Unlawfully At Large, page 36
part #2 of DCI Tyler Series
“Kevin, you better get on the blower mate, we’re definitely going to need the services of a safecracker,” Bull said with a grin.
◆◆◆
The final errand Rodent had to run before heading back to the flat was to stop off at the chemist in Barking Road and pick up some more dressings and bandages. He’d already purchased the thick winter clothing that Garston had sent him out for and some groceries for Winston to take with him to France.
None of the local shops had stocked any coats big enough to accommodate the gangster’s gargantuan frame, and the staff in the shoe shops he’d tried had all looked at him as though he were mad when he’d asked if they stocked anything in size fourteen. In the end, fed up with getting nowhere, he had found a phone box, called Garston and asked him where Winston normally purchased his clothing from. Inevitably, he’d received an ear-bashing for not having had the brains to do that before leaving the flat.
With Garston’s earlier comments about his lack of personal hygiene still bothering him, Rodent had grabbed himself a can of Lynx antiperspirant when he’d stopped off at Tesco to pick up Winston’s food supplies. As soon as he’d returned to the Rover, he’d sprayed himself all over so that he wouldn’t reek of sweat if he was lucky enough to be served by Jenna Marsh.
Just thinking about her made his pulse race. He knew a girl like that could never fall for someone like him, but even being around her made him feel better about himself.
To his delight, Jenna was standing behind the counter on her own, serving an elderly woman. His heart missed a beat when he saw her. Ducking behind one of the display racks so that she couldn’t see him, he had a quick sniff of his armpits. Thankfully, all he could smell was the pleasant musky scent of the aerosol he’d doused himself in a few minutes earlier.
It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t even washed his face or cleaned his teeth before leaving the flat that morning. He self-consciously cupped his hands to his mouth, exhaled into them a couple of times and then sniffed to see if his breath smelled. Then he quickly ran his fingers through his straw-like hair to smooth it down.
He passed the woman on his way to the front of the shop, politely moving aside to let her pass him in the narrow aisle.
“Hello again,” he said as he reached the counter. He could feel a goofy smile spreading across his face, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Jenna didn’t smile back, but she looked relieved to see him. “I was hoping you would come in,” she said.
“Well, here I am,” he said, spreading his arms wide and giving her a twirl.
Jenna’s face remained serious. “I need to ask you something, but I don’t want you to be annoyed,” she told him when he was facing her again.
The smile fell from his face as he realised it was going to be one of those conversations. In his experience, an opening statement like that was usually the precursor to a telling off or a lecture.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, wondering what he could possibly have done to offend her.
“I watched the news on TV last night,” Jenna began, watching him carefully for a reaction. “And I was really concerned when I saw the segment about the man who murdered that police officer at the Royal London Hospital on Monday afternoon and then escaped from custody.”
Rodent didn’t like where this was going. “And what’s that got to do with me?” he asked, guardedly.
He could see that she didn’t like the standoffish tone of his voice, but he couldn’t help that. This wasn’t a conversation he was prepared to have.
Jenna didn’t take the hint. “While I was watching the telly,” she continued doggedly, “I remembered you telling me about your friend’s stitches popping open after his operation, and him not being able to go back to the hospital because the police were looking for him.”
Rodney affected a perplexed expression. “So…?”
“So,” she said, and there was an edge to her voice now, he noticed, “it seemed to me that it was too much of a coincidence for the two things not to be linked.”
“Don’t be silly,” Rodney said dismissively, but even he could hear the tension that had crept into his voice.
“Rodney,” Jenna said gently, “I promise I’m not having a go at you; I just don’t want to see you getting in trouble.”
“Why would I be in trouble?” he scoffed. “Even if I was helping Mr Winston, it’s not like I was involved in the murder or in breaking him out of hospital, is it?”
“Rodney, the police won’t see it that way,” she said in exasperation. “You’ll get done for assisting an offender or something even worse, and you’ll end up going to jail.”
“Look, don’t worry about me,” he told her, but he could tell from the look on her face that she was indeed worried. After glancing around to make sure they were still alone, Rodent leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “We’re driving him down to the coast tonight and some fisherman bloke’s gonna smuggle him over to France in a boat.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he realised it had been a mistake to tell her that. She looked horrified.
“Tell me something, Rodney,” she asked, her big eyes full of confusion, “is someone forcing you to help him against your will”
Rodent didn’t know how to respond. If he told her that he was being coerced, she would think he was pathetic; if he admitted that he was being well paid for his services, she would assume he was just as bad as Winston. Either way, she would lose any respect that she had for him.
“It doesn’t matter why I’m helping,” he told her. “Anyway, after tonight, Mr Winston will be out of my hair for good and then I can get back to normal.”
“Rodney, please don’t help him to escape,” Jenna implored him. “It’s wrong. Men like that are evil, and they ought to be locked up in jail, not left free to roam the streets hurting people.”
