The Crime Trade

by Simon Kernick

  ‘How do I know you have her?’ Flanagan was less calm now. Only just keeping a lid on his emotions.

  ‘I have posted a letter to your home address. It is for your attention. Inside it is a lock of your daughter’s hair as well as her charm bracelet. The one she wears on her right wrist. She says it was a childhood gift from her mother.’

  He was breathing heavily. ‘What is it you want?’

  Stegs didn’t pause. ‘I want to know the whereabouts of Jack Merriweather.’

  23

  Tina Boyd watched from the other side of the road as Stegs Jenner came out of the PCA offices in Great George Street. He looked both ways, but didn’t see her. She was well hidden in the entrance to one of the imposing buildings that were commonplace this close to the seat of government. She stepped backwards out of sight, ignoring the strange look of a middle-aged woman coming out of the revolving doors, then peered round to watch as Stegs started off in the direction of Parliament Square. When he was about forty yards away, she saw him cross the road and turn and hail a black cab. The cab came to a halt and Stegs leant in the window to talk to the driver.

  Breaking cover, Tina came down the steps of the building and hailed a cab of her own, heading in the same direction.

  ‘Where are you going, luv?’ asked the driver through the open window.

  She bent down quickly. ‘Police,’ she said, flashing her warrant card before uttering a variation of something she’d wanted to say ever since she’d first seen films on the telly as a kid. ‘Follow that cab.’ She motioned towards the vehicle carrying Stegs as it indicated and pulled away from the kerb, and jumped in the back. The driver took a quick look over his shoulder and moved off, one car between him and the taxi carrying Stegs.

  ‘I’ve always wondered whether anyone’d say that to me,’ he said, leaning back and inclining his head towards her. He was about fifty-five, with a deeply lined, stubble-covered face and a baseball cap perched on his head that had seen better days. ‘To be honest, I never thought anyone would. Especially a bird.’ He guffawed throatily, scanning her in the rearview mirror. ‘You are going to pay us for this, I hope.’ He guffawed again. The archetypal cheeky chappie. Tina guessed that he was convinced he was a real comedian.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said, ‘I’ll do you a deal. You keep your eyes on the cab and your opinions to yourself, and you’ll get paid. Lose it because you’re gawking at me and I’ll nick you. Understand?’

  ‘All right, all right. I was only joking.’ He gave an exaggerated sigh and fixed his eyes straight ahead.

  Tina sat back in the seat as the cab moved down Bridge Street and on to the Embankment, following Stegs to wherever it was he was going. She was convinced of his guilt, as she had been right from the beginning. They taught you, of course, to be very careful in forming your opinions and to follow the evidence rather than your gut instincts, but in this she knew she was right, and slowly but surely the evidence was building up to back her judgement. There’d been something wrong with Operation Surgical Strike from the beginning. Someone had set the whole thing up, and in her mind there could only be one possibility. Now she was determined to prove it, particularly as John had remained sitting on the fence over the last few days, sympathetic to her viewpoint but never quite making the step needed to agree with it. Not that she’d condemn him for that. John liked to take his time over things, mull the possibilities. But even he would have to agree that what she’d already discovered that morning had pushed Stegs Jenner even further into the frame.

  She’d got into the incident room early, before eight, coming straight from her flat, eager to continue developing the lead she’d been working on the previous day, despite the fact that (a) it had initially looked like a dead-end, and (b) she was carrying a sore head from the leaving do the previous evening. There might not have been anyone on the Megane list whose name also appeared on the Desmarches suit one, but she hadn’t been prepared at that point to throw in the towel. In the past twelve months, there’d been four purchases of the suit made where the list didn’t provide the name of the purchaser. Three had been cash buys, and there was nothing that could be done about them. If the killer had paid cash, there was no way the purchase could be traced back to him. The fourth purchase, however, had been made using a stolen credit card in the name of a Mr Bernard Stanbury. It was a long shot to expect that whoever had stolen the card and had subsequently used it would turn out to be their killer, but Tina had decided to follow up on it anyway. She’d called the credit card company, explained who she was, and got the address and telephone number of Stanbury. The address was Barnet. Stegs Jenner’s manor. She’d taken a look in the A to Z and seen that Stanbury lived less than a mile from her suspect. Another coincidence? She didn’t think so.

