Unlawfully At Large, page 35
part #2 of DCI Tyler Series
“Dean, I need you to run the car’s index through CRIMINT to see if we can work out who’s been using it since then,” Tyler instructed. “And can you also circulate it on the PNC – same conditions as the BMW.”
“Leave it to me,” Dean said, jotting down notes.
Tyler turned to Wilkins, the Office Manager. “Tom, I need a High Priority action issued for the last known keeper to be contacted urgently. It’s a long shot, I know. It’s probably passed through half-a-dozen different keepers since he got rid of it, and it was probably sold for cash with no records kept, but we have to try.”
Wilkin nodded. “I’ll get it issued as soon as the meeting’s over,” he promised.
“Anything else before we wrap up?” Tyler asked, looking around the room.
“I’ve got the results of the overnight street sweep,” Tom Wilkins said, waving several sheets of A4 paper in the air. Today, he wore a yellow and blue polka dot bow tie over a pale blue shirt. “The Duty Officer emailed them to me at the end of his shift. Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to complete the sweep because they had to rush off and deal with a fatal accident on the Barking Road, but he’s promised to send his troops back out to finish it off tonight. Basically, it’s just Star Lane and half a dozen streets branching off of it that need checking.”
“Can you have a quick look to see if the car Darren has found is on your list?” Jack asked him.
Wilkins shook his head. “I’ve already looked, boss, and it’s not.”
“When did you do that?” Jack asked, frowning suspiciously. He hadn’t seen Wilkins referring to a list during the meeting.
“Before we started,” the OM informed him. “Darren came to see me earlier.”
Jack felt a bubble of anger forming in his chest. Blyth had found time to inform the Office Manager about the red Rover’s index before the meeting, but he hadn’t thought to tell the SIO. He took a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to have another dig at Blyth.
“Right,” Jack said, looking around the room and making eye contact with as many people as he could. “I know you’re all tired, and I appreciate that the last thing you want is another full-on day with me cracking the whip like a slave driver, but I’m pushing you like this for a very good reason. Claude Winston is an evil man and a danger to the public. He shot two of your colleagues last November, and he killed another one on Monday afternoon. If we don’t catch him in the next couple of days, there’s a very good chance he’ll quietly slip out of the country and evade justice. We’re making great progress, but the clock is against us, so let’s grit our teeth and keep up the pressure for just a little while longer. I’m going to hand you over to DI Keating and DI Dillon to go through operational roles and responsibilities for the day. Keep me updated on your progress. I wish you all good hunting.” With the pep talk delivered, Jack gathered up his things and rushed down to see Mr Holland in order to sort out the additional resources he was going to need.
Chapter 26
Claude Winston was feeling much better today. Now that the wound had been stitched back together, he was moving with a little more freedom. This morning, he had gone to the toilet independently for the first time since they had arrived, which had pleased him greatly. The antibiotics he’d started taking the previous evening were also having a positive effect, and his fever seemed to have more or less vanished overnight.
His mood had obviously improved too, because he hadn’t shouted at Angela or threatened her with violence once while she was changing his bandage and cleaning the wound, and to her great surprise, he’d even grunted out a sullen thank you to her as she’d left the room.
“Oi, Deontay,” Winston shouted, summoning his nephew into the bedroom.
“What is it, Claude?” Garston asked, poking his head around the door. He had been halfway through his breakfast when called.
“I’ve been thinking about that white-haired doctor you brought me yesterday.” Winston was sitting up in bed, drinking coffee, and his brows were drawn together in thoughtful consideration.
Garston stiffened. “What about him?” he asked, cautiously.
“I think he was taking the piss when he touched my nose. Do you think the cheeky cunt was implying that I’m some kind of animal?”
“No, of course not,” Garston said quickly. “He was probably just checking to see if you were dehydrated.”
Winston scowled at him suspiciously. “How the fuck can he tell that by putting his grubby hand on my nose?” he demanded.
