Cobweb (17 page)

‘What else does he do for a living?' Patrick asked.

‘The Holy Mother alone knows,' Jo-Jo replied with an elaborate shrug. ‘Nothing, probably.'

I really thought for a moment that du Norde would spontaeously combust in his fury and we would have the equivalent of a very large chip-pan fire on our hands.

‘And all these other people,' Patrick went on. ‘Do they need my services too, under the auspices of your good self, of course?'

Jo-Jo gazed along the short row of his associates, an unhealthy and shifty-looking bunch, most dressed in shiny and ill-fitting business suits. ‘Yes, I think they will all need your protection,' he said. ‘They are all … useful to me.'

Patrick handed me his mobile and took charge of the gun.

I had no need to dial any complicated numbers, or even 999, as it was an official phone and had been programmed to call a police hotline when I just pressed zero.

‘You're all under arrest,' Patrick said, removing his mask, and to Jo-Jo, ‘Nice try, Lorenzo.'

The paperwork took most of the rest of that night but the look on all their faces, especially du Norde's, was worth every minute.

W
hile it was gratifying to learn that, by a complete fluke, we had netted a couple of serious criminals and several minor ones whom the Met, and other forces, had been trying to catch for a long time, the evening's work had done nothing to advance our own investigations. With one exception, that is: one of his waiters was immediately shopped by Jo-Jo as being the man who had attacked us in the town. Denounced as ‘stupid' (he was) and having ‘acted without orders, hoping to impress', this turned out to be the one who had dropped the tray of glasses. I can only think that Patrick had glanced in his direction and that, on top of the grapevine warning that had been received of trouble brewing from a rival gang, this had broken his nerve.

I am not sure if the restaurant owner had been hoping to make a good impression himself with the police by this happy willingness to co-operate and never actually found out, his premises having been emptied and boarded up the next day after Scenes of Crime personnel had finished their work. A quantity of drugs had been discovered and several weapons, plus some counterfeit £50 notes, in a safe in an office, and a computer had been taken away to see what information it contained. I gather that those arrested who were not actually wanted in connection with crimes locally were dealt out like cards to the various London police departments who wished them to help with their enquiries and, as far as we were concerned, they disappeared without trace. Quite simply, they were not our responsibility.

Theodore du Norde, on the other hand, was, but like the others he was whisked away, by the Arts and Antiques Squad, his name already on a list of suspects owing to someone having put two and two together after properties had been burgled not long after a visit from a certain interior designer.

Patrick had said nothing the previous night but was not pleased with me. ‘You should have told me you were carrying the gun,' he said under his breath when we were leaving a slightly awkward debriefing late the following morning, during which he had lied through his teeth about his knowledge of my possession of it.

‘It was a last-minute decision,' I told him. ‘Jo-Jo bothered me – I thought him nastier than you did and had an idea he was behind the attack on us.'

‘I don't care about your reasons. I wouldn't necessarily have asked you to leave it behind. But I need to
know
about things like that – it affects how I plan and carry out the job, especially, like last night, when it's affected by circumstances beyond my control. You should know that after all this time.'

There was an awkward silence. Ye gods, here was the head boy all over again, but as before I was in the wrong – very much so this time. There should never be a breakdown in communication, not in this line of business.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I didn't think ahead – and that you might have to lie about it.'

He thawed. ‘You're still a bloody fine shot.'

Because of bruising to one of his hands, his arms and other parts of his body, the pathologist's view was that Daniel Smith had been unconscious before being hanged, having first been overpowered with some violence in his cell. This verdict, only the preliminary findings, resulted in a visit from the Met's Complaints Department and Woodhill police station became embroiled in an internal inquiry. Patrick was interviewed, in Michael Greenway's presence, and I gather that the recording I had made was listened to again.

‘No one's saying much, mostly because there's no evidence, but a bloke who works in the canteen hasn't reported for work since the murder,' Patrick said. ‘Someone's out checking at his home address now.'

