by AD Davies
“You still live with Roberta?”
“Yes, why wouldn’t I?”
“Well … you know…” He pointed the pen at her stomach.
“She’ll be a brilliant aunt!”
In reality, Alicia worried about it too. A three bedroom flat, a single mum, a baby, and a lovely outrageous friend living there. Robbie promised to help out occasionally as long as Alicia didn’t “take the piss”, but Alicia gave her an out at any point. If it became too much, interfered with their friendship or Robbie’s teaching, either Robbie would move out or Alicia would find somewhere else.
Alicia said, “The only reason she’s leaving is if I don’t stop cramming news shows. Local stuff like Look North, international events, even business specials. Ask me what a derivative is. Short-selling. Go on, I dare you.”
“I know what they are,” Murphy said. “I watch the news.”
* * *
Up on her level, third, each detective was allocated an office of their own, although “office” was probably stretching the term. They were partitions divided by sliding walls that could be twisted and moved to form larger meeting rooms. All except Janine Paulson’s of course.
In the anteroom to Paulson’s office, Alicia remained standing while Murphy sat on a low sofa, his knees higher than his hips. If he stretched his legs they would reach the chief super’s assistant’s desk, and as Alicia warned him in a stage whisper, “No one scuffs Maud Bassett’s desk.”
No one.
Maud’s computer pinged and she read the message. “Okay, Alicia, in you go.”
Murphy had never seen Alicia tense up in the presence of a superior before, but as they entered, that’s exactly what she did, greeting her commanding officer with a “ma’am” rather than using her first name, as she always did with Graham Rhapshaw.
Paulson was a slender black woman of around fifty with the build of a swimmer, closely-cropped hair, and hooped gold earrings, the only item not in keeping with her black and white dress uniform. She had prepared a conference area on the table overlooking the motorway, at which a man Murphy assumed to be Detective Sergeant Robert Stevenson manned a computer monitor with the SCA logo spinning. He’d been in here all along while they waited.
“Bobby!” Alicia said with one of her big, happy smiles. “Nice to see you again.”
“DS Friend,” Stevenson replied flatly.
He was in his early-thirties and handsome; looked to Murphy like one of the breed of “new men” who over groomed and hit the gym after work instead of the pub.
They all sat at the table and Paulson poured coffee from the caffettiere in the centre. Alicia opted for water and introduced Murphy as “Detective Chief Inspector Murphy” not “Donny-Boy Murphy” as she had in the past.
Paulson said, “Right, so. A connection between Omar Jafari and Mitchell Vaughn?”
“Yes,” Alicia said. “Omar—”
“And, DS Friend. We don’t need any soliloquies or speeches. Just the facts, please.”
Murphy awaited the obvious joke from Alicia aimed at Paulson’s unintentional Dragnet reference, but Alicia simply said, “Yes, Ma’am,” and bullet pointed the salient lines from their interviews. The pair watched her present the two videos, nodding along as she pinpointed deception indicators in Jafari’s and Vaughn’s body language. To conclude, Alicia said, “It’s possible there’s a cell of some sort. Omar is clearly of the jihad variety, but it’s not unheard of for white British people to convert and become radicalised. Homosexuals are a target for Islamists as much as us infidels—”
Paulson held up a hand, a simple gesture Murphy hated. The last time anyone did that to Alicia—a DCI from Chapel Allerton—she high-fived him and carried on regardless until he remembered his manners.
Today, she stopped talking.
Paulson asked, “Is there any particular reason you called him a ‘munchkin’?”
Alicia shook her head. “Felt right at the time.”
Stevenson inhaled, held it as if waiting for Paulson to offer him a hand gesture of his own. When it didn’t materialise, he said, “It’s worth looking at. The connection. Not the munchkin thing.”
Paulson stared at the screen. “It’s thin. Words. Nothing more.”
“Ma’am,” Alicia said, “we all know certain gangs use their own slang and code words. It’s the same with cells like this. Even if they’re unaware of each other, being ordered around by a central command figure, it’s possible they picked up the same language.”
