Souvenirs of Murder (28 page)

Warily, we went in. The place stank but, after all, someone had been rather ill in here. I expected the layout to be the same or similar to that of the other flat but this was a series of small rooms including a proper bathroom and kitchen, the former definitely a no-go area as far as I was concerned. The room at the front, the largest, was about twelve feet square, and like the others it was empty of furniture. The only item in the place was a supermarket bag full of rubbish in the kitchen. Very carefully, Carrick began to go through it.

‘So was it Hulton?' I wondered aloud. ‘He knew the police had been here.'

‘But why the hell was he hanging around?' Carrick said, dubiously unwrapping what turned out to be the mouldy remains of a takeaway. ‘You saw him at the pub, he was next door but one and he might,
might
have been here too. Was he hanging around hoping to catch up with the man who killed his daughter?'

‘That theory has a lot going for it,' I said. ‘But why would whoever it was come back here?'

Carrick looked up at me with a glint in his eyes. ‘Because it was his job to do so?'

‘Oh, brother,' I whispered. ‘Did Hulton think it might have been one of the cops on watch?'

‘One of the cops who'd changed his name from his Serbian one?'

‘Mlandan Beckovic!' I exclaimed, suddenly remembering the name.

‘It's happened, you know. Not all that long ago a Super in the Met was interviewing new entrants when he recognized someone he'd arrested for murder nine years previously. The bloke had assumed a new identity.'

‘I can't believe that if it was Beckovic he joined the Met with a view to settling old scores.'

‘No, but crooks
do
try to join the police, as in the case I've just mentioned. It gives them a huge advantage. And now that identity theft's on the increase . . .' He broke off and whistled softly.

I had been looking around the rest of the kitchen. ‘What have you got?'

Carrick delved into the bottom of the bag. ‘There's an empty bottle in here. The sort that drugs are kept in in pharmacies and hospitals.'

I went over and we looked at the label.

‘Amytal Sodium,' he read out loud. ‘It's a barbiturate. It looks as though we might have found the stuff that was put in the whisky. God, if this was full and whoever it was tipped it all into three or four bottles of Scotch then I'm surprised they lived long enough to be shot.'

‘There might be fingerprints on it.'

‘Quite. You wouldn't have a specimen bag on you, I suppose? – although I might have some in the car.'

I handed one over.

Carrick said, ‘If the guy on duty the night before the shootings was nobbled, poisoned, in some way there's still plenty of evidence in the bathroom. Did anyone investigate that, do you know?'

‘They didn't,' I told him. ‘But please don't ask me to take samples.'

‘Och, I'll do it. I might even have some wee plastic sample phials in the car too . . .'

He did and more potential evidence was gathered.

‘I reckon something went a bit wrong with their plan,' Carrick said, removing the gloves. ‘I mean, if the man here on his own was dosed with something to make him ill during the night it would have had to be done somewhere else, before he arrived, as time would have been needed for it to take effect. I'm sure they would have wanted to take out the people over the road under cover of darkness, as they say in corny detective stories. Only for some reason their plans went a bit wrong. Therefore, and still I'm guessing, the murderer was the one who should have been here on duty with him, not the man who was to have taken over from him next morning and who must have received some official-sounding message telling him he wasn't needed.'

‘Unless they were both in it together.'

‘That might be stretching it a bit. Whatever the truth we must find out everything about these surveillance people.'

‘Where are you going to take the evidence?'

‘You're the one who works for SOCA.'

‘Yes, but as I said earlier, it is Rundle's case.'

‘I don't like the sound of him at all. Is Greenway interested in getting Patrick off the hook?'

‘He is, but I don't think he can justify throwing much in the way of resources at it.'

‘Does
he
like Rundle?'

‘No.'

James grinned.

I rang Greenway and, without explaining further, asked if I could see him. He sounded surprised but immediately said I should come to SOCA HQ.