‘What about the caravan where Daniel Smith lived – do you know if anything of interest was found there?'

‘Mostly half a ton of rubbish, dirt, bedbugs and lice, apparently. Scenes of Crime are probably using it as a training ground before the army are let loose with flame-throwers as it's a hazard to public health.'

‘Shall we go back to trying to track the names on the list?' I suggested, knowing someone who would be first in the queue for a finger on that particular button.

But again we drew a blank; there was no one at home at the local addresses, no one seemed to know how to trace the people whose houses had been demolished, and there was no news from the other police departments who had been asked to trace the remainder.

‘We must refocus, then,' Patrick murmured. ‘Harmsworth's body is being exhumed tomorrow night with the second PM taking place the following afternoon. Professor Denyer, a Home Office pathologist, is doing it, apparently. Until then—'

I interrupted with, ‘We could have twenty-four hours off. We've worked every day since starting here.'

‘You had a day at the seaside,' he reminded me.

I blew a raspberry.

‘Oh, that reminds me: I saw Paul Boles just now. He's back on the job.'

‘I hope they don't make the poor man attend the PM.'

‘No, I am. I volunteered in case that idiot Knightly had precisely that in mind.'

Sometimes you can just look at a man and know what he really, really wants you to say next.

‘Would you like me to come as well?' I asked lightly.

‘If you want to,' he replied in equally offhand fashion.

Inwardly, I was worried, and not about the PM. When we had been walking through one of the graffiti- and litter-ravaged underpasses on the estate I had seen a figure, fleetingly, who had crossed our line of vision where two tunnels merged. Patrick had been checking his mobile for text messages at the time so had not noticed her. I was almost positive it had been Erin Melrose. Not sure enough, however, to say something and possibly cause friction if Patrick mentioned it to her. For, after all, she had every right to be there and was possibly working on another case, the estate being the kind of place where quite a large proportion of those living there would be helping the police with their enquiries at some time or other.

I was quite sure, though, that if it had been Erin she should not have been there on her own.

I have attended several post mortems in the past, one in connection with research I was undertaking for a novel, others because of the job, or, rather, Patrick's job. This I knew would be different and, although such a procedure is hardly anything to look forward to, I was absolutely dreading it this time.

It was different, of course, because I felt that I knew this man. I had seen photographs of him taken in life, spoken to his wife and colleagues and spent part of every day since arriving in Essex trying to find out what had happened to him. And here he was – or, rather, here were his battered and decomposing remains – lying in a stainless-steel shallow tray awaiting another mauling.

Surprisingly, Michael Greenway had decided to attend as well and I found myself liking him even more as he had told Patrick that the reason for this was not that he was following his latest recruit's every move but that he somehow felt he owed it to the dead DCI to set the record straight. Despite the fact that Denyer's comments would be recorded, Greenway had asked me to take notes. I was grateful. It meant that, already trying not to look at the blackened and slimy body, the legs and one arm almost severed, a ghastly injury to the abdomen, I had something else upon which to focus my attention.

Professor Denyer was all ready to begin and had waited, slightly impatiently, while the two and a bit members of SOCA donned the necessary anti-contamination suits. He was a stout, fussy little man who, according to Greenway, had so many letters after his name you could play Scrabble with them.

Before any new evidence could be investigated Denyer went through the full routine, rattling off comments, as he worked to reopen the Y-shaped incision in the torso, removed the heart, lungs and other organs, closely examined them and then moved on to the intestines. He was very slow and painstaking and, like all people of his profession, appeared utterly oblivious, despite the extractor fans, of the appalling smell. I tried not to breathe at all and scribbled down everything he said in shorthand. All too soon I began to feel a bit faint, cold beads of sweat running down from my forehead and soaking into my face mask. I shifted my position a little and took a few deep, stinking breaths.

