by Conrad Jones
“Detective Superintendent Ramsay to see you, Sir.”
“Thank you, Corporal,” the Major said. He stood and walked smartly around the desk. His boots were like black mirrors and he held himself bolt upright as if every muscle in his body were permanently tensed. His hair was shaven at number one, grey streaked the sides. “Superintendent, nice to meet you.” His handshake was vice-like. “I only hope that your journey isn’t a wasted one.”
“Anything you can tell me will be a help.”
“I’m not sure exactly what I can tell you but I’m certain of what I cannot.” There was an awkward silence between them.
“Captain Nigel Dunn, alias Richard Tibbs has witnessed an incident which could identify a murderer. We’re aware that we can’t reveal his previous identity and we may be able to find a way around that in a court but there are other issues. I need you to clear them up.”
“Issues?”
“You’re aware that he’s been put on the sex offenders register?”
“Yes, unfortunate, but hardly surprising,” the Major said. His hands were peaked together as if in prayer. His face was like stone, giving nothing away.
“He has led us to believe that the entire business was some kind of mistake, due to his identity change?”
“He’s a very resourceful man.”
“When you say resourceful, you mean he’s a liar?”
“Yes.”
“Why was he put into witness protection?”
“That’s classified.”
“I have a warrant,” Alec said calmly.
“Which we’re honouring with this meeting, Superintendent; it’s merely a courtesy. Your warrant has no authority here.”
“It’s signed by a Crown Court judge.”
“Even your judge doesn’t have the authority to access classified military information.”
Alec sat and pondered the situation. Sandhurst was a four hour drive away. Falling into an argument which he couldn’t win was pointless. He felt anger rising in his belly but displaying it would benefit no one. “Okay, I’m not here to argue with you. I’m asking for your help.”
“And I’m trying to help you without breaking with military convention.”
“Did he offend in Iraq?”
“I can’t discuss Iraq.”
“Is he a pedophile or not?” Alec asked impatiently.
“I can’t answer that.”
“You’re happy for him to offend again?”
“Are there children involved this time?”
“Yes.” Alec took a breath. “I am trying to protect them. Is he a pedophile?”
“Not exclusively,” the Major frowned. He paused as he gathered his next words. “This is off the record.”
“Understood.”
“He’s worse than that. He’s a sociopath, a predator. His file indicates that he doesn’t distinguish between his victims, although the majority were children. Iraq is a country where life is very cheap and anything is for sale at the right price. Dunn took full advantage of that fact, as did some others. He was part of a ring preying on the poor. When they were investigated, it opened a can of worms.”
“I don’t understand, Major. If he committed crimes, then why did you protect him with a new identity and allow him to return to civilian life where he’s a danger to the public?”
“All I can tell you is that his crimes were not as bad as the ones committed by others. His testimony was rewarded with a second chance.”
“His testimony or his silence?”
“His silence was another thing entirely. He receives a reduced salary for his silence.”
“And a pension and protection?”
“It’s not my choice. Neither is it yours. The decision was made by authorities far higher than ours. We have to manage the situation, not endorse it.”
“My priority is the safety of the public, not keeping a lid on things.”
“Has he committed any crimes?”
“Yes.”
“Could you explain the circumstances?”
“He was put on the register for allegedly assaulting two young girls,” Alec paused. “His bail conditions forbid him approaching those girls or any other minors. During the course of our investigation into a murder, Tibbs was found to have breached his conditions, by going to their school.”
“And he was arrested for this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Alec crossed his legs and thought about the best way to explain. He glanced at photographs of the Major in various uniforms and in different war zones. A familiar vehicle caught his eye. It was a Challenger tank and the Major was wearing a uniform worn by British troops in Iraq. He must have served in Desert Storm too. “He came to us with information first.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He said it was because he wanted to help us find a missing woman.” Alec explained. “During our investigation, we discovered that he had been visiting a primary school and handing out sweets. My DI threatened to have him charged with breach of bail conditions and he clammed up for a while.” The sound of boots pounding the drill square droned on in the background. “Then he revealed that he was in witness protection and was a former MP. The story that he gave my DI was that the girls at the school are his grandchildren and it’s all a mistake, caused by the change of identity.”
The Major stood and walked to the window. He ran his fingers along the ledge to check for dust. His expression indicated that there either wasn’t any, or that it was at an acceptable level. “That is quite a story.”
“Hence, I am here, Major.”
“If you charge him with breach of bail, he will call his handler and threaten to expose others who were involved in a pedophile ring in Iraq so that we change his identity again.”
“Obviously, I don’t want that to happen.”
“Off the record, Superintendent, the government and the military will never allow those names to be brokered. Dunn has a get out of jail free card, which will not expire. If you push it, they’ll make him disappear again, new identity, new name.”
“What can you tell me then?”
“Very little.”
“Okay, Major,” Alec said. He was boiling beneath the surface. “Off the record, was he married?”
“Yes.”
