by Nick Oldham
It was Santiago’s turn to shrug. Then she said, ‘Didn’t he finish work about the same time as Craig Alford, but then he got called back later to go to the scene of Alford’s death? Then he finished work after that, if you see what I mean?’
‘Yeah … what if he recorded something of interest during any of those journeys, either on the way home initially or going to or coming away from Craig’s house. Wouldn’t hurt to have a look, would it, even if there was nothing.’
‘If the cameras are here,’ Santiago said.
‘Mm. Maybe they aren’t, and if they aren’t that throws up a whole new ball game – such as where are they and who has them?’
‘They’re here.’
Flynn and Santiago turned, not having realized that while they were talking Marina had gone back into the house, gone upstairs, found the two cameras and returned with one in each hand. She held them out, like a dead bird in each palm. ‘Have them.’
Flynn and Santiago had not slept well, just a few hours of tossing and turning until eventually, though wiped out, they’d got up, made coffee in the room and waited for the arrival of the hire car, a Fiat Punto. It was after that they’d gone to see Marina, offered their sympathy and acquired the dash-cams.
From Tope’s house Flynn had driven down to Preston Docks, where they ate breakfast in the café at Morrisons supermarket. They then walked across to the edge of the dock.
‘If I’m right, from what Rik told me, Jerry was shot along here.’ He and Santiago walked in an easterly direction behind the Halfords car spares building, next to which was a customer car park. ‘This is about the spot.’
Flynn leaned on the rails and looked at the discoloured water in the dock, imagining the scene. Tope leaning on the top rail, the killer sneaking up behind him, the blinding flash of light and terrible pain, then blackness. Tope would probably not even have known he went into the cold, diseased water; he would have been dead before hitting it. Flynn felt queasy.
‘When are we going to have a look at the stuff on the cameras?’ Santiago asked.
Flynn fished out his mobile and called Rik Dean.
This time he connected and after the greetings and wellness checks Flynn put the question to him. ‘Have you got a timeline for Craig and Jerry’s murders?’
‘Yeah, course, why?’
‘What time did Craig leave work that night?’
Dean knew the answer instantly. ‘He went out through the main gate at headquarters at eight fifteen p.m.’
Flynn sensed the ‘why?’ question hovering, so he jumped in quickly to the next point. ‘He and Jerry were both working on the same drug-bust operation, both in the control room at the same time, is that right?’ Dean said yes. ‘What time did Jerry leave work?’
‘He went out of HQ a minute or so after Craig.’
‘Any idea what route they both took home?’
‘As far as I know, the usual. They both – usually – went up the bypass, under the bridge and back down the Fifty-nine again. I know for sure that Jerry went that way, just assume Craig did too. Up to reaching the Penwortham flyover, they both probably followed the same route. We’ve only just sourced some CCTV on those roads, so we’ll soon know for sure, probably tomorrow. Why?’
‘Bear with me,’ Flynn said. ‘Is there any suggestion or suspicion that either of them was followed?’
‘Not that we know of, but who’s to say? Look, what is this, Steve?’
‘Jerry had dash-cams in his car, front and rear. We just thought there might be something on them … worth looking at, is all.’
‘There weren’t any when the forensic team did his car,’ Dean said.
‘We think he took them out when he went home and didn’t put them back in when he went out again … you said you spoke to him when he was at the Sitting Goose.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. He’d nipped out for a pint. Anyway, you’re right, they must be worth a look, can’t do any harm. Where are they?’
‘We’ve got them. Marina gave them to us.’
‘Right … any chance of you …?’
‘We’ll bring them over and maybe we can watch them.’
‘OK.’
‘Another thing,’ Flynn said. ‘Just off the top of my head: even if they weren’t followed, do you think there could have been a spotter alerting the killer that Craig was on his way home?’
‘Could be worth checking. I’ll speak to the telephone unit.’
Twenty minutes later Flynn and Santiago were at headquarters sitting in a room in the FMIT building, sipping more coffee.
