James Craig - Time of Death

Running his operations out of the bunker-like Goodwin House, the thirty-one year old was the biggest skunk and ecstasy dealer in the N5, N7, NW5 and NW1 postcodes. The 1980s four-storey, brown-brick building was perfectly designed for his business operations. It was almost as if Camden Council had built it to order. It even looked like a fortress. The windows were small and at least twenty feet off the ground. More importantly, there was only one way in; even that was on foot – there was no vehicle access. Seeing its potential, Jerome had appropriated the top two floors and set about strengthening the building’s defences, so that if the police ever tried to raid it, it would take them at least two hours to get in. Short of bringing a Challenger tank down Marsden Street and pumping a couple of 120 mm rounds into the building, number 47 was impregnable.

Tossing the empty beer bottle onto the sofa, Jerome felt a sudden wave of boredom sweep over him. Reaching for his new toy lying on the coffee-table, he staggered to his feet and kicked at a couple of the bodies slumped on the floor. ‘Get up!’ he shouted over the music. ‘Let’s go up on the roof.’

Two minutes later, he was waving a Glock 17 above his head as he swayed to the music blasting through the asphalt below his bare feet. The 9 mm semi-automatic pistol had arrived earlier in the day, a present from a happy supplier; a reward for Jerome beating his sales targets for the first quarter of the year. The supplier – an Albanian people-trafficker who was diversifying into drugs – had thrown in a couple of clips of ammunition as well. Jerome hadn’t realised that he had any sales targets, quarterly or otherwise, but he was delighted by the gift. He had never owned a gun before, and he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it.

But he knew he would do something.

By his standards, Jerome had been giving it some serious thought. The way he saw it, there was no point in having the gun, if you didn’t use it to shoot someone. But who? For the moment, however, just holding it was enough. Wearing just a Nickelback T-shirt and a pair of ruby Adidas running shorts, he shivered in the night air. In the semi-darkness above the orange street lights he could see the goosebumps on his arms, but the cold was overridden by the overwhelming sense of power flowing from the Glock as he gripped it tightly in his hand. Sticking his free hand down his trousers, he gave his balls a vigorous scratch and felt a tingling in his groin. The Glock was giving him a chubby all right, and he hadn’t even fired it yet. ‘Oh man!’ he groaned to himself. ‘This has gotta happen, just gotta . . .’

Eric Christian, one of Jerome’s key associates, a friend since their second year at nearby Gospel Oak Primary School, stumbled through the doorway and on to the roof. He was followed by a couple of hangers-on who didn’t know the end of a party when they saw one. Eric looked at Jerome and grinned. ‘Careful you don’t walk right off the edge, man,’ he drawled, trying – and failing – to light a large blunt with a Harley-Davidson lighter.

‘No worries, dude,’ Jerome grinned. He brought the gun down to eye level, gripped it double-handed and pointed it at Eric.

Eric’s eyes widened as the blunt fell from his lips. ‘Whoa, maaaan!’ he drawled, trying to keep the nervous laugh out of his voice. ‘Tell me that thing’s not loaded.’

‘Nah.’ Jerome’s eyes lost their focus. He pulled the gun to his chest and pointed the barrel skyward, like a man about to participate in an old-style duel. ‘I took the clip out before. It’s downstairs somewhere.’

The music beneath them reached a crescendo. Starting to dance again, Jerome pointed the Glock past Eric at the other two guys who had joined them. He remembered them now. They were pondlife: sometimes they did little jobs for him, sometimes they were customers. Both of them looked like they were going to shit themselves; one even stuck his hands up, like they did in the movies. Jerome thought this was hilarious and burst out laughing, thinking that if the gun were loaded, he might just pull the trigger. He turned back to Eric. ‘We’ll have to try it out soon, though.’

‘Sure thing,’ said Eric, laughing too. Pulling a mobile out of his back pocket, he began filming his friend. Panning across the roof, he zoomed in on Jerome before focusing on the Glock. ‘Go for it, man. Let’s make a movie!’

Jerome shrieked with delight. ‘This one’s for YouTube,’ he shouted at the tiny camera. ‘Comin’ to get ya, baby!’

‘You the man, Jerome,’ shouted one of the losers.

‘I’m a killer, man!’ Jerome stepped closer to the camera and put the gun to his head, grinning like a maniac. ‘This is how you muthafuckin’ kill someone!’ he screamed, eyes blazing. ‘Just sqeeeeeze .’ His index finger jerked back the trigger. There was a muffled crack and his eyes rolled back into his head. For a second, time stood still. Then, still holding the gun, he did a little sideways dance before stepping off the side of the building and disappearing from view.

Eric stood there, the background hum of the late-night traffic in his ears, trying to work out how his mate had done such a cool trick.

‘Wow!’ said a voice behind him. ‘Did you get all that?’

The number 25 bus travelled west along Oxford Street, bouncing past the clothes stores, mobile-phone booths, cafés and sex shops at an average speed of about three miles an hour. It would probably have been quicker just to walk all the way, but he couldn’t be bothered. The top deck provided a dirty and depressing vista, an unappealing mix of third-world squalor and first-world weather. It was one of the few parts of his home city that made Carlyle feel ashamed, so he always did his best to ignore it.

This morning, on his way to his breakfast meeting with Rosanna Snowdon, he sat at the very front of the bus, with his head stuck firmly in The Times . On page three, he contemplated a story about a man in Wales who had spent thirty years in prison after having been wrongly convicted of the murder of a young woman. New DNA tests had shown that he could not have been the killer. The Criminal Cases Review Commission was rushing to have the guy freed.

Reading the article, Carlyle began to feel a physical pain in his chest. The whole thing was so depressingly familiar. The ‘murderer’ was described as being mentally ill. That was no big surprise – doubtless he had been an easy way of getting a serious case off someone’s desk and a grieving family off someone’s back. At the trial, the jury had returned a unanimous guilty verdict in double-quick time. The trial judge had thrown in his tuppenceworth as well, proclaiming: ‘ I have no doubt whatsoever that you were guilty of this appalling, horrible crime .’

No doubt whatsoever. They just couldn’t wait to throw away the key. How very satisfying. An appeal was refused. Only years later, when a new solicitor pushed for another look, did the Forensic Science Service test the bodily fluids collected from the crime scene.

In short, the case had been a total fucking mess, a serving policeman’s worst nightmare. It also raised serious concerns about the integrity of dozens of other murder convictions which would now have to be similarly reviewed. The man’s solicitor spelled it out for hopeful lags up and down the country: ‘ Anyone who believes that they’ve been wrongly convicted, and thinks DNA tests would help, should contact a lawyer immediately. ’

Carlyle wondered morosely how many of his own past cases could be undone by modern technology. It didn’t bear thinking about. There but for the grace of God . . .

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the bus struggled another fifty yards up the road to stop at a red light. Carlyle closed the paper and stumbled out of his seat towards the stairs. The five-minute wait while the bus crawled to the next stop and the driver condescended to open the doors, did nothing to improve his mood. Not for the first time, he pined for one of the old Routemaster-style buses, where you could just jump on and off the open back platform whenever you liked. Finally back on the pavement, he got off Oxford Street as quickly as possible and headed north.