‘The victim let the killer into her room, and then let him or her heave her out of the window without a fight. According to the post mortem she was neither sedated nor under any drug-related influence at the time. She was quite happy to let him or her in, to let him or her open the window wide, and then let him or her throw her out. No signs of a struggle, no scuffle marks, no sliding prints on the window frame or ledge where she might have tried to grab hold, nothing. So that would all point to the killer being a person she knew, or somebody in authority that she was quite happy to let come in to the room. No forced entry, and exactly the same in the other two cases. Could have been you, Mrs Drummond.’
She startled visibly. Palmer fixed her with a steely look.
‘Well she knew you, didn’t she? She was a regular guest. You could have come in on the pretence of airing the room; changing the curtains, even. The poor girl wouldn’t question you would she, eh? All you have to do is open the window wide with your key, call her over to look at the view, and as she leans out grab her ankles and whoops-a-daisy, she’s over the sill and gone.’
Mrs Drummond’s mouth fell open as she struggled for words.
‘But… but I can assure you I… I… I never…’
Palmer relaxed her with one of his killer smiles.
‘It wasn’t you, Mrs Drummond, don’t fret. I was just illustrating my point that she must have known the murderer, which is why it was an inside job; meaning somebody inside her social circle, somebody she knew and trusted. Let’s face it, the girl wouldn’t let a complete stranger into her room, would she? And whoever it was came prepared with a window key, and knew what type was needed. So, could quite possibly be a member of staff.’
Granger had gone quite pale.
‘So, we could have a killer on our payroll?’
‘You could have, sir. Glad I’m not staying here tonight.’
Chapter 6
In the squad car Palmer had requested to drop him and Sergeant Singh home, she turned to him and shook her head in an unbelievable manner.
‘What?’
‘You know ‘what’, guv. All that about the killer might be a member of the hotel staff. No way; not unless he’s got a job at three different hotels, and has a grudge against three major celebrities from three different walks of life. Poor Mrs Drummond, she’ll be suspicious of all the staff now, and Granger will be at his wit’s end worrying that he’ll have another dead guest turning up.’
‘Well, perhaps I was a little over the top. But he did keep us waiting an awful long time. And in any case, I may be right. Claire might turn up a part-timer that was working in each hotel on the fateful days in question.’
Chapter 7
After dropping Gheeta off at her apartment block, the squad car dropped off Palmer at his Dulwich home a little after midnight; the lights were out, so Mrs P. must have gone to bed. He turned up his coat collar against the rain as he walked quickly up the short gravel drive and let himself in.
Raising herself lazily from her usual sleeping position, curled up on the hall carpet at the foot of the stairs, his faithful dog Daisy the English Springer made the effort and wagged her tail in greeting. Palmer gave her a pat, removed his shoes, trilby hat and coat, and went into the kitchen with the dog in tow, closing the door silently behind them.
First port of call was the microwave, where his steak and kidney pie with the extra gravy sat invitingly. He pressed the buttons and watched for a moment as the inside lit up, and the pie started to appetisingly revolve. Taking a can of Boddington’s from the fridge, he pulled a Windsor chair out from under the old pine farmhouse table and poured a glass of the Manchurian nectar as he waited for the microwave’s ‘ping’.
A scribbled note along the edge of the day’s newspaper lying on the table told him not to leave the dog in the kitchen, as it had a habit of knocking over the swing bin in search of a midnight feast. It also told him that George was the final choice their son and daughter-in-law had settled on for the imminent addition to the Palmer family; he’d quite forgotten all about that with the murders case taking over his thoughts. The hospital scan had shown that Palmer was about to have another grandson, so the original list of ten names that had been cut to five was now down to one. George; that seemed okay to Palmer. He had purposely stayed clear of the arguing and choosing of the name. Whatever the kid was going to be called he wouldn’t like it. Who does like their own name? Palmer certainly didn’t. Justin; what sort of name was that to give a boy? All those years of schoolboy jokes about ‘Justin Time’, ‘Justin Case’, and the rest. Still, George was alright. Good old English name; sounded sort of rock solid. No rude connotations sprang to mind.
He raised his glass.
‘Here’s to you, young George.’
The Palmers had three sons and a daughter, all flown from the nest. The place seemed very quiet now, compared to what it was when they were all bouncing round it like beetles in a jar, squabbling and growing up. He smiled at the memory; good times. And like all good times, they were over all too quickly, of course. But now he was a proud grandad to six boys, soon to be seven, and two girls. He liked kids. Mrs P. said he was still one himself at heart; probably was, too. He certainly felt more like sixteen than sixty plus.
A sharp ‘ping’ announced his steak and kidney was ready, and he tucked in under the jealous upward gaze of Daisy, who had perfected such a sad look to put on when humans ate that any visitors that came round for a meal melted immediately, and furtively passed her something when Mrs P. wasn’t looking. Palmer flicked his foot and gave her a playful tap on the rear end.
‘Hop it, scrounger, you’ve had yours.’
Thirty minutes later, fed, watered, washed and in his pyjamas, he slipped into bed beside the familiar outline of Mrs P., thinking of how grandson George’s life would be completely different to his.