“For fuck sake, I’ve got no choice!” Rodent shouted, and immediately regretted raising his voice to her. “I – I’m so, so sorry,” he said, feeling truly awful. “I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”
Jenna shook her head, “It doesn’t matter,” she said, but he knew it did; the disappointment in her eyes told him so.
When Jenna next spoke, her voice had taken on the hardness of steel. “If you’re so sorry, prove it by calling the police and telling them where he is.”
Rodent shook his head sadly, knowing that his refusal would bring about an abrupt end to their brief friendship. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” she said fiercely, and he was taken aback by the raw anger in her voice. “Because if you help him to escape, then you’re no better than he is and you’re not half the man that I’d hoped you were.”
The words hurt him more than Garston’s kick to the ribs had earlier. “I told you, I can’t do that,” Rodent said, almost choking on his shame.
“Well I can,” Jenna said, bluntly.
Tears were running down the side of her face. “I’ll give you till six o’clock tonight to do the right thing,” she told him. “That’s when I finish work. If I haven’t heard from you by then, I swear I’ll call the police myself.”
Rodent didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Spinning on his heel, he stormed out of the shop without a backward glance.
“Please Rodney,” Jenna called after him. “I’m begging you, don’t go down with this man. He’s evil, and he deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life. Do the right thing – call the cops.”
Chapter 27
The locksmith had finally arrived. His name was Leonard Rhymes and he was a short, tubby man with a greying comb-over and a very noticeable lisp.
Lenny, as he preferred to be called, didn’t seem too impressed when Murray insisted that he don a full set of barrier clothing before being allowed to examine the safe, complaining that the paper oversuits severely restricted his range of movement.
Murray rolled his eyes theatrically. “I just want you to unlock the bloody thing, Lenny, not Moondance across the top of it like Whacko Jacko.”
Lenny struggled into an extra-large Tyvek suit and then had to fold the arms and the legs up because they were way too long. He complained constantly throughout the process. “These things are ridiculous. Look how far I’ve got to roll the bloody legs up,” he moaned.
Murray was having none of it. “It’s your own fault for being such a short arse,” he said. “They’re not made for midgets like you.”
“I’m not a bleedin’ midget,” Lenny objected.
“Course you are,” Murray insisted. “You’re short and fat, and you look like one of the Teletubbies.”
“This is not helping my self-esteem,” Lenny told him.
“Shut up, Tinky Winky.”
When he was finally kitted out, Murray led him over to the safe, where he knelt down awkwardly to examine it.
Earlier in the day, Juliet Kennedy had arranged for a local SOCO and a photographer to attend the scene, and while they had been waiting for the locksmith to arrive, they had cracked on with their respective tasks; the SOCO had fingerprinted the safe’s exterior, the filing cabinet, some of the tools and anything else that might yield prints, like the light switch. He had also taken a multitude of swabs for DNA and GSR testing.
Ned, the SO3 photographer from Lambeth, had completed as much record photography as he could. Both men had then gone off to a nearby café in order to warm up over a cup of coffee, and Murray had promised to call them back as soon as the safe had been opened.
Murray gave the poor man a whole minute to examine the safe before his impatience got the better of him. “How long is this going to take, Lenny?” he demanded, testily.
“This is a good bit of kit,” the locksmith said, looking up at the detectives. “It’s a Chubbsafes Executive model. These babies have a door thickness of sixty six millimetres and a body thickness of fifty millimetres, and they’re tested to International Standard UL73 Class 350 and NT Fire 017-60.” He said all this as though it should mean something to them, and was disappointed to receive blank looks in return.
“I’m sure that’s all very interesting,” Murray said, sounding bored out of his head, “but the only thing I care about is, can you open the bloody thing or not?”
Lenny snorted as though he’d never heard anything so ridiculous in all his life. “Course I can. I’ll have you know there aren’t too many locks that I can’t open after all these years in the business,” he announced with great pride.
“Well get a move on then,” Murray said, irritably snapping his fingers at the locksmith. “We haven’t got all day.”
“Give me a chance,” Lenny shot back. “I’ve only bleedin’ just got here.”
Leaving them to it, Bull wandered back to the warmth of the pool car where Kelly was topping and tailing the paperwork for the search. So far, all they had seized was the bucket of spent cartridge cases and an innocuous-looking thick green book that had been buried at the bottom of the filing cabinet underneath a load of far-right extremist literature.
The book was in a clear plastic evidence bag waiting for Kelly to seal it up. Slipping on a new pair of nytril gloves, he carefully removed it and folded it open at the page containing the latest entries.
“What are you doing?” Kelly asked. “I’m just about to index that and seal it up.”
“I need to take a quick look first,” Bull said. “Just in case there’s anything in it that the boss needs to know about in fast time.”
“Okay, but hurry up,” she told him. “I don’t like having loose exhibits inside the car.
Despite his many other faults, Charlie Dobson’s bookkeeping was immaculate. The book was neatly divided into bought and sold ledgers. In the first, every single outlay the skinhead had made over the past year was meticulously itemised. However, it was the sold ledger that grabbed Bull’s attention. The last entry was dated Thursday 6th January at nine p.m. It read: Two Brocock ME38s at £300 each plus a free box of .22. Paid in cash by D.G. Tested prior to sale by client.
