Fogarty: A City of London Thriller (24 page)

So, of itself the lack of success in the search rang no alarm bells, but when you add it to the other information.......” Coombes left the statement hanging.

DS Scott took up the reins. “Ben, there are many unanswered questions that we need to have answered. This is the most high-profile multiple murder case in London for a long time, and we are under pressure to solve it. We need to speak to Ashley as soon as we can. We invited her in for questioning on a voluntary basis, but she referred us to her lawyer.”

“What did he say?” Ben asked before he understood the reason behind DS Scott’s wicked grin. “She can’t do that. I mean
, I can handle some civil matters but I’m not a criminal lawyer. In any case, she never said a word to me.” Ben felt exposed and vulnerable.

“I understand. Can you persuade her to come in under her own steam? We don’t want to arrest her, we just want her cooperation. She can have a lawyer with her, of course.”

“Not me,” Ben replied a little too quickly. DS Scott looked at his boss.

“Look, Ben.” DCI Coombes softened as he spoke. “There are problems with your sister’s story, but that’s hardly surprising if you are to believe that she was drugged.”

“And you don’t, I take it,” Ben interjected.

“Are you asking as her lawyer, her brother or as the only other person in the house left alive?” DCI Coombes asked, still softly.

“Gentlemen, I am a little unsettled. I want to get to the bottom of this, but as time goes on the black and white becomes grey and I no longer enjoy the certainty I should be feeling about Ashley’s total honesty. She may be hiding something, protecting someone, but I simply don’t know my own twin sister well enough to push her for answers. Like most men, my resolve crumbles in the face of tears from someone I love. I’m not an impartial bystander here. I know there are inconsistencies in her story; the doors locked from inside, no food waste or dirty dishes, her blood tests showing almost no metabolisation of the drugs.” DS Scott and DCI Coombes looked at each other puzzled. “I know, I know. I have information you thought was restricted, but this is a major murder enquiry. The press are bound to be calling in their markers. One member of the fourth estate visited me at the weekend and told me all about the inconsistencies. The press are all over it. I haven’t slept all weekend.”

“Who called on you?” DCI Coombes asked, more in hope than in expectation. Ben just smiled and shook his head.

“OK, Ben. Someone here has been leaking information. Hell, I wish it was rare, but it just isn’t. Leaving this reporter aside, you can see why we need to speak to Ashley and why we won’t wait forever.”

Ben nodded. “I understand,” he conceded. “I’ll insist that she calls you. But you will also understand that
, if the crime scene report is correct, either Ashley or myself must be a cold blooded killer, and I’m not ready to accept that.”

The remainder of the meeting was tense and Ben felt as though there was something they were not telling him, but why would they hide anything? He was the brother of their main suspect.
“Damn! How did this happen?” Ben asked himself that question out loud as he walked towards the main exit.

***

“You know, Guv, I can’t help but feel sorry for him. He’s in a no win situation,” DS Scott mused as they watched Ben depart.

“If I can read men, Scotty, I’d say he was more on our side than hers.”

“On the side of the angels, then, Guv.”

“Angels with dirty wings, maybe,” Coombes replied. “Did you see the latest from forensics? It arrived by email just before we met up.”

Scott shook his head. Still staring at Ben’s back as he walked across the paved plaza, Coombes enlightened his DS. They found two partial palm prints on the bath, despite all the water that had been splashing about. They were exactly where you would expect them to be if someone had lowered themselves into the bath.”

“That isn’t helpful to Ashley’s case.”

“No. The reason they found them was that they showed up under the ultra violet disclosing light.”

“Prints don’t show up under disclosing lights, Guv,” DS Scott stated, puzzled.

“No, but minute specks of blood do. There were traces of Grierson’s blood in the prints,” DCI Coombes said, clearing up the mystery.

“Shit! She killed her own father, then,” Scott speculated.

“Her husband’s blood was mixed in there, too,” DCI Coombes announced to an open mouthed DS Scott.