There were to be more surprises; first another for Greenway on seeing Carrick and then a further one when James and I caught sight of Patrick sitting in the Commander's office, drinking coffee. I got the impression that he had not been there long.

‘I threw my weight around,' Greenway said, having been patient during the handshakes and hugs and provided extra coffee. ‘I don't do it very often but –' he seemed for a moment to be in danger of losing his temper again but mastered it and, his voice thick with anger, continued – ‘Rundle crowed. That shitty little DCI crowed to me that he'd made one of mine lay in the gutter to be arrested. More importantly as far as the law goes, he has no evidence to connect Patrick with Hulton's death, none at all, and that was what he had arrested him for. We've checked and just about his every movement yesterday can be accounted for. The morning at the clinic, taxi rides when, just to be on the safe side he took the numbers of the vehicles, then lunch with Richard Daws – God above, is there a better alibi in the whole universe than that? – and then another taxi to the hotel where the receptionist remembers he arrived just before she went off duty at two thirty. By that time Hulton had been dead for just under five hours. We know that because his watch was smashed and had stopped at nine sixteen, after Patrick had booked himself in to the clinic.'

‘Who found the body, sir?' Carrick enquired.

‘I take it you're here in the capacity of Ingrid's minder in the assumed, at the time, absence of her husband and taking into consideration the hazardousness of the investigation.'

‘That's right.'

‘Admirable. There was a tip-off.'

‘Oh?'

‘Yes. Stinks, doesn't it?'

‘What about these surveillance men whose details Rundle said he'd sent you?' I said impatiently, having thought that it was perfectly possible for Hulton's killer to have altered the time on the watch before smashing it.

‘Their names are Kenneth Hills and Daniel Rushton-Smith. Hills is a one-time traffic cop and due for retirement. He hails from Manchester. Rushton-Smith is thirty-nine years old and has been in the force only eighteen months. According to his CV he has mid-European antecedents. Take a look, I've printed off his photograph.'

‘I've already seen it,' Patrick told us quietly. ‘He bears a remarkable resemblance to the mugshot of Mladan Beckovic we actually have in this building.'

The colour photo came into my hands and I stared at the dark, somewhat sullen features. ‘Is this the man who was upstairs at Pangborne's house?' I asked Patrick.

‘I still don't remember seeing his face.'

Greenway said, ‘So now I'm not tiptoeing around this any more for fear of offending our colleagues in central London I intend to have him picked up. He's on his second day off this week, apparently.'

‘I can't understand him being stupid enough to leave that barbiturate bottle in the kitchen of the flat,' Carrick commented. ‘If it was him, of course.'

‘He's probably a lousy policeman,' I said.

‘The four of us will go with back-up,' Greenway decided. ‘Unusual, I know, but a lot is at stake here. I want to see this man's reaction when he and Patrick come face to face.'

‘In that case I'd like to put in an official request to carry a firearm strictly for self-defence purposes,' Patrick said. Then added with the trace of a smile, ‘Sir.'

‘Request denied. But doesn't Ingrid have your one-time MI5 short-barrelled Smith and Wesson?' He shot to his feet. ‘Well? Are you coming?'

We gulped down the remains of our coffee and followed him out.

Rushton-Smith, according to Met records, lived in Hammersmith. Only he did not, the house empty, the windows boarded up. Greenway, determined seemingly to be right at the forefront of events, pounded on the front door of the semi-detached house next to it and there was a short conversation with a woman. Patrick, Carrick and I, plus the driver, remained in the Commander's car, another with reinforcements parked right behind us, watching and waiting.

‘She doesn't know where the owners or tenants of the place are,' Greenway reported on his return. ‘It's been empty like that for several months and she's never seen anyone living there who looked like the man in the mugshot I showed her. So it's either a phoney address or he hasn't bothered to update his details.' Back in the car he turned to flash a big smile at the three of us in the rear seat. ‘I'm getting quite excited about this.'

