Текст книги "Scent of a Killer"

Автор книги: Kevin Lewis

Соавторы: Kevin Lewis
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‘Not a chance, Danny Boy. I’m stronger than ever.’

5

‘You don’t mind if I listen to my iPod on the way, do you, Mum?’

It wasn’t really a question. By the time Sophie Collins clambered into the passenger seat of the car for the school run, she had already fitted one of the slim white earpieces and was in the process of doing the same with the other.

Stacey forced out a sweet smile. ‘That’s fine, love. In fact it’s perfect. That way you can listen to your music, I can listen to the news, and we won’t get on each other’s nerves.’

Sophie smiled back, finished inserting the remaining earpiece and switched on the controls. She then sat back in her seat and closed her eyes. Stacey knew there would be no more conversation until a brief goodbye when they arrived at the school gates.

Ever since they had had their conversation about Jack Stanley, a certain chill had descended on her relationship with her daughter. They still got on well enough on a day-to-day basis, but it felt as though Sophie was keeping her mother at arm’s length. The iPod in particular had become something of a wedge between them, driving them apart even when they were physically together.

When Stacey questioned her daughter about the way things were, the teenager insisted that all was well and that her only problem was an increasingly heavy workload at school, but Stacey’s motherly instincts, honed by years of detective work, told her there was far more to it.

Although Sophie had agreed not to see Jack any longer, Stacey knew the decision was not a happy one. Once again Stacey cursed herself for backing down in the first place and giving in to her emotions in order to introduce father and daughter. It was, she felt sure, a decision that would haunt her for years to come.

And it wasn’t as if Stacey didn’t have enough problems of her own to deal with. Her mind was swimming with the names, measurements and descriptions of countless missing men whose details she was trying to match with the mystery corpse from the triple murder case.

Having obtained the victim’s shoe size from the mortuary, Stacey had been able to reduce her list of possible victims significantly, but it still contained hundreds of names. She was looking for a needle in a haystack and was becoming increasingly convinced that, to all intents and purposes, the task that Anderson had assigned her was essentially impossible.

The whole team was coming under increasing pressure. The first twenty-four hours had now passed, and all they had managed to do was to identify two of the victims; they had not found any kind of motive for the murders or uncovered a single clue about the killer.

Morning prayers brought little relief. Woods reported that he had interviewed Patricia Chadwick, but she had said nothing that would justify any further investigation of her. She had also not been able to pinpoint anything in her husband’s life that could have led to his death.

After Woods had finished bringing the team up to date, Anderson asked Collins for her own report. She could feel herself getting increasingly self-conscious as she explained that she had nothing at all to say and that her line of inquiry could take several weeks to complete. Anderson dismissed her with an impatient wave of his hand and moved on.

The team then learned that a thorough examination of all the CCTV footage had resulted in just two brief, blurry images of the Mercedes. They now knew that it had been driven into Peckham at around 10 p.m. the evening before the bodies had been discovered. It was too dark and the pictures too grainy for them to make out the features of the driver or even to tell how many people were in the car at the time.

The only thing they knew for sure was that Raymond Chadwick could not have been behind the wheel at the time the footage was filmed. The evidence showed that, even if he had been kept in cold storage, his body had been taken out and allowed to thaw at least twenty-four hours before it was found.

A slightly more promising line of inquiry had come out of DI Hill’s interview with Edward Miller’s former partner. Sandra Miller had revealed that the GBH for which Mr Miller had been charged related to a fight between him and her lover. Miller had arrived home from work early one evening and caught the pair in a state of undress in the middle of the living room. Miller had flown into a rage and attacked the lover but, being much smaller and weaker, he had taken a bit of a beating. A few days later, Miller tracked down the man and knocked him unconscious with a baseball bat.

‘How long had the affair been going on for?’ asked Anderson as DI Hill made his presentation.

‘About four months. And the assault took place three months before Miller went missing.’

‘Do you think the wife or the lover had enough motive?’

‘The wife told me they had been drifting apart for years,’ said Hill. ‘According to her, he’d dipped his wick on more than a few occasions. She hadn’t caught him red-handed, but it was obvious that he was playing away from home. She said he was trying to’ – he flicked through the pages of his notebook to find the exact phrase – ‘replace her with a younger model.’