“Like a pep talk,” Murphy said.
Stevenson and the chief super both glared at him.
“What, I’m not allowed to speak?”
“Of course.” Paulson eased the expression on her face. “It’s just we’re not familiar with you, DCI Murphy. Frankly, I forgot you were here.”
“In fact…” Stevenson pursed his lips awkwardly and nodded to the door. “Should he be here for a confidential briefing?”
“Murphy is a fine officer,” Alicia said. “And don’t forget, he’s a DCI, while you and I are sergeants. He might be a bit grumpy and frumpy but—”
“DCI Murphy,” Chief Superintendent Paulson said. “Please wait outside for a moment.”
“Wait a second,” Murphy said. “That’s—”
“Bullshit,” Alicia finished for him. “Just because Backfill Bobby here says something is confidential and needs clearance—”
“Sorry,” Paulson said. “But, ‘Backfill Bobby’?”
“I’ve asked her to stop,” Stevenson said wearily.
“He doesn’t like ‘Louis’,” Alicia explained, that infuriating “true” self of hers spilling forth. “He’s backfilling for me. His name is Robert, and he’s a bobby. A police officer. Get it?”
“I get it.” Paulson’s reply sounded as weary as Stevenson’s. “Your point, DS Friend.”
“My point is, nothing we’ve discussed is outside of Murphy’s grade. Counter Terrorism are still reviewing whether they need to take over, so Bobby here is only excluding Murphy from the meeting to feel like he’s in charge. And maybe to impress you.”
Stevenson’s smirk sounded forced. “Another speech?”
Paulson reclined in her seat. “The pair of you need to stop this. DS Friend, you’re insecure because someone is taking over your cases. DS Stevenson, you’re being a dick because Alicia has the reputation you aspire to. Get along, or get out.” She sipped her coffee as calm as she appeared when they first walked in. “DCI Murphy, these murders happened on your patch. What’s your take?”
Murphy glanced from Alicia to Stevenson in turn. Lingered on Alicia, who nodded.
He said, “I honestly don’t know. A terror cell, or perhaps they were a pair of killers who hooked up online. Impossible to tell at this stage.”
Paulson considered it. “A partnership?”
“Rose and Fred West,” Alicia said. “Myra Hindley and—”
Again, the hand came up and Alicia fell silent.
Murphy said, “We all know these people find one another somehow, but it would be unusual for them to act independently toward the same goals. That said, we have Vaughn’s message to someone in the Leeds area.”
Stevenson leaned forward on the table. “Could be Jafari.”
“Could be.” Murphy looked at Alicia. “But unlikely?”
Alicia nodded. “Unlikely but not impossible. I’d suggest a wider cell, or—”
The door opened and Maud entered with a slip of paper, which she presented—folded—to Paulson, then retreated to her desk. Paulson read the note and folded it flat to the table.
Deep breath, then, “What if this is a cell? What’s the prognosis?”
“Online community, perhaps,” Stevenson answered for Alicia. “Some group Cyber Division hasn’t picked up on. Maybe you could tap up one of your old friends at MI5—”
“I don’t ‘tap up’ old friends. I make enquiries based on mutual cooperation.” She met the gaze of all three.
Oddly, Murphy was beginn
ing to like the super.
He said, “If you could make the approach it could hasten the process. If this pair are on a watch list, no matter how tenuous, it might connect them to one another. Or an associate in common.”
Paulson nodded again. “Okay. DCI Murphy, this is your patch, your case. But I am officially offering you support from DS Stevenson and DS Friend.”
“Do I need both?”
“I assume DS Friend is your first choice. Fine. She’s yours. But if the investigation overlaps with DS Friend’s maternity leave, I want DS Stevenson fully briefed.” She turned to Alicia. “When do you and I part ways for a couple of months?”
“Friday,” Alicia replied. “And it’s six months, not a couple.”
