Chelsea Mansions Part 13

Danny was eyeing him with a gla.s.sy, unfocused look and Brock felt his heart sink. This was absurd, a wild stab in the dark, and Danny knew it. But he had to press on.

'We can't prove it, not yet, but we know it's true. So we are going to make Barbaros's life h.e.l.l until we do. We are going to rip his house apart and his car and that TV repair shop he owns, and his mother's house and your mother's house and everything they own until we find what we're looking for. So make it easy for us. Tell us where to look.'

He sat back and waited. He sensed Bren beside him shift in his seat, probably thinking the old man had lost it. He was right, it had been a truly terrible impersonation of a cheap cop show interrogation, and when Danny told his brief there'd be trouble. Brock felt ashamed.

Danny lifted his head and stared at Brock, who thought he saw a flicker of panic in his eyes. 'It was nothing to do with Barbaros,' he said finally. 'I swear. He was a Scotchman.'

'The man on the phone or on the bike?' Brock said calmly.

Danny bowed his head. 'The guy I picked up on Sloane Street.'

'A Scotsman, you say?'

'Yeah. Well hard. Listen, it was nothing to do with Barbaros. You've got that totally wrong, I swear.'

'We'll see,' Brock said. 'So where did he go when you dropped him at Camden Town?'

'I dunno. Back to Scotland for all I know.'

'You think he came from there?'

'Well, he came from somewhere. That's what the bloke on the phone said.'

'And you're sure the one on the phone wasn't the same man?'

'Oh yeah. The one on the phone sounded like a Londoner.' He paused and slumped lower in his seat. 'The one on the bike had flash shoes, Nike Air Jordans, blue with orange trim. Listen, I feel sick . . .' And then he turned his head and threw up on the floor.

They called the duty sergeant to look after Danny. 'We'll leave it for now,' Brock said. 'Tell his lawyer he doesn't need to bother.'

On the way out Brock phoned Kathy, pa.s.sing on the information about the shoes and the Scottish accent. 'It's possible he got the Northern Line from Camden Town to Euston, to catch a train back up north.'

When they got into the car Bren said, 'Smart work, Chief.'

'It may be nothing. Anyway, I didn't deserve it.'

Bren laughed, but didn't disagree.

'Scotland?' Zack shook his head. 'Is he having us on?'

'Apparently not,' Kathy said, although the same thought had occurred to her. She began contacting the teams with the new information, moving some to Euston, Kings Cross and St Pancras rail stations to check CCTV records. But it was Zack who first spotted the shoes, coming out of Camden Town tube station a few minutes after the killer had gone in, but this time on the feet of a man wearing a pale cream jacket and a cap.

'Got him,' Zack said. 'He must have put on the jacket and cap inside the station, and now he's heading north up Camden Road.'

They picked him up again going into Camden Road rail station on the London Overground network, a couple of hundred yards away, buying a ticket and catching a train heading east.

Again Kathy called up the teams to check the stations along the North London Line-Caledonian Road and Barnsbury, Highbury and Islington, Canonbury, Dalston Kingsland, and then Hackney Central, where they retrieved images of him leaving the station and disappearing into the streets leading south.

Meanwhile the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency had got back to them with an identification of the man at the flower show. His name was Harold Michael Peebles, thirty-six years old, known as Hard Harry Peebles, and his last known address was HM Prison Barlinnie, Glasgow, from which he had recently been released after completing a six-year sentence for manslaughter. A check confirmed that Peebles had been a pa.s.senger on a British Midland Airways flight from Glasgow to London on the morning of Wednesday 26 May. There was no record of him taking a return flight.

Everyone converged on the Hackney police station, where the CCTV coordinator began the search through local sources for the afternoon of 27 May. After an hour they had found one brief sighting on a bank security camera of the man in the blue and orange shoes, then nothing more. They moved their search to the following day, the mood of frustration growing among those who waited. Bren and the borough detectives were impatient to get out and canva.s.s shops, pubs and betting shops with pictures of the wanted man, but Brock held them back, not wanting to spook him if he was still in the area. The trawl through camera footage continued through the twenty-eighth, the twenty-ninth, but in the end it was Glasgow that provided the answer. The office at Barlinnie Prison had run the word 'Hackney' through their computer and come up with a next-of-kin address for one of the inmates in C Hall, where Harry Peebles had been housed. The address was for the man's sister, a Mrs Angela Storey of 13 Ferncroft Close, Hackney. A check soon established that Mrs Storey was divorced, childless and currently serving time in nearby Holloway Prison.

A helicopter from the Air Support Unit at Lippitts Hill was called in, giving them aerial surveillance. Ferncroft Close was a quiet residential cul-de-sac of just twenty houses in two terraces facing each other across a roadway jammed with parked cars. One end was blocked by a railway embankment and there was a rear access laneway running behind the back gardens of the terrace in which number thirteen was located. Brock called for an armed response unit and made his plans.

