by Nick Louth
‘They’re nothing more than criminals themselves,’ Leticia said.
Verity nodded. ‘They have posted some videos here, of them confronting and beating up elderly paedophiles. It’s pretty grotesque stuff actually. I’m only showing you this because if you see any evidence of threats to Wright, I want you to tell me. I’ll be passing on any information to DI Morgan.’
‘But they can’t find anything out,’ Leticia said. ‘It’s not on the case management system. Only on handwritten records, which go into the safe every night. Only you, me and Graham know his real identity.’
‘These people are very clever, Leticia. And they have friends in high places. Jill took a phone call from the local MP, who had somehow heard that Rollason was going to be on his patch. He put a lot of pressure on her to disclose his new identity and address.’
‘Why?’
Verity laughed. ‘He’s expecting to be appointed to the Justice Select Committee, and believes he should know. Jill had the measure of him. She said that if he was appointed, and the Home Secretary thought it appropriate, he would be informed by her department through the usual channels.’
‘Everyone wants to know,’ Leticia complained.
Verity gave a knowing smile. ‘With that particular MP, it is most probably to fuel some drunken boasting to colleagues about the secrets he has in his possession.’
‘Okay,’ said Leticia. ‘I have asked Wright to keep me informed if he receives any threats.’
‘Yes. Tuesday is going to be an interesting day,’ Verity said, and then suddenly turned away. A strange noise escaped her throat, and she began to heave. Before Leticia could say anything, Verity had grabbed a box of tissues and fled into the corridor. The young probation officer waited a moment, and then stepped outside. There was no sign of her boss. She must have gone to the ladies’ toilet. After the way Verity had reacted last time, Leticia wasn’t going to go in there and offer to help.
But finding herself in her boss’s office, with the computer on and logged in, plus her mobile phone just lying there, was a huge temptation. She went to the PC first, looking for any information about her own appraisal, which was due soon. There was nothing obviously related to that. Leticia then picked up her boss’s iPhone and checked her text messages, which just seemed to be a fairly lengthy and acrimonious exchange with her mother.
She was human after all.
Finally, Leticia stood, planning to exit the office and return to her own desk in the open-plan area. Before she could do so, she spotted desk keys hanging from the lock of one drawer in Verity’s desk. It took only a few seconds to give them a quick turn and slide it open. It contained what Leticia expected. Papers, pens, a few feminine hygiene products, a bottle of vitamin tablets, some eyeliner and eyeshadow. The one unexpected item was a small brown medicinal bottle with an attached dropper. It was half full of some dark liquid and had a stained label written in some foreign script. Not Chinese or Japanese, because she thought she would recognise that, but perhaps a Middle Eastern or Indian tongue. Maybe that was the medicine she was taking for her sickness. She wouldn’t be surprised if Verity was a believer in quack cures.
Then, she spotted something else. A pregnancy test kit. Now that was interesting. No one knew anything about Verity’s love life. It might explain the sickness, too.
Chapter Seventeen
Claire Mulholland arrived at Mount Browne’s CID building to see Gillard. He was sitting at his desk, eating a mid-morning sandwich, with the photographs of the body from the island laid out in front of him like some bizarre card game. Not too many people could sit and eat tuna and mayonnaise on granary bread while staring at the distorted features and blood-cyanosed flesh of a corpse, but she realised that his was the kind of familiarity that breeds, if not contempt, then at least decent digestion.
Gillard described to her what they knew of the man, now known irreverently as Mr Fang due to his one prominent gold-filled tooth. Claire could see the lack of progress was really beginning to bug him. The mitochondrial DNA tests had confirmed only what a simple glance at the man seemed to show, that he was mostly of Chinese origin. There were ancestral traces of Tibetan and Mongolian too, but Gillard wasn’t sure how that would help. ‘I’m looking for a more precise view of where the man had actually spent most of his life,’ he said. ‘That should come with the results of the stable isotope analysis, which shows the mineralisation in his body. It looks like that might yet be another week.’
