Dark Side Page 13

  Campbell pondered.

  ‘It appears from what Forrester said that he’s gone back to calling himself Hamsworth,’ Patrick added. ‘Which is the name of the registered owner of the night club.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’

  ‘That’s because you haven’t done any real work on it. Three of the four who were arrested work at the club; the other four, who got away, had been brought in from outside and may be Hamsworth’s minders – a bunch of thugs described as his private army.’

  There was an awkward silence broken by the DI saying, ‘We really need to find Carrick.’

  ‘He went to Scotland, we think with the express purpose of talking to an old friend about a gangland killing in Glasgow. A mobster by the name of Jack MacDonald has been murdered and his body dumped in a flat once rented by Hamsworth.’

  ‘Is he back?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Feeling about as useful as a stuffed mascot at a football match, I found my mobile and dialled Joanna’s number in an effort to find out.

  There was just the usual recorded request to leave a message.

  The phone in Campbell’s office across the corridor then rang and he hastened away to answer it. I heard him say, ‘You’ve what?’ and then there was silence for half a minute or so before he asked, ‘So where is he now?’ Then, presumably in receipt of an answer, he added, ‘I want his clothes,’ before crashing down the phone.

  ‘It looks as though my suspicions may have been realized,’ the DI was saying as he re-entered the room. ‘Lynn Outhwaite and the team have just found Carrick. He was unconscious, his clothing bloodstained and lying in a space between one of the recycling bins and a wall. He started to come round as he was moved but appeared to be delirious. He’s been taken to hospital.’

  I found myself too shocked to say anything.

  Campbell was flinging on his jacket.

  ‘Are you going to the crime scene?’ Patrick enquired, already on his feet.

  ‘Yes. I was only waiting to ask you about the knife.’

  ‘May we come along?’

  ‘Officially?’ the DI asked, pausing in snatching up a few possessions to give Patrick a hard stare.

  ‘Any which way you like. And Greenway did ask me to get you on side.’

  The nuances of this were not lost on Campbell, but he was in too much of a hurry right now to resent being part of a SOCA investigation. Besides, I felt, this was getting all a bit too much for him.

  All I could do was ring Joanna’s number again and leave a message asking her to call me.

  We discovered that Cooper’s body had had to be removed from the skip quite quickly, for although it had been fairly straightforward to take his wallet from his jacket pocket and therefore find some form of identification, in this case his driving licence, the corpse had slowly started to slither, mainly on account of the blood, head first down into a crevice in the scrap metal. This consisted of old washing machines, fridges and the like. The decision to then carefully shift this stuff from the skip in an attempt to find more evidence had been Lynn Outhwaite’s. It was she, ‘nosing around’ as she put it, who had subsequently found her boss behind a nearby container for recycling glass.

  The municipal recycling centre had been closed to the public – police and incident tape were everywhere – which had resulted in a traffic jam of such record-breaking proportions that even Campbell’s driver could not get through, blues and twos notwithstanding. We ended up having to walk back from a piece of waste ground destined for re-development a short distance away.

  The council centre, the gates of which appeared to have been forced, was the usual desolate area, the city’s dustcarts parked in an adjoining compound fenced off mostly with sheets of corrugated iron topped with rusting barbed wire. There was a notice board announcing that the area was shortly to be ‘upgraded’.

  Lynn was still upset about her discovery, a fact that she was desperately trying to hide behind a mask of super-efficiency. Campbell appeared not to notice, or was more tactful than I would have given him credit for, but I did and asked her if she was all right, fatuous in the circumstances, I knew, but I felt I had to say something.

  ‘What was your immediate reaction on discovering him?’ Patrick asked her quietly. ‘Absolute first gut feelings.’

  ‘That he’d been dumped there,’ was her immediate reply.

  ‘Did you think that way out of loyalty?’

  ‘No,’ she responded evenly. ‘By the way he lay on the ground.’

