Gunrunner

by Graham Ison

  ‘Thanks, John.’

  ‘But what are you doing about surveillance, Harry?’

  ‘I’ll have a team on standby at Dover ready to follow the truck when it comes in,’ I said, secretly hoping that I could make the necessary arrangements in time. ‘But I suppose you’ll put on a team to follow it as well.’

  ‘Not a chance, Harry. We don’t have the manpower since the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s swingeing cuts. We’ll be happy to leave it to you, but perhaps you’d let us know where it finishes up. Then we can meet you there and have a look at what customs offences have been committed.’

  I’d been involved in combined operations with customs before; it was complicated, and there was often a heated discussion about who should have first bite at the cherry. Or, to put it into laymen’s terms, someone would have to decide which of us would take the culprits to court and on what charges.

  All of that, however, was secondary to the next problem: that of assembling a surveillance team that could be in position by Friday. That’s not as easy as you might think; a team has to be found, and permission obtained for it to work outside the Metropolitan Police District.

  And that meant that I would have to speak to the commander, if he was still in his office; it was unlikely as he’d usually gone by six o’clock. But, to my surprise, he was still here, and was standing behind his desk attired in evening dress. On his left lapel were two miniature medals, one of which was for distinguished police service. It made me wonder what yardstick had been used in assessing our beloved commander for this award.

  ‘I hope this won’t take long, Mr Brock. My wife and I have been invited to a livery dinner in the City.’

  ‘I hope you have a pleasant evening, sir,’ I said, not that I could’ve cared one way or the other. I outlined my request. His response was predictable.

  ‘D’you realize what this would cost, Mr Brock?’ The commander’s reaction was one of horror combined with trepidation at the prospect of sanctioning an expense that might subsequently be called into question. ‘I’m not sure that the DAC would be prepared to approve it.’

  The commander invariably invoked the deputy assistant commissioner’s opinion even before he’d sought it, let alone heard it, but he was always reluctant to make any serious decisions without referring them to higher command. And as he regarded all decisions as serious, it meant that he never had to make any decisions.

  ‘It is, of course, entirely a matter for you, sir,’ I said, firmly whacking a volley into his court. ‘But if we don’t run the operation it might well result in our failure to bring Mrs Hammond’s murderer to justice.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ The commander dithered. ‘Leave it to me, Mr Brock. I’ll let you know as soon as I have arrived at a decision.’ And that meant when the DAC had arrived at a decision.

  ‘Of course, sir, I’m sure you appreciate that time is of the essence,’ I said, adding to his discomfort.

  ‘I’m well aware of that, Mr Brock,’ said the commander tetchily, but then he had another thought. ‘Could we not perhaps ask the Kent police to arrange this observation?’ he said, as if he’d just come up with a brilliant idea. ‘In their police district, of course.’

  ‘Not a reliable arrangement in the circumstances, sir.’ I shook my head slowly to imply serious doubt. ‘Such a plan would entail a handover at the border between Kent and the Metropolitan Police District, and that might blow the gaff.’

  ‘Blow the gaff?’ The commander wrinkled his nose; he had an abhorrence of CID argot.

  ‘If the handover was clumsy or in any way obvious, sir, it might alert the suspects to the surveillance,’ I said, swiftly translating. ‘Counterproductive, as I’m sure you’d agree.’

  The commander grunted, and I returned to my office and fretted.

  Ten minutes later, my phone rang, and I was summoned to return to the presence.

  ‘The DAC has agreed to the mounting of a surveillance operation out of town, Mr Brock.’ Our leader did not look happy, and I got the impression that he disliked parting with the Commissioner’s money as much as he hated spending his own. Even though the decision, and therefore the responsibility, was not his.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.

  Now began the difficult part, but I had a way of dealing with that. Rank hath its privileges, or RHIP as we say in the Job, and I’d lumber someone else to do it. Returning to my office, I sent for DI Ebdon.

  ‘Kate, I want you to assemble a surveillance team to be at Dover on Friday to follow Sharpe’s vehicle to London.’