‘Well, here’s a new line of enquiry for you,’ she said. ‘Baz is working on this private zoo owned by the Arab sheikh, just outside Walton-on-Thames.’
‘Ah, is that the one on the old St Thomas’s prep school site? Managed by that Zimbabwean.’
‘Yes, Gus van Steenis. It has the makings of quite an expensive undertaking. There’s not much detail online, but there’s going to be a very substantial reptile house, including crocodiles, and they’ve got the famous injured rhino.’
‘Ah, yes. Dennis.’ The detective chief inspector stroked his chin. ‘Interesting. Van Steenis went to the party on Tagg’s Island the same night that everyone seemed to hear this splash in the river. If he was involved that would be very careless.’ He turned to look at her with a smile on his face. ‘Are you thinking along the lines that our victim was sat on by Dennis or something?’
‘Well, it’s possible isn’t it? Maybe one of the constrictor snakes that he has.’
Gillard inclined his head sceptically. ‘That would be one powerful snake to inflict the damage the body sustained. The rhino would be more like the kind of power we’re looking for.’ He began to Google Gus van Steenis. ‘I remember reading about the guy in the local paper,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you can take a look around, Claire? Obviously, what I’d be looking for is a staff list, but I also want you to check they have all the legal permissions. Not just on animals, but for employing staff from abroad.’
‘I’m giving Baz a lift tomorrow, so I’ll do it then.’ Just as she was about to leave she said: ‘Craig, is the rumour true that Neville Rollason is being set up in our area with a new identity?’
Gillard shrugged. ‘I spoke to Rigby about it, but she won’t confirm. However, if you look at how busy and stressed Graham Morgan of Special Branch is, it’s clear that something is going on.’
* * *
Teatime on a sunny Thursday and PC Andrew Wickens slid his patrol car into the car park at Mount Browne, killed the engine and took a deep breath. The young constable was based at Staines police station, but he did have an excuse to be here at HQ. CID had wanted to see some detailed notes that he’d made while interviewing witnesses to the splash on Midsummer’s Night. The photocopies were in a folder on the passenger seat, with a sheaf of other relevant documents. It was the usual advice to a professional time-waster: always look like you know where you’re going and have a piece of paper in your hand. The excuse for being there was covered.
The real reason was something else.
He’d been trying for days to figure out whether Special Branch was involved in resettling Neville Rollason. If so, he wanted the new identity and, better still, an address. A few days ago, when Jim Cottesloe had gone out for lunch and failed to log out, Wickens had used his colleague’s terminal to do a search on the Police National Computer. It was a good precaution. You couldn’t get access to the PNC without keying in your collar tag, and he’d used Jim’s to cover his tracks in case anyone was checking up. He felt pretty safe, because there were bound to be dozens of enquiries from all over the country about Rollason, from disgruntled coppers trying to dig up the new name. All over the force, lots of officers were angry.
Special Branch was being cagey, though. There had been nothing on the system beyond the Parole Board decision and the release date. The details were bound to be on SB’s own system, to which he had no access. So now, Wickens was going to enter the lion’s den. He saw it as a crusade for truth and justice, against the Guardian-reading lefties who ran the Home Office and Parole B
oard, who would forgive anything a criminal did while forgetting the victims.
To right a wrong you sometimes have to break the rules.
He left the car, clicked the fob lock and strode across the car park to the main building. The male receptionist swallowed Wickens’ excuse about the papers for CID and let him through. Directions were given. Follow the corridor to the CID block, through to the main ground-floor office. He nodded and set off, folder in hand. The place was buzzing. Two of the incident rooms in use, ranks of detectives on phones, looking at screens, piecing clues together. He suppressed his envy and climbed the stairs to the first floor. Much less busy here. He followed the corridor, past fraud, child protection and on to the Special Branch office. The door had a combination keypad, but was ajar. He could see a female receptionist inside on the phone but no one else.
This was no good. He was too early. Too many people about.