  ‘Not as though he’d crawled in and collapsed, you mean.’

  ‘No, as though he’d been thrown in. He was lying on his back, feet this end.’

  With Campbell we walked across to the place to see that the gap between a wall and the container in question was quite narrow. Patrick got down on his hands and knees and slowly manoeuvred himself into the space – bugger forensics – gazing intently at the ground, which was covered in dead leaves and blown-in bits of plastic rubbish, as he did so. Then, with no regard for his clothes, he wriggled over on to his back.

  ‘Carrick has broader shoulders than me,’ he observed. ‘So unless he travelled in backwards somehow, which is unlikely, he didn’t get in here under his own steam. I reckon he was thrown in, at a guess by two people holding his hands and feet.’ He wriggled out and then asked Lynn, ‘Did he have any obvious injuries?’

  ‘No, although his clothing had blood on it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the front of his sweatshirt and the cuffs and sleeves.’

  ‘Smears, splashes, spots?’

  ‘Smears and one more concentrated stain on his right shoulder.’

  ‘Do you know if he’s right- or left-handed?’

  ‘He’s right-handed.’

  This was Patrick double-checking as I was sure he knew already.

  ‘He was reported to be delirious,’ I said to Lynn. ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘He was mumbling something when I discovered him but nothing that I could understand, then seemed to become aware of his surroundings as he was being put into the ambulance. He definitely recognized me and started to speak but then appeared to lose consciousness again.’ Her voice broke and she said, ‘I hope to God he’ll be all right.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I happen to know that the man has an ox-like constitution,’ Patrick said.

  ‘It’s vital to retain a professional attitude,’ Campbell insisted. ‘We must be seen to be considering this from all angles. An intelligent man like James Carrick would think of something like backing himself into a small space to make it look as though he’d been put there. He felt ill – we all know he’d never given himself sufficient time to recover from being beaten up – and thought he might collapse at any moment.’

  Patrick said, ‘This was after he’d cut Cooper’s throat and heaved him into the skip.’

  ‘No, there was no blood on the ground. Cooper was killed in the skip.’

  ‘So, weak, ill and feeling that he might collapse at any moment, he persuaded Cooper to climb into the skip where he killed him,’ Patrick persisted derisively.

  ‘He could have manhandled him in and the effort caused him to feel bad.’

  ‘But why? Why bring him here?’

  ‘To make it look as though he had been killed by this mobster you keep on about.’

  ‘Why kill him at all? Eventually, Cooper would have been an important witness.’

  ‘If Carrick was ill he could have been temporarily off his head. And, as you said yourself, the man had made life extremely difficult for him for years.’

  Patrick made no further comment, doubtless thinking the argument not worth pursuing. There were no actual facts to support any theory right now and everyone would have to wait for forensic findings.

  The DCI’s car was soon discovered in a side road near to where Cooper had lived. It was immediately impounded by Campbell and sent away for testing. As for Carrick himself, he was found to have no injuries except for
some fresh bruising to his body and arms and minor grazes. He did, however, have a dangerously high temperature due to a serious infection brought on by the earlier attack.

  Joanna had contacted me shortly before we left the crime scene – it was necessary for us to get out of the way of the investigating team – and, in receipt of the news, had gone straight to the hospital having, at my suggestion, dropped off the baby at the rectory for Carrie to look after for however long was necessary. To lighten our nanny’s workload I went straight home to take charge of my own children.

  To say that Patrick was aggrieved at Campbell’s over-professional, if not negative attitude was putting it mildly; perhaps inwardly ranting and raving was more accurate. But he had recognized that nothing could be gained by hanging around at Manvers Street, said I ought to have the car and headed off on foot along the Lower Bristol Road in the direction of the city centre.

