Ashes to Ashes Page 10

  ‘Mike just called to say you were here,’ he said genially, sweeping his fair, greying hair from his forehead, a lifetime’s gesture, all the while fixing Patrick with his steely blue-grey gaze. ‘He told me that you wanted to go after some mobster or other.’

  Over the years Patrick has learned patience and honed his natural cunning. He said, ‘I should like the authority to raise a case of my own, sir, and follow it through, involving whichever police forces I think necessary.’

  ‘Ah, that’s better – but it’s a promotion,’ Daws remarked quietly. ‘I’m sure you must know that.’

  ‘Then that’s my request.’

  Daws appeared to think about it. Then he said, ‘The NCA was set up with the view to give its operatives more power and flexibility to catch serious criminals. But you hadn’t been working for SOCA all that long.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but I worked for you for quite a few years before that.’

  ‘You’re a loose cannon.’

  ‘I get better results that way.’

  ‘And one day, I have a notion, you may well end up behind bars. There would be no support from me, you know, if you got into serious trouble.’

  ‘Like the time when a cop thought I’d killed a man you gave me an alibi by saying that I’d met you for lunch half an hour earlier than I actually did?’

  It had made no difference as Patrick had been on time for his appointment with him at his club.

  Momentarily back in duffer mode, Daws made harrumphing noises. Then he said, ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was no shock, horror reaction to this, Daws merely murmuring, ‘Jethro Hulton, wasn’t it? Murdering bastard was like a rabid hyena.’

  As well as attacking me when I had come upon him in an empty house during an investigation. Men – criminals, that is – who assault Patrick Gillard’s wife don’t usually live for very long afterwards.

  ‘That’s right,’ Patrick answered tautly.

  ‘Which rather demonstrates that you need to be kept on a tight rein.’

  Patrick made no further comment.

  Then Daws rose and held out his hand. ‘Congratulations. But you’ll still have to report to Greenway.’ He added, as we were leaving: ‘By the way, I want O’Connor alive. Don’t go after him until you have a gold-plated case against him.’

  ‘Does John really expect you to sort this out?’ I asked when we were in a lift going down to the ground floor. I had already given Patrick a congratulatory kiss.

  ‘He’s getting old,’ he replied, ‘and worries about not being to do things as well as he used to. I promised him I’d get the Peters woman off his and Mum’s back. So, yes, in that respect, he’s relying on me.’

  It transpired that nothing more could be done in London. No real work could start until the following Monday, as Greenway was having the rest of the week off and there would be formalities to go through in connection with Patrick being given more authority.

  We went back to Somerset.

  I was feeling a little depressed by all this. Events had escalated during the day, which, I supposed, I ought to have expected. It would have been wonderful to have had Patrick at home for longer, but I realized that it was not fair of me to try to tie him to life at home now he gave every sign of feeling fully recovered. Wrong, too, of me to look forward to the day when he retired.

  Was it though? Really?

  Involving whichever police forces Patrick thought necessary was acted upon without delay and we met the Carricks for a drink in the Ring o’ Bells that same evening.

  ‘You know, this is much better,’ Carrick began by saying to Patrick. ‘The fact that you’ll be getting under my feet officially from now on is a great improvement on your just poking around in my cases and showing me up by finding murder weapons right under my nose. No doubt the boys in Wiltshire will feel the same.’ He laughed loudly, not something this particular DCI goes in for an awful lot.

  Patrick had already reported our conversation with Oliver Stevens and now asked Carrick if Wiltshire Police had been in contact in connection with the cartridge cases he had found.

  ‘Y-e-s,’ he replied slowly. ‘They have nothing, of course, in the way of evidence to point to this death having been murder. The remains of the car have been crushed. The official attitude is – and I can’t say I blame them – that if Avon and Somerset and/or the NCA manage to find evidence, perhaps in connection with another case, then they will be delighted to help. Meanwhile, the coroner has been informed with a view to getting the inquest postponed. I think, Patrick, that with regard to that, the ball is in your court.