  Bernard Stanbury hadn’t been answering his phone, so she’d left a message for him before heading up to Harrow to show the e-fit of the O’Brien suspect to the witnesses in the pub car park shooting. Unfortunately, a long time had passed and none of them could say one way or another whether the picture was of the man they’d seen leaving the scene of the earlier murder. Another dead-end, and a time-consuming one too, and still Stanbury hadn’t called back. She’d thought about phoning John and finding out what he thought of this new cloud of suspicion circling round Stegs, but decided to leave it until she had something more. He was busy enough as it was, chasing after Robert Panner, and he’d said he’d phone her when he had a chance. She didn’t even bother wondering whether Panner could have been the shooter. At the moment, all she was interested in was the pursuit of the leads she was generating. And the man who appeared to be in the middle of them all.

  And this had been what had brought her to the PCA offices that afternoon, knowing that Stegs would be there for his interview. She wasn’t meant to be tailing him, and would almost certainly have got her arse kicked if her superiors had known about it, but sometimes you had no choice but to follow your instincts.

  Stegs’s cab continued along the Embankment, but as the traffic became heavier and more black cabs appeared out of the side streets, Tina was forced to concentrate on his vehicle in particular, not trusting the driver to do the job for her. She could see him sneaking peeks at the pretty young tourists walking along the banks of the Thames, enjoying the first of the spring sunshine.

  As they came up to Blackfriars Bridge, Stegs’s cab swung sharply into the left-hand lane heading up towards the Farringdon Road. They were three or four vehicles behind it, but the driver was more on the ball than Tina had given him credit for, and he glided smoothly across without breaking pace. The lights were green and the cabs went straight through, turning north in the direction of Holborn.

  ‘Let him get a couple of cars ahead,’ she said, leaning forward and wondering why she was speaking so quietly. ‘I don’t want to make it too obvious we’re following him.’

  The driver grunted an acknowledgement and fell back a few yards, letting another cab get between them. Traffic on the Farringdon Road was heavy, but still moving. After about five minutes, Stegs’s cab turned left into Cross Street, and by the time they’d made the turning themselves it had come to a halt outside an office block. Stegs was already outside, paying the driver.

  ‘Go straight past,’ she hissed. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘I want to get my money for this, you know,’ he moaned, but did as he was told, driving on without changing speed. ‘I want to help out the police, course I do, but I ain’t a charity. If I was I wouldn’t be working here, I can tell you.’ He guffawed again.

  Tina ignored him and turned round in her seat, watching as Stegs turned away from the cab and started up a side street, moving at a jog.

  ‘All right, stop,’ she demanded.

  He did a deliberate emergency stop, taking advantage of the lack of traffic to teach her what he hoped was a lesson. It didn’t work. Expecting it, she grabbed the handle by the seat and held on tightly, before thrusting a tenner through the hatch.

  ‘Change and
receipt, please,’ she said, thinking that London’s black cabs were as far from a charity as you could possibly get. Much closer to unarmed robbers. He dawdled, so she told him to hurry up or she’d take his number and report him, and he got the message.

  She jumped out of the cab and walked quickly down to the spot where Stegs had got out of the cab. She was intrigued. They were a long way from his patch. It could be something completely innocent that explained his presence here – a girlfriend, or a mate he was seeing – but she still felt a flush of excitement.

  When she reached the street he’d turned into a good minute and a half earlier, it was empty. Completely. It was narrow and cobbled, made up of oldish grey-brick buildings that looked to be the offices of small businesses. She hung back and waited a few moments, just to make sure he didn’t suddenly reappear, then started to walk up on the left-hand side, checking the nameplates on the doors of the buildings. They were mainly run-of-the-mill companies: graphic designers, specialist printers, photographers, that sort of thing. Halfway up there was an olde-worlde-style wine bar of the kind you get in the financial district, with stone floors, sawdust, bangers and mash, and a wine list to die for. Everything traditional except the astronomical prices. The windows were tinted but the interior was just about visible if you looked hard enough. She did. It was empty, but then again it was close to three o’clock, a dead time of day round these parts.

