill.
Patrick Riordan was but dimly conscious of these things. The last noise he heard before he drifted out of consciousness was someone in the ambulance saying that he thought James Fitzpatrick was wounded, not dead. It was the most grievous blow of all.
EIGHTEEN
It was a flat in a block which contained thirty similar residences. This one was on the ground floor, scarcely twenty yards from the main entrance. Peach and Northcott inspected the red Audi in Brian Jacobs’ allotted parking space as they moved the twenty yards from their police Focus to the entrance. They noted that it was as clean inside as it was gleaming outside, that it looked as if it had been recently valeted. That was the kind of detail CID men note automatically.
Brian Jacobs met them at the door of the flat before they had time to knock. He was in casual gear, which looked as if it had been as carefully chosen as the blue suit he had worn when he had met them at his place of work four days previously. The attractive but slightly untidy black hair had been cut and styled since Tuesday. His hands were as clean and well-groomed as if they had been professionally manicured. He settled his visitors on the sofa opposite the big window and the bright morning light. There was a smell of coffee from the kitchen adjacent to this square, pleasant living area.
The man was more nervous in his home on Saturday morning than he had been in his office at work.
Peach wasn’t going to say anything to put him at his ease. The DCI took his time, looked for a moment at the picture of Derwentwater with the fells of Catbells behind it, accepted the offer of coffee and biscuits. He sniffed the coffee, then sipped it appreciatively. He began his questioning obliquely, because he sensed that Jacobs wanted them to be direct and get this over with quickly. ‘You haven’t any children, Mr Jacobs?’
‘I have one boy. He lives with my ex-wife. That’s when he’s at home. He’s in his second year at Warwick University.’
Peach nodded. ‘This place is far too neat and tidy to have kids around it, whatever their age might be.’
Brian Jacobs took a sudden gulp of his coffee. Too large and too impulsive a gulp: it almost scalded his tongue, causing him to gasp and down his cup hastily on to the low table between them. Peach looked at the liquid spilt into the saucer for a moment, as if it had great significance. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us this morning. We need to ask you some more questions.’
‘I’m willing to help, though I can’t think I’ll be able to tell you anything which will push things forward.’
‘Push things forward, yes. Well, let’s see, shall we? DS Northcott?’ Peach settled more comfortably and raised his black and expressive eyebrows towards the big black man, who was sitting uncomfortably beside him on the very edge of the sofa.
DS Northcott looked somehow even more threatening with the small notebook clasped in his huge hands. ‘Could you clarify the nature of your relationship with Mrs Jean Parker for us, please?’
‘That has nothing to do with the death of Dominic O’Connor.’
‘Then why did you choose to conceal it when we spoke on Tuesday?’
‘I didn’t “choose to conceal it”. It had nothing to do with your case and it still has nothing to do with it. It is a private matter between Jean and me and I simply chose to let it remain so.
’
Peach was suddenly animated by one of his eager smiles. ‘A most unwise decision, as things have turned out. Concealment always excites suspicion, in cynical chaps like us.’
‘It wasn’t concealed. Jean told you all about it when you first spoke to her.’
‘Correction. She told us nothing about your association with her. She merely gave us your name as a known enemy of Dominic O’Connor.’
‘Which was clearly very frank of her.’
‘Very frank indeed. So much so that we believe that it was what was agreed between the two of you beforehand, as evidence of that frankness. We believe that Mrs Parker gave us your name as an enemy of the murder victim to try to convince us of her good faith, whilst at the same time electing to conceal the fact that she had a close relationship with you. We have to ask ourselves why she chose to do that.’
‘Because it was private. Because it was our own business and no one else’s.’
‘It makes you into a couple with both motive and opportunity for the murder of Dominic O’Connor. A man whom you hated and whom you now plan to replace as Financial Director at Morton Industries.’
