Rat Poison

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘I understand that you were on your way home after work,’ Carrick began by saying.

  ‘Yes, it was later than usual as there’d been a big party. Lots of clearing up to do.’

  ‘Please tell me as much as you can recollect.’

  She thought for a few moments. ‘Well, I did hear bangs in the distance but not for a minute did I think it was guns. Fireworks, perhaps, or a car. Even when the noise came closer I still didn’t get really worried although I don’t like it at the best of times when stupid boys mess around with fireworks.’

  ‘The restaurant’s in Nash Square. Where were you by this time?’

  ‘Just coming from Hot Bath Street and crossing the road where Macfisheries was years ago. All the shops seem to sell gifts for visitors now, you know, no real shops at all. My husband used to say that you couldn’t even buy a bag of nails.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘These men came running down the hill from Milsom Street, first two and then more a little way behind. The front two were looking absolutely terrified. Then there was another bang from somewhere behind them and the two turned round and fired their guns. I hadn’t noticed until then that they were carrying them. I ran myself then, I promise you.’

  ‘Can you describe them at all?’

  ‘The first ones looked a bit sort of foreign, but street lights make people look different, don’t they? I didn’t see the faces of the ones behind them.’

  ‘Foreign in what way?’

  ‘Well, sort of quite short and dark-haired. Curly hair. I don’t mean they were black, mind. More like gypsies really.’

  I wrote HUGGINS followed by a question mark in my notebook.

  ‘That’s all really,’ Mrs Stonelake said. ‘Only that I ran and ran and at least two of them were behind me all the way down Stall Street into Southgate. A couple might have gone somewhere else. Someone was laughing. Then they must have fired at me for I fell down. I didn’t feel anything straight away so I thought I’d just tripped. I played dead and that’s all I remember until I woke up here. They won’t come after me again if they find out I’ve talked to you, will they?’ Her lips quivered.

  Carrick put a hand on her shoulder. ‘No, no chance. There’s an armed police officer just outside the ward at all times. Is there anything at all that you want to add – even if it seems unimportant to you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Was there any traffic?’ I asked. ‘Cars whose drivers were trying to get out of the way, for example?’

  ‘No, at least . . . Yes, that’s right, I remember now. I did glimpse some cars but they’d stopped at the top of the road, from where the men had come. They were too far away to see exactly what they were, though.’

  ‘And of course lower down it’s a pedestrian precinct,’ Carrick said.

  ‘Yes, but they drove down that,’ I reminded him.

  ‘So they did.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Mrs Stonelake exclaimed. ‘That’s right, I did see some cars around Southgate. And there was a big car parked without lights.’

  ‘Something like a Rolls-Royce?’

  ‘Not quite as big and posh as those.’

  ‘Where was it exactly? Can you remember?’

  ‘Near the bottom where I was hit.’

  ‘Was anyone sitting in it?’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘What colour was it?’

  ‘Very dark. Black, probably. Yes, that’s right, the windows looked dark too – dark glass so I don’t suppose I would have been able to see anyone in it. Now you’ve reminded me I remember thinking it might be the mayor’s or somebody like that, waiting to pick him up from a do.’

  ‘And it’s silly to ask if you noticed any of the registration.’

  Another wan smile. ‘No, sorry, I didn’t.’

  Carrick said, ‘Do you think you might be able to recognize any of the men if, when you’re better, you looked at some photographs?’ He did not add that included those of the dead, the bodies carefully made more or less presentable by the mortuary assistants.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Mrs Stonelake said dubiously. ‘I suppose I could always try. But I’d be worried I’d get people into trouble if I picked out the wrong ones.’

  ‘That’s my responsibility,’ Carrick assured her. ‘And we don’t arrest people without good reason.’

  Well, not for most of the time, I thought.

  We left, Carrick giving her his card should she recollect anything further.

