Shooting Elvis (7 page)

‘It’s not political correctness, it’s common courtesy. We have two female officers and as far as I’m concerned they are bloody good officers. Now what have you got?’

It’s another of his Met habits. They used to refer to women police officers as splits, until there was a furore about it and threats of severe disciplinary action. So the wags in the locker room started calling them stills, because they were still…

He passed me a copy of the list of names Eric Smallwood had given him. ‘I’ve been checking these off against the PNC. They’re all clean except one.’ He pointed with his finger. ‘Him there. Done for attempted bank robbery in 1999. Took an eight, served four, currently unemployed. I think we should pay him a visit.’

‘Donovan Bender,’ I read. ‘I remember him well. It was Christmas Eve and he daren’t go home because he’d lost all the Christmas money on the ponies or peed it against a wall. He’s a resourceful lad, decided to hold up the National Westminster, using a carrot inside a paper bag. He was arrested outside with
£
2,000 in his pocket, waiting for the taxi he’d ordered. When the Judge asked him why he’d used a carrot inside a paper bag he said that he couldn’t afford a cucumber. Poor old Donovan is the stuff of legend.’

‘I still think we should go see him.’

‘I agree. It’s as good a place to start as any. First thing in the morning.’

May is my favourite month. The days are stretching out, the birds are bonking on the windowsill and then singing it to the world, and optimism starts to creep through the veins like a mug of hot chocolate. May is the month of rebirth, of blossom on the trees and office girls in summer dresses. The cricket season starts then, too, but you can’t have everything.

Except tonight it was raining. Sonia had planned to do a fast training spin and then train lightly and rest for the remainder of the week because Sunday was her big day. She’d entered the Oldfield 10K road race and this would be her official comeback. It was always a big field – a couple of thousand in the men’s race and three hundred or so in the women’s – but not what you would call a high class one. Sonia had a definite chance of doing well.

‘It’ll be muddy in the woods,’ I warned her as we drove to the golf club. ‘Could be tricky underfoot.’

‘Mmm,’ she agreed, pensively.

‘Want to go round on the road?’

‘No,’ she decided. ‘I want to do it against the clock; see what time I can do. It’s only a short stretch in the wood, and the rain might not have got through to the ground yet. We haven’t got a standard time for going round by the road. We’ll do the woods. It’ll be OK.’

We reckoned the circuit was slightly under three miles and the routine was that she did two laps of it while I slogged round just the once. Our speed
difference meant that I was back at the car about eight minutes before she came steaming up Rhododendron Drive at the end of her second lap.

Sonia was doing her stretching exercises while I took my tracksuit bottoms off, when one of the dog-walkers approached us. She was a middle-aged lady with a West Highland terrier on a lead.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but are you Sonia Thornton?’

I saw the colour flood into Sonia’s cheeks as she admitted that she was.

‘I saw you win a race at Roundhay Park one Bank Holiday Monday,’ the lady said. ‘You were wonderful, only about seventeen. I thought you’d retired.’

‘No,’ Sonia said, still blushing, and the lady wished her good luck and went on her way, the dog leaping up at her, wanting to be released. I was amazed how awkward Sonia had been, almost embarrassed. She was shy and tongue-tied, but when she was with people she knew you couldn’t stop her talking. I nodded to her, she nodded back, I clicked the watch and she went plunging off into the woods. I put the stopwatch in the car, locked the doors and plodded after her.

The man with shiny shoes opened his scrapbook for 1998 and read about a hit-and-run case where the underage, over-the-limit driver had killed an elderly couple and escaped with a six-month sentence and
a two-year driving ban. There were, the court was told, mitigating circumstances. The couple were wearing dark clothing as they crossed a busy road only fifty yards downwind of a zebra crossing. Very irresponsible. This had contributed in no small way to their unfortunate deaths. The youth was driving the car as a favour to a friend, not realising he was over the limit from a previous drinking session, and his overwillingness to help a friend in need had led to his downfall. Driving away from the scene was a moment of madness brought on by panic.

The man with shiny shoes noted the names and turned to his computer. He slid a CD of the whole country’s electoral roll (‘
44,000,000 names and addresses at your fingertips
’) and clicked the icon on the screen. In seconds he was scrolling through names and addresses that could have belonged to the drink-driving youth.