“Did his partner commit suicide?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he have grandchildren?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“So he lied to my DI?”
“Undoubtedly,” the Major said emphatically. “I am sure that your DI checked his story and hit a brick wall.”
“She confirmed he was in witness protection. That was all they would confirm.”
“That was all they are allowed to confirm.”
“Is there anything else that you can tell me?”
“Dunn has pushed his luck before. If I had my way, we should bring back the firing squad, or we should have turned him and his co-conspirators over to the Iraqis. They would have done what we couldn’t.” The Major leaned on the desk and folded his arms behind his back.
“I can’t compromise the safety of two little girls to protect anyone.”
“You realise that if something like this came out, the image of our troops abroad would be tarnished beyond redemption?”
“I would have to be very careful that didn’t happen,” Alec said. “I have no wish to damage anyone except Tibbs.”
The Major walked to the window and watched the cadets marching. He seemed to be mesmerised by their display of coordination. “Theoretically, if someone in witness protection was charged with a serious offence and processed quickly, the military may not be able to protect him.”
“What if he threatened to expose people, theoretically or otherwise?”
“Then those others would have to take their chances. I think that the transparency which the digital age has brought to us is something that we should embrace, don’t you?”
> “I do.”
“Incidents and events can be searched out by anyone in possession of a mobile phone.”
“What are you saying, Major?”
“That once the theoretical ‘cat’ is out of the bag, you can’t put it back.”
“Theoretically.”
“Indeed.” The Major took a deep breath and turned to face Alec. “Richard Tibbs is not his first alias.”
Alec sat forward and waited for the Major to finish but he didn’t. A light switched on in Alec’s brain. “That’s why his file is so thin?”
“Yes.”
“What should I be looking for when I get back?”
“Run a check for a Mark Weston.” The Major coughed into his fist. “You know there’s only so much that can be buried. Some things are just too big to be to be covered up. Details of national security and the names of secret operatives or black ops missions should never be revealed, but hiding the names of perverts because of their rank or who they’re related to, is wrong, theoretically.”
“I agree,” Alec said confused. He was still reeling from the fact that Tibbs was connected to Breck Road. He was Mark Weston. “What are you saying?”
“Even the tightest vessel can leak.”
“Secrets are only worth protecting while they remain secret.” Alec smiled.
“Indeed, Superintendent.” The Major walked to the door. “I hope that you can report how anally retentive and unhelpful the military were in this investigation?”
“Thank you for being unhelpful, Major.” Alec made a mock salute and ran the facts over in his mind as he walked out of the door. He had made a mammoth breakthrough, but he would need to be very careful how he played the next few moves. If he was clumsy, he could bring the weight of departments that he didn’t know the names, of down on his head. If he was smart, Tibbs would be exposed and at the mercy of the judicial system.
“Superintendent Ramsay.” A voice dragged him back from his thoughts.
“Yes,” Alec said. He stopped to face the young corporal.
“You should check you mobile, Sir,” he smiled. “A DI Jones called and said that it’s urgent that she speaks to you as soon as possible.”
“Thanks.” Alec turned and walked down the hallway, his footsteps echoing from the walls. “I hope it’s good news for a change,” he mumbled to himself although his gut feeling told him that it wasn’t.
Chapter 27
Annie sat and stared at the phone. The main office was virtually empty. Her teams of detectives were responding to calls from the help lines while others were on their way to the explosion at Breck Road. She held a black coffee cup in her left hand, the contents now cold and streaky looking. The screen on her mobile flashed and it vibrated on the desk. She had no idea how to tell the caller the news. “Guv,” she sounded out of breath. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“I had to turn my mobile off while I’m at Sandhurst but it was worth the trip,” he explained. He skirted the marching cadets and made his way to the car park, which was behind the main building. The sun was on its cusp but still had little warmth to offer. He was eager to tell Annie the news but her need to talk seemed greater than his own. “What’s the panic?”
“There’s been a gas explosion, Guv,” she said. “At the Breck Road scene.”
“Bloody hell,” Alec spoke quietly, as he opened the driver’s door and climbed into the BMW. The familiar odours of leather and pine air freshener drifted to him. The next question stuck in his throat. “How bad is it?”
“Bad,” she sighed. “The building has collapsed. Only the front elevation is standing.”
“How many casualties?”
“Brian Dooley is dead and Jenny Porter is missing. She’s still in the rubble somewhere. They were the only two CSI in the building. A young PC who was carrying evidence packets is critical at the Whiston burns unit. Most of the technicians were working in the mobile lab at the time. We could have had ten officers in there.”
“It could have been much worse, although Brian Dooley’s wife and kids won’t think so right now.” Alec thought back to the night he was told about his wife’s death. A sharp pain shot through him. It was a slicing pain which began above the groin and spread north. When he thought about her, he was always left with a sick feeling in his guts and nausea behind his eyes. It was grief and it never left him. It never waned but it became less frequent. “What do we know about the cause of it?”