Trying to kill some time, Wickens left the CID block and made his way to the refectory. It was packed. The day shift for uniformed officers was just coming to a close, and many were taking the opportunity to load up on subsidised grub before heading off to the sports and social club for a pint. He paid for his pasty, chips and beans at the cash register, then turned to look for somewhere to sit. There were a couple of hot young female officers with a spare seat to either side of them. On any other day he would have been in like a shot, but he was looking for someone else. DI Graham Morgan, the Special Branch detective who hadn’t been seen for weeks in the sports and social, and who according to rumour had a secret project to look after.
And there he was.
Wickens spotted him at the far end of the refectory, sitting alone on a table for two, eating a burger while reading a motoring magazine propped up against a bottle of ketchup, his coat and bag on the seat opposite. Off home afterwards, by the look of it.
The constable knew him only vaguely but did have one conversational hook that was guaranteed to work. He made his way across to Morgan and sat at an adjacent two-person table, so they were diagonally opposite each other. The Special Branch officer raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement, then returned to his magazine as Wickens cleared his table of the detritus of the previous occupant. Finally ready to eat, the constable asked Morgan if he could borrow the ketchup. As it was passed across he said: ‘Crap performance in the rugby on Saturday, wasn’t it?’ Morgan was a known rugby fan and, after the disastrous England showing against France in a friendly last Saturday, Wickens guessed he would be happy to vent. For the next five minutes they talked through the game, the failings, the missed opportunities and the improvements that the coach should make.
Having put the world of sports to rights, Wickens asked: ‘Word has it you’ve got a big project at the moment.’
Morgan sighed heavily and looked around the room. ‘Too right. Drew the short straw on this one. Spending all my time on paperwork, filling out bloody benefit forms, council tax credit, you name it. Not what I came into the police for.’ He chewed ruminatively on his burger.
‘Some drug nark you’ve got to protect from the Albanians?’
Morgan shook his head and laughed. ‘I wish it was. Someone worth saving maybe, someone with at least a shred of human decency.’ He fixed Wickens with a glance. ‘I can’t say who it is.’
Wickens smiled. You just did. He finished his pasty, said goodbye, then headed out and back into the CID block. This time he was in better luck. The upstairs corridor was quiet, and he made his way along to the end to the Special Branch office. The door was shut, and from the lack of sound appeared to be unoccupied. He tapped and called hello. No reply.
He looked at the keypad. It was pretty old, requiring a four-digit code, plus the letter C to reset. He took out his LED torch and shone it at an angle. It clearly showed the four most heavily used digits on the keypad, because the black paint was rubbing off. Letter C, then five, nine, and particularly zero. In fact zero was almost unreadable. Most of the other numbers looked pristine. That was still a lot of combinations, but you could try as many times as you wanted. He tried a few but got nowhere.
Someone came past, so Wickens headed off to the gents’, sat down in a cubicle and had a think. This was a bit like sudoku. He was fond of taking a paper with him into the loo and doing the brain-teasers. The last time he’d seen Morgan in the sports and social, it was his birthday. The Special Branch guy had bought everyone a pint, including him. What date was that? A birthday would make a memorable code, if not the smartest. It was some time in May. So let’s assume that was the 05. He couldn’t for the life of him remember what day it had been, but going for 09 would be a good start.
Of course, the door code might not be Morgan’s birthday. It could be his wedding anniversary, the birthday of a grandson or something else. It could also be the receptionist’s birthday, as she was probably in the office more than her boss. Wickens then realised that a six-digit date could be boiled down to four in two ways. One, by dropping the day or the year. Or two, by dropping preceding zeroes in day and/or month. Which to consider? Wickens returned to an observable fact, the worn zero. He decided to assume it was used twice in the code. He used a biro to write down some permutations on the palm of his hand, not wanting to sully the paperwork he was going to hand in shortly.