  When she came to the T-junction at the top of the street, she stopped, lit a cigarette, then turned left and started along it, just in case he’d come this far up. Again, nothing stood out. She crossed the street and came back the other way, still not uncovering anything out of the ordinary in any of the signs. By the time she’d got back to the top of the street she’d first come up, Tina was beginning to feel disheartened. Was she reading too much into his movements?

  She walked back down on the other side in the direction of the main road, trying to remain as casual as possible, but knowing that she stood out. She might have been in the middle of a city of ten million people but these backstreets were as eerily quiet as they always were, and she was the only person on this particular one.

  She stopped. Suddenly. Her eyes fixed on the plate outside a modern tinted-glass door that looked like it was an inch thick. Carroll, Reed and Foster Solicitors. Melvyn Carroll. It had to be him. A smile spread across her face. Bingo.

  Then, through the door, she spotted someone’s legs coming down the stairs just inside. They were clad in khaki chinos and brogues, and she knew immediately it was Stegs.

  ‘Shit!’

  Cursing, she turned and sprinted ten yards before slowing to a casual walk as she heard the door open and close again, hoping he didn’t recognize her from the back. She kept walking, and turned into the main road, heading in the direction the taxi had dropped her. She couldn’t hear any footsteps behind but kept going for another minute, before finally risking a look over her shoulder.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  She breathed a sigh of relief, then broke a long-standing habit by lighting a cigarette less than five minutes after she’d put out her last one.

  This was very interesting. Melvyn Carroll was one of the most crooked lawyers in London, which was saying one hell of a lot. More importantly, he acted as counsel for a number of organized crime figures, and for a long time had been the Holtz family brief. As far as Tina was aware, he was also involved in the defence of senior Holtz crimelord Neil Vamen in his upcoming trial. That Stegs was corrupt, she knew. That he’d fed information to the Holtzes in the past, she was sure. And now it seemed he was working for Neil Vamen.

  ‘I’m on to you, Mr Jenner,’ she whispered, pleased with her day’s work. ‘And this time you’re not getting out of it.’

  24

  Stegs cursed himself as he watched Tina Boyd. He’d recognized her the minute he’d come out of Carroll’s. It was the way her arse waggled effortlessly as she walked, plus he remembered the cream trouser suit. She’d been wearing it the day he first met her. He was observant like that. Particularly with good-looking women, and ones who dressed well. You wouldn’t have caught Boyd in a sock-and-clog combination. He’d followed her down to the bottom of the road, then crossed it, heading away from her, before stopping in the doorway of a forlorn-looking antique shop and watching her as she continued up the road. She’d turned round and lit a cigarette, and he’d got his confirmation, as if he’d needed it. Then, after a few seconds, she looked at her watch, took a couple of rapid puffs on the cigarette, and hailed a passing cab.

  He really had fucked up here. He’d known they were suspicious of his role in the hotel killings and the O’Brien murder, but hadn’t expected them to put him under surveillance. They were always going on about lack of resources, and he honestly didn’t think he was up there at the top of the list of suspects. Still, that was no excuse. He should have prepared for the worst and kept more of an eye out. Now he was in a difficult situation, and one that might have to involve some sort of evasive action.

  But one thing about Stegs was that he didn’t panic. Yes, he’d made a mistake, but the situation was redeemable. It was always redeemable. He got a momentary twinge of doubt again about his course of action, but forced it back down. This was no time for weakness. This was a time for men with steel in their veins, and whatever else you said about Stegs Jenner, he had plenty of that.

  25

  I’d been carrying a mean hangover all day and I was looking forward to the end of the working part of it. It hadn’t been helped by the fact that we hadn’t been able to find Robert Panner in any of his possible haunts, and according to the surveillance units he hadn’t shown up at his official address either.