A detective constable was setting up a feed from the dash-cams into a laptop computer which was in turn linked up to a ceiling-mounted data projector, and the image from the screen was on the whiteboard at the front of the room.
Rik Dean entered, sat alongside Flynn and nodded at the DC, who pressed a button. The screen changed to a coloured but grainy image of the exit barrier at the front of headquarters, with the corner of the security kiosk just visible at one edge. There was a running time and date stamp in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
A moment later a black Jaguar drove up to the barrier with headlights on. The barrier rose, the car drove out, one person on board, not clearly defined.
‘Craig leaving,’ Dean said.
Flynn’s mouth dried with fearful anticipation. He took a sip of his coffee and Santiago laid a hand on his arm, picking up on his emotion, knowing what was coming next. He was about to see what had been almost the last journey Jerry Tope had undertaken. It would be hard to watch.
The barrier came down and Alford’s car disappeared.
Flynn held his breath.
‘Jerry leaving,’ Dean said unnecessarily as Tope’s car approached the barrier.
Flynn squeezed Santiago’s fingers, then pulled himself together.
‘This is the dash-cam footage coming up,’ the DC said, and began to run the images taken from the front and rear of Tope’s car on a split screen which came to life the moment Tope started the engine and reversed out of his parking spot at HQ. They were good, sharp images of the view from the car, Tope driving slowly around the HQ building, then towards the exit barrier. At no time was Alford’s Jaguar visible in front of him.
The barrier rose and Tope passed under it, across the junction, then left up the A59 where he turned off left again and under the bridge as expected.
Tope passed a single car parked in the layby a couple of hundred metres up the road from the HQ junction. Just as Tope drove past the driver’s door on this car was opening and there was the transient image of a man’s face at the crack, checking over his shoulder before getting out.
The rear-view camera caught the same man getting out, closing his door and walking around the rear of his car towards the hedge by the field.
By this time, only a matter of seconds, Tope had reached the turn-off and only moments after that he was under the bridge, then coming back down the road in the opposite direction. There was only a glimpse of the car across the carriageway with the driver still by the hedge, looking downwards.
‘Looks like he’s urinating,’ Dean said.
The remainder of the journey was uneventful, all the way up to the point where Tope drew up on his drive and the screens went dead. At no stage was there any sight of Alford’s car.
‘Not much to see,’ Dean commented. ‘Good thought, though.’
‘No,’ Flynn agreed. ‘Can we just spin back to the car on the layby, if you don’t mind?’ he asked the DC, who said, ‘No probs.’
Rik Dean’s phone rang so he excused himself and left the room.
Flynn looked at Santiago. ‘It’s like watching ghosts.’
She nodded. There were tears in her eyes. She had only known Tope briefly and had almost been murdered alongside him in the car bomb in Puerto Rico, so she felt a strong connection and was feeling these re-runs as much as Flynn.
‘Here we go.’ The DC pressed ‘play’.
Tope reversed out of
his parking spot and the journey started.
‘I know it’s a pain,’ Flynn said, ‘but when the layby comes into view, can we do it frame by frame, as it were?’ Flynn knew it was a digital image and frames did not exist any more, but the DC knew what he meant. Slow motion.
Tope went under the barrier, drove out on to the A59.
Then the DC slowed the image right down, forwarded it the equivalent of one frame at a time as Tope’s car approached and passed the car in the layby. The make and model were clear but the number plate was just a tad hazy and indistinguishable.
‘Any chance of enhancing the reg number?’ Flynn asked.
‘Sure.’
The next complete pause was on the face of the man peering backwards through the crack in the door, which was quite clear but only showed a vertical strip a couple of inches wide down the middle of the man’s face.
Then Tope had gone past and Flynn concentrated on the rear-facing camera showing the man getting out. It also captured the front of the car and the registration plate, which was still hard to make out.
But the man was quite distinguishable, even from a distance and in the fading light of the evening.
He was a middle-aged white man, maybe six feet tall, heavy build or simply overweight.