  He rang me during the afternoon with the news that although DNA testing would take longer it had been confirmed that although the smaller bloodstains on Carrick’s shirt were the same blood group as his, the larger ones were not and in the meantime it was not unreasonable to suppose that it was Cooper’s blood. Patrick was upbeat about this, saying that if anyone was going to go to the lengths of framing a cop for murder they would have to have a damned good try at doing it properly. Worse was to follow. Half an hour later he called me again to tell me that fingerprints on the handle of the knife were definitely those of the DCI, adding that it was perfectly possible that the weapon had been wiped, put into Carrick’s hand while he was unconscious and then tossed into the skip.

  All this made me think that Patrick had somehow got himself into the lab, a guess confirmed when he arrived back at home at around five-thirty.

  ‘Scenes-of-crime people are at Cooper’s house now,’ he reported.

  ‘Campbell should talk to Paul Mallory,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the first place I went. He’s not there.’

  ‘Or not answering the door?’

  ‘No, I got in and had a look round. The place is a real tip and I half expected to find him dead from a drugs overdose.’

  ‘Is he bright enough to have hatched this plan to kill Cooper, implicating Carrick, on account of the humiliation he’s been suffering for goodness knows how long?’

  ‘And – or, Cooper wouldn’t let him have any drugs, or pay him what he owed him?’ Patrick mused. ‘Yes, I think he’s capable, especially after what Nathan Forrester said about him going into his bedroom armed with a knife. That has to be taken into consideration.’

  ‘I don’t think James did it, but what about you? If he had a sky-high temperature and finally cracked …’

  ‘Of course he didn’t do it. If you cut someone’s throat and are not experienced, or received training in how to do it properly, neatly, you get covered in blood as the arteries are severed. James has never cut anyone’s throat. The killer, or an accomplice, smeared Cooper’s blood on Carrick’s sweatshirt by wiping his hands and the blade of the knife on it. There might even be some of his own DNA on the garment.’

  ‘But how on earth did they get hold of James in the first place?’

  ‘We shall just have to wait until we can ask him.’

  ‘I’m just hoping that Campbell doesn’t arrest James without doing much more in the way of investigation.’

  ‘I can’t believe he’d take such a risk with his career and I shall inform Greenway if he does. SOCA can get seriously involved if we, meaning us two, can find a strong lead that shitface Hamsworth’s behind it. God, I need a drink. Shall we go to the pub?’

  ‘There’s an extra baby on board. Have a drink here and nurture your kids while I cook the dinner?’

  I had a struggle to joint a couple of chickens without thinking about post-mortems.

  DI Campbell, being the official investigating officer, wasted no time in talking to his immediate boss and as soon as the doctors looking after Carrick gave the go-ahead, the infection under control some forty-eight hours later, he went to the hospital with Lynn Outhwaite. This, according to the latter – she had opened what can only be called a hot-line to Patrick, probably because she regarded us as allies – had been a disaster as the two men had a blazing row and she and Campbell were asked to leave. Having carefully observed Greenway’s orders not to tread on Campbell’s toes, the reason he had stayed away from the hospital, this caused Patrick some grim amusement.

  Lynn had gone on to say that the post-mortem on Cooper’s body had revealed that he had received a severe blow to the head which would have rendered him deeply unconscious, and possibly brain-damaged had he lived. But it had not killed him as his heart had continued to beat, this resulting in the huge loss of blood following the deep knife wound in his neck. Other test results were irrelevant to the immediate investigations into the murder and a report still to come with regard to internal organs was not thought likely to throw further light on the investigation either.

  Initial forensic findings on Carrick’s car had revealed that the only fingerprints on the steering wheel, made from a plastic compound – James has never gone in for what he refers to as ‘fancy’ cars or accessories – were his. Joanna has her own car and doesn’t like driving her husband’s. There was smearing, destroying all but a thumb and index fingerprint, as though someone had lately handled the wheel wearing gloves with some kind of grease or oil on them, the precise nature of which was still being tested. It was when Campbell had put the suggestion to Carrick that he might have recently driven the car wearing gloves while eating fish and chips or some other kind of takeaway meal that the DCI had lost his temper and called him a Lowland moron.