“The building collapsed into the cellars where the gas main enters the house. We don’t know if it was a leak or deliberate. It’s all over the news, Guv. There are a dozen reporters and a television crew encamped there watching the recovery going on. One of them has the explosion on disk. We’ve got a copy already. The windows exploded on all three floors simultaneously. There was obviously a build up over time.”
“We know it was gas?”
“Definitely,” Annie said. “They had to isolate the gas main to put out the fire. As soon as the supply was cut, they had it under control.”
“You had better get a family liaison to Dooley and Porter’s homes. We don’t want their families finding out from the BBC.”
“That’s already done, Guv.” Annie swallowed hard. She felt as if the case was running away from her. “There are recovery teams from Manchester and Chester on the way to help with the search for Jenny. The fire was pretty intense, Guv. I’m not holding out much hope of finding her alive.”
“We need to concentrate every resource on whatever was recovered from that house.”
“My thoughts exactly, Guv,” Annie said. “My gut feeling tells me that the explosion wasn’t accidental, which tells me that we’re onto something.”
“Dazik is on remand, so either he’s telling us the truth and he has nothing to do with the address or he has some very serious connections cleaning up after him.”
“I think the same,” Annie felt some confidence creeping back into her voice. “I’m having the press cordon moved back to the end of the close and I’ve ordered the forensic search of the gardens to begin. They’re sweeping the lawns with Ground Penetrating Radar first, Guv. Once we’ve ruled out any bodies under the lawn, we’ll move to the outbuildings and hedgerows.”
“Good,” Alec sighed. Annie had done exactly as he would have. She was a good detective but he was concerned how the brass perceived her investigation so far. Alec could see some flaws in the process. If he saw a flaw, the brass would see a gaping chasm. “You know what my next question is going to be don’t you?”
“Yes, Guv.”
“Okay. Who checked the services before the CSI search began?”
“I did, Guv,” Annie replied nervously. “The gas cupboard was in the kitchen at the rear of the building. I had the supply isolated at the meter, Guv. We left the domestic electric supply running but all equipment was run through a bank of RCD switches. All the safety checks were signed off by myself and Kathy Brooks before they began their search.”
“Good,” Alec sounded relieved. “We’re under the cosh as it is but this is going to bring the rain down in buckets, Annie. We need to make sure that procedurally, we’re watertight.”
“I know,” Annie sighed. “The investigation must look like a shambles from London, Guv. Maybe I should step down from the investigation.”
“If you offer to do that to the Chief, he’ll rip your hand off and you’ll be working vehicle crime for the next twenty years. He needs a scapegoat or results.” Alec had seen too many bright talents sacrificed to satiate public demand and the government’s image. He’d seen the tough-on-crime politicians come and go and it made him sick to the core. It implied that the police were not tough on crime all the time. Was there ever a let’s-be-lenient-on-crime week or a let’s-be-reasonably-fair-on-crime month? Not in Alec’s world and he wasn’t going to let a good detective like Annie Jones fall on her sword to silence their critics for a moment. They would take the sacrifice and demand the impossible at the rising of the sun the next day.
Pressure for results was always intense and it was also relentless. That was the way it was and Alec knew that it wouldn’t be any different once they locked up their killer. There would be time for a quick breath of fresh air, a moment of self satisfaction, a bottle of single malt shared with a team of ambitious crime fighters and then the weight of expectation would return with a vengeance at nine o’clock the next morning. There was never any letup. “We’ll give him results. If you are not up to the task then you’ll hear it from me first, not the Chief. I don’t want to hear you mention stepping down again. Am I clear?”
“Guv.”
“Right. On the subject of results, I need you to arrest Richard Tibbs.”
“Tibbs?”
“Tibbs is Mark Weston,” Alec said. He didn’t want to mention the details of what had happened in Iraq. It would cloud the issues that they faced. Annie had made too many mistakes already to muddy the waters further. He needed her focused on the facts that they had, which were few and far between. It would have been easy to let her stand down and take responsibility for the lack of progress, but that wasn’t his way. Despite all that, it was difficult to keep the disappointment out of his voice when he spoke about Tibbs. “Find him and search all the details on Weston, the van, the house and anything else that he has that name on. We need to connect him to that house. Then dig into Tibbs himself. I want his bank accounts, his telephone records, his rental agreements, car insurance, his barber, his doctor, his dentist, understand?”
“Yes, Guv,” she replied tentatively. Annie sensed his frustration with her. “Can I ask why the switch to Tibbs, what happened at Sandhurst?”
“What happened is we didn’t check out his story properly,” Alec said. He regretted saying it immediately.
“You mean I didn’t check out his story properly.”
“I meant what I said. We didn’t.” Alec paused. Destroying her confidence would not help right now. “You have one of the biggest cases this decade to handle and there are numerous priorities vying for attention at any one time. We will miss things, but as long as we sort them eventually, we won’t go far wrong. Tibbs was a witness not a suspect.”