  ‘What time, guv?’ Kate was completely unfazed by the gargantuan task I’d just set her.

  ‘Better make it from six in the morning, Kate,’ I said, ‘but I hope to hear from the French police in good time when it’s due to arrive at Calais. That means that the start time could vary either way.’

  ‘No worries, guv, I’ll get on it.’

  Kate Ebdon has a wonderful way of charming the impossible out of senior officers in other departments who are reluctant to part with manpower, and within an hour she reported back that it was all set up.

  ‘They’re mainly motorcyclists, guv, with one or two nondescript vehicles, all of them leapfrogging. It’ll be the usual professional operation.’

  ‘I hope so, Kate.’

  ‘And I’ve arranged for radio contact to be maintained in the incident room here at Curtis Green.’

  All we had to do now was to wait.

  I had thought that there was little I could do until Friday, but it was not to be. That, however, is police work for you.

  I arrived at Curtis Green at about eight thirty on the Wednesday morning, and was followed into my office by Detective Sergeant Wilberforce waving an email printout in my direction.

  ‘That looks ominous, Colin.’

  ‘It’s about Gary Dixon, sir.’

  ‘What about him?’ I asked, accepting a cup of coffee from Dave.

  ‘He’s in intensive care at Ealing Hospital, sir. He was found late last night about two hundred yards from his home, and according to the local police he’d been the victim of a severe beating. The CID at Ealing did a routine check on the PNC, found we were interested and informed us.’

  ‘Has he said anything that might be of assistance, Colin?’

  ‘According to this, sir,’ said Wilberforce, flourishing the printout, ‘he hasn’t yet regained consciousness.’

  ‘I hope he doesn’t snuff it,’ said Dave, ‘at least, until we’ve had a chance to talk to him.’

  ‘Is there any information as to his injuries, Colin?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve spoken to the hospital, sir, and he’s suspected of having a broken arm, several broken ribs, a possible hairline fracture of the skull, and severe general bruising. They’ve promised to let us know as soon as he’s fit enough for us to have a chat with him.’

  As it happened, we didn’t have long to wait. At two o’clock, the hospital telephoned to say that Dixon had recovered consciousness, was out of intensive care and was now fit enough to be interviewed.

  Gary Dixon was a sorry sight. He had a black eye, his left arm was in plaster, his head was swathed in bandages, and he was connected to all manner of weird tubes that were attached to even weirder machines.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of Scotland Yard, Gary,’ I said, ‘and this is DS Poole.’

  ‘I dunno nothing,’ said Dixon.

  ‘Well, that is a surprise,’ muttered Dave.

  ‘Who attacked you, Gary?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea. Two guys jumped me from behind. I never got a good look at ’em. Anyway, they was wearing ski masks.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone who would’ve wanted to put you out of action, Gary?’

  ‘Nope.’ Dixon’s response was too quick to be convincing.

  ‘Well, I can think of a few,’ I suggested. ‘I understand that you were very friendly with Kerry Hammond, your former employer.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

&n
bsp; I ignored that predictable reply. ‘You phoned her mobile frequently, the last occasion being at about half past three on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. And we know you were having an affair with her,’ I said, having fairly strong evidence that that had been the case.

  ‘All right, so I did know her,’ mumbled Dixon. ‘There ain’t no law against it.’

  ‘No, but murdering her is punishable by life imprisonment,’ put in Dave.

  Dixon attempted to sit up, but let out a groan of pain. ‘I never murdered her. I never even knew she’d snuffed it.’

  ‘You were also involved in smuggling firearms,’ I continued, convinced that he did know about Kerry’s murder. ‘But that all finished when you were turned over by customs at Dover last September bringing in a load of booze. That resulted in you being fined five grand, and we know that Kerry paid the fine for you. We also know that she paid a grand a month into your bank account after Bernard Bligh sacked you. What was that for? To make sure you kept your mouth shut?’

  ‘I dunno where you got all that from,’ said Dixon.

