The Kill (13 page)

‘They could have met up by the gate. One car for the shooter, one for the girl. And Pete’s right.’ I hated to admit it, but it was true. ‘They wouldn’t have wanted to get stopped. Even if they had a quick clean-up they’d have been covered in blood or mud. We should look for a car driving carefully. Slowly, even.’

‘Well, that fits in with the other car I’ve got on camera,’ Colin Vale said. ‘The only problem is that I can only see one wheel and a bit of the front bumper. The footage is black and white. It’s off a petrol station forecourt so the camera wasn’t pointing at the road and it’s just in one corner of the screen. Gives us something to work on – we’ve identified makes and models from less. But it’s not as easy as checking a licence plate this time.’

‘We’ve got two witnesses.’ Godley flipped through the notes, distracted. ‘Josh, did you get a description of the car from either of them?’

‘Yep. For what it’s worth.’

‘Not sure about it?’ Godley rubbed a hand over his forehead. ‘Great.’

‘We just thought that one of the witnesses could have been overstating what he’d seen,’ Derwent said. ‘Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.’

‘I think he saw
something
.’ I was struggling to be fair. ‘I just think he wanted to tell us what we wanted to hear.’

‘He was trying to tell us things that made him look good. Attention-seeking little prick.’

‘Hugh Johnson.’ Colin was reading over Derwent’s shoulder. ‘As in
Animal Neighbourhood
?’

‘One and the same.’

‘Wow. I love that programme.’

Derwent laughed. ‘I hate to break it to you, but Hugh Johnson is an arse.’

‘You think everyone is an arse.’ Colin looked at me. ‘What’s he really like?’

‘An arse,’ I confirmed. ‘Sorry, Colin. But I think it was still worth talking to him. The first witness didn’t see a lot. He had picked up a lot more detail.’

‘Whether that’s accurate or not is another question,’ Derwent said.

‘There’s no such thing as a reliable eye-witness,’ Godley said. ‘Maeve, how do the two accounts compare?’

‘Megan O’Kane and Hugh Johnson were on the hillside to the left of the crime scene, too far away to be able to see it directly. Megan told us she saw a car with its lights off, shortly after the shooting. So did Hugh. Megan couldn’t be specific about the colour. Hugh thought it was dark grey. Megan said it had a noisy engine. Hugh thought it was a diesel, possibly Japanese, but couldn’t give us an exact make. He thought it was an old Toyota. It was boxy, apparently. Megan couldn’t see the driver or any passengers because it was so dark. Hugh said there was someone in the back seat. He said the driver was quite short and could have been a female.’

‘How did he see all this when she didn’t?’

‘Superior eyesight,’ Derwent said. ‘According to him.’

‘He’s used to spending hours in the dark,’ I explained. ‘He can spot things that ordinary people might miss.’

‘Even though Megan said he had his head buried in the grass when the car went by, in case they shot him.’ Derwent rocked back on his chair at a dangerous angle, his hands in his pockets, unconsciously emphasising the difference between himself and Hugh. Risk-taking for no apparent reason came easily to Derwent. Hugh was cautious to the point of immobility.

‘It’s a place to start,’ Godley said. ‘Colin, see if any of that helps you narrow down our suspect cars. What else did you find out, Josh?’

‘I got a report on the ballistics. Still waiting for it to come through on email but I’ll send it round when it comes.’ Derwent gave the others the same lecture on illegal firearms and gun clubs that I’d had in Richmond Park.

‘Right,’ Godley said when he’d finished. ‘Josh, you seem to be the best person to concentrate on the weapon. We need to make a list of gun clubs in the greater London area and the home counties.’

‘Done.’ I slid it out of the back of my notebook. ‘We can expand the search if we don’t turn up anything useful.’

‘Throw in a request for information on firearms at the next press conference, boss,’ Derwent said.

‘I was going to.’ Godley leaned back in his chair. ‘What else? Pete?’

‘I’ve put in a request for Hammond’s personnel file but obviously it’s going to take a while to get it. Before Isleworth he worked in south-west London and he started off in Bethnal Green as a probationer. I’m trying to get hold of people who knew him way back when.’ He looked around at all of us. ‘It’s hard, on a Sunday. I keep hitting dead ends.’