‘That situation is a fact of life. It’s not something we contrived. Motive and opportunity don’t mean that either of us chose to kill O’Connor. I’m even prepared to admit that I’m glad that he’s dead and if there’s the opportunity to obtain the position I should have had years ago I’ll take it. That doesn’t make me a murderer.’
‘No. But the fact that you chose to conceal as much as you could of this makes you a strong suspect. Just as the fact that Mrs Parker concealed how close she was to you until yesterday and then only admitted it because she had no alternative also excites our interest. Concealment is never a good idea, even for the innocent, Mr Jacobs.’ His tone implied that he would need much convincing before he accepted the innocence of this particular pair.
‘Jean told me that she’d informed you all about us yesterday.’
Peach’s smile this time comprehended the fact that he expected the pair to compare notes after each meeting with him. ‘That was only when she realised that there was no alternative, Mr Jacobs. As the only one of our suspects who combines a declared hatred of the victim with a known history of violence, you are now almost our prime suspect, I’d say. Would you agree, DS Northcott?’
‘Indeed I would, sir. Not our only suspect — we have to bear in mind that a woman could easily have killed Dominic O’Connor — but perhaps our prime suspect, as you say.’
‘Jean didn’t kill O’Connor.’
‘And why would you seem so certain of that, sir? You’re not confessing to the crime yourself, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not! I’m just certain that it isn’t in Jean’s nature to steal in and kill anyone like that.’
Peach shook his head with one of his sadder smiles. ‘Ah, if only you knew how often we’ve heard thoughts like that, Mr Jacobs. We never know what lurks in the hearts of even those we think we know quite intimately. I only hope that we don’t have to listen to Mrs Parker voicing that notion about you. Does she know about your previous history of violence?’
‘It was in 1989, for God’s sake! It feels as if it was a different person in a different life.’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then.’ Peach’s voice hardened suddenly. ‘Unfortunately for you, it was the same person in the same life. A person who attacked and almost killed someone with a knife. Have you come up with anyone who can support your story that you were nowhere near Dominic O’Connor’s house last Friday night?’
‘No. But the innocent sometimes don’t have alibis.’
‘True. And the guilty never have them.’
‘I was here from around eight o’clock on Friday night. I didn’t kill the bloody man, any more than Jean did.’
‘You were unbalanced about him.’
Brian recognised that word. It had come from Jean. She had used it to him when she’d been exasperated by the extremes of his hatred of Dominic O’Connor. He felt a sense of betrayal that she should also have told these calm and relentless bastions of the law that he was ‘unbalanced’. He said as calmly as he could, ‘Dominic O’Connor had given me good cause to be unbalanced. I didn’t kill him, though. Someone else did that for me.’
‘You could have twisted that cable round his neck. You could have wound it tight and watched him die. You’d have enjoyed that.’
Peach was pushing hard, harder than his normal code allowed, searching for some sort of reaction, some flicker of the face which might reveal even for a split second that the man was guilty. He got nothing. Brian Jacobs said harshly, ‘Your forensic people have examined my car. You’ve no doubt questioned people in the area around O’Connor’s house to try to place me in that area on Friday night. You’ve come up with nothing. That’s because there is nothing. I left the golf club at around half past seven as I told you and drove straight home, without going near the O’Connor house. I didn’t kill the sod, and neither did my Jean.’
It wasn’t politically correct, that ‘my Jean’. You shouldn’t claim ownership of a woman any more. But DCI Peach found he thought better of Brian Jacobs for it, as they drove back to the station. It wouldn’t affect his judgement on whether the man was a murderer one iota.
There was an unexpected message back at Brunton police station. Would the man in charge of the Dominic O’Connor murder enquiry please ring the security service number in Manchester as soon as possible? Technically, that should have been Tommy Bloody Tucker, but the head of Brunton CID had held a media conference on the previous Saturday, and couldn’t be expected to make a weekend appearance in the CID section for at least another year.