  ‘Where were you between the twenty-third of December and when the police found you last night, Gary?’ asked Dave.

  ‘At home, weren’t I?’

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ I said. ‘On Saturday, the twenty-eighth of December, your wife Sonia told one of my officers that she hadn’t seen you since a few days before Christmas.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. I was away on a job.’ Dixon was struggling to field each of our increasingly difficult questions.

  ‘On a job, eh?’ said Dave. ‘Who were you working for?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m feeling rather tired,’ said Dixon, and promptly feigned sleep.

  We met a nurse on our way out.

  ‘How much longer d’you think that Mr Dixon will be kept in, Staff?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea, but why don’t you ask the doctor. That’s her over there.’ The nurse pointed to a young good-looking black girl of about thirty, a stethoscope in the pocket of her white coat, who was in conversation with another doctor.

  We introduced ourselves, and Dave asked the all-important question.

  The young doctor laughed. ‘Tomorrow, I should think. The X-rays showed that there was no hairline fracture of the skull, and what we thought was a broken arm turned out to be a dislocated elbow. The bruising will go down in due course, and the ribs will take care of themselves now that they’re strapped up. In the meantime, we’ll give him a bucketful of pain killers and send him home.’

  ‘Mr Dixon is someone in whom we have an interest, Doctor,’ I said. ‘Would you have any medical objection to my placing a police guard on him until he’s ready to leave, at which point he’ll be taken into custody.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said the doctor. ‘In fact, we’d be delighted. Might stop him making a bloody nuisance of himself. He’s always complaining about something or another.’

  I turned to Dave. ‘Perhaps you’d make the necessary arrangements, Dave,’ I said, but he was already on his mobile to Ealing police station.

  On Thursday afternoon, Gary Dixon limped into the interview room at Charing Cross police station whence he’d been transferred from the station at Ealing.

  ‘I want to know why I’ve been nicked,’ he said, as he sat down slowly and carefully. He adjusted the sling supporting his left arm, and glared at us.

  ‘Just sit there quietly and we’ll tell you,’ said Dave. He turned on the recording machine and announced who was present.

  ‘We know that you were involved in smuggling firearms from France, Gary.’ I based that allegation purely on Tom Challis’s claim that he’d sensed gun oil in Sharpe’s lorry. ‘We found the secret panel in the rig you drove before you got the sack from Kerry Trucking.’ I took a gamble on it having been installed while Dixon was working for Kerry Trucking, if not before, and my belief that the smuggling had been going on during Dixon’s time with the company.

  ‘Secret panel? What the hell are you talking about?’ demanded Dixon. ‘I don’t know nothing about no secret panels. That’s all James Bond stuff. Who d’you think I am: Double-O-Seven?’

  Dixon’s reaction was so genuine that I was almost inclined to believe him, and the confirmation I needed was, therefore, unlikely to come from him.

  ‘And even if I did know anything,’ Dixon continued, ‘I’d be asking for more than a beating up if I grassed on whoever was at it. Gunrunning’s heavy stuff.’

  ‘So you know about that, do you?’ suggested Dave.

  ‘Nah, but I’ve read about it. In the past, like,’ Dixon added hurriedly.

  ‘Are you still not going to tell us who attacked you?’ I asked.

  ‘I told you in the hospital, I don’t know. I never saw their faces.’

  ‘D’you think that Kerry Hammond’s organization was behind it?’ I asked, still intent on getting an answer. ‘Perhaps whoever took over the operation from her arranged for someone to give you a going over.’

  ‘Why should they do that? All I know about Kerry is that I was screwing her,’ said Dixon. ‘She was all for it. Couldn’t keep her hands off of me. She come with me on a trip to France, fact-finding she called it, but it was only an excuse to get me into bed in Gay Paree. But who was I to argue with the boss? When she said jump, I jumped.’ Dixon gave a lascivious laugh.

  ‘Why was Kerry paying a grand a month into your bank account?’ asked Dave.

