The Perfect Crime (23 page)

FIFTY FIVE

Having found his underground bunker, with all its inbuilt strengths and advantages, the Panther was confident enough to dispense with his all too complicated idea of the ransom being thrown from the train. As a matter of principle, he knew that the more complex a plan, the more opportunities existed for it to go wrong. He had reckoned that a couple of attempts at making contact by telephone to the Swan shopping centre kiosks would be sufficient and considered the delivery and (more to the point) his collection of the ransom from his underground hideaway was reasonably fool proof. Being the organised character he was, however, he did have another, simpler Plan B.

He went to Lesley and gave her food and water and left her with a half bottle of brandy – for medicinal purposes – should she feel in need whilst he was away. He also took with him his cassette recorder and a tape and a card carrying a message in block capitals thereon. He instructed the girl to read out loud, what was on the card.

He said, “When they hear this, they will pay up quick. Won’t be long now.”

Awake and on the go for a considerable period, he drove back to Bradford and slept for a many, long delicious hours. When he woke up, he climbed up to his campaign room, entered via a securely locked door in the loft space of his house and retrieved more tapes for his Dymo machine.

Back in Dudley, he left his transport in a car park opposite the Midland Red bus garage and walked up on the road leading to the Freightliner Depot. Here he started laying a trail of Dymo printed tapes for the Whittles – or their stooges – to follow to the drop off point for the ransom money.

Around ten thirty that moonless, damp and murky night, he had completed his task and intended to slip out of the depot grounds unseen, when a tall balding man wearing freightliner uniform walked by. This was extraordinarily inconvenient. He was far too close to both the ransom trail and its end point. Slipping behind one of the parked up lorries, he hoped the man had not seen him, or if he had been seen, would not bother with him any further. He was to be disappointed. Footfalls approached.

“What are you doing here?” The man asked.

The Panther put on one of his disguised voices, but had been caught off balance. He felt peculiarly naked, exposed, with no balaclava or other gear to help him merge into the background, his friend the darkness. He was off home ground and not in control of the situation. His usual composure rapidly evaporated. This was totally off the wall. He did his best. Many times afterwards, he thought,
Why
didn’t
I
just
tell
him
I
was
looking
for
somewhere
to
take
a
leak
?

“Giz a lift mate.”

“A lift? Where?”

The Panther’s brain started to spin. He gestured randomly. “Jackson’s warehouse, mate.”

The man frowned, “What do you want to go there for?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

What was he to do? He was not kitted out as he usually would be. He had nothing to tie the man up with, even if he could subdue him sufficiently and for long enough. The heavy transports he had seen in the depot were all obviously locked, so nowhere to incarcerate him while he made his getaway.

As he spoke, the Panther was fumbling discreetly for the .22 in his pocket. A vague plan was forming in his mind. It was chancy, but if he could get this nosey, interfering menace back to his lair in Bathpool Park, he could tie him up and keep him down the shaft long enough to collect his money and get away. He would think about and deal with the problems with being identified later. Matters were taken out of his hands, however, long before it could get that far. The man turned on his heel and started to walk away from him. That could mean only one thing.

Police.

The Panther called, “Come back here.”

The man kept walking.

The pistol was in his hand, now.

He shouted, “I said, come back.”

No response.

Crack.

The man turned angrily, holding his backside. “You idiot,” He yelled, “What are you playing at?” He closed with him and swung a haymaker in the Panther’s direction, but the younger man was agile and adept at unarmed combat. The freightliner employee turned to run. Desperately, the Panther fired another four shots, but his aim was poor as he was also running now. The man suddenly stopped and faced him. He was a mere six feet away. He would have to finish it. Now. Then no more worries. He raised his pistol at point blank range.

Took careful aim.

Click.

He’d run out of ammunition.

Gerald Smith, the forty four year-old freightliner overseer, dragged himself back to the terminal and staggered in to his office.

“Get the police.” He gasped. “A bloke out there shot me. He emptied the gun into me from point blank range.”

The only visible wound was on his left wrist. Neither he nor any of his staff realised how extensive the damage was to the rest of his body. The depot night shift foreman eased him into his car and took him to Dudley Guest Hospital, five minute drive away on Tipton Road. He was examined in the accident and emergency department, where they found a total of seven bullet wounds. In addition to the holes in his left shoulder, he had a wound in his left buttock, the right side of his stomach and two in the small of his back. Only when he was sent for X-ray did the full scale of his injuries then start to become apparent. As his condition began to deteriorate, the doctors established that one badly damaged kidney would have to be removed. His liver was damaged and the bullet through his stomach had pierced his bowel. This in itself would necessitate a major operation. With his strength ebbing fast, the doctors decided that immediate surgery was imperative to save his life.