‘Let’s have a look at what we’ve got,’ I said to the murder team, Wednesday morning. I wiped the whiteboard clean and tried a blue pen in the corner of it. It worked.

‘Are we convinced it’s murder?’ someone asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Right, in that case it was premeditated.’

‘Good.’ I wrote the word near the top of the board.

‘Organised,’ someone else added. That’s the buzzword. Killers are either organised or
disorganised. It covers a lot of ground. Some murderers are opportunists, some plan to the most minute detail.
Organised
went on the board.

‘How old is he?’ I asked.

‘Alfred was in his seventies, and his killer appears to have befriended him.’

‘So he’s probably not in the normal age range, twenty to thirty-something?’

‘No, he’s middle-aged.’ That went on the board.

‘Alf was a racist, so his friend would be a white man.’ I wrote it up.

‘What does he do for a living?’

‘He’s an electrician,’ John Rose suggested. ‘Murderers use what knowledge they have. Doctors use poison…um, that sort of thing.’

‘What sort of thing?’ Sparky asked, sensing John had backed himself into a corner.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Mad axe men use axes,’ someone else suggested.

‘Exactly,’ John agreed.

‘OK,’ I interrupted, before the meeting degenerated. ‘Let’s just say he had a knowledge of electricity. He may be a plumber or similar.’

‘An artisan.’

‘That’ll do.’ I wrote
artisan
on the board. ‘What else.’

‘He’s police aware.’

‘Why?’

‘The white van. It’s not on any CCTV cameras.
He left no prints. He had the sense to park some distance away.’

‘I’m convinced, but he could have picked that up from watching
Crime Scene
on TV.’ I wrote it on the board. ‘What about his education?’

‘Above average intelligence,’ someone said and everybody nodded. We like to think we’re up against master criminals. Up it went.

‘Marital status?’ I asked.

‘Divorced, with twin boys and another on the way.’

‘Keep it serious, please.’

‘Sorry, boss, but we’re getting into conjecture.’

‘I know, but let’s try.’

‘A sad loner,’ I was told.

‘No, they’re usually married to a devoted wife who thinks the moon and stars rise out of their backsides,’ someone argued.

‘OK, we’ll leave that one. Anything else?’

We kicked ideas around for another hour. Our murderer didn’t take risks, probably had a criminal record and lived not too far away. None of the normal motives fitted. He was a sociopath, incapable of recognising another person’s feelings, and he’d done what he did for the hell of it. He was a sadist and would probably kill again.

‘So what was the purpose of the killing?’ I asked.

‘He did it for fun,’ I was told. ‘Or just to feel what it was like. He’d probably fantasised about it for years.’

‘And how did he pick his victim?’

‘He looked for a lonely old man that nobody would miss.’

‘So it wasn’t personal?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps the killer’s a gerontophile,’ one of the young guns suggested, showing off.

‘In that case, wouldn’t there have been some form of sexual interference?’ I responded.

‘Um, yeah, probably, boss.’

‘That’s it, then,’ I told them. ‘Remember, this is not evidence. Hopefully it’s given us an insight into the type of person we are looking for, but in itself it’s not worth a hill of beans.’ God, I wished I’d said that.

Eddie Carmichael hung back after the meeting, waiting for me. ‘Are we going to see this plonker bank robber?’ he asked.

‘Right now,’ I said, pulling my jacket on. I asked one of the DCs to make a note of what was on the board and headed for the door.

‘I need to collect a gun,’ Eddie said as we passed through the foyer.

‘A gun? What for?’

‘Because he’s a convicted armed robber.’

‘He was using a carrot in a paper bag.’

‘Only because he didn’t have a gun. He’d have used it if he’d had one.’

‘He’d have used a cucumber, if he’d had one,’ I argued.

‘With respect, guv, you’re relying on your memory of the case. The file has him as an armed robber, so I want to be armed, just in case.’

‘Have you got authorisation?’

‘Right here.’ He waved it under my nose. ‘I saw Mr Wood, first thing.’

