Nick Oldham - The Last Big Job

Again, Henry’s mind had wandered. Danny could see he wasn’t concentrating totally on her. It miffed her a little. Then his eyes focused. ‘Danny,’ he said with a click of his tongue, ‘can I bounce something off you — you being a close friend?’

A close friend! ‘Yes, sure.’

‘ Me and Kate parted on acrimonious terms. She was dead against me going back to Crime Squad work…’ He then related his sorry tale of woe. Danny listened intently and offered advice from her perspective, much against what she was really feeling. What she wanted to say was, ‘Ditch the bitch and hop into my sack.’ She didn’t, hid her disappointment and tried to give Henry some options. It was obvious he did not see Danny as a possible; he was too deeply in love with Kate and very distraught by his marital predicament.

‘ I just seem to cock it up all the time,’ he whined. ‘If it’s not my pants coming off, it’s work. I’m such a selfish bastard. Sometimes I think I should jack the job in, buy a newsagent’s or an off-licence, or something and live over the business, then I’d be really tied down.’

‘ Bad idea. If nothing else, you’re too good a cop for that, Henry.’

The two planes remained in tandem until the Paris flight veered east, whilst the Lisbon flight continued to fly almost due south. No one on either of the flights knew anyone on the other flight and although the two planes were never near to a collision, the two men, Crane and the Russian, were soon to be on a personal collision course which would end in bloody violence.

‘ Danny?’ A Detective Constable literally swung into the canteen on the upright door jamb, looking very excited. ‘ Got a good ‘un. Three bodies in a vehicle inspection pit — and they didn’t get into it willingly. Can you turn out and cover the scene? Like I said, looks a cracker.’

‘ Be right there.’ She looked at Henry, desperate to kiss him.

‘ Duty calls.’

‘ Want me to come?’

‘ Nah, I’m a big girl now. You go home and take my advice — give Kate an old-fashioned night of passion, OK? It works wonders, the orgasm. It does with me, anyway…’

The flattening of the rank structure in the police service, together with the philosophy (some say misguided) of pushing more and more responsibility downwards, means that quite often the most senior rank available to attend serious incidents is a Sergeant. As Danny alighted from the CID car, she was aware that the eyes of all the Constables were on her because she was top banana at the scene. The situation did not faze her. Firstly because she had a lot of years’ experience behind her and could bullshit her way through anything; secondly because sooner or later the job would be taken away from her as higher-ranking detectives started to crawl out of the woodwork and the SIO team leaped into action.

What she had to do was ensure the scene was managed properly, that evidence was preserved — and not destroyed by a procession of size 10’s — that everything was properly documented and she didn’t show her arse.

She scrunched out the cigarette she had been smoking, took things slowly and made sure her eager beaver detectives did not rush her.

Firstly she looked at the outside of the premises.

It was a garage. One of those one- or two-man operations found in back streets or on small industrial estates and the like. Peter’s Motor’s was the miss-spelt name on the hand-painted sign. There was one big sliding door — closed — next to which was a normalsized door — open. Adjacent to the building was a small tarmacked area with a sign, again hand-painted, which read MOT/Repair’s only. A couple of old bangers were parked thereon.

Danny was already beginning to draw conclusions about the sort of person she expected this Peter, the owner of Peter’s Motor’s, would be.

A uniformed Constable stood by the door, clipboard in hand, logging the comings and goings. A DC told her that this particular officer had been first on the scene. She approached him, listened, asked a few questions, probed deeper on some issues and told him what a good job he had done. He appeared suitably pleased.

Danny entered the garage after skim-reading the officer’s log.

She was glad that neither a pathologist nor scientific support had yet landed on the scene. Not that their input and observations weren’t crucial. It was just that they were becoming increasingly a pain as more and more films and books appeared portraying them as detectives; they all wanted to solve the crimes these days, were always coming up with theories — usually wrong or just misguided — and were sometimes convinced they had more investigative skills than real detectives.

Time spent simply observing a scene, drawing conclusions and hypotheses, was invaluable to a detective. And the more people there were crawling round, the harder that was to do.

Danny stood inside the threshold, took a deep breath, used her eyes.

It was not a big garage, but was divided into three distinct areas. To her right were two hydraulic run-on car ramps, one straddling an inspection pit. From where she stood she could not see into the pit and did not want to — yet. The next section of the garage was an area of concrete long and wide enough to fit a car on comfortably; beyond that a massive sheet of polythene hung down from the roof like a huge curtain, dividing off the third section of the garage. Danny guessed this was the paint shop. She winced when she thought about the quality of resprays done in there. Hardly a clinical environment.

Immediately to her left was a door marked Storeroom. In front of her was a rickety wooden staircase leading up to an office above the store. She could hear voices and movement up there. She ignored that and looked around the garage again. It was a typical backstreet set-up. Tools scattered around. Cutting and welding gear. Tyre-repair equipment. Oily floors. A dirty sink. A kettle and grubby cups. An old radio with a circular tuning dial. Overalls hung up on hooks. Copies of the Sun on a work-bench. A disgusting four-year-old calendar on the wall.

And a vehicle inspection pit.

Two chairs were set near to it, one with a puddle on it, the other smeared with what was obviously excrement. A metal pipe lay discarded on the floor, next to the chairs. Two planks of wood had been placed parallel to the pit, one lying on top of the other.

Think evidence preservation, Danny instructed herself.

She had been informed there were three bodies in the pit, all with head wounds, probably caused by a firearm. The oily floor surrounding the pit — surely a health and safety hazard — had shoeprints in it. They could be vital. Danny wondered if she really needed to go and look into the pit at this stage of the game and risk ruining evidence. Obviously police officers had been to peer in prior to her arrival, so did she really need to add her footprints as well?

As senior officer on the scene, she decided she did. She bit her bottom lip, considering how best to do this without destroying evidence.

In the end she decided that no one else who was not essential to the investigation would enter the premises. Bobbies were nosy by nature, but they would have to be kept at bay. Secondly, she would indicate a route to the edge of the vehicle inspection pit which everyone would use until all the necessary surrounding evidence had been lifted.

She leaned back out of the door and spoke to the PC who was acting as doorman. ‘No one else comes in here, Tom. My orders — no one. Got that?’ He nodded. ‘Go to the CID car and get that roll of cordon tape from the passenger footwell, please.’

Danny decided on the route to the pit — a straight line from the door which she marked by laying two lengths of cordon tape parallel to each other on the floor, about a foot apart. When the path was marked she walked down it and peered into the dark pit which was about four and a half feet deep.