  That afternoon there was a meeting designed to create a progress report. It proved to be a depressing experience. The first thing to emerge was that no evidence had been found to connect Adam Trelonic with the shootings even though there was no satisfactory explanation as to why he was in the city centre at that time of night. His wife still maintained that she had no idea why he had been there – but surely, I thought, a woman would know if her husband had gone out for a beer – and it had become obvious that the couple’s marriage had not been healthy. She had finally refused to cooperate any further. With reluctance on Carrick’s part the man was now being regarded as an innocent passer-by either caught in crossfire or singled out later by those who had ‘won’ or, at least, survived.

  The two mutilated bodies were still unidentified but due to their appearance and blood group types were being tentatively labelled as belonging to men of mid-European extraction. Their fingerprints and, when available, DNA details would be circulated to all relevant authorities. It would all take time. And, adding to the DCI’s gloom, the people who Lynn Outhwaite had spotted in the restaurant were proving impossible to trace.

  On the positive side, the man living rough who had witnessed some of what had happened had been located at a Salvation Army hostel. He had been sufficiently close to the injured to be able to positively identify the Jessops from mugshots and was emphatic that they had been carrying weapons, at least one of which had been swiftly grabbed by someone although it had been impossible to tell whether whoever it was had been one of those who had shot them. This was valuable, pre-empting any claim by the brothers that they had merely been passing.

  DI Black could not be present at the meeting but I was able to stand in for him and update those not in the know with regard to the Bristol-based mobsters. Three of the dead had been identified almost right at the start with another two, at the time, unknown. One of these had been found to be listed as a missing person; the other had assumed a stolen identity. Both had been known to the police at one time and all five had been connected to a crime boss who called himself Mick the Kick on account of his enthusiasm for kick-boxing. This individual was being sought to help with enquiries.

  That left finding out who was running the other gang. Someone had gone round recruiting men fairly local to Bath. It was vital to discover what part, if any, the London crime lord referred to as Uncle had played in all this. More might be learned when Derek Jessop was deemed fit enough to be questioned, soon it was hoped. His brother Billy was still dangerously ill.

  ‘You need to get SOCA involved,’ I finished by saying.

  ‘You think that would be useful?’ Carrick asked, his tone light and neutral.

  ‘There’s a possibility the pair who are thought to have been of mid-European extraction could have broken away or were fugitives from gangs from Romania and the Czech Republic that have moved to the UK and SOCA are trying to smash. We might be able to discover who they were from cases that are being currently worked on.’

  ‘All details were sent to the Met,’ he responded.

  ‘May I send them to Commander Greenway?’ A breakdown in communications would be nothing new.

  He pondered for a few moments and then said, ‘Yes, that’s fine by me.’

  Patrick set off from Manchester to drive to London that evening.

  ‘I’ve briefed someone and handed over the job to her,’ Patrick said when he rang me before starting his journey. ‘There’s actually very little left
to do as thanks to old intelligence from Richard Daws we’ve located most of this guy’s chums – he originally came from the Midlands – and there’ll soon be a few dawn raids. Hopefully that’ll lead to info as to where he’s hiding out.’

  ‘I take it you’ve been recalled by Greenway for another job,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t you suggest I was brought in to help with the turf war?’

  ‘I did, but was being careful as I wasn’t sure what had been said – and you might not have been.’

  ‘Are you coming up?’

  ‘What, to London? Do you need me right away?’

  ‘For several reasons,’ he replied before uttering a dirty chuckle. Then, ‘What’s that faint rumbling noise I can hear?’

  ‘Pirate’s successor and her brother,’ I answered. ‘They’re on my lap, purring.’

  Michael Greenway had suffered a gunshot wound to his left shoulder not all that long ago and was still moving a little stiffly. I knew it must be causing him huge annoyance as he has a large garden in the Ascot area and unwinds by getting it into shape with various powerful implements.

  ‘I understand you winged some bloke who took a pot shot at Jim Carrick,’ was his opening remark to me. He and the DCI have met several times.

