Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

Knox was back out in the hallway talking to DC Berrin, who’d now arrived, and we told them what we’d found out from Miss Williams, including the time she’d returned. ‘She was there all evening after that,’ I said, ‘and she didn’t hear anything. My feeling is it must have happened before eight.’

Knox turned to Berrin. ‘What time did you get here last night, Dave?’

‘Ten to six, bang on. I checked my watch. And we didn’t leave until midnight. Nobody came in or out in that time.’

‘I’ve just talked to Carlson, the widower on the top floor,’ said Knox. ‘He was here all day yesterday, except between two and four when he went out for a walk up in Highbury Fields, which he does most days. He thought he heard a bang coming from Mrs MacNamara’s apartment at some time between half-one and two. He was watching TV at the time, Neighbours . He said he didn’t take much notice because it wasn’t very loud, and could easily have been just something breaking. When he came down the stairs to go out, he said that he heard the sound of the TV coming from her apartment, so assumed everything was OK.’

‘It could have been the shot that killed her, though?’ said Tina.

‘Davies says that, as far as he can tell, she was only shot the once, so it sounds logical. That was the killer taking her out, and then it was a matter of waiting for O’Brien to arrive. Perhaps he lured O’Brien into his grandmother’s place, then surprised him, which would explain the lack of evidence of a struggle.’ Having effortlessly assimilated my theory, he was now embellishing it like a true pro.

‘So now we need to get an idea of what time O’Brien returned, if we’re assuming they weren’t killed at the same time,’ I said, muscling back in. ‘You went looking for him in the Slug and Lettuce yesterday, didn’t you, Dave?’

Berrin nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘Did they say whether he’d been in or not?’

‘We didn’t ask, guv, to be honest. Just poked our noses round, looking for him. He wasn’t there, so we left.’

Which was typical Berrin. He was a good kid, very pleasant and presentable, with a nice line in polite patter with the public, and a grad too, like Tina; but unlike her, he hadn’t been blessed with much in the way of know-how or work ethic, which made the life of his superiors harder than it should have been. But this is the Met, and these days it’s a case of beggars can’t be choosers.

‘We’ll need to have a thorough check of O’Brien’s movements,’ said Knox. ‘It’s essential we find out what time he died.’

‘Are we going to be taking this case then, sir?’ asked Tina, and I was sure I heard a hint of enthusiasm in her voice. We had a lot on at the moment, and the events of the previous day and the subsequent investigations were only going to add to the workload, but there was a challenge here. Someone had killed two people and evidently thought he could get away with it. Most coppers worth their salt would be interested in proving him or her wrong. Whatever Tina had said about leaving, I knew she was one of them.

‘I very much doubt it,’ answered Knox. ‘With the potential connections with yesterday, I think it’s definitely going to be a Serious Crime Group investigation, but we need to do our bit, and do it well, while it’s still in our jurisdiction.’

The rest of us nodded soberly, knowing that our involvement might soon be at an end. But, like Tina, I was already hoping it wouldn’t be.

Tina and I spent close to another hour at the scene, interviewing the immediate neighbours in the houses on each side (none of whom could provide us with any leads), before leaving and heading back to the station where we both had plenty of work that needed doing. Among other things, the two of us were heading up an ongoing inquiry into local people who’d supplied their credit-card details to an internet child-porn site based in Arizona. The inquiry had been going on for weeks and there were twenty-two men in our locality who had to be checked out, arrested, questioned and, if necessary, charged by a team of four of us. So far we’d collared nine of them, including a magistrate, a children’s charity worker and a doctor, but each individual case took a lot of effort and manpower, as court orders had to be obtained for credit-card checks and confirmation gained that the cards hadn’t been stolen or were in false names before finally houses and computers were painstakingly searched and arrests made. Every one of the men had visited the site at least five times, most over fifty, a handful over a hundred, and the images contained on it involved the pay-per-view abuse of children, and even babies. It was horrific stuff, all of it, and no-one involved in that inquiry thought it was a waste of our time. We were currently concentrating on a fifty-five-year-old retired school teacher with no previous convictions and an exemplary employment record. He’d visited the site 110 times, on one occasion spending four hours solid on it, at considerable financial cost to himself. We were hoping to arrest him before the end of the week, but I was also due in court that afternoon to testify in a rape trial, so I was no longer sure it was going to happen. In this sort of case that can break a reputation in seconds, you have to be very careful how you tread. Either way, I was going to have a busy day, without any distractions from Operation Surgical Strike.

But if I was hoping to avoid those distractions, I was being unduly optimistic. We got back to the station at 10.40. At 10.45, I convened a meeting of the team on the arrest of the retired paedophile teacher. At 10.50, my extension rang, and the DC who answered it interrupted the meeting to tell me it was urgent. ‘It’s Asif Malik,’ he said. ‘SO7.’

Reluctantly, I got to my feet and asked Tina to chair the meeting in my absence, then left the meeting room.

‘Hello, Asif. Are you all right?’ I asked, picking up the phone.

‘Not really, John, no. I don’t like the fact that Robbie O’Brien’s dead before we can get any information out of him. It makes us all look very stupid. You’ve seen the headlines in this morning’s papers.’

‘I haven’t actually. I haven’t had a chance.’

‘Well, they don’t look too clever.’

‘No, I can imagine.’

‘“High Noon at Heathrow”, according to the Sun , and they’re going to get a lot worse than that as more details start coming out. When they hear about O’Brien, they’re going to be thinking that we’re being completely outmanoeuvred, and we can’t have that.’

‘Who’s taking the case?’

‘Joint Serious Crime Group East and SO7. DCS Flanagan’s going to be heading it up.’

I raised an eyebrow at that one. ‘What? After yesterday?’

‘He followed everything to the letter with Surgical Strike, and we’re very short of available SIOs of DCS level, and this is definitely a DCS-level case. At least he knows the background.’

‘If there’s any assistance I can give, I’ll be more than happy to help.’

‘There is,’ he said. ‘We want you seconded to the inquiry. You and DS Boyd. Flanagan’s clearing it with your chief super now. You both know the victim, you’re familiar with the background, and I hate to say it, but you’re also involved in what’s happened.’

‘Only a limited involvement,’ I told him, keen not to get tarred with the wrong sort of brush.

‘But you know all about it. With everything else, that makes you ideal. Plus, you’re a bloody good copper, and I know you rate Tina Boyd as well.’

I didn’t say anything for a moment.

‘Are you still there?’