“Noted.” Back to Murphy. “You have four days of Alicia, then it’s all Bobby—Robert. Sorry. Alicia is grounded here at HQ or at Sheerton. She’s a consultant. Under no circumstances is she to attend any active operations or crime scenes. Robert will be your main contact, and he will report in to me daily.”
Alicia pouted. “So I’m, what, the secretary?”
“Here.” Paulson handed her the note from Maud. “Liaise with the West Yorkshire team dealing with this and fire off the details to Murphy and Stevenson.” Paulson stood. “Might be connected, might not. But so soon after the others, I think we have to treat it as a third attack.”
“What is it?” Murphy asked.
Alicia read the note and struggled to her feet. “Leeds city centre, right on the precinct. A machete attack. Murphy, it’s a PCSO … it’s one of our own.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Murphy had never visited a warzone, but he imagined something similar, albeit fifty square metres of shopping precinct instead of citywide devastation.
Briggate was one of the longest streets in Leeds city centre, a pedestrianised stretch of road lined with boutiques and major department stores like Harvey Nichols, Debenhams, and Marks & Spencer. Branching off here saw long arcades, covered stretches facilitating more shopping and dining than anyone should really need. Today, amid the opulence, armed police shouted at civilians, directing them to get back behind the outer cordon, to move away.
A hundred metres inside the tape barrier, an inner cordon circled the actual scene where the body of the police community support officer—the PCSO Paulson referred to—was enclosed within the familiar white tent, while his blood spilled across the red bricks all the way to blond flagstones that served as an entrance to a shop selling nothing but ties. Scene of crime officers laid sand at the outer limits of the spreading pool to halt its progress. Gawkers gathered at the outer cordon fifty hundred metres down the precinct, while Murphy and Stevenson were granted access to the inner one a mere ten meters from the body. Although the PCSO was hidden from view, the killer was not.
Two uniformed police constables bundled him, screaming, into the back of a police van. A bald black man, topless and well-muscled, he wore only jeans and work boots, and resisted by bracing his legs on the interior cage. When a plainclothes detective manoeuvred his legs and feet, the suspect crashed into the van, where the constables secured him before crashing the cage door closed, locking him in.
The officers from Leeds Central hadn’t yet received the message regarding Murphy and Stevenson dipping their toes into their crime scene, so the pair were stuck at the limits of the inner cordon while the crime scene manager made phone calls.
Less than an hour earlier, the man provisionally identified as Benjamin Grodin, stood atop one of the four-foot-cubed flowerpots lining Briggate and ranted about police brutality. According to the scant details Alicia gleaned so far, witnesses compared him to a preacher giving a sermon, quoting the Black Lives Matter movement that originated in America, referencing specific names here in the UK who he claimed were young black men and victims of police violence. Although Murphy only recalled one incident of an unarmed black man being shot by police in Britain over the past decade, it was one too many and high profile enough to launch protests and for the public to lose more trust in an institution supposed to protect them.
The intelligence document on Murphy’s phone was signed, “Alicia the secretary.”
When PCSO Harpinder Rashid showed up to invite the man for a cup of tea, Benjamin Grodin unsheathed a machete from within his backpack and attacked without further discussion. The wounds to Harpinder Rashid saw the twenty-two year-old’s left arms hacked into, then his left thigh. Once he fell to the floor, Grodin swung at his head and neck, slicing through fingers as Rashid attempted a futile defence. The machete cut muscle and bone, and blood gushed.
Three members of the public—strangers to one another before today—used improvised objects to step in. One threw his hot coffee to shock Grodin into pausing his frenzy, then a second man rammed Grodin with his briefcase outstretched, before a nineteen-year-old woman in a tracksuit waded in with her buggy, having passed her two-year-old daughter to a fourth stranger.
Benjamin Grodin backed off, faced down the trio of protectors that stood between him and the police community support officer, then raised his machete and attempted to slice his own throat.
Nobody tried to stop him. He bled, but there was no flowing torrent. Not quite as easy as it looks in the movies to cut one’s own throat. But he thought he’d done enough, and dropped the machete, at which point half a dozen pedestrians rushed him and sat on him until the police arrived. The paramedics declared his self-inflicted wound superficial, barely even nicked the windpipe and missed both carotids entirely. They patched him up and allowed him to be arrested.