  ‘Derek Jessop,’ I said. ‘With his brother Billy he was involved in the Bath shoot-out.’

  ‘I thought you were joking!’ Patrick exclaimed.

  ‘I rather hoped you thought I was joking,’ I told him.

  It was mid-morning the following day and we were in Greenway’s spacious office. On the way up to London on the train I had been wondering about the wisdom of my impetuous suggestion to involve SOCA. While it was true that Patrick had wanted to be involved with the case right from the beginning, the people we would be dealing with were highly dangerous and organized criminals. I had cheered up slightly when I remembered that Patrick is a highly dangerous and organized investigator.

  ‘I’ve been following this carefully,’ Greenway said, seating himself in the revolving leather chair behind his desk with more care than usual. ‘Even more so when Uncle’s name was mentioned.’

  ‘Why is he referred to as that?’ I enquired.

  ‘I understand it stems from when he shot and killed his nephew on account of the young upstart thinking it was about time he took over the old man’s business.’

  ‘Do we know his real identity?’ Patrick said.

  ‘Do these people ever have real identities? Once upon a time he was a man from East Ham by the name of Fred Gibbons who used to be a hairy yob with tattoos. This character disappeared for a couple of years after he came out of prison for robbery with violence and then a man with a shaven head came on the scene in the same area calling himself Dobson. So there was a bald yob with the same kind of tattoos getting up to the same kind of criminal activity. He went down for six years for the nephew’s murder, the sentence reduced because he dropped any number of his seriously wanted so-called buddies in it and at the time the nephew was armed to the teeth and tried to shoot him first – you realize we’re talking gang warfare here too. He went from sight again after release and then a man we’re convinced is the same villain has popped up in Hammersmith with money to burn and, according to a reliable grapevine, is running a crime ring involving some of the same mobsters. This bloke has blond hair and the same kind of tattoos, although some of them seem to have been removed. Like Carrick, I’ve seen covertly taken pictures and agree with him that it’s the same man: Uncle. This is the description that’s been circulated to all police forces. The house he’s living in is rented in the name of Brad Northwood.’

  ‘Were you sent the descriptions of the other people DS Outhwaite saw in the restaurant in Bath?’ I asked.

  ‘I was, and quietly as I’m not up to full ops yet, I’ve been working on it. The woman with Uncle that night sounds like Joy Murphy. She’s not his current squeeze – he usually has a few cast-off footballers’ wives for that – more like an in-house harpy who acts as his bodyguard. Apparently she likes nothing better than to be let loose on someone Uncle’s got a grudge against. She was probably involved in the mob war in Bath. I get the impression the rest of those present at the restaurant were locals known to Carrick.’

  ‘Someone called Charlie Gill,’ I recollected. ‘And a Cardiff-based crook Carrick also knew about.’

  ‘He’s probably aware by now that the latter mobster’s very recently been picked up by the eastern division of South Wales Police to help with enquiries into a warehouse raid in which a security guard was shot and seriously injured.’

  ‘He also mentioned a woman who had more convictions for being drunk and disorderly than seemed possible but couldn’t remember her name. She was with a man with ginger hair. He didn’t recognize him from Lynn Outhwaite’s description.’

  ‘I emailed Carrick about them,’ Greenway said. ‘Just to get as much info as possible. She’s one Gilly Darke, a local petty criminal. The man hasn’t appeared on anyone’s radar so might be perfectly innocent.’

  ‘Going out to dinner with a crime lord like Uncle must have been a bit of a culture shock then – if he even knew who he was,’ Patrick drawled. ‘But why was a petty crook and her boyfriend there?’

  ‘Recruits?’ I suggested. ‘Someone’s been going around the pubs in the area looking for potential gang members. Were they brought along as they might know the set-up at Bath nick and/or CID? And you could ask Carrick how many male coppers there are in the area, past and present, with ginger hair.’

