Unlawfully At Large, page 38
part #2 of DCI Tyler Series
“My colleagues found your secret CCTV system,” he informed Dobson conversationally. “That’s good news for us, but not so good for you. Footage from last Thursday evening has been copied onto this tape, which is exhibit RP/1. I’m going to play that for you now. There’s no audio, but it clearly shows you and your three Aryan friends entertaining Deontay Garston and Errol Heston. Heston’s the one with the bald head. It clearly shows you – you, not your skinhead friends – removing two guns from the safe, demonstrating how they work and then letting the client's test fire them. It also shows them paying you for the merchandise and leaving with the guns. You all have big smiles on your faces, parting company like you’re the best of friends. Strange, considering you claim not to know them. Let’s watch the clip in silence, and then I’m going to invite you to comment. I must say, I’m really looking forward to what you have to say about this footage,” he said with a mocking grin.
It had now dawned on Dobson that he was in deep trouble, and he was shaking with rage at the way the black detective had played him. “You fucking cunt,” he hissed, and without warning, he stood up and launched himself over the table at Franklin.
Unfortunately for him, Stone had been prepared for this. In one fluid movement, he leapt out of his chair, grabbed hold of Dobson’s head as it hurtled forward and slammed it into the wooden table so hard that it sounded as though a firearm had just been discharged. Without breaking stride, he rammed Dobson’s right arm so far up his back that it almost came out of the socket.
Dobson’s actions had sent his solicitor sprawling backwards onto the floor and, as she scrambled unsteadily to her feet, glasses askew, she could only watch on in shock as Stone restrained the prisoner and Franklin pressed the alarm button. Within moments, several uniformed officers came running in to assist.
Handcuffed, his face bleeding profusely, Dobson was unceremoniously dragged back into the custody area.
The sergeant behind the desk lazily raised an enquiring eyebrow as they approached him, but he didn’t seem particularly fazed by the sight of the skinhead, bleeding and battered, being frogmarched up to the counter.
“Anything I need to know about,” he asked casually, as though this was an everyday sight.
“Prisoner didn’t like the way the interview was going,” Franklin said. “Decided to take a pop at me. DC Stone was forced to restrain him.”
The custody officer shook his head in despair. “When will these people ever learn?” he said to no one in particular. “Alright, put him back in his cell. Looks like he’s got a nasty bump on his head so we’d better call the FME.” He turned to Martha Fischer. “You’re his solicitor, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Were you present?”
“I was.”
The custody Sergeant let out a long sigh. “In that case, are there any observations you’d like noted in the custody record?” he asked, pen resignedly paused to record her bleating complaint about police brutality.
“Yes,” she said, looking across at Dobson, who was now sitting on the bench, dazed. “The officers were very professional, and they acted with great restraint when my client launched an unprovoked attack on them.”
The custody Sergeant did a double-take. Not much surprised him, but the solicitor’s unexpected endorsement of the detectives’ actions had.
Chapter 28
Jenna Marsh stopped outside the graffiti-covered phone box in Barking Road. Chewing her lip anxiously, she stared at it as though it might bite her if she tried to enter. It was coming up to six-thirty, a full half an hour beyond the deadline that she’d given Rodney. She felt so conflicted inside that it hurt. Had he done the right thing? Had he called the police and told them where to find Winston?
Somehow, she doubted it.
It was heading towards the end of the rush hour, but traffic was still busy along the Barking Road, and as she stood there, watching the never-ending sea of headlights streaming towards her, she wondered what he had done after storming out of the shop.
Jenna’s breath clouded around her, and she rubbed her gloved hands together to generate some much-needed heat. God, it was so cold out here! The weather forecast predicted snow over the coming days, and from the arctic temperature, she could well believe it.
Jenna felt sick. She wondered how Kevin would react if he knew what she was contemplating. He wouldn’t be happy about her ratting someone out, especially not the younger brother of his best friend, a timid man-boy who in many ways was still as guileless as a child. Even her parents, who were as law-abiding as they came, would take a dim view of her telling tales out of school. The truth was that she really didn’t want to grass Rodney up to the police, but she had warned him she was going to do exactly that unless he contacted her to say that he’d called them himself, which he clearly hadn’t.
Jenna took a deep breath and opened the door. It felt as heavy as her heart, and for a long moment, she hesitated, feeling as though she were about to step into a gas chamber and not a telephone kiosk.
The cramped space inside smelled of piss. As the door slowly swung shut behind her, she pulled off her gloves and reached into her coat pocket for the loose change she would need to make the call. Most of the kiosk’s glass had been smashed, so it was no warmer inside than it had been out on the street. It wasn’t any quieter, either.
She had found the number for the Incident Room in an article from yesterday’s London Echo and had written it on the palm of her left hand before leaving work. She stared hard at the smeared digits for several seconds before plucking up the nerve to lift the handset and start dialling.
“Oh, Rodney, why did you have to turn out just like your brother,” she said, shaking her head sadly.
Jenna almost jumped out of her skin when the telephone was picked up and a disinterested male voice said, “Incident Room. DS Wilkins speaking. How can I help you?”
Jenna opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.