  ‘I have a small item of news for you about the weapon you found,’ he went on. ‘The Beretta, which, as you said, is an unusual one to be found at a crime scene. Someone at Manvers Street who really knows about guns phoned a few contacts – one in Bristol, another two in London – and asked questions. One of these characters, and it doesn’t do to enquire too deeply about them, mentioned a small, “consignment”, as he put it, of weapons from the States that were brought, smuggled into this country by sea, last year. God knows how. The source of this information hadn’t handled the stuff himself, it was just on the grapevine and he couldn’t tell us anything else about them.’

  ‘Not even serial numbers?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘No. It’s not a lead but explains how the weapon might have got into the illegal pipeline in this country.’

  ‘Any leads on the skull?’

  ‘Until I have some DNA to compare it to, no.’

  ‘And the wife’s off the map so we can’t ask her if she has anything of his that might have a few strands of hair on it.’

  ‘I reckon she binned all his possessions before he was cold, don’t you?’

  ‘Quite likely,’ Patrick agreed.

  The men brooded gloomily into their beer.

  Joanna, who had been quiet up until now, relaxing, said, ‘How about in that shed that survived the explosion and fire? There might be an old coat in there or something like that.’

  ‘Is your application to rejoin the police likely to go through soon?’ I asked her and the pair of us had a good cackle at our husbands’ expense.

  ‘Scenes of Crime have taken everything like that away,’ James said a little sheepishly. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll check if David Campbell asked them to look for clothing and personal possessions in connection with formally identifying what remained of the body before he went on his course. At first, as you know, everyone assumed it was the woman who had died in the fire.’

  Campbell had not.

  Patrick spent most of the next day questioning people in Wellow about Anne Peters, endeavouring to discover whether she had friends, or at least acquaintances, who might know where she could have gone. He also tried to discover what had happened to the couple’s car, but with no success. It was impossible for him to do any of this without using his NCA ID, but as the case was up and running, if only in his mind and barring the formalities, in his view it mattered little. Anyway, what Richard Daws says is as good as already in the history books.

  ‘Let’s look at this from a different angle,’ Patrick said that evening. ‘The body that was cremated – who the hell was it? Why did he, or she, have to be got rid of in that fashion? Joanna came up with some names of missing people but none of them lit any fires with me.’

  ‘Bound to have been a bloke,’ I said. ‘Someone dodgy or a mobster and, from the evidence we have, quite old and having been in a serious accident. It shouldn’t be that difficult to discover his identity. If O’Connor’s involved we might be talking about a rival, another crime baron. Anyway, why can’t the Met lay their hands on him?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Daws wants him, no doubt to prove that the NCA’s getting results,’ I added, definitely not wagging a warning finger. ‘And alive, he said. A corpse full of bullet holes will be no good to him at all.’

  Patrick merely grunted.

  Attempting to discover the identity
of the late owner of the medical hardware had to wait, for as soon as Patrick arrived at the NCA HQ the following Monday morning he was required to attend courses – as he put it, ‘brain washing’, that would take up the next two days. I stayed at home – the children were back at school – the distaff side of the partnership not required at this stage. In truth, I wondered if his promotion would result in a job that was less hands on, though this was not necessarily what he had been after. I was also a little concerned that his patience to remain polite while coping with being ‘lectured’ for hours on end, no doubt about health and safety matters, might run out quite early in the proceedings.

  ‘How did you get on?’ I enquired when he rang me late afternoon on the Wednesday.

  ‘It was OK.’

  ‘Not boring?’

  ‘Not at all. The courses were for new entrants and when those in charge read their info and discovered I’d worked for both MI5 and SOCA I was roped in to give a couple of talks. Tomorrow I start work for real. Do you want to come up?’

  ‘No courses?’

