Peter Turnbull - Deep Cover

‘Here’s how it works,’ Brunnie addressed the three tenants who stood in attentive silence. ‘You cooperate with us and we’ll cooperate with you. The girl who lived in the front room with Mickey Dalkeith. . she’s been murdered.’

The two women looked at each other. Billy Kemp remained expressionless. Brunnie thought their reactions to be genuine. No one displayed any sign of guilt, none overacted in feigned shock or surprise. ‘So work with us and we’ll work with you.’ He paused as he glanced down the hallway and out into the street as a dark-blue police minibus halted at the kerb. ‘OK, here’s your transport. Non-cooperation from you and we’ll turn your rooms over until we find something we can use against you. Give us mucho info and we’ll turn a blind eye to little things like a few spliffs. Is that right, Billy?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘See, I let Billy flush a few things. . in an act of good faith. . and you ladies flushed something when we knocked on the door; there’ll be more to find and we’ll find it if we have to. OK, out into the street and into the van.’

The three residents filed out of the building and Brunnie noted that not one could resist a sideways glance into the gloom of the front downstairs room, and then they stepped out of the house and climbed meekly into the police vehicle and were driven away.

Harry Vicary turned into Claremont Road just as the police minibus drew away from the kerb. He drove his car slowly and parked it at the kerb in the space vacated by the police van. Ignoring the members of the public who stood on the pavement, having noticed the activity at the house, he walked into the hallway and, directed by a constable, into the front room of the house. He encountered a dimly lit room and a musty atmosphere. DS Ainsclough and a slightly built man stood in the room. Vicary noticed the corpse lying on the bed. He also noticed the cluttered and untidy nature of the room, and was unable to tell if there had been a struggle; the room, he thought, could best be described as chaotic.

‘Dr Rothwell — ’ Ainsclough indicated the slightly built young man — ‘the duty police surgeon.’

‘Ah.’ Vicary extended his hand. ‘DS Vicary.’

‘Nice to meet you, sir.’ Rothwell shook Vicary’s hand warmly. ‘Well, I have confirmed life extinct.’ He spoke with a distinct West Country accent. ‘And I think it is suspicious. Contusions to the neck, open eyes. . petechial haemorrhaging. . but that is for the next box, so to speak.’

‘Understood.’ Vicary glanced at Ainsclough. ‘SOCO? Home Office pathologist?’

‘Both requested, sir.’

‘Well, no need for me to remain.’ Rothwell closed his Gladstone bag. ‘I have another call to make. It’s going to be one of those nights. No rest for the wicked.’ Rothwell stepped lightly out of the room and exited the house.

‘Brunnie?’ Vicary asked.

‘Here, sir.’ Brunnie entered the room. ‘Just taken a quick sweep of the house — all the attic rooms seem to have been used for storage. . furniture in the main. So, just three other residents, all taken in for questioning. Detailed search has not yet been done.’

‘I see.’

‘The deceased is believed to be called Gaynor Davies, from Wales. One resident said she was a teenage runaway.’

‘Teenage?’ Vicary glanced at the slight figure. ‘She’d pass for eleven or twelve.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Brunnie spoke softly. ‘I know what you mean.’

‘She was brought back by Michael Dalkeith and she lived here, coming and going as she pleased when he was away, which was for days at a time.’

‘He had a family in Palmers Green, sir,’ Ainsclough said. ‘Wife and two stepchildren. . but kept the rental on this place. . in which he also lived with the deceased.’

‘Sounds like he would have had some explaining to do if he hadn’t lain down in the snow. Two addresses, a female in each address, one of whom is now deceased, and deceased in suspicious circumstances.’

There came a knock on the front door. They stopped talking and glanced towards the door of the room as the constable stepped to one side and said, ‘In here, sir.’

Moments later the squat figure of John Shaftoe bumbled into the room. He smiled and said, ‘Hello, boys.’

‘Sir,’ Vicary replied.

Shaftoe smiled at Vicary. ‘Didn’t think I’d see thee again today, Mr Vicary. No rest for the wicked, eh?’

‘Funny you should say that,’ Vicary said with a wry grin.

‘Oh?’

‘Nothing. . nothing, sir.’ Vicary replied. ‘It just struck a private chord. . The deceased. . female. . life was pronounced extinct.’

Ainsclough checked his notepad, ‘At seventeen fifty-eight hours, sir.’

‘Seventeen fifty-eight,’ Vicary repeated.

‘I see.’ Shaftoe looked at the body. ‘You’re too young to be a customer of mine, pet, far too young. She doesn’t look much older than twelve.’

‘We’re told she is a teenager, sir.’

‘Yes, she could be a finely built thirteen or fourteen, but I’d be surprised if she was much older than that.’ He paused. ‘Strangulation, it seems.’

‘Yes, sir. The police surgeon who has just left said much the same thing.’

‘Have you photographed the corpse?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘I see. . so can’t be moved yet?’

‘No, sir, not overmuch.’

‘If you can turn her over, I can take a rectal temperature. It might help determine the time of death, although time of death is an inexact science at best, really no more accurate than sometime between when she was last seen alive and when the corpse was discovered, but the Home Office like thoroughness. So, I’ll take a rectal temperature and a room temperature, then, frankly, nothing I can do until I get her to the London Hospital. So I’ll do that, undertake the post-mortem tomorrow. Leave you to await the scene of crime officers, and their cameras and fingerprinting kit and whatever.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Vicary despatched Ainsclough and Brunnie to New Scotland Yard. They had reports to write and statements to take from Billy Kemp, Sonya Clements and Josie Pinder. He remained at the scene with three constables and a sergeant.

John Shaftoe, who did not drive, was conveyed to the London Hospital by his driver in a small black car. He went to his office and opened a medical file on the as yet unnamed female found deceased, possibly strangled, in the house on Claremont Road, Kilburn. He locked his medical bag in a secure cabinet and then, pulling on a donkey jacket and a flat cap, he left the hospital by an obscure side entrance and walked into the enveloping darkness of London’s East End. An observer would have seen a low-skilled manual worker, short and stocky, ambling homeward after a good day’s graft, which was exactly the image that John Shaftoe, MD, MRCP, FRCPath, wanted to portray.

He walked by the walls of the buildings, this being a practice he had acquired during his youth in south Yorkshire, where ‘hard’ men who wanted a fight walked close to the kerb, and feeling disinclined to battle his way through what he always thought to be the oddly ill-named rush hour, he called in at a pub and stood at the bar with his foot on the brass rail, enjoying a pint of IPA. Eventually, as often happened, one of the locals came and stood alongside him. The two men nodded at each other. Shaftoe read the man as being an East End villain and even though, at just 5' 4" tall, Shaftoe was as least cop-like as can be, he still had to be checked out.

‘Doing OK, mate?’ the East End villain asked with a smile.

‘So, so,’ Shaftoe replied, avoiding eye contact.

‘Not seen you in here before?’

‘Not been in here before.’ Shaftoe pronounced here as ‘ere’ and before as ‘a-for’.