Garston’s burner phone started to ring. Thankful for the interruption, he checked the number and saw that it was the Sussex fisherman. “I need to take this,” he said, slipping out of the room.
Alone in the hall, he pressed the green button and raised the phone to his ear. “Hello…?”
“It’s me, Kenny Meade,” a jarring male voice with a slightly rural twang announced. “There’s been a slight change in plans. Can you bring the cargo down tonight?”
“Tonight?” Garston replied, confused. “I thought you didn’t want him there until tomorrow night so you could go across in the early hours of Friday morning.”
Meade was short with him. “Like I said, the plan’s changed and you need to bring the cargo down tonight.” His tone became surly. “I would’ve thought you’d be pleased to be a day ahead of schedule.”
“I am,” Garston said defensively, “but it might be too early to move him.”
Meade tutted irritably. “Listen, I’ve been asked to run another cargo over as well as yours, and this new job pays a hell of a lot more than the chicken feed you’re giving me. I’m not sure if it’s arriving tonight or tomorrow, but I need to be ready to set sail as soon as it gets here, so I need you to get your man down to the cottage by ten o’clock tonight just in case.”
“What you’re asking is going to be difficult,” Garston complained. “I’m going to have to rush around like a lunatic to make it happen, and for what? You might not even end up sailing tonight.”
Meade grunted ill naturedly. “Don’t make a plank out of a splinter, son,” he complained. “Just do what you need to do to get your man down here tonight. If all goes well, he’ll wake up tomorrow morning in La Belle bloody France. Worst case scenario is he gets to spend a lovely day by the sea at no extra cost to himself and we go on Friday as originally planned.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Garston said aggressively. They had an accord and it wasn’t right that Meade had just upped and changed the conditions of their deal just because someone else had come along and offered him more money to go a day earlier.
“I can’t help that,” Meade said bluntly. “Be here for ten p.m. tonight. If you’re not, and my other cargo is, you’ll have to wait until next week for it to be safe for me to make another night time crossing.” With that, the cantankerous fisherman hung up, leaving Garston staring at the handset in silent fury.
He paced the hall, wondering what to do. Had there been a viable alternative, he would have told the pirate to shove his mainsail right up his inbred arse, but people smugglers were hard to find at short notice and he needed to get Winston out of the UK as quickly as possible.
He daren’t mention this to Winston, or his uncle would probably shoot the fisherman as soon as he saw him. Realistically, there was no real choice but to comply with the instructions he’d been given. If Meade sailed tonight, without Claude Winston on board, he would be stuck with his uncle for another week, and he doubted his sanity would be able to withstand that.
Garston stormed into the lounge, where Rodent was curled up in his sleeping bag in the centre of the room, snoring away contentedly. Feeling the need to vent his frustration, Garston kicked him viciously in the side. “Get up,” he snapped.
Rodent cried out in pain. When he sat up, his eyes were full of fear and confusion. “What’s the matter?” he whimpered, looking around in a panic. “Are we being raided?”
“No,” Garston said irritably. “I need you to get up and run some urgent errands for me, and then I need you to go and get your mate’s van like you said you could.”
Rodent unzipped the bag and gingerly rose to his feet, still favouring his side. “But I’m not supposed to be getting that until tomorrow,” he mewled.
To Garston’s disgust, the small-time drug peddler was still clad in the same clothes he’d worn when he had picked them up from the hijacked helicopter, and the ripe smell of his body odour came flooding out of the sleeping bag with him.
“Yeah, well, there’s been a change of plan and we need to drive him down to the coast tonight, so you need to have a word with your mate and borrow his van this evening instead. Tell him I’ll make it well worth his while.”
“But he uses it for work during the week,” Rodent snivelled. “What if he can’t let us have it tonight?”
Garston stepped forward and slapped him around the top of the head, making him flinch. “Tell him if he doesn’t, I’ll put a fucking bullet through his head. I’m sure that’ll convince him to make his poxy van available.”
