Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

Everyone turned round, making various grunts and casual gestures of welcome, and I gave a slightly embarrassed smile in return, keen to get on with things. I thought that Flanagan would give some justification as to why it wasn’t his fault that Surgical Strike had gone wrong, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d already done that yesterday.

‘Right,’ he continued, ‘so where are we so far? Let’s recap. Robert O’Brien and Katherine, or Kitty, MacNamara were shot dead two days ago in what appears to be a highly professional hit. I have the preliminary autopsy reports here, hot off the press this morning’ — he tapped a thin pile of A4 sheets on the table — ‘and they tell us that the two of them died at different times, possibly as long as six hours apart, with Kitty the first to go.’ At least I was right so far. ‘She was killed with a single shot from a.38 calibre weapon, possibly an old Smith and Wesson, delivered at point-blank range to the side of her head, half an inch above the right ear. A cushion was used to muffle the sound of the bullet, and it happened at some point between nine o’clock in the morning and three o’clock in the afternoon, but given that a neighbour heard a sound that could have been a shot during Neighbours , which runs from one-forty to two o’clock, it’s quite possible that it was then.’

He then explained his theory (or Knox’s theory, or even my theory, depending which way you wanted to look at it) that MacNamara’s murder had been opportunistic in so far as the killer had disposed of her purely so that he could use her apartment to ambush Robbie. According to Flanagan, the killer had almost certainly been let into the building and the apartment by Mrs MacNamara, since there were no signs of forced entry and no-one else in the building had let anyone in. That meant she’d either known him or he’d somehow tricked his way into her confidence. Flanagan said that we were going to need to interview all of Robbie’s known criminal associates who were still on the outside in case it had been one of them, and he assigned several of those present to the task, before revealing his first useful lead of the day.

‘The killer was in that apartment for three or four hours at least, and he was extremely careful not to touch anything or contaminate the scene in any way. Very professional, as you’d expect from someone who could execute two human beings, including a hardened killer, with the minimum of fuss. But he did, we think, make one mistake.’

There was a pregnant pause as those who weren’t in the know waited to hear what that mistake was. I already had a good idea.

‘We don’t think he went out the same way he came in, instead opting to go out the back way through a window in Mrs MacNamara’s bedroom. We think this firstly because the window was slightly open whereas Mrs MacNamara, who according to her granddaughter hated the cold, always tended to keep hers locked in the winter, and secondly because of the timing. From what we’ve built up so far on Robbie’s movements on the day of his death, we think he arrived home at some point between five and five forty-five that afternoon, if witness reports are correct.’ He turned and addressed a middle-aged detective in the front row. ‘Isn’t that right, Joe?’

Joe, who was wearing a frighteningly retro purple shirt with black tie, cleared his throat and picked up his notebook. ‘That’s right, guv. We’ve been down to every known haunt O’Brien used in the Islington area. He had lunch on his own in the Sacre Coeur in Theberton Street. They reckon he left about two-fifteen, and was acting normally. We don’t know where he went after that, but he did turn up in the Half Moon on Essex Road later on that afternoon. The barman said Robbie told him he was on his way home. He was in there for about fifteen minutes and just had a pint and a couple of packs of crisps. He left approximately five o’clock, give or take fifteen minutes, according to the barman, and from there it’s about a ten-minute walk to the murder scene, probably fifteen or twenty when you’re his size. So it would have been some time around five-thirty.’

‘And, according to Islington CID, O’Brien’s building was under police surveillance by ten to six, at the request of SO7. No-one emerged after that, and a neighbour who was parking his car opposite at twenty to, and who stopped for a short conversation with a passer-by he knew, didn’t see anyone come out the front either, so the back route looks like his most likely exit.’

‘What was his mistake then, guv?’ asked one of the younger detectives.

‘We think he might have caught the jacket he was wearing on a nail sticking out of the wall as he climbed out the window, leaving a piece of it behind. It might not be his, of course, but it hasn’t been there long, and I can’t see who else’s it would be. I have to tell you, there’s not much left of it, and it’s wet, but it’s a clue and, given how careful he was in every other aspect of the murders, it may well be the best we’re going to get from the actual scene itself. It’s being analysed now and hopefully we’ll get an idea of the type of jacket it came from within the next few days. I’m hurrying things along as fast as I can.

‘And also, if he did go out through the back window, then he still would have had to cross a number of gardens to get back to the road, and he might have been seen. It’s therefore especially important that we talk to everyone in the surrounding streets. A Portakabin’s going up at the scene this morning, and it’s going to be manned by DCs Holby and Birch’ — he pointed at two young officers sitting near the back — ‘and a couple of uniforms, and we’ve also managed to get hold of a further twenty uniforms to conduct house-to-house enquiries. I can’t see the killer hanging around in the flat with the two bodies, so it’s probably safe to assume that he killed Robbie as soon as he arrived back at the building, and made his escape immediately afterwards.’

He paused for a moment before continuing.

‘Which leaves an important question. Why, after he’d killed O’Brien, did the killer choose to exit the building through the back window, which was surely a lot less convenient and potentially more risky than going out the way I believe he came in, i.e. the front door? It’s a question we’re going to need to answer. Was he disturbed? I don’t think so, otherwise we probably would have had a third corpse. Or did he think it was too risky going out the front because the police might be looking for Robbie O’Brien? In other words, did the killer know about the op at the hotel? Because if he did, that means he was somehow connected with it. Which brings me on to motive. Why was O’Brien killed? We didn’t cover the “why” so much in the meeting yesterday because I wanted us to get moving on the basics of what actually happened, but now we need to look at his murder in relation to the events of Wednesday, because I believe it’s in there that we’ll find our solution. Not only is it highly coincidental, Robbie dying like that on the day of Operation Surgical Strike when he’d had so much input in setting it up, but it’s clear that a lot of planning went into his and his grandmother’s murder. O’Brien undoubtedly had a lot of enemies, but I’m not sure how many of them could have organized this.

‘And that’s not all.’

Everyone in the room waited expectantly. Flanagan gave another dramatic pause lasting at least five seconds, and I decided that this was how he’d risen as high as he had. The bloke loved the centre stage, basking in the glow of self-importance. He was an actor, and I bet he could have kissed ass with the best of them when it suited.

However, even I had to admit that what he had to say was dramatic.