After his experience at Danny Yilmaz's flat, Brock didn't go in with the team, but instead watched from Queen Anne's Gate, through the helicopter's camera, the unmarked car and two white vans arriving at Ferncroft Close. There was a sense of unreality in seeing it unfold like this, like a computer game, with sound effects, a sudden burst of dogs barking coming through the headphones. Brock remembered other such raids in years gone by, when communications meant a shout and a dodgy radio.

There was nothing unreal about the raid as far as Kathy was concerned, sitting squashed up in the white van with a gang of uniforms. One of them was the operator for a device new to the Met, the Black Hornet, currently on operational field trials from its Norwegian manufacturer. Looking over the operator's shoulder, Kathy watched him open the small aluminium case that he was carrying and take out one of three tiny black helicopters, as small as a child's toy. They opened the rear doors of the van and the man released the device, which rose with a soft purr into the air. He settled back down with a control panel and screen, guiding the Hornet down the street to hover silently outside the windows of number thirteen, sending pictures back to the van. A neat toy, Kathy thought, but nothing could shield you from the reality of a forcible arrest, the shock of violent contact, the spontaneous decision that could take a life or ruin a career in a millisecond.

'No signs of movement on this side of the house,' the Hornet operator intoned. He guided the machine over the roof and down to check the windows at the back. 'Doesn't look as if anybody's at home . . . hang on. Upstairs room, far side. Curtains are closed and it looks as if . . .' He fiddled with the helicopter controls, moving it closer. 'Yes, a light is on inside.'

A stir went through the van, people easing in their seats, adjusting their equipment.

The Hornet operator looked at Kathy. 'Boss?'

Kathy spoke into the radio to Bren in the other van, which was at the entrance to the rear lane. 'Right,' she said finally. 'First crew straight up the stairs to that bedroom, second clear the ground floor. The others are coming in the back. Let's go.'

The van lurched forward down Ferncroft Close and came to a stop outside number thirteen. Now the rear doors were thrown open and they were racing out, smashing open the front door, charging inside with shouts of 'Police! Don't move!' Kathy pounded up the stairs, following the lead pair with their helmets and guns, and sucked in a deep breath as she watched the first man kick the bedroom door open, then come to an abrupt stop, staring inside.

'What?' She ran forward, and the smell hit her before anything else, a gust of hot, fetid air billowing out onto the landing. She pushed past the man and saw a figure stretched out on a narrow bed. A grotesque effigy of a man, bloated, cloudy eyes open and unseeing, skin green and mottled like a rotten marrow.

'Is that him?' Bren was by her side. Then he gagged and reached for a handkerchief to cover his nose.

Kathy called back over her shoulder, 'No signs of life. Everybody out.' She took in the rest of the room, an electric fire blazing away with both bars, a syringe and strap lying on a fluffy pink rug beside the bed, the headboard of the bed decorated with decals of fluffy teddy bears and rabbits.

She got on the phone to Brock. 'He's been dead a while. Several days. Hardly looks like him, but there's that scar down his left cheek.'

'I'm on my way.'

FOURTEEN.

That evening Kathy arrived back at Queen Anne's Gate before the others and went to find Pip Gallagher. The young detective constable was at her desk, surrounded by photocopies and file notes.

'Sounds like I missed out on some excitement,' Pip said. 'We really got a result?'

'Looks promising. The man on the motorbike, dead in his safe house, OD'd by the look of it.'

'Celebrating after a job well done, was he? Serves the b.a.s.t.a.r.d right.'

'Got anything for me?'

'Yeah, boss.' She shuffled papers together. 'Grab a chair.'

Kathy sat at her side and began to examine the pages Pip handed to her.

'Mikhail has written to the papers before, once to The Times, several times to the Surrey Advertiser and before that the Esher News and Mail, which has now closed down. There may have been others I haven't found.'

'Funny place to write about the threat from the Russian government.'

'Except that wasn't what he was writing about.' Pip consulted her notes. 'He was writing in support of the activities of various bodies-mainly the BHPS.'

Kathy frowned, trying to think if she'd heard of it. 'What's that, neo-n.a.z.is?'

Pip laughed. 'Not quite. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society.'

'You're having me on.'

'Straight up. Mikhail thought they were doing a wonderful job. Also the CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and the PTES, the People's Trust for Endangered Species. He was a member of all three, apparently, and a generous donor.'

'Esher is where his daughter lives.'

'Yes. I spoke to the secretary of the local branch of HogWatch. They plot hedgehog sightings reported in by volunteers. Apparently Mikhail was a keen hedgehog spotter whenever he went down to visit his daughter.'

Kathy was astonished. 'You think you have an idea of someone, and then you come across something like this and realise you were thinking in stereotypes. The hedgehog oligarch. Nothing political? You're sure?'