‘You should make more progress tomorrow.’ Godley rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

‘So what do we think? Was this personal?’ Derwent asked. ‘Or was it because he was a copper?’

When Godley replied, his voice had that edge to it I’d heard before. ‘It’s far too early to say. We don’t know anything about Hammond yet.’

‘We need to talk to the family again,’ I said. ‘Find out what Hammond was like behind closed doors, if we can.’

‘You handle that, Maeve. The wife is going to be tricky. Try to talk to the daughter without her.’

‘I’ll find out when she’s going back to school. I bet it’s sooner rather than later. Somehow I don’t think Mrs Hammond is going to want to keep her nearest and dearest at home at this difficult time.’

‘You got that impression too, Maeve?’ To the rest of the table, Godley explained, ‘Not a great mother–daughter relationship.’

‘That doesn’t mean she won’t keep us away from Vanessa. Especially if the family has something to hide.’

‘All families have something to hide.’ Godley’s face was sombre.

‘Any surprises at the PM?’ Derwent asked.

‘No. Not about Hammond, anyway. He was fit and healthy until he was shot, and the injuries he sustained are consistent with the kind of ammunition you were talking about, Josh. Nothing we weren’t expecting. But I’ve got some bad news. It’s not really my news, but I have permission to share it with you.’ Godley took a moment before he went on. ‘I talked to Glenn Hanshaw at the PM. He’s been diagnosed with cancer. They don’t know where it started but he has secondary tumours on his spine and in his brain.’

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Pettifer said.

‘It isn’t. Six months.’

There was a murmur around the table. Hanshaw wasn’t the most popular person we worked with, or the easiest to get to know, but he was a brilliant pathologist. And what would it be like, I wondered, to work with death every day and know that your own time was coming? Maybe for Hanshaw there was no mystery to it, so there would be less fear. Or maybe it was worse that he knew what was in store for him.

‘Is he going to keep working?’

‘For the moment.’

‘I’d jack it in straightaway,’ Pettifer said. ‘Sorry, boss, but if I’ve got six months left I’m going to spend the time living, not working.’

‘That is life for Glenn. It’s what he loves. When he can’t do the job effectively any more, he’ll stop, but until then it’s business as usual.’ Godley’s jaw was tight and I remembered that he and the pathologist were friends. Maybe this was why Godley was in such a rank mood. Maybe it had nothing to do with the text message I’d seen.

‘Does he know we know?’ Derwent asked.

‘Yes. He wanted you to understand what was going on but he doesn’t want to talk about it. Please, don’t commiserate with him. Treat him as you would usually.’

Which, as Godley knew, was far from easy. We all nodded, however, and Godley pushed his chair back.

‘If that’s everything, then, go home. Get some rest. Tomorrow is another day.’

‘But you’re not going home.’ Derwent was watching Godley closely.

‘I’ve got to organise the search teams for the area near the park and record another interview for the evening news. Bits and pieces. I won’t be long.’

There was a general upheaval as everyone else stood up and made for the door. I shuffled my notes together and followed more slowly. I knew better than to assume I’d be going home just because Godley had told us we were finished for the night. Derwent would find some reason to keep me at work if I looked as if I was keen to leave.

He himself seemed to be in no hurry. He was still watching Godley. ‘I’ll wait for you.’

‘There’s no need,’ Godley said shortly.

‘It’s no trouble.’

‘Josh, you don’t need to stay. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘I just thought we could go for a pint.’ Derwent was standing with his hands in his pockets, affecting to be relaxed, but I could tell he was tense. He’d have denied it to his dying breath but Derwent wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be. For the very small number of people he cared about, Derwent would give his all. It made him vulnerable, and every now and then that vulnerability showed.

‘I’m too busy.’ Godley took out his phone and stared at it again.

Derwent looked at me and tilted his head towards the door.
Get going
. I went, before he could change his mind. I knew he would persevere with Godley, and I knew Godley would keep saying no. I didn’t want to hang around to deal with a disappointed Derwent. The fallout would be dreadful.

As I walked away from the office towards the Underground, I worried about Derwent. He worshipped Godley with a blind, unswerving loyalty, a loyalty Godley had earned when they worked together years before. I’d felt the same way, once upon a time. I hoped Derwent would never find out the truth. And if he did find out, I just hoped it wouldn’t be through me, because I’d be lucky if shooting the messenger was all he did.