  You are on dangerous territory when you say things like this to policemen. But as Greenway knows perfectly well, to bring in ideas from new angles is exactly my role. He gave me a straight look and then muttered, ‘Yes, all right, I’ll get on to him.’

  ‘So what would you like us to do, sir?’ Patrick asked.

  There was a little silence and then Greenway answered with, ‘This is a brainstorming session.’ He sat back in his chair with a tight smile and regarded us steadily. ‘Ideas, please, from my adviser and his consultant. I want to put together a list of proposals that you can take to Carrick with a view to getting quick results with this. And don’t call me sir – you used to be a lieutenant colonel, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You don’t need anyone to search out Uncle as it’s known exactly where he is – if indeed it is the right bloke,’ Patrick immediately said, having chuckled at the final remark. ‘But you do need to build a copper-bottomed case against him before he’s picked up and find out how far his empire stretches. Not only that, you need to know whether he really has got as far as Bath or if that was just him and a few cronies having a weekend off and living it up on their ill-gotten gains. I reckon he’s had enough of being inside and is going upmarket having found rather a lot of emergency loot somewhere. He’ll get his dirty work done for him from now on and if the hirelings are arrested that’s tough on them. If we’re not careful he’ll be virtually untouchable, on the face of it living a respectable life. I’m prepared to go undercover with a view to infiltrating his set-up.’

  ‘Thank you but I don’t think that needs to be our number one move.’

  ‘The interesting bit is the presence of the petty crook, Darke. Is she stunningly beautiful and possibly in line to decorate his bed, by the way? I haven’t seen her description.’

  Greenway consulted his computer. ‘Tall, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes, no other distinguishing marks. That doesn’t tell us much.’

  ‘I’ll ring Lynn,’ I said. ‘She’s at her mother’s with a broken leg but will probably still answer her mobile.’

  Lynn had a few choice words to say about Darke and in response to my query as to her own well-being grunted and then said that she would rather be at work and was planning to shoot the horse.

  ‘Grumpy as hell,’ I reported. ‘In which case it might be wise to slightly temper her pronouncement that Darke resembles a pig’s arse.’

  ‘I think it answers your question, though,’ the commander said to Patr
ick. ‘And I can understand why Carrick doesn’t want to pull her in at the moment. It’s best to proceed with caution or they’ll go to ground.’

  I had an idea Carrick could not even find her but said nothing.

  ‘This Charlie Gill . . .’ I ventured.

  ‘James’ll be able to fill us in on him,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Yes, I know but he’s someone you might expect to be involved if this man is trying to extend his criminal interests. Uncle might be offering him some kind of partnership with whatever he controls and then when he’s got what he wants quietly have him dropped into Bristol docks one night in a weighted sack.’

  ‘And?’ Patrick said.

  ‘Charlie might not be very bright and doesn’t know who he’s up against. So a friendly warning might not come amiss – hoping that he’ll then be scared into coming up with some really useful info.’

  ‘It’s too risky,’ Greenway said. ‘Patrick’s a local too – he’d be recognized.’

  ‘While it’s no secret in Hinton Littlemoor that Patrick’s working for SOCA I’m not sure about the wider area. But this doesn’t have to be done undercover. I’m sure he could portray himself as a bit of a maverick – one of those cops who hover on the edge of the criminal fraternity.’ I gave Patrick a big smile. ‘Sorry, I’m talking about you as though you weren’t here.’

  Smiling back, Patrick said, ‘But if Gill really is in this man’s pocket and thinks he’s got a good deal it would be risking the investigation – they would know they’d been spotted together.’

  ‘Then arrange for Gill to have a little encounter that would unnerve him so he’d be more likely to believe you.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ the commander burst out with. ‘This isn’t one of your books, you know!’ He was silent for a few moments and then said, ‘What sort of encounter?’

  ‘Oh, just being pushed around a bit by someone hooded and scary should do it. Does he have any minders?’ I asked.