They did their best, but it was to be only a reprieve, not a recovery. Within a matter of months, Gerald Smith would be dead.

He was in no condition to give a detailed statement, but detectives were allowed to talk to him as he waited in casualty. The description he gave was circulated to all patrols.

As the message was being broadcast, PC Mark Wakelam was driving along Tipton Road, a short distance from where the overseer lay awaiting his operation. Twenty year old Wakelam was one of the unarmed reinforcements heading for the rendezvous point at the Freightliner depot. As he was passing the hospital, his headlights illuminated the figure of a small man, walking quickly, dressed in a flat cap, wearing a knee length raincoat and carrying a rucksack.

“Christ, that’s him.” He gasped. He braked to a halt and sprinted back to where he had seen the man, but his quarry had disappeared in the direction of the hospital grounds, either by climbing over a wall, or through the gate into the nearby nurses home. A search of the area revealed nothing. It was as if he had dematerialised in the mist.

The divisional commander, Chief Superintendent Cliff Taylor convened an emergency conference with his head of CID, Detective Superintendent Arthur Strange and other senior officers. The most baffling feature of the whole incident was a complete apparent lack of motive for what had transpired. And the would be killer seemed to be a trigger happy tramp. But how many tramps carried a gun and what possible reason would anyone have to gun down Gerald Smith? After all, he was walking away when the shooting started.

The following morning, at first light, a fingertip search of the Freightliner compound was started and officers quickly unearthed three live and six spent rounds of .22 ammunition. Detective Superintendent Strange ordered that they should be rushed to the forensic science laboratory in Nottingham for immediate examination.

Within minutes, a traffic patrol car, blues and twos full on, piloted by a class one advanced driver powered out of the station yard, en route for Nottingham.

FIFTY SIX

Groat met up with Ted on Ilford Lane, near the end of Hickling Road. On the other side of the road from where they’d parked – quite illegally – a bakers shop was wafting the most delicious aromas into the atmosphere. Fresh bread, cakes, pastries, doughnuts.

“Fancy a fresh jam doughnut?” Ted sighed wistfully.

Groat preferred savouries to sweet things, but memories of cell block food and the lack of Gloria’s home cooking over the last few days, suddenly overtook him. “Oh, what the hell.”

When they got back to the cars, as if from nowhere, a traffic warden had appeared and was officiously writing on her pad.

“Want a doughnut, darling?” Groat enquired.

“Are you trying to bribe an officer of the law?” She said.

Ted had been with his colleague in similar circumstances before. He jabbed Groat in the back with his index finger, “Oi, come on.”

Groat ignored him, concentrating on the traffic warden. He did his best to appear hurt, feelings deeply injured. “I only asked you if you wanted a doughnut.” He sidled up to her and executed a fair impression of Leslie Phillips. “Well,
ding
dong
,” he said, “What’s a gorgeous girl like you doing in a hole like this?”

Ted looked on in disbelief, willing the woman to get on with it, tell him to get stuffed; watched her melt in spite of herself, dreading the denouement to follow. Wished he was anywhere but Ilford Lane, in broad daylight, unable to escape the inevitable humiliation of the traffic warden, who, in his opinion was only doing her job. He was embarrassed, because he was aware of what was going on and knew he should stop it. He also knew with equal certainty that he would not.

Groat continued, “What would it take for you to forget about the parking ticket. If not a doughnut, what then?” He leered at her, segued seamlessly from Leslie Phillips to Sid James, “Could I slip you something?”

The warden gazed up into Groat’s eyes, putty in his hands. Groat took his wallet out of his inside pocket.

“How about a crisp fiver?” He said, voice soft, cajoling.

The traffic warden smiled.

Ted cringed.

Groat hovered, an inch from her ear and said, “Or how about this?” and shoved his warrant card in front of her nose.

As they walked away, having parked their cars more respectably, Ted said, “You really are a turd, you know. I do wish you wouldn’t do that. Especially while I’m around.”