‘Where to now, sir?' asked the driver.

‘Wood Green nick. We'll talk to Kenneth Hills. No, hang on, I'll find out exactly where he is first.' He grabbed his mobile.

Rundle gave the information immediately. Hills was on duty with the colleague who had suffered food poisoning and they were at an address in the centre of Wood Green keeping watch on a Chinese restaurant thought to be employing illegal immigrants. There was, the DCI added, a car parking area to the rear of the shops. I thought the advice pointless as Greenway was in the mood to block the road and bring the place to a standstill. But as it happened the pair were watching the rear of the premises in question across the car park from a storeroom-cum-office they had commandeered over a charity shop that fronted on to another road.

‘The four of us will go but do try not to look like cops on the way over,' Greenway announced. ‘I don't want to bust the cover of these blokes and I'm not for one moment suspecting them of anything dodgy. However, a little exposure to fire-power never did anyone any harm.' Unlike Richard Daws he did not pronounce it ‘far-par'.

No wonder Rundle had been so helpful, I mused, he was still recovering from his own singeing. I also wondered what had made Greenway change his mind about interfering, not just because Rundle had become a bit cocky, surely.

We wandered over to the charity shop, Patrick and I first, the others following half a minute or so later, and discovered that the rear entrance was locked. We found our way round to the front and went in, Greenway waving his warrant card at the two Oxfam ladies on the way through and giving them one of his big smiles.

‘Morning!' said the Commander loudly at the top of a flight of narrow stairs.

‘Morning, sir,' said one of the two men with cameras and other surveillance equipment in the gloomy and cramped room we found ourselves in – the grubby curtains were almost closed – which instantly became very crowded indeed.

Rundle had warned them then.

‘Which one of you is Kenneth Hills?' said Greenway after quickly introducing the rest of those to whom they were talking.

‘I am,' said the man who had first spoken; of medium height, slim, with a thin moustache.

‘Tell me, in no more than twenty words, why you didn't report for duty on the morning of the murders at Park Road, Muswell Hill.'

‘I got a phone call from Dan saying that he would stay on and do the first shift as well.'

‘That is Daniel Rushton-Smith?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Did you question that at all?'

‘No. He gets a bit funny if you argue with him. He said he'd had a row with his girlfriend and wanted to stay out of it for a bit longer.'

Greenway turned to the other man, ‘And you? Sorry, I don't know your name.'

‘Keeting, sir. Philip.'

‘Are you prone to stomach upsets?'

‘No, not at all.'

‘But you were really ill.'

‘Yes. I thought I was going to die. The docs said I must have eaten something horribly off.'

‘Had you had anything in the hours previously that could be regarded as suspicious?'

‘No, I couldn't think of anything. No seafood or stuff like that.'

‘Had anyone fixed you something to eat – other than in the nick canteen?'

‘Dan had fetched several of us coffee earlier that day. But he only had to go out to the machine in the main corridor, not go to a greasy spoon place.'

‘Do you know if anyone else was taken ill?'

‘If they were I didn't hear about it.'

‘OK. Where does this Dan live? His records are out of date.'

Both men looked at one another in surprise.

‘Dunno,' said Keeting.

‘No idea, sir,' said Hills. ‘He's a private sort of bloke.'

‘No idea at all?' Greenway asked in amazement.

They both shook their heads.

‘Think,' Patrick said, stepping forward from where he had been standing in a corner. ‘He must have given you some clues.'

They frowned in perplexity.

‘Come on!' barked the parade-ground voice, making everyone jump. ‘You're bloody
cops
!'

‘Well – well, he doesn't drive in,' Keeting stuttered. ‘Moans about the trains.'

‘Tube trains?'

‘Er – no, surface ones. He got stuck at Hornsey not so long ago. I don't think that's on the tube.'

‘It's only the next station to Wood Green down the line,' Greenway commented. ‘So that doesn't help much.'