The DC paused the image and zoomed in, something that could never have been achieved as easily with videotape or old-fashioned film.
An icon resembling a Sherlock Holmes type magnifying glass appeared and suddenly the whole screen was the man’s face.
‘I think I know him,’ Flynn said.
The DC then dragged the icon around and zoomed in on the car’s number plate, which was then easy to read; then he went back to the man and positioned the icon on his hand, in which he was holding something that was probably a mobile phone.
‘Who is he?’ Santiago asked.
‘Name escapes,’ Flynn said distractedly. ‘But whatever, this could be nothing. A bloke in a car in a layby. So what? Having a brew, having a wank … these things happen.’ He looked at the DC. ‘Can you print off a couple of pictures of the man’s face and one of the registration number?’
Rik Dean burst back into the room, blowing out his cheeks.
‘Two things,’ he said hurriedly. ‘First, how do you feel about coming to Lancashire Prison today to look at some CCTV footage?’ He glanced at the image on the whiteboard as he talked, screwed up his face and went on, ‘It was taken on the day of the fire when Brian Tasker died.’
‘Supposedly died,’ Flynn corrected him.
Dean shrugged a ‘whatever’.
‘And, yes, we’d like that very much … second thing?’
‘The telephone unit called me while I was out there … they’ve been in touch with several mobile phone service providers, who are good at supplying us with information without frickin’ warrants all the time if we give them specific dates and times to look at.’
Flynn waited.
‘After you suggested it earlier, I asked them to look between eight ten p.m. and eight twenty p.m. on the night that Craig and Jerry were murdered, at any calls that were made or texts sent from the area just outside HQ on the Fifty-nine. Incredibly only two calls were made and one text message sent from that location. Craig made two calls, one to his wife’s mobile number and one to his home landline.’ He paused dramatically.
‘And the third, the text?’ Santiago asked impatiently.
Dean held up a sheet of paper on which he had scribbled two numbers. ‘It was sent from the top number to the second number. You might be interested in the bottom number, Steve, very interested.’
He and Santiago looked. She made a hissing noise. Flynn just shook his head. He did not recognize it.
‘It’s the hotline number on the Steve Flynn wanted poster,’ Santiago said.
Flynn’s mouth dropped open.
‘The telephone unit tell me it’s a pay-as-you-go number, but now out of service,’ Dean said. ‘Unfortunately it’s impossible to read the content of the text.’
‘And the other number – the top one?’ Santiago said.
Dean turned the sheet back towards himself, then looked at the image on the whiteboard, the face of the man from the car in the layby. ‘Don’t know who it belongs to – yet – but I’ll bet a pound to a pinch of shit it’s from him.’ He looked at Flynn. ‘You know who that sleaze ball is, don’t you?’
EIGHTEEN
Lancashire Prison was situated a few miles south-west of the town of Leyland, close to the other prisons in that area, Wymott and Garth, and was fairly modern, built on similar lines to the other two. Flynn had been there in the 1980s, when all three prisons kicked off with major riots and many buildings were overrun by inmates who kidnapped and assaulted the staff and set fire to the places. It had been a time of great unrest in British prisons and Flynn knew it still bubbled to this day, almost thirty years later.
Prisons were never going to be happy places.
Flynn, Santiago, Rik Dean and a DS called Bromilow had been allowed into the prison, but not into the inner sanctum. They were sitting in a training room in which a laptop and projector screen had been set up. A senior prison officer, Milne, had linked the laptop via Wi-Fi to the prison’s internal security camera network. He was explaining things.
‘It was the night of the twentieth … all inmates had been returned to their cells, a rollcall was done and lockdown had just been completed. Just a normal night by all accounts.’
‘Were you on duty?’ Flynn asked.
‘No, I came in the morning after,’ Milne said, and went on, ‘A fire was noticed in one of the cells at about three a.m. on the morning of the twenty-first, but we’re not certain exactly how long it might have been blazing – possibly for some time.’