Anderson scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Two unhappy marriages. As a twice married man I can tell you that doesn’t mean much. Tell me about the man she was seeing.’

‘Ex-amateur boxer. Still goes down the gym on a regular basis. I know from experience that people in that sort of world can have some pretty dodgy connections. He had good reason to be bitter. She dumped him after hubby gave him a hiding. Miller made him look like a fool. He went around telling people he’d get the bastard back, that he’d rip his head off.’

Anderson nodded. ‘I think we should bring the man in for questioning. Softly, softly, though. The jealous lover thing is good motive and could even explain the mutilated genitals. I think it’s unlikely that he has a link to all three men, but I want to be able to eliminate him from our inquiries. What’s his name?’

Hill flicked back a couple of pages in his notebook. ‘Banks. Leroy Banks.’

‘Ah. Works in finance, does he?’

Hill squinted at his notes. ‘No, sir, he’s –’

‘I was kidding, Len. Bring him in this afternoon.’

DS Porter raised a pencil in the air.

‘What is it?’ asked Anderson.

‘I was wondering if this could be a Mafia thing. They’ve been known to remove genitals. I was reading up on the origins of the Mafia last night. It’s a sign that the victim offended the wife of another member of the clan.’

Anderson raised an eyebrow. ‘You think Leroy Banks is Italian?’

‘No, but some of the Yardie-style gangs that have a predominantly black or mixed race membership are known to model themselves on the Cosa Nostra. When I was attached to Trident we had loads of cases where the perpetrators had carried out attacks based exactly on scenes from The Godfather or Goodfellas. They’re really into that kind of symbolism. There have been a few Mafia cases in which bodies have been found with hands and heads cut off or with the genitals removed and stuffed into the mouth.’

‘Okay, I’ll accept it’s a possibility, but, let’s face it, it’s an outside one,’ said Anderson, a small smile curling at the corners of his mouth. ‘Of course, we’re somewhat hampered by the fact that we don’t have the heads and hands so can’t check to see if that’s where the missing genitals are. But if they turn up in that state, we’re all going to owe Porter a good few pints.’

A ripple of laughter worked its way through the members of the team before Anderson dismissed them and they headed off to start the day’s work.

Collins sat at her desk and opened up the file containing the next set of missing person reports. Everyone was under such pressure to catch the killer, chasing one lead after another until they were exhausted. Yet she felt as if she had her hands tied behind her back.

She had been stupid to meet up with Jack Stanley and even more stupid to take Sophie along to his house to introduce them. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but there was now no way she could tell anyone the absolute truth without getting herself into a great deal more trouble.

That said, she had lied under caution, so if anyone ever found out, she would be out on her arse faster than she could say Jack Robinson.

A mixture of resentment, bitterness and anger was building up inside her. A small but growing part of her was even considering jacking the whole thing in. She didn’t need this kind of bollocks in her life, and she certainly didn’t need to be treated like shit by the likes of Anderson and his bag men. All but ignored by her daughter in her private life, it was too much to find herself all but ignored by her boss. She felt she had hit rock-bottom.

The job had become so much more difficult in recent years and it depressed the hell out of her. Advances in forensics and computing, as well as an expansion of police powers, had been welcome additions to the crime-fighting armoury, but they had been neatly balanced by an ever increasing number of technicalities that allowed the guilty to walk free.

The more she thought about it, the more clear it became that the job was at the heart of virtually all her problems. The fact that she was never around for Sophie, the conflict of interest over her past dealings with Jack Stanley, her inability to hold down any steady relationship with a member of the opposite sex, even her increasingly cynical demeanour were all the result of eighteen years on the job.

But was jacking it in really an option? What else could she possibly do? And could she really afford to give up on her generous police pension now that she was more than halfway there? Quitting would also give out the wrong signals, especially so soon after her DPS interview. And no way in hell did she want to give the likes of Anderson the idea that they had got to her.