Denyer progressed to the brain, removing the already sawn-off top of the skull and taking out the contents, a move that caused Greenway to walk rapidly to the far corner of the room, turn his back on what was going on and lean on the wall with both hands. Patrick went over to him, but Greenway just mutely shook his head and nothing was said.

Denyer then went on to prod around in various parts of the cadaver, muttering to himself, and I began to feel that I was trapped in a time-warp, the only positive occurrence being Greenway recovering and returning to stand by the table.

‘Remind me of the new evidence we have to go on,' Denyer ordered, at last, in his somewhat squeaky voice.

Greenway's eyes, the only visible part of his face above the mask and below the cap, swivelled in Patrick's direction, who nodded and said, ‘Harmsworth's sergeant Paul Boles was first on the scene and saw that the DCI was still alive. He pointed to his neck, with his left hand, a finger moving in a stabbing motion. He then died. This piece of evidence did not come out at the time, for various reasons.'

‘Pointed exactly where? – do you know?'

Yes, he did, for Boles had demonstrated and indicated a spot just below the left ear.

Denyer found the tiny wound in the putrefaction and opened up the whole neck to find out more. I wrote down everything he said, the clarity of my penmanship now in dire straits, and I even succeeded in asking the great man to spell the medical terms, which meant nothing to me. Arteries, veins, processes, sinews, muscles …

It is sufficient to record that Derek Harmsworth had been murdered, stabbed once with a long, thin-bladed knife.

The three of us then made it to the nearest pub, where, together with the men and for only the second time in my life, I downed a double whisky, neat.

Michael Greenway had got his colour back. ‘Right,' he said. ‘We must not lose sight of our mission in this cobweb of events, which is, as you know, to investigate the deaths of various individuals and discover if there's an ongoing risk to police personnel. Partly due to the fact that the perpetrator of the attack on you both has been charged and it patently has no bearing on these other cases, I'm beginning to think that the man we're after has gone to ground and there isn't a risk
now
.'

Patrick looked dubious but said nothing.

‘We now know that Harmsworth was murdered and it was made to look like an accident,' Greenway continued. ‘He was investigating the Giddings killing before the case was handed over to what appears to be a newish branch of Special Branch because the murder victim was an MP. Why was that so slow to happen? Do either of you know?'

We did not.

He went on, ‘Harmsworth could have been on the verge of making an arrest and the killer somehow knew he was on to him. DI John Gray was also murdered and although he had assisted Harmsworth on the Giddings case it really wasn't his pigeon, so I'm going to stick my neck out and agree with Woodhill CID that he was killed in a burglary that went wrong. Obviously the crime was committed by someone who wasn't your run-of-the-mill burglar, but it's reasonable to suggest that it was a spur-of-the-moment copycat crime done in a panic.' Here Greenway rubbed his hands over his face tiredly. ‘How does that sound so far?'

‘And Daniel Smith?' I asked.

‘Yes, I'd forgotten him for a moment. It seems that he really was an accessory to Harmsworth's murder and was about to cough. Knightly's on the hunt for someone who works in the canteen who hasn't been seen since Smith's death and could have kept his ears open to what people at Woodhill were talking about. This person could be in the pay of whoever killed Harmsworth – and possibly, under orders, killed Smith himself.'

‘Why suspect someone who might just have pulled a sickie, though?' I asked.

‘Well, apparently this guy's nickname is the Nose, as he's always trying to listen to people's conversations and sticking said nose in where it's not wanted.'

‘Money troubles?' I wondered aloud.

‘I don't think anyone's got as far as asking that kind of question.'

Patrick said, ‘Most of your theory hangs together, but I must point out that as far as the Giddings investigation goes the trail had gone stone cold. It seems inconceivable that a man of Harmsworth's experience and professionalism would keep a red-hot lead all to himself, without even making a note in the case file, and yet noise it abroad in the canteen before heading off into the sticks one night at a time when he would normally be at home in bed – without even telling his wife he was going to be late.'