  Tina, however, had been more successful. By now it was almost seven p.m. and she, Malik and I sat opposite DCS Flanagan in his office adjoining the O’Brien incident room. Flanagan looked the worst of all of us: tired, stressed and irritable all rolled into one. His face had also taken on the unhealthy red pallor it had had in the aftermath of Operation Surgical Strike, and his tie was badly skewed. According to Tina, he’d come in without a word to anyone that morning, his face tight with worry, and had walked straight into his office, shutting the door behind him and not emerging for another hour. It looked like the relentless pressure for a result was getting to him. His fingers drummed a steady, monotonous beat on the table as he stared at Tina for what seemed like an inordinately long time. In fact, I was just about to ask if he was OK, when he finally spoke.

  ‘You’re saying that it was Jenner you saw coming out of Melvyn Carroll’s office this afternoon? I know we’ve already been through all this, but I’ve got to be absolutely sure. This is a serving police officer we’re talking about here.’

  Tina didn’t hesitate. ‘I followed him, sir. All the way from the PCA offices in Great George Street. And, before you ask, it was definitely Carroll’s offices. No question.’

  ‘What were you doing following him?’ he asked, with more than a hint of suspicion in his voice. ‘I don’t recall saying we were going to put him under surveillance.’ At the same time, his fingers maintained their steady drumming. Flanagan didn’t seem the remotest bit pleased with the lead she’d turned up.

  Tina told him what she’d told me earlier, about the fact that the owner of the only stolen credit card used to purchase a jacket identical to the killer’s lived in Barnet, just down the road from Stegs. ‘It seemed like one coincidence too many, on top of everything else. I knew he was down at the PCA, so I thought I’d watch him for an hour or two, see if something turned up.’

  Flanagan nodded, and forced out a constipated smile. It looked like it was the best she was going to get. ‘I’m glad you did. What you saw certainly raises a lot of questions.’ His fingers stopped drumming and he sat back in his seat, using his hand to wipe the sweat away from his forehead.

  Once again, I thought about asking him if he was all right, but decided against it. He might have taken my question the wrong way.

&nbs
p; He sighed loudly. ‘The question is, where does this leave us? What is Jenner’s part in all this?’

  Finally, it was my turn to speak. ‘This is something Asif and I were discussing earlier, sir. I think the visit to Carroll, added to what Tina uncovered about possible links he had to the Holtzes in the past, suggests that he’s on their payroll somewhere. So, if he was working for the Holtzes, he may well now be working for Neil Vamen.’

  ‘Carroll’s Vamen’s solicitor,’ put in Malik, ‘and if he’s working for Vamen, we do have a motive for Jenner’s role in leaking Surgical Strike.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Flanagan, his interest suddenly very much aroused.

  Malik continued. ‘Neil Vamen’s main rival in the north London underworld, the man who’s taken a lot of his old business, is Nicholas Tyndall. The robbery of Stegs and the Colombians last week was carried out by Tyndall’s men, including a man who’s supposedly one of his closest associates, Ashley Grant. That robbery didn’t do Tyndall a lot of good, whether or not he had any part in it. It was such a high-profile failure, in front of so many witnesses, that it was always going to get him serious unwanted attention, as well as upsetting the Colombians. Men he’d be wanting to stay on the right side of.’

  ‘Tyndall’s still free, though.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘but we’ve got two of his men in custody facing very long prison sentences who we’re trying to get to turn Queen’s evidence. It may be that as a result of what happened we can bring a lot of pressure to bear on Tyndall, and even possibly put him behind bars. Which would suit Neil Vamen perfectly.’

  ‘So you’re saying Vamen set the whole Heathrow thing up? Using Stegs?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s certainly possible. Likely even. Stegs, for whatever reason, uses O’Brien to provide the robbery tip to Strangleman Grant, either with or without Tyndall’s knowledge, and I suspect it was without. Grant, who we know is something of a short-term merchant, sees an opportunity to make some easy money and snatch a few kilos of top-grade coke, takes the bait, not having a clue that he’s about to walk into a trap, and bang, it all goes wrong.’