The Kill (12 page)

‘Quite a lot. I know it sounds unlikely but I am used to spending hours in low-light areas, watching for small movements. A lot of animals only come out at night and they don’t like artificial lights any more than murderers do. The car was quite a long way off but I’m long-sighted, as it happens.’

‘You said you thought you knew the colour and make of the car.’

‘Yeah. I’d say you’re looking for a Japanese car and not a recent model. It was boxy. I’d say it was a Toyota. Something like that. Colour …’ he pulled a face, thinking about it. ‘Dark, but not black. Call it grey. Maybe not grey but not black.’

‘Do you like cars?’ Derwent asked.

‘I watch
Top Gear
now and then.’ He laughed, obviously expecting us to join in. Derwent was stony-faced. I hadn’t the heart to muster a smile.

‘Anything else? What about the engine? Did it sound as if it was in good nick?’ I asked.

‘Not particularly. It was loud. Could have been a diesel.’

Which fitted in with Megan’s statement.

‘Could you see the driver? Any passengers?’ I asked.

‘Someone in the back seat but I couldn’t tell you anything about them except that they were there. I could see a figure but no detail. I can say more about the front of the car. I had longer to look at it. The driver was small – plenty of space in the car around him or her.’ He concentrated, staring at the carpet in front of him, and I thought he was telling the truth about what he’d seen. ‘I saw one hand on the steering wheel and either the driver was wearing light-coloured gloves or they were white, because it was definitely pale. Stood out against the darker background.’

‘Could it have been a woman?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ The answer was instant. ‘But I can’t say it was – not definitely.’

‘Was there anything else you saw or heard that might be useful to us?’

‘No. I’ve been trying to think. I just keep remembering seeing that car.’ Hugh put a hand to his eyes and shuddered. ‘It’s not what you expect to see somewhere like Richmond Park. All the blood. And Meg went far closer than I thought she should have.’

Derwent bristled. ‘She didn’t do any harm. What if he’d been injured? She might have been able to help him.’

‘You know better than that. His brains were all over the back windscreen.’ Hugh’s face had lost most of its colour, but he was holding his own against Derwent. ‘He had a hole in his chest the size of my fist. They don’t teach you how to deal with that in first aid.’

‘You didn’t know that twenty feet out.’

‘What do you think I should have done?’ Hugh demanded. ‘What would you have done? Run down the hillside and stopped the car?’

Derwent laughed. ‘I wouldn’t have been there in the first place, mate. I can think of a few better choices for a first date.’

‘Okay.’ Hugh nodded. ‘You’ve got a problem with me because I’m on TV. It happens.’

‘It’s not because you’re on TV. It’s because—’

I cut in before Derwent could say something unforgivable and reportable. ‘I think we’re finished. I’ll write this up as a formal statement and get it to you for signature, okay?’

‘Fine.’ Hugh stopped glaring at Derwent for a moment to smile at me. Derwent jumped up and padded out to the hall without a word to either of us.

‘If you think of anything else or you want to amend anything you’ve told us, you can give me a call.’ I handed him a card and then started putting my notebook away.

‘Is that your mobile number on the back?’

I glanced up, surprised at the question. ‘Yeah. Best way to get hold of me. This isn’t a desk job and it’s not nine to five either.’

‘I can imagine.’ He turned the card over and tapped the edge on his knee. ‘I thought you’d put it there for my benefit.’

‘Oh. You mean … no. That would be completely unprofessional.’ I tried to sound severe, even though I knew I was blushing. I hoped against hope that Derwent was too busy with his shoelaces to hear any of this.

‘I don’t suppose you’d like to go for a drink some time? Even though it would be unprofessional?’ He waggled his perfectly manicured eyebrows at me.

‘I have a boyfriend.’

‘Of course you do.’ He crossed his legs. ‘Can’t blame me for trying.’

‘Er, right.’ So I wasn’t too tall after all. I tried to feel lucky about that. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Derwent in the hall, arms folded, watching us. I stood up. ‘I don’t think a drink is a good idea, Mr Johnson.’

‘I see a girl like you, I have to ask.’ He gave me a rueful smile that made my skin crawl.

