Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

As I spoke, I mentally crossed my fingers. Both Malik and I were almost a hundred per cent certain he wasn’t our man, so now it was a matter of hoping that he knew who was, that Catherwood hadn’t made a mistake about the bullets, and that Panner felt he was in sufficient trouble that it was worth giving us the information.

Watson leant over and whispered something in his client’s ear. After a few seconds, Panner told the lawyer that it was all right. ‘I didn’t do it, man. I swear,’ he said, sounding annoyed that no-one appeared to believe him. Then he turned to me. ‘That time with Fi, yeah, I did pull a piece and put bullet in da ceiling, but it wasn’t my piece, man.’

‘Who did it belong to then, if it wasn’t yours? And where is it now?’

‘If I help you, will you drop the charges? You know, attempted murder of po-leece man, and all that.’

‘If you help us, your case’ll be reviewed favourably,’ I told him, giving the standard police spiel. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’

He nodded, seemingly satisfied. ‘I got it off a guy a few weeks back. He hires them out, y’know. There was man after me because he said I owed him, and I had to get hold of a piece fast, you know what I’m saying? There’s a guy over Acton who rents them out, so I got one off him for a week, just in case this man who said I owed him came calling. Then the bitch, Fi, started giving me grief about something, so I went over there and pulled the piece, just to scare her, y’know? Put bullet in the ceiling, just so she knows the Pretty Boy means business, but she starts screaming, the neighbours start shouting, and I’m outta there. Next day, I got bit worried that po-leece would come a-knocking, so I gave the gun back to man in Acton. I told him I hadn’t fired it; y’see I didn’t want to lose deposit on piece. If it gets used, then the rule is I have to get rid of it, and I lose the two hundred I had to put down. I needed the money, so I lied.’

‘Why didn’t he check the gun, this guy from Acton?’ I asked. ‘He could easily have told if you’d fired it.’

‘I borrowed a spare bullet from a friend of mine, put it in there, and he never knew.’

‘A spare bullet?’ said Malik disbelievingly. ‘You borrowed a spare bullet?’

‘I swear!’ he shouted. ‘It’s da truth, man. I swear it is. I know it don’t sound true, but that’s the way it is.’

We all gave him sceptical looks, even Watson. It wasn’t that it was outlandish for someone like Panner to go to an armourer if he wanted a gun, particularly if he only wanted it for a matter of days. Because of the UK’s relatively draconian gun laws, it wasn’t always easy for a criminal to get hold of firearms, and since plenty of the bad guys wanted them, a rental trade in guns had developed, run by individual armourers who typically hired them out to criminals for one-off crimes, or occasionally, as in Panner’s alleged case, longer periods of time. The usual way it worked was that a rental price was agreed, and on top of that a deposit put down by the customer as security. If the gun got fired while in the customer’s care, he or she not only had to get rid of it themselves, they also forfeited the deposit. That way the supplier didn’t lose out. What made Panner’s story a lot less believable, of course, was that he was claiming to have given the gun back even though it had been fired. If this was the case, then the supplier clearly wasn’t very good at his job, as he should have been able to see that it had been used. And, if Panner didn’t have easy access to firearms (and he presumably didn’t if he had to use the services of an armourer), then where did he find a spare.38 bullet?

We both glared at him. ‘That story’s horseshit,’ said Malik, with a dismissive snort.

‘I’m telling the truth, serious. You can fucking check.’

‘All right. What’s this guy’s name?’

‘It won’t come from me, right? If I tell you, want it kept quiet I co-operated. I got a rep, y’know.’

‘Sure you have,’ said Malik sarcastically. ‘Now, what’s his name?’

‘Tony.’

‘Tony what?’

‘I don’t know his last name, man.’

‘Then you’re going to be spending a long time in prison.’

‘He lives in a flat on a place called Haymarket Road over in Acton. Number ten or twelve. If we go over there, I can show you which one it is.’

Malik wrote down the address but didn’t let up on the questioning. Neither did I. There was no point. This was a story that reeked of convenience. An armourer owned the gun, so although Panner had been in possession of it once, it was now no longer anything to do with him. Sure.

So we carried on.

What we were trying to do was find inconsistencies in his story and then hit him with them in the hope that he’d tie himself in knots, realize the error of his ways and spill the beans on who the shooter was. Then we could start getting to the bottom of who’d actually organized the hit on O’Brien, and from there bring this whole sorry case to something akin to a satisfactory conclusion.

But Panner wasn’t playing ball, and for the next twenty minutes he insisted that the gun he’d fired had belonged to the armourer, and that he’d never seen it since he’d given it back more than a fortnight ago. We tried coming at him from different angles, but nothing seemed to budge him from his story, and eventually we brought the interview to a close. Watson demanded that his client be given bail, but we both laughed at that one, and Panner was taken back to the cells. We had another nine hours before the initial twenty-four were up, so there was no need to worry about letting him go just yet, but it was a concern that he was sending us up what looked like another blind alley, even with a whole host of charges hanging over his head.

Bernard Stanbury worked as an accountant for a civil engineering firm in Winchmore Hill, a short commute from his Barnet home. At just after ten o’clock that morning, Tina Boyd walked into the firm’s cheaply decorated reception area and asked the woman manning the switchboard — the only person in the room — if she could speak to him.

‘And whom shall I say is calling?’ asked the receptionist in a comically affected voice as she looked Tina up and down with barely concealed suspicion. ‘I don’t seem to have anything in the appointments book. If you’re here to sell anything-’

‘Police,’ said Tina with a polite smile, removing her warrant card.

‘Oh,’ the woman said with interest, pausing to hear if there was any further explanation.

There wasn’t. Tina simply stared at her, waiting, the smile remaining fixed on her face.

The receptionist got the hint and called Stanbury’s number. ‘The police are here to see you, Bernard,’ she said in hushed, conspiratorial tones. ‘Amiss. .?’

‘Boyd. Detective Sergeant Boyd.’

A few seconds later and she was off the phone. ‘Mr Stanbury’s office is through those double doors, the second one on the left.’

‘Thank you.’

Tina put the warrant card back in her jacket pocket and walked through the double doors. Almost immediately, the second door on the left opened and a smallish man of about forty-five with nondescript glasses and an even more non-descript face stepped out. His expression was a combination of anxious and annoyed.

‘Come in, come in.’ He ushered her into his small and surprisingly untidy office, swiftly shutting the door behind her. ‘What’s the problem?’ he demanded, returning to his seat, without shaking hands.

Tina smiled and took the seat opposite him, on the other side of the desk. ‘I’m DS Boyd. We spoke on the phone yesterday regarding your stolen credit card.’ She put out a hand and he took it reluctantly, blinking behind the glasses and avoiding her eyes.