She thought back over what Jessica Matthews had said about Anderson not being happy about working with women. A quick glance around the incident room seemed to confirm this. She was the only female DI on the team. All five Detective Sergeants were men, and of the fifteen Detective Constables only two were female. Of those, the most junior seemed to do little more than fetch Anderson’s coffee and sandwiches. Only one in eight of the Met’s CID officers was a woman, so statistically the numbers were spot on, but Collins couldn’t help thinking that things had been weighted in such a way as to ensure the officers Anderson worked with most of the time were male.

Well, that was one game Collins wasn’t prepared to play. Anderson was going to have to get used to her working on this case, whether he liked it or not. She looked over in the direction of his office and scowled. The phone on her desk started to ring and she was still scowling as she answered it.

‘DI Collins.’

‘Am I calling at a bad time? You sound a bit grumpy?’

‘Sorry, Jessica,’ said Collins, immediately recognizing the voice. ‘I was in the middle of something. What can I do for you?’

‘I hear you’re on the sidelines for this one.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘I have my sources. The thing is, I think I have something that might help you out. A heads-up to get you back in the good books. But it will mean that dinner’s on you when we meet up.’

‘You don’t have to –?

‘I want to. Anderson needs to be brought down a peg or two, and us sisters need to stick together. The way he treats some of his officers, especially the female ones, it’s not right. Some men – most men, really – need to be taught a lesson and he’s one of them. At least hear me out.’

‘I’m all ears.’

Danny Thompson was driving like a moron.

In the half an hour since he had left London he had gone through two red lights, turned left at a junction after indicating right, circled a large roundabout three times and cut across three lanes of traffic on the motorway to make a sudden exit, only to rejoin the same carriageway an instant later.

Thompson knew he was risking a ticket but there was method in his madness: it was the only way he could be one hundred per cent certain that he was not being followed by anybody.

Satisfied that he was safe, he left the M1 at Junction 6 and headed up the Old Watford Road towards Bricket Wood, parking on a side street at the edge of the common. He walked down to the end of the road, turned right and then turned right again and again, walking directly past the car he had just parked. Satisfied that no one was acting suspiciously around his car, he continued down the road and this time turned left into the entrance of the Tin Man public house.

He took off his sunglasses as he reached the entrance and peered around the room, allowing his eyes to adjust slowly to the light. In the far corner, in a booth against the back wall, he spotted a middle-aged man with glasses and a neatly trimmed full-face beard just starting to turn grey at the outer edges. Thompson got himself a pint at the bar, then strode towards the man and, without a word of introduction, sat himself down opposite him.

‘You’re late,’ said the man in a soft Scottish accent.

‘Yeah? Well, I’d rather be late and have my arse covered than get here on time and have the shit hit the fan when I get back.’

‘So how goes the big manhunt?’

‘Stanley knows there’s a leak, but there’s no way that he or anyone close to him is ever going to point the finger at me.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Trust me. I’m rock solid.’

DCI Warren Milton took a sip of his orange juice and stared at the man opposite him. Several weeks had passed since the SOCA officer had hinted to DI Collins that an operation against Stanley was under way. Today was his chance to find out if that information had indeed been passed on. ‘Good. So what have you got for me?’

Thompson sipped his pint before speaking. ‘I’m not gonna tell you … I’m not gonna name names or anything like that.’

‘No?’

‘Not right now.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Are you taping this?’

‘No, no.’

Thompson leaned forward so that he was staring directly into the eyes of the man opposite him. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I wouldn’t do that without telling you. This is all just background. Off the record. You’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re that bothered, you can frisk me if you like.’

Thompson cocked his head to one side. ‘Nah, you’re all right.’

‘What can you tell me about the size of Mark Dennings’s operation? What sort of drugs was he dealing in?’

‘Everything.’

‘Cocaine?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ecstasy?’

‘Heroin, blow, everything, mate. Where there was money to be made, he did it.’

‘Did he make a lot of money?’

‘Yeah, not mega-money, but he was doing all right. You have to think about this whole business like a game of chess. Everyone wants to be the king but most people just end up as pawns. Someone like Dennings, he had moved up the ranks a couple of places, but he was nowhere near the top.’

‘So who killed him? And why?’

Thompson shuffled in his seat. ‘Drawn a blank there, I’m afraid. If Stanley was directly involved, he’s keeping it pretty close to his chest. I can’t get anything out of him myself. I can’t even be sure that he was there.’