Police work has taken Palmer into some of the worst socially deprived areas of the UK, and he hadn’t seen any improvement over the years; quite the reverse in some cases. The gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ had widened considerably since Thatcherism and its years of elitist plunder, and the theft of the public sector that had been sold off to asset-stripping friends of the Establishment rankled with Palmer every time he had a train cancelled, or an incredibly high utilities bill; cabinet ministers retiring on fantastic pensions, to take a highly remunerated seat on the board of companies they’d sold the nation’s treasure to, or sitting on their fat backsides in a commissioner’s position in the overblown workforce of the EEC. If England had been a South American country, Palmer was sure there would have been coups and social unrest long ago. He’d written a paper about it for the Home Office ‘think tank’, that tried to plot the nation’s policing needs in the future. He had underlined the fact that if you take any comparable model from overseas societies, it wouldn’t be too long before the ‘have-nots’ realised that the ‘haves’ were never going to share, and when the powder keg ignited the blast would be so big the thin blue line would be blown away.
He’d given a talk some time ago in a side meeting at the Police Federation Conference on how he felt they were becoming a rich people’s protection force rather than a law keeper. It went down well with his colleagues, many of whom echoed his views but did not have Palmer’s nerve to speak out. Calling a spade a spade and kicking ‘political correctness’ up the backside was something that had never troubled him, and was a fault in his makeup that Mrs P. had time and again told him to reign in. A meeting with a Deputy Commissioner and a Home Office official had quickly followed his Federation talk, to underline the fact that his views hadn’t gone down very well with the top brass at the Home Office, quite the opposite in fact; and he had been told in no uncertain terms that had that talk found its way into the public domain, and the tabloids had gotten hold of it, the repercussions could have split the force and almost certainly meant enforced early retirement for Palmer. The meeting had been fairly ugly, as were most of his meetings with the top bra
ss, and he gave as good as he got, as he didn’t like veiled threats of any kind.
Anyway, the future was for young George’s generation to work out and try to keep a lid on. But for Palmer, there was the little matter of three bodies in three hotels to sort out.
‘Justin,’ Mrs P. murmured, half asleep.
‘Yes, my dear?’
It might be his lucky night!
‘I hope you did the washing up.’
It wasn’t.
Chapter 8
D.S. Gheeta Singh arrived home to her 7th floor Barbican flat a little before eleven thirty.
Kicking off the clunky regulation shoes and swapping her uniform for a loose bath robe, she peered down from the large picture window to the Thames snaking past far below, like a shimmering brocade in the night light of London. The suburban lights of South London out past the opposite bank bounced their orange hue off the low, rain-filled dark clouds. She took a cool drink of orange from the fridge, together with a fruit salad, and settled down in front of her computer to check e-mails.
Gheeta Singh’s parents had been thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin and fled to the UK, where they started what had grown into a very successful electronics company, now run by her two brothers. The whole family, most of whom were in India, were linked by their own website that Gheeta had built herself, which was basically a private chat room. Type in ‘hello mum’ on the PC in her flat, and there it was on about eighty different screens throughout India, the UK and New York, where her uncle had fled to. The site was very carefully password-encrypted for privacy, and had, in the past, hosted many family business meetings, birthdays, and a few rows. No traffic on the site tonight, though; just a few posted questions for her. Cousin Barvinda in Dehli wanted to know if she could get a ‘Frozen’ doll, as they were all sold out in India. Now that request would have confused Palmer; Gheeta smiled at the thought of him asking the staff at Iceland if they had one in stock. Her aunt was currently online, having an argument with grandma about Gheeta’s age. Was she twenty-nine or thirty? Whichever it was she should be married by now, was Grandma’s point, and she had a list of suitable Indian gentlemen of class who Gheeta should meet. Grandma’s life’s work seemed to be trying to arrange a marriage for Gheeta, and every conversation with her ended up along that same thread, which was why Gheeta avoided contact by using the ‘secret’ button when on the family site, so she could eavesdrop without them knowing she was online. There was some earlier traffic between her brothers and an uncle in Delhi about getting some microchips and motherboards sourced cheaply, and that was it.
She messaged Barvinda that she’d see what she could find out about ‘Frozen’ dolls, and logged off. Usually she’d go over the day’s work on her laptop and arrange it all chronologically; but it had been a tough day, and tonight the lure of her comfy bed was too much, and after a quick shower she was soon sandwiched between mattress and duvet ,and fast asleep. Tomorrow would be a very busy day.
Chapter 9
Palmer’s Serial Murder Squad offices were on the third floor of New Scotland Yard. They consisted of his office, which he shared with DS Singh on one side of the corridor, and his operations room, known as the ‘team’ room, on the other side; this room housed all the computer terminals, servers and peripheral software add-ons that DS Singh had set up originally in the office, which they had soon outgrown, and been moved over along with the arrival of Claire. Claire had been a civilian data clerk that Gheeta had noticed with her head buried in a computer magazine one tea break at the Yard, and in conversation she had found out that Claire was heavily into computing and taking a degree in programming through an evening class. A quick word in Palmer’s ear, and Claire was transferred to his department, where she took to the back-office work like a duck to water. Give her a problem, and Claire would dig away until she found the answer; hence Palmer had nicknamed her ‘JCB’, which had stuck with the team. This team consisted of up to thirty officers, seconded to Palmer on an ad hoc basis when needed.