“Oh come on, lighten up. It’s only a bit of fun. Anyway,” he made a creditable stab at a Pete and Dud accent, “I’ve not been well. I’ve been under a lot of strain lately.”

Ted said, “So that would be the red salmon, then, would it?”

Fortunately, at that moment they reached number forty two, Hickling Road.

“Come on.” Groat said walking into the small front garden. A tall, straggling, ill tended privet hedge reached out to touch them, across the short path to the front door. He peered through the bay window, but the combination of cobwebs, dirt encrusted glass and heavy net curtains prevented any useful reconnoitre.

“What are you going to do?” Ted looked worried, concerned about the flighty mood his friend seemed to be experiencing at present. “We haven’t got a warrant, or anything.”

“You’ve heard of the Metropolitan Police Ways and Means Act?”

Ted’s expression intensified. “We can’t just…”

Groat carried on as if he had not been interrupted, “It’s a bit like the Lincolnshire Barbed Wire Act, only a bit smoother, more urban.” He switched his attention to the knocker.

Ted said, “No, don’t…”

Groat rapped on the woodwork, turned to his colleague and gave him a smug smile, “Why make everything so difficult, my boy?” He knocked again. A young man with dark tousled hair, answered the door. He was wearing a pair of creased Crimplene trousers and a grubby singlet, covering an already incipient corporation. The sound of a television boomed down from upstairs, a male voice commentating; a frenzied crowd cheering.

Groat said, “Mr Boulders?”

A quizzical look. “No. That’s the bloke that lives downstairs. We live upstairs.”

“And you are?”

“Alan…”

“Well, ‘Alan’, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Groat, this is D/S Pearson. We need to speak to Mr Boulders. I take it by the fact that you answered the door, that he’s not in. Mind if we have a look around?” Not waiting for a reply, Groat pushed past him into the hallway, followed by a troubled looking D/S Pearson.

“He keeps it locked up.” Alan said.

Groat rounded on him. “Oh? And how would we know that? Tried the doors, have we?”

The lad looked sheepish. That was enough for Groat.

“Well, Alan, I suggest that you go back upstairs and watch the gee gees, or whatever it was you were doing, and let the CID do their job. All right?”

The lad shrugged and padded off, back upstairs to his television.

Groat put his shoulder to the front sitting room door and turned the handle. It opened easily.

Ted followed him in, said quietly, “We shouldn’t be in here… doing this…”

Groat was busy searching. Without turning, or pausing, he said, “The small, sweet voice of reason. My conscience. If this is Bonehead’s lair, bearing in mind what he’s done to me – tried to do to me… You can wait outside if you want.”

Ted sighed and pitched in. Groat found a stack of holiday home brochures in a cupboard, together with a few girlie magazines and Ted unearthed a ten bob note stuffed down the side of an armchair and a can of lager, but nothing of any real interest in the front room. They went through into the rear room which had been pressed into use as a bedroom.

Groat said, “That lad said Mr Boulders keeps his doors locked. Note; these doors are not locked. There are bits and pieces lying around, but nothing of value, certainly nothing personal. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“What, like he’s done a bunk and isn’t coming back?”

“Something like that – but why? He’s got a perfectly good little set up here, why just up and leave it?” He paused, looked at his watch. “What time have we got to see Mr Van Lesseps?”

“Half four.”

“OK, we better met a groove on then. I’ll search in here, you do the kitchen.”

Ted saw that the narrow kitchen was equipped with a bath, a hinged working surface over it and shelves above. There was a cooker and a sink; a small folding table lay flat against the opposite wall. He heard Groat hail from the other room. He went through to him. “Remember the what?”

“The Groat principles of searching.”

Ted sighed. “And what are the words of wisdom to the undeserving on this occasion, oh mighty one?”

“Because most people are short arses, they think that putting something up high is hiding it.”

“Right.”

And he was. A couple of minutes later, Groat heard Ted call. His tone was sufficient to make him hurry. “What is it?” He asked.

Ted had assembled a small collection of items on the working surface. A single burner Camping Gaz stove, a blow torch, plasticine, plaster of Paris and various other paraphernalia; a small tin and a handkerchief with the initials L.E.G. in one corner.

“Give us your keys.”

Groat felt in his pocket and did as he was told.

“There.” Ted said, a note of triumph in his voice.

He fitted Groat’s back door key snugly into the depression in the plasticine filled tin.

“Got you, you bastard.” Groat said with no small satisfaction.