‘But you think he ordered the hit?’

Thompson shrugged. ‘Can’t be sure of that either. There were rumours that Dennings was skimming stock, but that means that anyone in the organization might have wanted to have a pop at him, just to see if he had a load of gear stashed away.’

Thompson knew he was being convincing, but the truth was somewhat different. In fact Thompson knew all about the murder of Dennings, a small-time dealer from the Blenheim Estate who had worked for Stanley. After getting greedy and skimming off a portion of the drugs that he was smuggling in, Stanley had decided to make an example of him.

Dennings had been shot twice in the head while getting out of a drug boat on the beach at Margate a few months earlier. Stanley had been there to see his own brand of justice done, but it was Danny Thompson who had pulled the trigger.

‘What about Stacey Collins?’

‘What about her?’

‘Does she help Jack out much?’

‘Does she fuck. Little prick tease. He went out with her for about a minute and a half when they were teenagers or something, and he’s been stuck on her ever since. He always reckons he gets stuff from her but the truth is it’s all one-way traffic. He gives her plenty of tips, but everything she comes back with is a load of shite. I think Jack just likes the kudos of being able to say he had a cop on his books. But I told you all this last time.’

‘I know, I just wanted to see if the situation had changed since then.’

‘He hasn’t mention her name to me. Read into that what you will.’

‘Has Jack said anything about an up-and-coming raid?’

‘What, drugs squad?’

‘No. SOCA.’

‘You lot? I didn’t think you had anything yet, otherwise why do you need me?’

‘There’s been some talk about it in certain circles. I just wanted to know if the whisper mill had reached you yet.’

‘Not that I’m aware.’

‘Okay. But if you hear anything, let me know.’

‘He might not have had time to mention it. He’s having woman trouble and then there’s this aggro with the Albanian mob. That’s keeping him pretty occupied.

‘You need to keep a lid on that, Danny. I don’t want our hand being forced.’

‘It’s under control.’

‘The kind of control that leaves a lot of dead bodies on the street?’

‘You’re funny, you know that. Ever considered a career in stand-up?’

‘I mean it, Thompson. You lot go to war and all bets are off. We’ll have no choice but to bring you all in.’

‘And we’ll be back out again in a day.’

Milton leaned forward. ‘Let me put this in language you can understand. You fuck up the arrangements from your end and I’ll do the same from mine. If you find yourself in the shit, there will be no point in calling on me.’

DCI Milton watched as Thompson finished his drink, stood up and walked out of the pub. A split second later a man from a nearby table came and sat down next to him.

‘You get it all?’

The man held up a miniature recording device.

‘Clear as a bell. You think we can trust him?’

He looked back round to face the front. ‘The thing you have to understand about grasses is that out of all the people in the world, they’re the ones everyone despises. Criminals hate them and, even though a lot of police work relies on them, we don’t like them much either. Sell their own grannies if they thought it would get them somewhere. So if you ask me do I trust Danny Thompson the answer is a definitive no. I wouldn’t trust the fucking scumbag as far as I could throw him.’

Thompson’s driving during the return journey was equally erratic.

Every roundabout was circled at least twice; he joined and rejoined the motorway three times and doubled back on himself every half an hour. Cocky and confident, he was certain that he had made himself impossible to follow. And he had, which is why the team keeping him under surveillance had opted to fit a small GPS device to his car instead.

His entire journey appeared on the screen of a laptop computer, and it was only when he stopped for more than a few minutes that one of the team of cars and motorcycles that were always a few miles behind was sent forward to investigate.

As the map showed Thompson pulling up to his home, the head of the team hit the redial button on his mobile and held it up to his ear. ‘He’s back now,’ said the man in his strong South African accent. ‘I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere else so I’m going to call it off for the day and send the rest of my boys home. The photographs will be with you by the morning. There will also be a couple of audio recordings, though the quality isn’t great because we didn’t want to risk getting too close. Is there anything else we can do for you, Mr Stanley?’

‘No,’ Jack replied softly. ‘I’ll call you when I get the prints. In the meantime, feel free to send me your invoice.’

6

The shelves in the incident room at Peckham were creaking under the weight of all the reports being written up by members of the team, but so far nothing seemed to have taken them even a single step closer to finding out who was behind the triple murder.