“Hello… is anyone there?” The voice sounded impatient, unhelpful. Maybe its owner was just really busy and could do without the distraction?
Jenna hung up the phone and pushed open the door to leave, eager to escape into the fresh air, but then she hesitated. If she didn’t do this now, she never would. Her stomach was doing little flips, and her head was spinning, but she picked up the phone and redialled.
◆◆◆
It was seven o’clock and, in light of the anonymous phone call that had come in half an hour earlier, Jack Tyler was holding an impromptu supervisor’s meeting in his office. Dillon, Carol Keating, Steve Bull, Charlie White, and Tom Wilkins were all gathered in a little semi-circle around his desk. It was a bit cramped, but just about doable.
Carol had been the first to arrive, and she had immediately set about organising hot drinks and chocolate Hob-Nobs for everyone. As each of the others had arrived, they had greeted her with the customary, “Oooh Matron,” receiving a delighted smile and a little quip in return.
Despite her no-nonsense demeanour, she really was a very sweet woman, Jack decided, and he could see why everyone warmed to her.
“Right,” Jack said, after taking a tentative sip of the boiling hot coffee she’d just handed him, “things are moving fast, so I thought we should get together for a quick pow-wow.” He was tired and he was crotchety, and he wanted to get through this as quickly as possible.
“Have you got a particular order of business in mind?” Dillon asked, looking irritatingly fresh.
“Well, the main thing we need to do is discuss our plans for tonight, but before we get started on that, I’d like to top and tail where we are with the four skinheads and the two hookers.”
Jack turned to face Carol Keating, who had been tasked with reviewing all the evidence against them and liaising with Susie to see what had come out of the interviews. “How close are we to being able to charge them?”
“Well,” Carol said, thoughtfully. “I think we’re pretty much there. The interviews for all six prisoners have been concluded. The three skinhead lackeys, Roach, Taylor and Higgins all went ‘no comment’ throughout. No surprise there. Charlie Dobson tried to do the same, but his arrogance occasionally got the better of him, and he ended up blurting out answers when he really would have been better off staying schtum.”
“Anything, in particular, that was worthy of note?” Jack asked.
Carol referred to her notes. “He admitted in interview that he didn’t like black people, so Colin Franklin asked him why he’d sold Garston and Heston guns that they’d promptly used to murder a fellow white man. His reply was, and I quote: ‘I didn’t know he was gonna shoot a white man.’”
Dillon’s breath escaped in a low whistle. “That’ll go down well in court.”
“Dobson realised he’d made a bit of a faux pas as soon as he’d opened his mouth,” Carol explained, “and he tried to brush over it but, by then, the damage had been done.”
“That’s why solicitors always tell idiots like him to go ‘no comment’,” Wilkins said. “Because every time they open their gobs, they drop themselves further into the shit.”
“How did the suspects react to seeing the CCTV from the lockup?” Dillon asked. “I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall when that was played.”
“It didn’t go down very well,” Carol admitted with some satisfaction. “They were all shell shocked, to put it mildly. Dobson’s reaction was more extreme than any of the others. He completely lost the plot and tried to attack poor Colin Franklin.”
Jack looked up from the notes he had been making. “Is Colin okay?” he asked.
“Perfectly,” Carol said, smiling sweetly. “DC Stone prevented the attack by ramming Dobson’s face into the desk, which split his head open and left him in a crumpled heap. They had to take a lengthy break for the FME to examine Dobson, who refused to go back into interview afterwards.”
“I bet he did,” Dillon said, grinning widely.
“Please tell me the interview was videoed,” Steve Bull said in anticipation of being able to watch the former Para nullify Dobson.
“Afraid not,” Carol told him, “but Susie said that Dobson’s face was a right mess afterwards.”
“Couldnae have happened to a nicer bloke,” Charlie White said with a malicious grin.
Jack didn’t share their amusement. “I’m not having Dobson dictate to us whether he’s interviewed,” he announced, irritably. “Tell Susie to carry on, even if it means she has to set up portable equipment outside his cell and conduct the rest of the interview through the open wicket.”
“That’s exactly what she did do,” Carol Keating reassured him. “Dobson sat on the cot in his cell, facing the wall. Refused to speak a single word, but they put all the evidence to him and the interview has been satisfactorily concluded.”
“Good,” Jack said, somewhat mollified. “So, apart from Dobson’s admission, what other evidence have we got?”
“Well, I would say we have plenty,” Carol said. “The quality of the footage from the concealed camera in the lockup is very good. Reg Parker burned several copies onto VHS for the interview teams and he assures me that everyone’s faces are easily recognisable, so I’m convinced a jury will readily accept that it’s Dobson, Higgins, Roach, and Taylor. And just to make our lives slightly easier, the considerate little dears were only wearing T-shirts so a lot of their tattoos were visible. Naturally, we’ve had every tattoo on their bodies photographed while they’ve been in custody, so it won’t be too hard for the graphics department to put together a body mapping package to illustrate that the defendant’s tattoos correlate exactly to those of the people featured in the CCTV.”
As she spoke, Jack furiously scribbled notes in his daybook so he could update his Decision Log after the meeting.