  ‘I s’pose she felt sorry for me after Bligh give me the push. She never knew nothing about it until it was too late, and I never got no redundancy or nothing like that. But that Bligh’s a nasty bastard.’

  ‘When we spoke to you yesterday, you said that you were away from home over Christmas doing a job. What job was that?’

  ‘All right, so I was with a bird what I met on one of my runs up to York. She give me a bell to say she’d be down in the Smoke over Christmas to visit her sister, and how did I fancy spending a few days with her in a hotel. At her expense, like. Well, I said I was all for it. And before you ask, her name was Tracey, and no, I dunno where she lives.’

  Unfortunately, we’d been forced into giving Dixon time to dream up an alibi. Nevertheless, I had to try to break it.

  ‘What was the name of the hotel?’

  ‘Can’t remember exactly, but it was up West somewhere.’

  All of which amounted to a most unlikely story. I suspected that Dixon had been engaged in some pursuit of a felonious nature, and that the generous and willing woman from York was a figment of his imagination.

  ‘Why did you telephone Kerry Hammond at about three thirty on Christmas Eve, Gary?’ asked Dave.

  ‘I wanted to know if she was up for it, didn’t I? But she said as how she was about to leave for the airport because she was off to the Big Apple with her husband. I told her that she’d have a better time with me, but she said it was too late. She reckoned it was all booked, and I should’ve got in touch earlier.’

  ‘But you just said that you were with an obliging girl from York over Christmas.’

  ‘Yeah, but not all the time. Like I said, she had to pop out and visit her sister.’

  I had rapidly come to the conclusion that Dixon knew little of the gun-smuggling operation, and that, even if he did, he wisely intended to keep his mouth shut. But he was still not out of the woods insofar as Kerry Hammond’s murder was concerned.

  ‘I’m going to admit you to police bail to return to this police station in one month, Gary,’ I said. ‘Should we not require you again, we’ll let you know before then.’

  ‘Bloody liberty, I call it,’ said Dixon as he struggled to his feet and shuffled out of the room. He was clearly in a lot of pain.

  TWELVE

  Much to Gail’s annoyance, I left her bed at a quarter to five on the Friday morning. I was annoyed too, because, like Marilyn Monroe, Gail wore nothing but Chanel No 5 in bed and, on occasions such as this, temptation comes very close to overcoming the demands of duty. I’d arranged for a car to pick me up a
nd was in the office at just before six.

  Kate Ebdon and Dave Poole were already there, along with Gavin Creasey, the night duty incident room manager.

  ‘The team is at Dover, guv,’ said Kate, ‘all set up and raring to go. Captain Deshayes telephoned earlier to say that the suspect vehicle is booked on the oh-seven-hundred hours ferry from Calais.’

  ‘That means it will be at Dover at about eight thirty.’

  ‘Nearer seven thirty our time, guv,’ said Kate smugly. ‘The French are an hour ahead of GMT. Incidentally, Captain Deshayes said he’ll ring you later to fill you in on what happened in France. But he did say that Sharpe picked up a load just outside Marseille at a place called St-Circe, as you said he would. He doesn’t know what the load was because he didn’t want his people to show out. However, he added that the police were now searching the warehouse where Sharpe stopped.’

  ‘Excellent,’ I said.

  ‘So far as our surveillance is concerned,’ Kate continued, ‘our call sign here at Curtis Green is Trading Post, and the various guys doing the following are called Trader followed by a number. They’re calling the suspect vehicle Jumbo.’

  ‘I suppose that all makes sense,’ I said, being none too well informed about technical matters of that nature.

  For an hour and a half, we lounged around the incident room, drinking countless cups of coffee and reading the newspapers. And those of us who smoked were smoking, despite all the silly rules that forbade it.

  At twenty minutes to eight the radio crackled unto life.

  ‘Trading Post from Trader One. Jumbo now leaving port area. On to the A20. Over.’

  Dave flicked a switch on the console. ‘Received, out.’

  Ten minutes later, another message came wafting through the ether.

  ‘Trading Post from Trader Five. Jumbo now on to M20 in light traffic. Over.’