Motioning for Rodent to follow him, Garston went through to the cramped kitchen. His half-eaten poached egg on toast had gone cold, and he pushed it aside as he sat at the small Formica table.
“You stink,” Garston told him bluntly, his voice dripping with contempt. “Don’t you ever change your clothes?”
“Normally I change them every day,” Rodent told him, and his young face flushed with shame.
“So why haven’t you changed them since we’ve arrived?” Garston taunted him.
Rodent stared down at the floor. “Because,” he said meekly, “every time I try to go into my bedroom to get anything, Mr Winston shoves a gun in my face and shouts at me to get out.”
Garston’s face softened. “You should have told me,” he said.
The kid shrugged. “I’m not a grass.”
Garston nodded. “Good for you,” he said, “but even if you can’t change your clothes, you could still shower and spray on some deodorant.”
“I’m sorry,” Rodent said, feeling browbeaten.
A notepad and pen were lying on the kitchen worktop. Garston ripped a page out of the notebook and began to scribble frantically. When he’d finished, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a large wad of cash. “I need you to get some more medical supplies, some men’s clothes in the sizes I’ve written down, and some food for Claude to take with him. Also, pop into a phone shop and buy yourself a cheap burner phone and fifty quid’s worth of credit. Tell them you want a pre-paid unregistered phone. Whatever you do, don’t give them your details. Got it?”
Rodent nodded uncertainly. “Pre-paid unregistered. Don’t give them my details,” he recited.
Garston thrust the shopping list and cash into Rodent’s hand and shoved him towards the door. “That’s right. Now, I want you back here by two o’clock at the latest, so you’d best get a move on.”
“But I haven’t had any breakfast yet,” the boy protested. He looked close to tears.
Garston rolled his eyes, peeled off another tenner and threw it at him. “Stop off at a bloody café, and while you’re out, buy yourself some deodorant with the change.”
◆◆◆
The morning had sped by in a sustained flurry of frantic activity. The meeting with George Holland had gone better than expected. Although it wasn’t their core business, he was all in favour of trying to recover the skinhead’s gun stash, and he had been able to recruit an entire unit of TSG – four carriers, each containing a PS and six PCs – to help out with the searches, plus a half-dozen detectives to assist with the interviews.
The local CID had kindly offered to deal with the back-garden runner, who was wanted on a fail to appear warrant, which left AMIP with six prisoners to be interviewed: four men and two women.
Having been put straight into a mandatory sleep period upon arrival, they hadn’t been roused until eleven. Of course, they then had to be given sufficient time to shower, eat some food, and then consult with their solicitors before they could be questioned. As a result, although it was now getting on for one o’clock, most of the interviews were only just beginning.
The searches had taken far longer to organise than Jack had hoped. One of the hardest challenges had been tracking down the PACE Inspector to authorise them. It turned out that he had gone into a meeting and switched his radio off for the duration.
By the time that Carol had completed the briefing and risk assessment documents, all the staff being deployed on the searches had arrived at Arbour Square. They had been hurriedly divided into search teams and whisked off for a quick briefing. Then there was a mad scramble as officers ran around the building trying to round up enough vehicles to ensure everyone had transport, and Jack had been annoyed that none of the officers participating in the searches had thought of doing this before they were ready to set off.
The net result of all the fluffing around was that the premises searches didn’t begin that much earlier than the interviews.
◆◆◆
Steve Bull was leading the search of the lockup behind the parade of shops near Rathbone Market. With no occupants to worry about, it was the smallest of the search teams. In addition to Bull, there were only three other detectives, Kelly Flowers, Paul Evans, and Kevin Murray, who was to be their advanced exhibits officer.
Upon their arrival, they were met by Aaron Stein, a short, fat man in a creased suit, with a wrinkly bald head and bulbous nose.