  ‘I’ll give you my notes on anything you need to know about.’

  Right now I really wanted to get on with my latest novel. And the garden was looking lovely, baby Mark with me in the warm sunshine on a blanket on the lawn under a parasol, trying to crawl over to where one of the kittens, Pirate, named after her predecessor, was washing herself close by on the grass …

  ‘I value your company,’ Patrick wheedled.

  ‘As in, in bed?’ I asked.

  ‘That too. But mostly because when you’re not around I miss the constant twittering noise by my side when I’m on a job.’

  I drove up to London the next morning.

  He had his own office, small like Greenway’s, but perfectly formed, containing the regulation desk and chair – but not a leather one like the commander’s – plus necessities such as another couple of chairs for visitors, a computer, a set of shelves and a metal cupboard. Other essentials to civilized living, such as a coffee-making machine, a small refrigerator and a microwave cooker, he had gone out and bought himself. Oh, and an orchid plant on the window ledge.

  ‘They don’t like full sun,’ I told him, taking it off and placing it on the shelf next to the coffee maker.

  ‘I thought they liked it hot,’ Patrick said.

  ‘They live in jungles so need warm, shady and humid conditions.’

  ‘I’ll breathe on it sometimes.’

  ‘Is there anything to do today?’ I went on to enquire, seating myself.

  ‘I might have found out who the hip replacements belonged to.’

  ‘Really! How?’

  ‘It involved nothing more complicated yesterday afternoon after the courses had finished than going round introducing myself – there are a lot of bods here, both sexes, whom I’ve never met before – and asking if anyone knew of a clapped-out mobster who’s gone off the radar lately. One name came up twice – Frederick Judd, known as Freddie the Bent on account of his appearance after being involved in a hang-gliding accident when he was in his forties and subsequently being seriously afflicted with arthritis. Criminal grapevines say that he’s dead, quite recently.’

  ‘Was O’Connor’s name mentioned in connection with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If mobsters want to get rid of a rival they usually do something like shooting them and dropping them in a weighted sack into a canal or river,’ I pointed out. ‘Or just leave them where they fall. Why go to more bother with him?’

  ‘Perhaps they wanted him to really disappear – no chance of ever finding the corpse. Or he could have been made an example of along the lines of get off my manor or burn … perhaps alive.’

  ‘That would fit in with what you’ve already said about O’Connor.’

  ‘Yes, quite.’

  EIGHT

  The last known address for Judd was in Feltham, Middlesex. The house where he had lived – or still might live if the rumours of his death were incorrect – was one of hundreds of semi-detached homes on a sprawling estate not far from Feltham Young Offenders Institution. The tops of the high fences crowned with razor wire were within our sight as we walked, through light drizzle, down the slightly sloping road towards the house number we wanted. The Range Rover had been left several streets away – you avoid allowing potentially criminal people to glimpse your vehicle.

  Before leaving HQ, we had researched our target and discovered quite a lot from various computer files. Wealthy quite early in life – he had lived here during that time – it was assumed from the proceeds of crime carried out by him and his extended family, Judd had set himself up as a restaurateur in the High Street of the town, put in a manager, his brother-in-law, and turned the place into the headquarters of a money-laundering operation. Other local businesses had been bought: a nightclub above which he opened a brothel in rooms on the first floor, the girls trafficked from central Europe, and a hairdressers that was turned into what one local police officer had described as ‘a supermarket for Class A and Class B drugs’.

  All these enterprises had finally been closed down quite a while ago. Judd and other family members had been arrested and he had gone to prison for ten years, the charges including car theft and grievous bodily harm – an attack on another drugs dealer. When released, Judd had scorned family connections and set himself up on his own, hiring help, or heavies, when he needed it. Burning resentment of being imprisoned was now manifested as he became prone to extreme violence against anyone who crossed him. Outwardly respectable, he got married, bought a house in Harrow and lived the life of a successful businessman. During this time he probably drew on funds he had salted away as well as masterminding several serious robberies of works of art and antiques in the Home Counties. No one had ever been arrested, nor the stolen property recovered following these crimes, and the only evidence to connect him with them was extremely flimsy. It was round about then that he had the hang-gliding accident, which had almost killed him.