Vastrick Security Offices, No. 1
, Poultry, London.

Monday 22
nd
August 2011; 11am.

Dee Hammond leaned back in her expensive office chair and supported her ‘bump’ by placing her hands underneath the baby. Ben suddenly became aware of just how large the bump was when the carefully tailored blouse was stretched across it. He felt a little guilty for having spent over an hour outlining the events of last week in the Rectory and the subsequent revelations uncovered by the DS Scott and DCI Coombes.

Dee had once been arrested by DCI Coombes on suspicion of murder, but since then they had worked together harmoniously and she had a good deal of respect for his ability and his integrity. So, whilst Ben felt a lot better at having unburdened himself, he also felt a degree of trepidation, aware that both he and Dee Hammond were thinking the same thing; DCI Coombes had good reason to believe Ashley was a murderer.

Dee moved her centre of gravity, and the chair smoothly moved into an upright position. The private investigator smiled at Ben and spoke, choosing her words carefully.

“Ben, Josh really likes you, and he’s a great judge of character, for a loss adjuster, but don’t tell him I sa
id that. In the brief time we’ve spent together, in the past and again today, I have to admit that I like you, too. You didn’t achieve your level of sporting success without a steely determination and a resilience that would be alien to most people. For this reason alone I’m going to be as frank as I can be.” Dee held Ben’s eyes with her own powerful stare.

“The odds are that Ashley is somehow involved with the murders. Maybe she allowed someone entry to the house, let them do their work and then locked the doors before proceeding upstairs to give herself an alibi. I don’t know. Neither of us knows her well enough to know whether she has the stomach for murder, especially in the very personal way these killings were carried out.

What we do know is that there is no other plausible explanation.” She paused before adding, “At least, not at the moment.”

“You met Pete
– Geordie, to his friends - the last time you were here. Well, Pete and a couple of other guys will look into the matter and see what we can find out. We need to be careful, though, because there’s a criminal investigation under way, and DS Scott and DCI Coombes will be all over me if they find me interfering. Do you think Max will speak to us?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask. He’s a reporter, and so if he thinks it will lead to a story I’m sure he will.”

“Good.”

***

Gavin Mapperley listened to the voice mail one more time. There was no room for error here. Punishing the innocent was a rock solid certain way of starting a mutiny. The voice on the other end of the line was familiar and clear, despite the other party probably using a cheap non contract phone.

“I repeat, a complaint was made to the Organised Crime hotline from the Flats yesterday afternoon. They referred to Operation Bilbao and said that a new crime gang was moving in. Luckily I intercepted the message this morning from the hapless civilian who mans the phones at the weekends. The woman gave the address of Den’s flat as your centre of operations. You need to get it sorted before someone else calls the Hotline and the Assistant Commissioner gets her knickers in a twist and organises another operation.”

The tape went on to give the five names of the ringleaders, some of whom were familiar, one of whom was more than familiar. Mapperley felt a knot forming in his stomach and it was tightening minute by minute. He dug into his coat pocket and found his pill-box. He washed his tablets down with sparkling water from the Jaguar’s minibar, making a note that Detective Chief Inspector Bob Radcliffe had earned himself a bonus. He leaned forward and spoke to his driver.

“OK, Ralph, lets get down to the flats and join the others. Let’s quell this little rebellion before it starts.”

***

It was just after two in the afternoon when Max’s phone vibrated. The caller was Ben Fogarty. Max was more than a little surprised. He had been convinced that Ben would never talk to him again.
The conversation was short but friendly. Ben asked whether Max had a free evening and whether he would be interested in meeting him for dinner, just as old friends. He made no mention of the case. Max had accepted, and then, at Ben’s request, he made a note of Vastrick’s number and promised to give them a call.

Max picked up his
iPhone to call Vastrick, and the phone vibrated in his hand. He pressed receive and took the call. He recognised the number. It was Mary Akuta’s mobile number.