PCSO Harpinder Rashid, though, was declared dead at the scene.
“Muslim?” Stevenson suggested as he and Murphy kicked their heels awaiting clearance.
To Murphy, the three attacks sounded like lone wolf incidents, those who ascribed to the same ideology but—perhaps scarier than mass organised violence—they would have no contact with one another. If this was a jihadi cell, it was an unprecedented series of organised attacks designed to appear like lone wolves, and while the killing of the gay couples and Jafari’s mass murder could conceivably point at a terrorism plot, this murder in Leeds … the assailant appeared to have targeted a police officer. It wasn’t beyond comprehension that Islamists could stoop to such tactics; they’d done it plenty of times abroad. Yet it didn’t sound right.
Why rant about police brutality instead of drones bombing Muslim babies?
“Maybe,” Murphy replied. “But I think it’ll be something else.”
“You hope?”
Murphy nodded. “Yeah. I could do without the riots.”
Stevenson paced. “There was a demonstration after the restaurant murders.”
“I know. That one went down without trouble. The arseholes up at Sheerton today smashed up a couple of cars. Guess it’s the Muslim factor.”
“The what?”
“When a Muslim commits a crime, it’s seen by the public as much worse than a white Brit or American committing the same crime. If Omar was some British white scrote or bored rich kid, do you think there’d have been a demo? Or anything like that degree of hate and anger? And the march for the dead gay fellas maintained a sombre tone, a coming together to grieve, not anger. Hardly seems right, does it?”
“It’s because it’s random,” Stevenson said, halting his pacing to watch the crime scene manager approach. “With a gay-bashing gang—or even a murderer—the target is gay people. Since only between five and ten percent of the population is gay, it’s less important. When the Islamists don’t discriminate, people are more afraid.”
“So we do nothing to stop the hate against gays because they’re proportionally less common?” Murphy said.
When the crime scene manager halted then turned to retrieve his iPad, Stevenson shoved his hands in his pockets. “Murphy, I’m currently up to my neck in wedding plans. My betrothed is called Callum. As in a guy. So I understand better than most.”
“Better than me?”
The crime scene mana
ger arrived and said, “DCI Murphy, DS Stevenson, sorry for the wait. You’ll be afforded every courtesy, but for now remember this is a Leeds Central scene. Sign here.”
Murphy and Stevenson used the stylus to sign the sergeant’s digital paperwork and ducked under the tape.
Stevenson said, “I’m taking over from Alicia because I’m good. I know what I’m talking about, and I will make sure this investigation covers everything as thoroughly as she would.”
Murphy stopped beside the staging area where a technician handed them paper booties and gloves to wear when approaching the body. DI Cupinder Rowe was already wearing identical items as she emerged from the tent, stripping off her gloves. When she reached the staging area, she stared up at Murphy, glancing briefly at Stevenson.
She said, “You SCA guys taking over?”
“Possibly,” Murphy replied. “But—”
“Save it. It’s over. One of our own is dead, and the guy who did it is in custody. You want the paperwork, you got it.”
With her boots, hair net, and gloves in the secure waste bag she prepared to sign out.
Murphy said, “You interviewed Mitchell Vaughn.”
“Yes,” she replied without looking at him.
“You see anything similar here?”
“Other than senseless murder? Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“Benjamin Grodin,” Stevenson said. “Is he a Muslim?”
Cupinder thought for a moment, signed her name on the crime scene ledger, and said, “He was wearing a crucifix when we took him in. So I’m guessing no.”
“Then we’ll need him moving to Sheerton immediately,” Murphy said. “Sorry, but we are taking it over for now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Although Chief Super Paulson grounded Alicia like an errant teen, the restriction extended to Sheerton, and while she had no intention of violating her boss’s orders, it didn’t stop her stretching those restrictions to their limit. Providing nothing snapped, she could stay on the case and out of the digital archives.