It transpired that the lockup was actually an end garage in a block of ten units situated behind the shops. They had brought along the five keys that had been in Charlie Dobson’s possession when he’d been arrested and were pleased to see that the chunky key was a perfect fit for the padlock attached to the side of the lockup The first of the two Yale keys didn’t want to know when it was inserted into the lock in the handle protruding from the door’s centre, but the second one turned smoothly and they were able to raise the door upwards and gain entry.
“Well, well, well,” Bull said as he looked inside. “What do we have here?”
Although it was dark inside, Bull immediately made out the large Nazi flag that was hanging in the centre of the left-hand wall. It pictured the swastika in a white circle on a background of red. Directly beneath this was heavy-duty safe that Bull suspected was probably either bolted into the wall or, more likely, the concrete floor.
A penny to a pound, he thought to himself, if we’re going to find anything incriminating, it will be locked in there.
Aaron Stein started to walk towards the opening, clearly intent on having a nose around inside, until Murray placed a restraining hand across his chest.
“Where do you think you’re going then?” he demanded.
The bald man seemed startled by the question.
“Why I’m going inside to see what that hooligan has done to my property,” he said as if it should have been obvious.
Murray shook his head. “No, mate, you’re not.”
“But I own it,” the man protested.
“You might own it,” Murray said, patronisingly, “but right now it’s a potential crime scene and only authorised personnel are allowed inside, and you ain’t authorised.”
Stein opened his mouth to object, but Murray raised a warning finger to shush him. “It’s not up for debate, so be a good chap and go and wait in your car.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve Bull saw the lockup owner pivot angrily and storm off towards his vehicle. He walked over to Murray, who was slipping into a Tyvek oversuit. “Not been upsetting people again, have you, Kev?”
“As if I’d do that,” Murray said, working the fingers of his right hand into a latex glove one by one. Maybe it was just Steve’s imagination, but he could have sworn that Murray deliberately left his middle finger extended far longer than all the others.
“Come on you bunch of losers,” Murray said when he had finished. “You need to suit up if you want to come into my crime scene.” With that, he reached into the back of his car and threw them each a set of barrier clothing.
When they were finally ready, Steve led the way over to the entrance and they all had their first proper look inside. The interior was ten foot wide by sixteen foot deep. A single fluorescent tube hung from the ceiling. Murray hit the light switch, which was located just to the left of the door, and the bulb flickered on and then stabilised, bathing the interior in a sickly yellow glow.
Apart from the hefty wall safe, there was no other furniture along the left hand wall. The right hand wall was occupied by an eight foot long heavy-duty workbench, and just beyond that stood a rusted, three drawer filing cabinet that was covered in dents.
What really caught the eye – apart from the huge Nazi flag – was the way that the back wall was set up. It was covered from floor to ceiling with thick sheets of metal, and these were all peppered with small dents and impact craters.
Murray let out a low whistle. “This place looks like a homemade firing range to me.”
Evans nodded his agreement “I reckon we’ve found ourselves a little armoury in here.”
“Look at the wall safe,” Flowers said. “Unless Dobson’s given you the combo, we’re going to have to call out a locksmith to crack that little beauty.”
A thick yard broom was leaning against the wall in the far left corner of the lockup, and there was a metal bucket on the floor beside it. “I wonder,” Bull said, ambling over. He broke into a large grin when he peered inside. “Guess what’s inside here?” he said to the others, beckoning them to come and have a look.
Murray hazarded a guess. “Spent cartridges?”
“Yep,” Bull said happily. “Lots of them.”
Murray sauntered over to join him, his plastic overshoes scraping along the floor with each lazy step. Kneeling down, he inserted the tip of his biro into one of the cartridges and raised it for a closer inspection. Although he was wearing two pairs of latex gloves, he didn’t want to risk smearing any latent prints that might be on the brass cases. He held it up to the light and tilted it from side to side, seeing if he could spot anything of interest with the naked eye.