“Hello, Mary? How are you today?” he asked chirpily. There was a silence.
“Mary?” he repeated, concern creeping into his voice. This time there was a reply, but it wasn’t Mary.

“Hello. This is Jennifer Salmon. I am the senior staff Nurse at St Thomas’s ICU. Do you know Mrs Akuta?”

Max felt a frisson of anxiety. “Yes, I do. Is she all right?” An answer seemed redundant, as she was obviously in the Intensive Care Unit.

“Are you a relative?”

“No, I am her legal representative.” Max knew the call would soon end if he announced himself as an investigative journalist.

“Oh, I guess that’s all right
, then. We can’t find any relatives, and she is seriously ill. We found your number on her phone. Could you come to the hospital immediately?”

“I’ll be there within the hour. Is she critical?”

“I’m afraid so. You need to be quick.”

“I will be. Was it a heart attack?” Max asked, knowing of Mary’s troublesome angina.

“No. She had been beaten half to death.” There was a quiver in the voice of the normally stoic nurse. Max ended the call and hailed a cab.

***

Max had been sitting in MacDonald’s at Kings Cross when Ben’s call had roused him. He wasn’t a fast food junkie but the hamburger giant had generously installed free WiFi in most of their restaurants. Nonetheless, Max still ate a double cheeseburger and fries as he surfed the net.

The call about Mary Akuta had shaken him, more so than he would have imagined. As the taxi crawled through the streets of North London, Max, a strong believer in journalistic introspection, tried to work out why he had felt such immense grief at hearing of Mary’s condition. He decided that it wasn’t shock, nor was it just that t
ragedy had struck close to home. He realised that he loved the old woman. Max had never really known either of his own grandmothers. They had died in his infancy, and the quirky old lady from the flats had charmed him with her smothering affection and had won his respect for her unshakable Christian morality. He now realised that over the years he had spent far more time with her than was strictly necessary for his job.

His mind turned to Saturday morning as the taxi picked up speed along Farringdon Road, heading in the direction of Blackfriars Bridge. Trying to keep an open mind, he found it hard to believe that Gavin Mapperley’s appearance at the flats with his goons in tow, just forty eight hours earlier, was unrelated to Mary’s beating. Mapperley was basically an enforcer for a criminal syndicate
, and so it would be no surprise to Max if it turned out that Mary had been beaten as a warning to others who were unhappy with the new regime at the flats.

The taxi driver spoke just as the black cab reached the bridge. “You OK, mate?” he asked. Max looked at his own reflection in the driver’s mirror and realised that he looked scary. His jaw was locked and his eyes were intense; he looked capable of extreme violence, especially with his Johnny Snake Eyes haircut. He forced himself to relax and he smiled at the cabbie.

“Yeah, I’m just a bit upset, that’s all. An old lady I care about is in critical condition at the Hospital. She might not make it.”

“You should have said, mate,” the taxi driver said, suddenly pulling out into the overtaking lane and accelerating so hard that Max was thrown back in his seat. “My Gran died last year and I got there too late. Wouldn’t want that to happen to you. Hold on tight.”

New Scotland Yard, London.

Monday 22
nd
August 2011; 12:30pm.

In the early 1960s policewomen were much undervalued in the Metropolitan Police. They were often assigned menial tasks, and were sometimes kept in the back office. Some of the more misogynistic constables would refer to their female counterparts as ‘Clippies’, a reference to bus conductresses who clipped tickets and whose uniforms were similar in appearance to those of WPCs.

Margaret Waddington, a sergeant in the Met, decided to do something about the lack of respect that WPCs faced. Dame Margaret Waddington of Barnes, as she was now titled, established the Metropolitan Policewoman’s Guild in 1963 and it had
spread like wildfire. At first the ranks laughed at the organisation and their ‘third Monday lunches’ but soon the leadership at the Met were being asked questions about equality of opportunity by the Home Office, and within weeks the lack of opportunity for women in the Met was being discussed in the cabinet meetings chaired by the Prime Minister of the day, Alec Douglas- Home.