Rajid Khan, a geeky computer expert attached to the unit, had been brought in to examine Chadwick’s home and laptop computers to see if they held any clue to his whereabouts in the weeks before he died. Khan used specialist software to scan the hard drives, looking for evidence of incriminating emails, letters or instant messages.

His investigation had produced hundreds of pages of data, all of which had to be read, recorded and cross-referenced. Yet, despite the huge number of man hours invested in this part of the inquiry, nothing of interest was found.

Leroy Banks, the lover of Sandra Miller, had been arrested, brought to the station and subjected to a lengthy interview under caution. He made no secret of the fact that he hated his love rival and that he had publicly expressed a desire to see him dead on numerous occasions. However, he had a cast-iron alibi for the night the bodies were dumped.

‘He can’t be totally in the clear because we don’t know how many people we’re talking about,’ said Porter as the team discussed their findings that afternoon. ‘There could be two or three killers all working together. Just because Banks wasn’t actually driving the car on the night the bodies were dumped doesn’t mean he’s innocent.’

A murmur of agreement passed through the room. Collins looked across at Porter and found herself unable to resist the urge to cut him down to size. ‘It’s not Banks. That theory only works if there’s some kind of connection between the victims,’ she said. ‘They’d have to all live in the same street or work for the same company. It’s one thing having a lone killer working at random, quite another having group effort. If that kind of link existed, we’d already know.’

Now it was DI Hill’s turn to speak. ‘Maybe you just haven’t found the link yet. Don’t go knocking our end of the investigation while your own research is coming up short.’

Collins couldn’t believe what she was being accused of. She could feel her chest tightening as anger rose up within her. She was just about to let loose a stream of vicious swearwords and put-downs when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted DCI Anderson entering the room.

Collins had spent all morning psyching herself up for what she was about to do and knew that it was now or never. She had to make her move, and revenge on DI Hill would have to wait. Anderson had barely reached the halfway point across the room when Collins appeared beside him.

‘Sir, I need to attend the post-mortems this afternoon.’

Anderson raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘Myself and DI Hill are already attending,’ he said, his voice calm and firm. ‘I really don’t see the need for anyone else to be there. And besides, you already have your assignment –’

‘I need to know if there are any distinguishing marks on the unidentified body.’

‘That will be in the report –’

‘But that won’t be ready for a couple of days. I’ve got a contact on Crimewatch but their deadline for the next show is the day after tomorrow. If anything useful comes out of the PMs, I need to know about it as soon as possible.’

Anderson reached one hand up to his chin and began scratching it slowly – a habitual gesture. Collins could see that he was deep in thought and held her breath.

‘Let’s talk about it in my office,’ he said at last. ‘Right now.’

Moments later Collins found herself standing in front of Anderson’s large wooden desk while he seated himself and studied her cautiously.

‘I don’t think it’s any secret that you do have something of a reputation as a loose cannon. I’d even heard about your exploits long before I arrived at MIT, and, I have to confess, some of what I’ve heard makes me very uneasy,’ he said.

Collins blinked and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know what to say. I get results. Sometimes my methods may be a bit unorthodox but I get the job done.’

‘But there’s no point in getting the job done if it all falls apart when the case comes to trial. And with the kind of antics you get up to, that’s just the situation we’re likely to end up in. That’s my big fear.’

‘I know the law, sir,’ snapped Collins. ‘I’d never do anything to jeopardize a trial. Just because I’m determined doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.’

‘I never said you were.’

Anderson sat back and scratched his chin again as he ran through the options in his mind. He enjoyed the challenge of running a murder squad – so far as he was concerned it was what policing was all about – but he was unhappy about having inherited so many officers that would not have been his first choice had he been putting the team together himself.

He was equally unhappy about officers from the DPS coming to see him shortly after he had been appointed to inform him that one of his DIs was under investigation and that she should be kept away from any sensitive parts of the inquiry.

Collins had since been given the all-clear, but Anderson was in no hurry to make her part of his core team. He was all too well aware that he had gained a reputation for being something of a misogynist but knew that in reality it was entirely undeserved. Some of the female officers he had worked with in the past had been razor-sharp and excellent. Others, however, had been absolutely hopeless. But exactly the same could be said of the men he had worked with.