He had called up twelve of them for a team meeting for 10.30 in the team room, and a hubbub of noise spilling out from it met him as he crossed from his office. Taking up his usual position in front of a large ‘write on wipe off’ case progress board, on which DS Singh had blu-tacked the three victims’ photos and crime scene text, he held up a hand for silence. DS Singh sat at the side of the room, while Claire worked away at her keyboard.
‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Nice to see you all back here again. Please be seated.’
He screwed up his face against the scraping of chairs on old lino as the team sat at the desks that formed a semi-circle line in front of him.
‘On the desks in front of you are the various Met Divisional files of the murders. DS Singh has already put you into four teams of three. Teams one to three are victim analysis; you’ll find a file on your designated victim on the desk in front of you in the work folders. I want full backgrounds investigated: friends past and present, business circle, social interests, debts, bank accounts, just about anything you can find out. Each team has a laptop so put all the information you glean onto that, and don’t wait until you get back here to send it in. The idea of the laptop is so you download information as you get it in the field straight to Claire.’
He paused for a moment whilst the officers opened their folders.
‘The Divisional CIDs have had these cases for a couple of months, so time is important as clues get cold, and witnesses’ memories dim after a while. This is a live case, ladies and gentlemen, with nobody remotely in the frame yet. I think we’ll probably find the victims to be clean, but you never know. Team four, I want you three to work inside the hotels; try and get a temp job inside, see what the staff are talking about. If you can’t get inside, find out where staff go for lunch and get talking with them there; find out who hates who and why in the managerial structures on the hotels. Keep scratching.’
He turned to look at the victims’ pictures on the board.
‘We have three people here who innocently booked into a hotel and left in a body bag. All killed for no apparent reason, and maybe at random; the only link between them is they were murdered in a hotel, and each time the killer left a piece of paper with the name of a day written on it. But you and I, ladies and gentlemen, know that there will be a greater link. So go find it.’
He rubbed his hands together in a workman-like manner.
‘Right then, usual communication lines apply; all information into JCB via the laptops, no post-it notes or text messages, and all operational queries through DS Singh.’
He paused to check his watch.
‘It is now 11.10, so study your folders and plan your operations, and be out and on the job by one o-clock; and that includes having lunch. Claire is currently downloading as much information on your victims as she can get from Social Security, Credit Agency data and all other national databases they appear on, and she will have that downloaded onto your laptops in…?’
He turned to Claire with eyebrows raised questioningly.
‘Twenty minutes max, sir.’
Her eyes never left the screen as she answered.
‘Excellent. Right then, let’s get on with it. Let’s get a result.’
He smiled like a schoolmaster leaving a class in the exam room and returned to his office, followed by DS Singh. No sooner had they sat at their desks than Claire gave a perfunctory tap on the door and came in. She had a big smile on her face, which Palmer noticed.
‘You look like the cat that got the cream. What have you found?’
He relaxed and pushed his chair, which could have come from any 1950s office furniture supplier, back on its back legs until it jarred into the deep groove in the wall plaster, dug out by this repeated action over the years. He clasped his hands behind his head.
‘Come on, don’t keep us in suspense then.’
‘The Majestic has nine illegal immigrants on its payroll, and the other two hotels have about the same. None are registered w
ith immigration or have national insurance numbers. All are being paid not by the hotels, but by an employment agency; the same agency in all three cases.’
Gheeta, being the daughter of an immigrant, was a little shocked.
‘You’d think a company as big as the Majestic would have a few safeguards in place to check on who they were hiring, wouldn’t you?’
Palmer shook his head.
‘No, not if they are outsourcing; that’s up to the agency that they use. And cheap labour is cheap labour. I doubt if the illegals are going to complain, are they? No doubt stuck in the kitchens out of sight, low profile, no hassle, and some cash at the end of the week.’
Gheeta wasn’t happy.
‘But the hotel could have a whole terrorist cell working there and not know it.’
‘I doubt it. Probably just a few guys making a bit of money to send back to their poverty-stricken families in some third world war zone. But stick to the rules, Claire; copy the details to the AT ( Anti-Terrorist) department just in case, so they can give them the once over.’
Claire nodded.
‘What about HM Revenues and Taxes? Copy to them?’
‘No, let them do their own dirty work. Why grass on some poor wretch who probably paid a king’s ransom to get here, and works his butt off for a few quid a week to keep his family from starving? They’d only shove them into a detention centre, which would cost us tax payers a fortune each week. I’d rather put some politically correct arsehole of a social worker who’s never done a real day’s work in their life inside one.’
Gheeta smiled at Claire.
‘All opinions expressed in this office are solely those of the person making them.’
POETIC JUSTICE & A KILLER IS CALLING: The DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad series, cases 3 & 4. Page 3