  At which time, according to reliable sources, he went more than a little mad. Turning into what one informer described as ‘a monster’ both physically and mentally, his wife soon left him, as did all members of the house staff. He was forced to sell up, went ‘home’ and bought the property in Feltham where he no doubt hoped to disappear below the police radar but was thought to have continued organizing crime, re-employing his ‘boys’ – those who were not behind bars, that is – one of whom was reputed to cook and clean for him. Several years went by and, according to police informers, Judd became seriously rich.

  ‘This man was being monitored, low key, in an effort to nab him, catch him red-handed, as the saying goes,’ Patrick had said once we’d finished reading. ‘They weren’t getting anywhere. Then – this was around a couple of months ago – the place went quiet, overnight, apparently. This was a relief to those living nearby, who said when questioned that he had given them the horrors by his behaviour, including the way he had sworn at their children. Someone said he had heard shouting in the early hours one morning, he wasn’t sure exactly when, but it was nothing new as those living there and others who appeared to wander in and out drank heavily and, he suspected, took drugs. Bottles and other rubbish were often thrown over into neighbouring gardens.’

  ‘Has anyone been inside the house?’ I now asked.

  ‘From the law? Not so far as I know, and he might be abroad. You can’t just break in without good reason. I intend to, though.’

  ‘He might be lying dead on the floor, his “boys” having got fed up with him and spitted him with the bread knife.’

  ‘That’s perfectly possible.’

  ‘Is Greenway really OK with your carrying on investigating this?’

  ‘I did raise the matter with him and he said he’d not get any sense out of me until I’d got it out of my system and anyway, as he put it, it would be a good thing for me to cut my teeth on.’

  I thought the remark a bit rich considering what Patrick has achieved in
the past.

  ‘Daws wants O’Connor too,’ I reminded him. ‘Like you, he might be of the opinion that he’s part of this package.’

  ‘You think he might have had a word with Mike?’

  ‘Umm.’

  The house was like the others in the immediate vicinity, a thirties semi, but was shabbier by some margin: filthy windows, peeling paintwork, black bags of rubbish dumped on the long grass in the front garden. An old car with a flat tyre was parked outside, a wheel up on the kerb.

  We went up the front path and Patrick rang the doorbell or, at least, pressed the bell push but with no audible result. The plastic front door possessed no knocker so he then battered on it with a fist, making the cheap structure bounce in its frame. There was continued silence within. Not one to wait for very long, if at all, my husband then set off down a sideway and I followed, always giving him plenty of space in such situations. The last thing he needs if suddenly ambushed is to find me in the way.

  Around half of the small back garden looked like some kind of open-air bottle bank, most of the bottles smashed as they had been thrown at a tailor’s dummy propped up against a shed, a traffic cone jammed on top of it by way of a head. The seats of the plastic chairs remaining upright were filled with rain water and rotting leaves and were scattered about, more bottles and dozens of beer cans arrayed around them. Another heap of black bags filled with rubbish were piled up by a boundary fence.

  ‘He could even be in one of those,’ Patrick muttered, nodding in that direction before trying the handle of the back door. The door opened.

  There was no need for me to urge caution.

  ‘In view of the fact that this is unlocked I can’t believe that someone from the local police hasn’t had a look round,’ Patrick whispered. ‘I’ll phone and find out before we do anything else.’

  We returned to the front where, after a couple of calls – they said they did not want to discuss cases with someone they’d never heard of, which, I thought, was reasonable – we ended up driving to Feltham police station. I waited in the car while Patrick went in, and, probably, vented his impatience. But when he returned he was smiling.