The simple truth was that good officers, regardless of gender, ethnicity or disability, were thin on the ground. He didn’t plan to let anyone drop the ball on one of his cases, least of all Collins.

Anderson paused and steepled his fingers. ‘I was having a chat with DCS Higgins the other day and your name came up.’

Collins said nothing. Instead she waited for Anderson to carry on.

‘He rates you very highly,’ he said at last. ‘He told me to be sure to make the most of you, that you’d be a real asset. He was sorry to see you go.’

‘I was sorry to leave,’ Collins replied.

‘It’s clear you two had a pretty special relationship.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping with him if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘I wasn’t. Not at all. I mean it’s clear that he empathized with your way of doing things. It’s also clear that I do things very differently. You’re just going to have to get used to that.’

‘So it would appear.’

‘I run a tight ship, Collins,’ he said. ‘There isn’t any room for mavericks in my team. If you take one step out of line, you’re off the squad. Do I make myself clear?’

Collins leaned forward and placed both palms flat down on the desk. ‘Listen, I want to get whoever is responsible for these murders every bit as much as you do. I’m going to do my job to the best of my ability. That’s all I ever do. I’ll always put the case first. You might surround yourself with yes men who’ll take the fall for you if you mess up an investigation and maybe it pisses you off that I’m not like that, but, like I said, I put the case before my own career and I certainly put it before yours.’

Anderson was staring hard at Collins. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Collins. One wrong move from you and you won’t just be off my team, you’ll be out of MIT altogether. Do I make myself clear?’

Collins stepped back and folded her arms in front of her body. It was the most defiant gesture she could make under the circumstances.

‘Yes, sir. Crystal.’

Collins stared silently out of the side window of the squad car taking her, Hill and Anderson to Guy’s Hospital, where the post-mortem was due to take place. She sat in the back alongside Hill while the DCI was up in front next to the driver.

The first few minutes passed in silence but then Anderson folded up the newspaper he had been reading, turned to Collins and smiled. ‘So, you’re a tad sceptical about the chances of Leroy Banks being involved.’

Collins was taken aback by both the question and Anderson’s friendly tone but rapidly regained her composure. ‘I just don’t think he’s serial killer material. I know he has motive for wanting to attack Edward Miller, but I don’t see him going as far as killing him, let alone the other two. You don’t seriously think he’s involved, do you?’

Anderson smiled again and Collins realized that this was probably the first time she had ever seen him do so. ‘I don’t like to leave any stone unturned,’ he said, ‘just in case it comes back and bites me on the arse, if you’ll forgive my mixed metaphors.

‘One of my first murder cases involved this teenage girl who had been stabbed to death in her own home. I got to the scene and it was a terrible mess. Blood everywhere, a real frenzied attack.

‘There was no sign of a forced entry, and the only people in the house were the mother – she called it in – the stepfather and the girl’s younger brother. When we went into the brother’s room we all had a bit of a shock. He was one of those death-obsessed teenagers. Every square inch of the wall was covered in posters for slasher films, heavy-metal music and vampire memorabilia. There were skulls and crucifixes everywhere, as well as a load of marijuana and speed.

‘Everyone on the team liked the kid for the killing, and there was a suspicion that the stepfather might have helped. It looked like an open-and-shut case but my guv was less sure. Made us do a trawl of the neighbourhood. That was when we found a homeless guy, care-in-the-community case, wandering around in a drunken stupor. He had no blood on him and no weapon, and there would have been no way that he could have entered the house. The only things in his pockets were a couple of chocolate bars. I was all for letting him go but the guv said we had to bring him in anyway to cover all the bases.

‘Cut a long story short, it was the homeless guy that did it. To this day we don’t know how he managed to get into the house but what we do know is that he stabbed the girl while she was in her bed so her blood got soaked up by the duvet. We found a tiny spot on his sweatshirt but what had really nailed it was that the governor had noticed a little bowl full of chocolate bars by the side of the girl’s bed. The guy had nicked a handful on his way out. Ever since, I like to bring in as many people as I can – isn’t that right, Len?’