Chapter 9

I was right about Julie Hammond not wanting to keep her daughter close to hand. It was only two days before Vanessa Hammond was sent back to her expensive private school, Uplands – two days Derwent and I filled with following up dead-end leads produced by Godley’s appeals for information. The nutcases were out in force, and not just on the other end of the telephone or by email. Because Hammond had been a police officer, the newspapers were full of speculation about who had killed him, and why. Godley had been careful to keep a lot of the details out of the press – there was no suggestion yet that he had been with anyone when he died. Lack of information didn’t prevent conspiracy theories from blossoming. Endless, moralising editorials suggested that the Metropolitan Police was unpopular because of institutional arrogance, racism and being out of touch with the communities it was supposed to serve. The blame was placed squarely at our door. It was almost as if Hammond was a legitimate target.

‘I’d like to see how they’d manage if we weren’t doing our job.’ Derwent folded one of the more sanctimonious broadsheets and dumped it in the back seat of the car. We were sitting outside Vanessa Hammond’s school, waiting for our scheduled time to interview her. ‘I’d like to see them deal with the shitbags who’d come out if we weren’t keeping them under control.’

‘Levon Cole wasn’t a shitbag,’ I pointed out, retrieving the newspaper and spreading it out so his photograph wasn’t creased. ‘People are angry about what happened to him, and rightly so.’

‘Yeah, he should never have been shot and the armed officers should never have tried to cover it up, but the fact he was a good boy is irrelevant. We don’t execute people, no matter what they’ve done. Not our job.’

The photograph of the teenager took up a quarter of the page reporting on Hammond’s death, far more space than Hammond himself had been allotted. Levon had been beautiful – high-cheekboned and doe-eyed, with dark skin and hair cut close to a finely shaped head. At sixteen he’d been growing into his features still, which gave him a fragility that was poignant once you knew what had happened to him. He looked like a rapper or a young actor, not a victim of mistaken identity. He’d bled to death in a grim stairwell, shot by police officers who’d tried to make it look as if it had been his own fault, not theirs. I wasn’t one to think we were in the right, automatically, no matter what – it had been a mistake, and a bad one. The more right-wing media had gone to elaborate lengths to prove that he’d been a gangster, trouble personified, and had come up with nothing substantive. The truth was that his death had been a tragedy, pure and simple, and a stain on the Met’s history.

‘If I was Levon Cole’s mother I’d be livid that his death was being brought up in connection with this killing. It’s not relevant and everyone knows it. They’re just using him to create a controversy.’

‘If I was Levon Cole’s mother I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning. Mind you, I have a lot of time for her,’ Derwent said.

It wasn’t all that often that Derwent succeeded in surprising me. ‘Why’s that?’

‘She’s got dignity. She could be calling for people’s heads. She’s just asking for an independent enquiry. She wants to know the truth.’ Derwent shrugged. ‘I respect that.’

‘I understand why she wants an enquiry but nothing’s going to bring him back. And his death is subject to an IPCC investigation anyway. There’s no need for a separate enquiry.’

‘She doesn’t believe that.’

‘The clue is in the name, though. Independent Police Complaints Commission. If there’s a criminal case to answer it’ll go to the CPS and they’ll prosecute the hell out of the officers. You know that. No one is going to want to look as if they’re not taking this seriously.’

Derwent shook his head. ‘You’re bringing logic to bear on this. That’s not what Claudine Cole is looking for. This is about feeling someone is listening to you when you don’t otherwise have a voice.’

‘It’s not like you to out-empathise me.’

‘I’ve picked up the pieces a couple of times. Not in the police. In the army.’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to adjust my opinion of Derwent to incorporate a new, compassionate side to his character. ‘What happened?’

‘Never you mind,’ Derwent said. It was the usual thing: he hinted at his past but never actually told me the details. I thought it was a power trip, and I also thought it was annoying. ‘The main thing to focus on is that widows and mothers love me. These shoulders? Made for crying on.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind.’ It made so much more sense for Derwent to use other people’s grief to feed his ego, I didn’t know why I was disappointed.

‘Invitation only, Kerrigan. Don’t go getting any ideas.’