“Then there are the witness statements,” Carol continued after he’d caught up. “You already know about Prudence, the girl who received the confession evidence from Roach. What you might not be aware of is that Anita, that’s the hooker who was found in the downstairs living room with Lola, was very forthcoming in interview.”
“I wondered if she might be,” Dillon said. “She gave the impression that she would have spoken to us at the scene if Lola hadn’t been there. What has she said?”
“She told her interviewers that the skinheads brought all the drugs with them. She admits to being a sex worker and claims that Lola’s the house Madame, having been installed by none other than Deontay Garston. She also told the interviewing officers that Dobson and Taylor – he’s the man she was shagging when the TSG burst in – had openly boasted about selling the guns that were used in the policeman’s murder. She said they seemed really proud to have done so.”
“Low life shite-bags,” Charlie White mumbled under his breath.
“Susie’s instinct is that if we NFA her, Anita can be persuaded to make a statement repeating what she said in interview,” Carol said.
Jack considered this. If they charged the girl with an offence, they wouldn’t be able to use any of what she’d said in her interview against another defendant, whereas if they took no further action against her, they would then be free to take a detailed witness statement from her. “What charges are we realistically looking at for her anyway?” he asked, struggling to concentrate. Although he’d managed to take a power nap in his office for an hour or so earlier in the day, it had been fitful and uncomfortable, and he was now so tired that he could hardly think straight.
“She was arrested for the collective possession of drugs, along with everyone else, just because she was in the room and no one was putting their hands up to owning them,” Carol said. “Nothing worth getting worked up about.”
“NFA her then,” Tyler said. “She’s small fry. I’m happy the drugs will either have been laid on by the skinheads or Lola, and she’s far more useful to us as a witness.”
Carol made a quick note. “That’s my view, too. If you don’t mind, I’ll pop out and let Susie know straight away, so she can grab a statement from the girl before she changes her mind.” Excusing herself, Carol left the room to make the call.
Closing his eyes, Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. He had taken some paracetamol before the meeting but it was doing little to dull the throbbing ache in his head. Maybe he needed to drink some water to rehydrate himself as he’d been living off coffee all day.
“How’s the lab getting on with the exhibits you had rushed up there, Stevie?” he asked wearily.
Bull consulted his notes. “I spoke to the FSS just before we sat down, boss,” he said. “They’ve done the presumptive testing on the drugs from the squat. The white powder is definitely cocaine. There is also some herbal cannabis and a small amount of a prescription drug called Viagra.”
Dillon chortled. “I think Charlie Dobson’s already tested the Viagra out for us. It worked a little too well for his liking, mind you,” he said, recalling the man’s acute discomfort as he’d waited for the paramedic to come and examine his engorged manhood.
“The lab has also found several prints on the drug’s outer packaging,” Bull continued. “There are definite matches for Dobson, Higgins, and Lola.”
“Good,” Jack said, writing this all down.
“As for the firearms we seized from the lockup safe, they’ve found fingerprints matching Dobson and Roach on the two converted guns. Under UV light, they can make out some latent prints on one of the boxes of ammo and on at least two of the three unopened Brocock boxes, but it’ll require Ninhydrin treatment to bring them out. You know the score as well as I do,” he said, shrugging his shoulders resignedly, “it’ll take a day or two before we see any results. I did broach the subject of them fast-tracking the process by using an oven, but they were unhappy about doing that in case it compromised the quality of the evidence.”
“Fair enough,” Jack grunted. He hadn’t expected anything else, but it had been worth trying. “I suppose they said the same about the ledger?”
Bull nodded. “Yep, afraid so.”
Carol returned. “Have I missed anything important?” she asked.
Jack shook his head. “Steve was just telling us where the lab was in regard to the priority submissions that we sent up earlier.”
“Oh, is that all?” Carol asked, waving her hand dismissively as if it were old news. “I already know about all that stuff.”
“In that case, we’ll carry on,” Jack said.
“Carry on Matron, you mean,” Dillon said, and did another rendition of his Sid James laugh.
“Oooh Sid,” Carol responded, and everyone except Tyler laughed.
Jack stroked his stubbled chin thoughtfully as he flicked through his notes, finding the sensation strangely soothing. “It seems to me,” he said, when they had quietened down, “that we have enough evidence to charge the four skinheads with possessing two firearms and a quantity of .22 calibre ammunition without a licence. We can also charge Dobson, Higgins, and Lola with possession of controlled drugs with intent to supply. I take it she didn’t say anything when interviewed?”
Carol shook her head. “Not a dicky bird, and Susie said she’s a nasty piece of work.”
Tyler arched an antagonistic eyebrow. “Is that right? In that case, on the strength of the statements from the two working girls, I’m minded to add on an additional charge of running a brothel for Lola as well as the drugs,” Jack said. “Does anyone disagree?”
No one did.
“Okay then,” Jack said, tossing his pen onto his desk and leaning back in his chair, “Tell Susie to start the necessary paperwork for the prisoners to be charged with the offences we’ve discussed. Obviously, I’ll expect them to be remanded in custody.”
“Obviously,” Carol echoed.