Steve felt his heart rate increase. If this meant what he thought it did, it was pure gold. “Kelly, take a look. What do you think this means?”
Kelly leaned over, read the entry and raised an eyebrow. “DG could stand for Deontay Garston, I suppose,” she speculated.
“I reckon it does, and if Garston test fired the two guns in that lockup the spent cartridges ought to be in amongst all the others that were swept into the bucket we’ve seized.”
“Makes sense,” Kelly agreed.
Steve let out a low whistle. “If there are spent cartridge cases in that bucket from the gun Winston used to kill PC Morrison, we’ll be able to match the hammer marks on them to the murder weapon once we’ve recovered it.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Kelly cautioned him. “We’ve got to recover it first.”
Steve nodded. “True, but I’m confident we will, and then the FSS can test fire the weapon and compare the striations on that slug against the ones on the bullet that was removed from PC Morrison’s brain during the post mortem.”
Striation marks are caused by a bullet passing through a gun’s barrel during discharge, and they are totally unique to that weapon. The same was true of the mark a firing pin left in the back of a cartridge case when the trigger was pulled.
One of the things the Forensic Science Service at Lambeth in South London would do as part of the ballistic investigation was run the striation and firing pin data they retrieved through the National Ballistics Intelligence Service - or NABIS for short – to see if there were any matches against weapons that had been involved in previous shootings. Steve was convinced that the gun used on PC Morrison was a new weapon, but some of the other cartridge cases might have come from firearms that had, by now, been in circulation for a while.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Steve said as the cogs in his brain worked overtime. “If Dobson, his mates or Garston have handled the cartridges in that bucket, we’re going to get fingerprints and or DNA from them.”
“Assuming they weren’t wearing gloves,” Kelly pointed out.
Steve shook his head emphatically. “They won’t have worn gloves here. This is their safe place, and they won’t ever have expected us to find it.”
Hardly able to contain his excitement, Steve was just reaching for his phone to let Tyler know when he caught sight of Murray waving at him out of the corner of his eye.
He nudged Kelly’s arm. “Looks like lisping Lenny has opened the safe,” he told her. “Coming for a look?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Kelly said, grinning like she was on her way to a party, “but why do you call him that?”
Steve grinned mischievously. “Trust me, as soon as he speaks it’ll become self-explanatory.”
Jumping out of the car, they pulled their coats tight against their bodies to keep out the wind, lowered their heads, and set off towards the comparative shelter of the lockup.
“What have we got?” Bull asked excitedly, looking from Murray to the locksmith.
“Have a look for yourself,” Murray said, standing aside.
Bull knelt down next to the locksmith and peered inside.
There were two shelves, both of which were crammed full of stuff.
“Use this,” Lenny offered, handing over a pencil torch.
“Thanks,” Bull said, accepting it gratefully. The top shelf housed what appeared to be two bulky objects wrapped in leather shammies. Next to these were several unopened boxes of .22 ammunition. On the lower shelf, several bigger boxes sat on top of each other, and when he read the packaging, he saw that each one contained a Brocock ME38.
“My bet,” Murray said, “is that the bottom shelf contains the legally purchased stock that’s waiting to be converted into guns that will fire real ammunition. The replicas that’ve already been adapted and are ready to be sold are safely tucked away up on the top shelf, along with the ammo.”
Bull nodded. That made perfect sense. “We need to get this lot photographed before we remove any of it,” he said.
“Well, duh,” Murray responded. “I’ve already rung the photog and told him and the SOCO to hotfoot it back here with some takeaway coffees for us.”
“That’ll be lovely,” Leonard said appreciatively. “I’m freezing my bollocks off in this cold, and I could murder a hot drink.”
“I didn’t tell them to bring you anything,” Murray said. “You can sod off and get your own in a few minutes.”
Lenny looked crestfallen.
◆◆◆
When Tyler hung up after receiving the update from Steve Bull, he turned to Dillon and smiled like the cat who had just got the cream.
“It looks like they’ve found two firearms down at the lockup and several boxes of .22 ammunition,” he announced.
“That’s great news,” Dillon said, smiling back at him.
“It gets better,” Jack told him. “Charlie Dobson maintained a very detailed ledger outlining all the transactions he made. The last entry in the book is him selling two Brococks to a client whose initials are DG –”
“That’ll be Deontay Garston,” Dillon interrupted.
“– who test fired the guns at the lockup last Thursday.”
“I’d better let Susie know,” Dillon said. “She’s going to have to incorporate that into her advanced disclosure.”
Jack said nothing. He was too busy trying to work out how long it would take to get any useable results back from the lab. It would take the officers down at the scene a little time to package everything and get it back to the office, say another hour or two, and then Murray would have to type out the lab forms and get them approved by the CSM. That would easily take up another hour. Once all that was done, someone would have to blue light any exhibits they wanted testing up to the lab for forensic examination.