Wickens emerged from the gents’ just as a female in civvies emerged from child protection and went down the stairs. He could hear activity on the CID floor, but on his floor it was quiet. He pressed in 0509. Nothing. He went through various permutations, and finally, at 0590, the door opened. Inside, he closed the door, sat at the workstation and checked to see if Morgan was still logged in. No. When he tapped return, the prompt came up to enter log-in details. No point trying that without the password. He looked on the desk for a Post-it note with the code on. Nothing. Even Morgan wouldn’t be that dim.
He turned his attention to Morgan’s in-tray. There was a stack of documents, most of which appeared to be irrelevant to the Rollason case. Right at the bottom was a blank council tax benefit form. Wickens cursed Morgan for having not yet filled it in. Maybe it had only arrived today. He looked in the bin. It contained a torn window envelope. Inside it he found a standard cover sheet from the council enclosing the benefit form he’d just been looking at. It was addressed to: The Occupier, 63 Wexford Road, Staines.
That must be the address where Rollason was going.
What a find!
He folded the cover sheet, then stuffed it in his pocket, left the office and quietly closed the door. He descended the stairs as quietly as he could. The CID office was almost empty as he made his way across.
‘Wickens.’ It was eagle-eyed DCI Gillard, sitting in his office with the door slightly open.
‘Yes, sir.’ Wickens made his way to the doorway.
‘Got those notes for me?’ Gillard continued to tap away on his keyboard, only occasionally raising his eyes to the junior officer.
‘Yes, sir. They’re here, sir.’ Wickens walked into Gillard’s office and set them on the desk.
‘Thank you. What were you doing upstairs?’
Wickens paused for a moment. Playing dumb wasn’t going to work. Gillard must have heard him. ‘I was looking for you.’
Gillard continued to tap away. ‘You walked right past my office. Got my name on the door.’
‘So it has, sir.’
‘I take it you have no ambition to become a detective then?’
‘Sorry sir?’
‘Not exactly Sherlock Holmes, are we? Can’t read a name on a door.’
Eventually, Wickens extricated himself with another couple of apologies. He felt his face burning with embarrassment. The trouble was he really did have ambitions to be a detective. He’d dreamed of it since he was a child.
* * *
It was late afternoon. Baz Mulholland was tired and not in the best of moods, trying to finish the final stretch of wall in the herpetarium. Jakes was working on the other side, finishing off some edges. The bill for the van repai
r was much higher than Baz had anticipated, and then he had argued with Claire on the way in, about the death penalty and how to treat the worst murderers. He’d made the mistake of calling her a bleeding-heart leftie, and in the ensuing row she’d run rings round him. He was so annoyed that when he got out of her car he’d forgotten to take his radio. Now he was missing his music, and it didn’t help that he knew that Jakes was continuing to listen to his own on his earbuds. The slight hiss of the classical music hovered at the edge of Baz’s concentration as he swept one clear arc after another with his trowel. Baz hadn’t often tried to engage his colleague in conversation. It wasn’t an easy task, because Jakes took such an intellectual and philosophical approach to every subject. But today Baz, still needled over the subject of crime and punishment, wanted to provoke a conversation.
‘So what about this bloke Rollason, getting out with a new identity courtesy of the British taxpayer?’
Jakes slipped off his earbuds, said nothing for a while, then ventured: ‘Ethically it’s a complex subject.’
‘Is it bollocks. They should hang him.’
‘Justice and retribution are not synonyms.’
‘Eh?’
‘Have you read any Nietzsche, Barry? The will-to-power concept has some interesting insights into the nature of good and evil.’
Baz knew he’d blundered into one of Jakes’s many philosophical quagmires. He struck out for firm ground. ‘Did you ever read what Rollason did to those children? Disgusting. One day they will be able to work out before birth who’s gonna be like that and wipe them out with an injection.’
‘Eugenics. Another tricky subject with no clear end point.’
‘So why shouldn’t they kill freaks like that?’
There was a tut, but no reply. When Baz looked across he noticed a careless crease like a wonky smile in Jakes’s fresh plaster.