‘You don’t have to ask, actually. Not when she’s just doing her job. She’s working, not hanging out in a bar, and she doesn’t need to deal with comments on her appearance.’ Derwent had come to lean against the doorframe. He was word-perfect after my lesson earlier, I noticed. And I’d thought he wasn’t even listening.

‘It’s fine,’ I said.

‘It’s bloody not,’ Derwent said.

Hugh leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Derwent. ‘You know, you made a good point just then about Miss Kerrigan doing her job. Now I suggest you go and do yours and try to catch this guy before he kills someone else.’

‘What a great idea. I would never have thought of that.’ Before the situation could deteriorate even further, Derwent’s phone started ringing and he took it out. ‘I have to take this.’

‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Hugh was talking to thin air; Derwent had already gone through the hall and out the front door. To me, he said, ‘He’ll be lucky if I don’t make a formal complaint against him.’

‘Oh, he means well,’ I lied. ‘We’ve been up all night and this is a big case. He’s under a lot of pressure. He’s a good police officer.’

‘If you say so.’ Hugh sniffed. ‘If you need to come back, don’t bring him with you.’

‘Definitely not.’ Although I would bring someone, I thought. Preferably someone male and large. The more I saw of Hugh, the more I felt Megan had been lucky to stumble across a murder the previous night. I’d take a ringside seat at a violent death over a date with him any day.

I stumbled through a quick goodbye as I gathered my things and pulled on my boots, trying to be charming to make up for Derwent’s demeanour. I really hoped Hugh would forget about his complaint. As I ran through the conversation in my mind, I couldn’t think of anything that had been too awful. On the other hand, that might just have been because I was used to Derwent and I’d forgotten how normal people behaved.

I found him on the doorstep, ending his call.

‘You got out all right, then.’

‘He’ll hear you,’ I whispered.

‘I don’t care,’ Derwent whispered back.

‘Who was on the phone?’

‘Ballistics. I asked them to get in touch as soon as they had any information on the ammo.’

‘And?’

‘Not a .22 or anything like it. American ammunition, illegally imported.’

‘As you thought.’

‘Yeah.’ His face was bleak, even though he’d been right. ‘He’s got a good weapon, top-of-the-range ammunition and the skill to use them. You’d have to hope this was personal so it’s just a one-off. Make no mistake, Kerrigan, this guy was shooting to kill.’

Chapter 8

At five to six on a Sunday, the office was almost completely deserted. I threaded through the empty desks, heading for the conference room where a murmur of voices told me I would find my colleagues.

Godley looked up as I walked in, and frowned. ‘Where’s Josh?’

‘On his way.’ I slid into a seat and looked around. ‘What’s new?’

‘We’re about to find out.’ Godley made a note on the pad in front of him. There was a greyish undertone to his skin, as if he was ill. The atmosphere in the room was funereal. While Godley wasn’t looking I caught Colin Vale’s eye and he shrugged, very slightly.

The outer door banged and quick, confident footsteps came towards the conference room. Derwent swung through the door. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Just sit down.’ Again, there was that edge to Godley’s voice that was unfamiliar and unsettling. Derwent caught it immediately and did as he was told.

‘Terence Hammond. Who wants to begin?’

‘Me.’ Pettifer leaned over his notes. ‘Dave and I went to Isleworth and got a list of his colleagues. We’ve spoken to about half of them so far. We keep getting the same story. Decent bloke, good copper.’

‘Get the feeling that’s true?’

‘No.’ Dave Kemp sounded definite. ‘Not the whole story, anyway.’

‘Why’s that?’ Godley asked.

‘A couple of things. The younger ones, the ones who hadn’t worked with him for as long, they weren’t all that keen. They said he was hard to get on with. He’d pick on small things and never let them forget it. Liked to put other people down. Inclined to lose the rag when provoked. Bit of a bastard.’

‘He’s not the only sergeant to behave that way,’ I said. ‘I had one of those when I was in uniform.’

Pettifer grunted. ‘There might be a bit more to it than him getting lairy because he’s a sergeant. We spoke to one PC who told us, off the record, about a row one night with a lad they were nicking for fighting. He ended up in hospital with a fractured skull. They said he gave Hammond a lot of backchat when he was being arrested, and Hammond was the one who brought him in to custody. He was fine on the street – walking and talking. He’d collapsed by the time he got to the nick.’

‘Head injuries can be like that,’ Derwent commented.