‘Why do you think that?’ Dean asked.
Milne winced. ‘Part of the alarm system was disabled on the landing of that wing … it’s called Martin Mere Landing, after the nearby bird sanctuary.’
‘How was it disabled?’ Dean probed.
Milne shrugged. ‘I say “disabled”; it just didn’t work like it should have done. It was checked after the fire and was working OK.’
‘But it didn’t pick up the smoke or the heat?’
‘No … and it’s one of those that can respond to heat and/or smoke, but it didn’t go off for some reason. They can be temperamental, but they are checked monthly. This one had been checked on the first of the month.’
Dean was eager to ask more questions but decided they could wait. He and the others were impatient to see the CCTV footage. ‘OK, can we see?’
Milne touched a button and the screen showed an image split into two camera angles on Martin Mere Landing, Block C, Wing B. These showed views from each end of the landing, the cameras basically facing each other, with ten cell doors on the left of one screen and the same ten on the right looking the other way.
Nothing was happening. The landing was empty.
Then a wisp of smoke came from underneath one of the cell doors, like a spirit coming through the gap.
The time stamp on the screen was ‘03:01’.
Smoke seeped out, slowly building until it began to fog the landing. Flynn thought he saw a lick of flame from under the door.
The situation seemed to go on for a while, the time passing with excruciating slowness. It took for ever before ‘03:04’ appeared on the screen.
‘I’m assuming that is Tasker’s cell?’ Flynn asked.
‘Yes. He was in there alone.’
‘Alone,’ Flynn said flatly.
‘Yeah, guy like him—’ Milne said.
‘Gets what he wants?’ Flynn eyed Milne cynically.
‘Up to a point. Occasionally he had to share,’ Milne said. ‘And, by the way, he had been a model prisoner for all his time in custody.’
‘Sociopath,’ Santiago said. ‘Playing the long game.’
Almost five minutes after the first wisp of smoke the first prison officers were pounding down the landing, w
eaving their way through the smoke-saturated air to the door from which the flames were now definitely licking. They fumbled the keys and it was evident, even on this silent video, that they were shouting desperately to each other, until one managed to shove the key into the lock.
Once the door was unlocked they did the sensible thing and ducked behind it as it opened outwards, to protect themselves from severe injury or death. A searing fireball came from within the cell as the rush of fresh oxygen produced an explosion of incredible force, heat and ferocity, as though a bomb had gone off, but missed them crouching behind the steel door.
Dean, Flynn, Santiago and Bromilow stared, transfixed, in awe. Flynn gave a quiet whistle.
‘He had an armchair in his cell as a perk,’ Milne said, glancing quickly at Flynn for a comment which did not come, ‘but it was stuffed with old style foam and it looks like he fell asleep on his bed after dropping a lighted cigarette down the back of the cushion. The smoke killed him and he was engulfed by fire after the explosion when the door opened.
‘Fire service took twenty minutes to arrive, during which time the fire raged and we were ineffective in fighting it with our inadequate extinguishers. He had no chance and neither did we.’
‘Very convenient,’ Flynn said sourly.
The officer pushed a brown envelope across to Dean, who shook out several graphic photographs of the scene after the fire had been put out. They were horrific and the body on the lower bunk bed was barely distinguishable as such. The inside of the cell was a black-charred mess.
‘We carried out an investigation,’ Milne went on, ‘together with the police and fire service, and as far as the coroner was concerned it was death by accident.’
‘It was a DI from Leyland, I believe, who dealt with the police side of it?’ Dean said.
‘Correct.’
‘And a post-mortem was carried out?’
‘For what it was worth,’ Milne said.
‘So the death of Brian Tasker has now been done and dusted,’ Flynn said. ‘How sure are we it really was Brian Tasker in that cell?’
‘As sure as we can be. He was locked in at lights out, ticked off on rollcall and checked by an officer on his rounds at eleven thirty p.m. and midnight, when he was seen to be asleep. Why? Do you think it wasn’t him?’