Peach rang the number immediately. A man with the rank of commander asked him loftily if he knew of a man called Patrick Riordan. ‘I do indeed,’ said Percy breezily. ‘I had occasion to interview him on Thursday morning in connection with the murder in Brunton of Dominic O’Connor.’
‘That’s the man.’ The voice softened as they became two professionals in pursuit of a common enemy. ‘He committed a terrorist act in Manchester last night. His target had security cover — to whit, one man with a pistol acting as his bodyguard, who was at his side when he was shot. It’s touch and go, but apparently the odds are that the target will survive. Rather better odds than are being offered on Patrick Riordan, whom our man chased and severely wounded before making an arrest. Riordan is currently in Manchester Royal Infirmary, with bullet wounds in lung, chest and shoulder. It’s possible he won’t recover or won’t say anything, but apparently he’s mentioned your man Dominic O’Connor in his ramblings.’
‘Can we speak to him?’
‘We’ve bullied the medics into allowing us to see him for five minutes or so. I thought it might be worth your while joining our man, in case Riordan gives you anything useful before he pops his clogs. Best thing that can happen to the murderous sod, in my view. Three o’clock at Manchester Royal, if you can make it. Ask for Jefferson at reception.’
Scene of Crime and Forensics had not produced a great deal from the examination of the room at the back of his house where Dominic O’Connor had been found dead. The few alien fibres found on his clothing were either from his wife’s garments and thus hardly suspicious or from sources not identifiable. The two hairs which were neither his nor his wife’s might be useful if they provided a match with someone eventually arrested for his murder, but were as yet anonymous. The probability was that they would prove to have no connection with this crime.
There was one tangible and perhaps significant find. DCI Peach dispatched his wife to interview the probable owner of it. He thought it would be interesting to have a woman’s view on the person he had found to be the most enigmatic female involved in this multi-layered case. DS Lucy Peach took DC Brendan Murphy with her to interview Sarah O’Connor, the victim’s sister-in-law and former mistress, who was also the widow of his murdered elder brother.
Lucy had not seen the huge modern mansion
where the widow of the elder O’Connor brother lived. She was surprised by her emotions as they drove up the drive and parked in the ample space by the front door. She had been involved for months in the investigation into the recruitment and abduction of care-home girls. She had questioned wretched teenagers about prostitution, rape and sadomasochism. Arrests had now been made and the local people who had driven and financed these vicious things were arrested and awaiting trial. But Lucy could not rid her brain of the thought that the money for this place had come at least partly from that awful trade.
It was possible, even probable, that the woman she was here to see had known nothing about the sources of the income which supported her luxurious lifestyle. Lucy watched the elegant, dark-haired woman closely as she ushered them into the huge sitting room. She looked too intelligent to have known nothing and suspected nothing about the darker areas of her husband’s business empire. Sarah O’Connor seemed to DS Peach like one of those women who took care not to know things which might embarrass her. She’d met a few such people in her years in CID and she didn’t like the breed.
But that was nothing to do with why she was here today, she told herself firmly. DC Murphy could do the talking; she’d listen, observe, and report back to Percy in due course.
Sarah O’Connor crossed her elegant ankles and said to Murphy, ‘I remember you, DC Murphy. You’re the man with the Irish name who’s never been to the emerald isle’
Only the English ever spoke of the emerald isle nowadays, Murphy thought waspishly. He repeated what he had said many times before, working hard not to sound irritated. ‘I’ve lived all my life in Lancashire. My grandmother was Irish, but I never knew her. I’ve never even been to Ireland, north or south.’
‘Nor had I, until I met Jim. I never quite felt at home there, when I visited with Jim. I don’t expect I shall go there much, once he’s been buried. There’ll be a lot of his old friends and rugby mates coming here from Ireland for the funeral.’ She looked round at the expensive furnishings and carpet, then out at the garden which stretched away below the long, low window. ‘There’s only me and my daughter here now and Clare’s away at university most of the time. Neither of us enjoys rattling around in a huge place like this. I shall move quite soon to something smaller.’