‘Or Hammond was teaching the boy a lesson. It got covered up. The boy didn’t remember anything that had happened to him since the previous week and no one looked too hard to implicate Hammond.’

‘So he broke the rules at least once. Anyone know anything about a girlfriend?’

‘It wasn’t anyone from the team.’ Pettifer grinned. ‘Three female officers and all of them as butch as they come. I didn’t even bother asking them.’

‘Too scared of getting beaten up,’ Dave Kemp said.

‘Too right.’ Pettifer shook his head. ‘One of them was bigger than me.’

It was a cheap laugh. I kept my expression neutral, but I was thinking about our colleague Liv, who was delicate and lovely and a committed lesbian. Pettifer still hadn’t grasped that you couldn’t define someone’s sexuality just by looking at them. Nor did he understand that women didn’t have to be pretty and feminine just because he preferred them that way.

‘What about someone from a different team at Isleworth?’ Godley asked.

‘No one thought that was likely. And I think they’d have told us.’ Pettifer looked to Dave, who nodded.

‘They told us what they did know, which wasn’t much. He had two phones, one a cheapie pay-as-you-go job. He never let it out of his sight.’

‘Classic cheater’s trick,’ I said. ‘A lot easier than trying to delete texts and messages you don’t want your wife to see.’

‘Did we recover two phones?’ Derwent asked.

‘I don’t think so.’ Godley flipped to the list of personal effects he’d received from the morgue. ‘One phone. It’s gone off to the lab.’

‘If they download the address book for me I’ll check the numbers,’ Colin Vale offered. ‘She might be in there under a different ID. I had one once who put his girlfriend in as Home Insurance Helpline, which was fine until the bathroom flooded and his wife tried to call an emergency plumber.’

‘Now that’s bad luck,’ Derwent said, grinning.

‘It got worse. They had a fight and she “fell” down the stairs. Survived so she was able to give evidence against him at his trial for attempted murder. He’s got another two years left before he can apply for early release.’

‘So the moral of the story is, always carry a second phone,’ Belcott said.

‘Well, you’d need to have a bird to cheat on first, Pete, so in your case it’s not strictly necessary.’ Pettifer beamed at him. I hid a smirk.

‘We can assume the second phone is gone,’ Godley said. ‘We can try cell site analysis and see if we can track all the phones in use in the area – there can’t have been many.’

‘Not too many masts nearby,’ Colin Vale said, sounding dubious. ‘It’ll be a big area to cover.’

It was a good point. Cell site analysis worked by collecting data from mobile phone masts and calculating the location of the phone according to which signal was strongest. In the sprawling wilderness of the park we would be lucky to narrow it down to a general area.

‘If she was savvy enough to recover the phone, she might have ditched it by now,’ I said. ‘No reason to keep it. In fact, every reason to get rid of it as quickly as possible.’

Godley nodded. ‘I’ll get a team of uniformed officers to search drains and bins near the park for the SIM card and the phone itself, or some bits of it anyway. It hasn’t rained since Hammond died, so if we have any luck at all we’ll find it where she left it. Colin, have you any idea which area we should be looking at? Any luck on the CCTV?’

‘Yes and no. I’ve been trying to get hold of anything useful before it’s deleted so I haven’t had time to review much of the footage. The bad news is that quite a few of the cameras nearest the park weren’t in use.’

It was a perennial problem. The cameras themselves were the deterrent to crime – no one except the owners could tell if they were working or not. Repairing them was expensive. London was full of cameras, but that didn’t help when they were out of action.

‘What’s the good news?’ Godley asked.

‘I’ve got three suspect vehicles coming out of the park just after the shooting, two using one gate in particular, one on its own. I’m going to need a bit more information about the car, if we can get it, to work out which is my favourite.’

‘What can you see on the footage?’ Derwent asked.

‘Not a great deal, unfortunately. The two cars were picked up by a camera on a house near the main gate. Right time of night, moving fast, looks to be a Ford Mondeo followed by a BMW coupe. The camera got the cars but not the occupants.’

‘Did they have their lights on?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Our witnesses said the lights on the suspect car were off.’

‘But that’s going to draw more attention to you on the road. Easiest way in the world to get stopped,’ Belcott said.

‘They also said it was one car that drove away from the area, not two,’ Derwent pointed out.