  ‘I’d have lost my temper too if someone had said that to me,’ Patrick declared after Lynn’s call that evening, in the pub. ‘For one thing, it’s hardly been cold enough to wear gloves and for another, people who eat takeaways anywhere near their motors or even while they’re driving, let alone with gloves on, usually have multiple piercings, ditto tattoos and a pile of tinnies on the seat beside them as well.’

  ‘Not your average DCI or Range Rover driver then,’ I said, straight-faced.

  ‘No.’ He then laughed. ‘All right, I’m a snob. But you get my drift.’

  ‘To be fair, Campbell is trying to be even-handed.’

  ‘I think he’s a complete arsehole.’ Patrick got up to fetch himself another pint.

  ‘That’s completely unwarranted,’ I said to his retreating back. No, actually, I reconsidered moments later, there are such concepts as people being innocent before proved guilty and sticking by your colleagues.

  We had not been idle during the past two days and had every intention of talking to James ourselves. Following a suggestion from Joanna – I had not quizzed her about what, if anything, her husband had said to her in connection with what had happened – Patrick had contacted Carrick’s one-time colleague, DI Neil Macpherson, whom he had already met, in Scotland. Mentioning that he was now working for SOCA, he had explained the situation, reminding the DI that he was a friend of James’s. He had then requested details of any work-related conversations the two men had had, offering to fly up to Glasgow should Macpherson not wish to discuss anything over the phone or doubt his identity.

  Macpherson had replied that he always remembered voices and then gone on to say that Carrick’s main interest had been the investigation following the murder of Jack ‘The Pits’ MacDonald whose body had been found in the flat rented by Nick Hamsworth, the tenant having helpfully used that name, and then, understandably, vanished. Macpherson related that he had pulled in a few local men, whom he had referred to as ‘the usual suspects’, two in particular having been known to act as heavies for a gang Hamsworth had been involved with but not run. Nothing really fruitful had come of this other than one of them saying that he had heard that the two men, Hamsworth and MacDonald, had fallen out over money the latter insisted the former owed him for a job.

  In response to the next question the DI had s
aid that the name Raptor had never been mentioned and he had no idea why Hamsworth had come up to Scotland in the first place, unless it was to distance himself from Metropolitan Police inquiries and earn himself more illegal money on the side.

  The murder victim had been seen with Hamsworth – this information courtesy of an informer – in various pubs and drinking clubs and, there being no real evidence to the contrary, Macpherson could only suspect that there had been some kind of serious argument, sober or otherwise, and Hamsworth had shot him. ‘There are always power struggles, you ken.’ The murder weapon had not been found but, having received the bullet that had killed MacDonald, the ballistics laboratory report indicated that it had come from a Beretta of some kind. There was a warrant out for Hamsworth’s arrest.

  ‘Sulyn Li Grant had a Beretta of some kind,’ I had commented on learning this.

  ‘Thousands of them are knocking around the world’s streets,’ Patrick had muttered.

  ‘I thought you’d kicked me into touch,’ Carrick said when he first laid eyes on us the following morning. He was in a small side ward, the only occupant.

  ‘Hardly, old son,’ Patrick replied. ‘Just doing as I was told and not upsetting your DI. Besides, I promised I’d help you sort this out.’

  James was not placated. ‘And when the hell did you start worrying about upsetting people?’

  He still looked ill, his unshaven face gaunt and pale, and I wondered if he had in fact fully recovered from a gunshot wound he had received a couple of years previously, and whether it had been exacerbated by the recent injuries. Whatever the truth, he was being discharged the following day on condition that he went home to be looked after and stayed there.

  I passed over some Scottish tablet, fudge, his favourite ‘sweeties’, that I had managed to track down for him, anything else that might cheer him up, and by that I mean single malt whisky, being absolutely and utterly banned while he was on strong medication.