The armoury is what was intended as number eight cell, hastily converted when the Yardies started shooting each other, with a counter inside, racks for the few guns we have and shelves for the ammo. There are Heckler and Kochs, Glocks, a sniper rifle that will shoot off a gnat’s left testicle at half a mile, and a sawn down shotgun for firing lead powder-filled cartridges that can blow a door off its hinges. The H & K machine gun is the standard weapon, with a Glock pistol as standby for when the Heckler jams, but in this case Eddie would just take the Glock.

It’s fairly routine. If there’s a faint chance that a suspect or witness may have a gun we might carry one concealed in a belt holster, just in case, although I’ve never bothered and neither has Dave. I killed a man, once, but that was on a raid. He fired at me and I fired back, three times. I didn’t know his gun was empty, but I don’t lie awake at night wondering about it. Not too often.

The desk sergeant led the way with Eddie hard on his heels, me loitering. He unlocked the thick door and let himself behind the counter.

‘One nine-millimetre Glock 17 semi-automatic,’
he said, as he placed the weapon in front of Eddie. ‘You want a holster for it?’

‘Yes please.’

‘’Spect you’ll want a bullet, too.’

‘A bullet! A full magazine, if you don’t mind.’

‘You can have fifteen. They cost money, y’know.’

‘How many does it hold?’ I asked. I’d never used a Glock. In my days it was all Smith and Wesson revolvers. I picked it up, felt the weight of it and how it fitted my hand.

‘The mag holds seventeen,’ the Sergeant told me, ‘but we only put fifteen in to avoid compressing the spring too far. It helps prevent jams, not that they jam too often. You don’t want one, do you, Charlie?’

Eddie strapped the belt round his waist, put the gun in the holster, checked the hang of his jacket. I swear he looked round for a mirror.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘A carrot in a brown paper bag is all I ever use.’

‘How do you like the Mondeo?’ Eddie asked as he settled into the passenger seat.

‘Love it,’ I replied.

He ran his finger over the console with the delicacy of a devotee, checking the numbers, the quality and God knows what else. ‘Two litres?’

‘Yes.’ I started the engine and steered us out onto the road.

‘Hmm. It feels nice. What do you get to the gallon?’

‘Thirty… something,’ I told him.

‘Press the button on the end of the stalk.’

I did as I was told.

‘Thirty-six point five,’ he read from the digital display. ‘Not bad. Press it again.’

I pressed it.

‘At an average of 38.4 miles per hour.’

That kept him happy for the rest of the journey. Donovan Bender lived in one of the project blocks at the bottom end of the Sylvan Fields estate. Bottom end geographically and socially. The lift stank of the usual, the car parking area held the standard array of shopping trolleys and wheel-less vehicles, and if a window cleaner had ever ventured into the flats he’d have found a sanding machine more useful than a wash leather.

‘Police,’ Eddie shouted through the door in response to Donovan’s ‘Who is it?’

He let us in and asked us to sit down. His wife was at work, behind the desk at a local filling station, and he was preparing vegetables for when the kids came home from school. The TV was showing cartoons but he switched it off. The room was surprisingly neat and tidy.

‘What am I supposed to ’ave done now?’ he asked, wiping his hands on his jeans and sitting down.

‘We don’t know. What have you done?’ Eddie responded.

‘Noffing. Noffing at all.’

‘Where were you on Sunday the ninth? That’s a week last Sunday.’

‘Nowhere. I never go anywhere, do I? Down to the pub on a Saturday, watching cricket or football at the rec. in the afternoon, and that’s it. Can’t afford to go anywhere, not wiv two growing kids. If I do go anywhere it’s wiv them, innit?’

‘When did you last see Alfred Armitage?’

‘Huh! So that’s worrits about, is it. Loopy old Alf. I thought it was ’im when I saw it in the paper, but I wasn’t sure.’

‘You haven’t answered the question.’

‘When did I last see Alfie Armitage?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Dunno. Probably the day Ellis and Newbold’s closed down. I’ve certainly never seen ’im since.’

‘What did you do at Ellis and Newbold’s, Donovan?’ I asked.

‘I was just a labourer and van driver, wasn’t I?’

Eddie quizzed him some more, gave him a hard time, suggested he might prefer to come down to the station to make a statement, but he had nothing to offer us. Donovan remembered Eric Smallwood, said he was weird, and that the two men hardly spoke to each other, but it never came to violence. He couldn’t think of anybody at the factory who might want Alfred dead. Nobody cared that much about him.