'I've contacted all the national papers and the main London locals. Here are facsimile copies of the letters he sent.' She handed Kathy a file. 'I've also followed up on forensic linguists, like you said. Central registry has the names of two approved specialists, but one's in j.a.pan for the next month and the other's in hospital having quintuple bypa.s.s heart surgery. So I gave them your Canadian's name and asked them to look into him. Was that okay?'

'Yes, fine.'

'They checked him out and said we can use him if the other two aren't available. I've got the paperwork here that he'd have to sign.' Another file.

'You've done well, Pip, thanks.'

'I'd rather have been breaking that b.a.s.t.a.r.d's door down, boss.'

'Next time.'

Brock returned from Hackney, exhausted but quietly satisfied, and told the team to get themselves cleaned up, grab mugs of tea and a.s.semble for a debriefing. Dot was waiting for him with a message from Commander Sharpe, who wanted to come over as soon as Brock got back.

Ten minutes later he was sitting in Brock's office.

'Brilliant,' he beamed. 'To be perfectly honest, Brock, I had severe doubts about that Scottish angle you were chasing. I should have known that you always have something up your sleeve. I still don't quite see what this has to do with Nancy Haynes' relatives though . . .'

'It turned out to be a bit more complicated than we first thought,' Brock improvised. 'There's still a lot of work to be done to tie Peebles to whoever commissioned the murders.'

'Yes, but the important thing is that we have a result.' Sharpe paused, looking at Brock more closely. 'You look all in, old chap.'

'I've had a bit of a bug, sir.'

'Well, I think a simple press release. No need for interviews until you have some more answers.'

'Yes, I agree.'

Sharpe got to his feet. 'I'd like to congratulate everyone personally.'

'Of course.' Brock led the way to the big room where they were all gathered and Sharpe said his piece, shook hands with Brock and left.

There was a buzz of satisfaction in the room, a sense of shared achievement, and Brock had to remind them that this was a good beginning, but only a beginning. Now they had to discover where Harry Peebles would lead them.

'Bren,' he said, 'tell us what we have from the house.'

'Right.' Bren got to his feet and stood in front of the board on which Peebles' picture was posted. Alongside he stuck felt-pen sketch plans of the layout of the two floors of the house in Ferncroft Close, and photographs of the bedroom.

'The body was found upstairs in this bedroom, fully clothed, with a syringe on the floor beside the bed on which he was lying. Fingerprints confirm that it is Peebles. Time of death is obviously important, but the body was not fresh. The medical examiner was cagey about time of death, because of the high temperature in the room. When pressed he suggested about three days ago, which would put it immediately after Mikhail Moszynski was killed. The light was on in the bedroom, indicating it happened at night. On the chest of drawers in the bedroom we also found a bag containing ten thousand pounds in twenties.

'The search of the house and garden hasn't yet found the knife that was used to kill Moszynski. But we did find a mobile phone in the pocket of Peebles' jeans. This is being given priority.

'The rest of the house looked as if Peebles had been living there for several days. Judging by the bottles, frozen-food packets and dirty dishes, it looked as if he was doing most of his eating and drinking there and not going out for meals. We've started door-knocking the street and surrounding area, including the local off-licence and supermarket, and of course the CCTV cameras in the vicinity.'

Bren paused, and Brock said, 'Any other drugs in the house?'

'Not that we've found so far. But I did wonder if there could be a drug angle to this. Suppose Moszynski was using his companies to bring drugs into the country and had upset some locals, who decided to bring in an outside contractor to take care of him.'

'Hm. What do we know about Peebles? Any gangland drug connections there?'

Kathy spoke. 'We've got his record, and yes, plenty of drug connections. He was gaoled twice for dealing and his last spell in Barlinnie was for the killing of a user who owed one of the big Glasgow drug gangs a lot of money. The Crown Office settled for manslaughter. Peebles was also a heroin user. He was on drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs while he was inside. No known connections to London dealers though. He told his parole officer about an offer of work in London, and was given permission to go south for a trial period of one week.'

'Maybe Moszynski was moving into the Scottish market and upsetting people up there,' Bren suggested.

'Anything else, Kathy?' Brock felt drained, remembering that he was due to take another Tamiflu tablet.

'We've been checking the cameras at Heathrow to see if Peebles was met off his flight on Wednesday, but nothing so far.'

'Right.' Brock stood up. 'Well done, everyone. Go home and get a good night's sleep. We've got plenty to follow up tomorrow.'

As he made his way out Kathy caught up with him and said, 'One other thing. I thought I'd have the text of the letter that Moszynski sent to The Times authenticated.'

'Haven't we done that already?'

'The notepaper and signature were pa.s.sed by forensics, but we should make sure the language was his. We can compare it with other letters he sent to newspapers. But the thing is that the two specialists the Yard normally uses are both unavailable. There is someone else, a Canadian staying in the hotel next to the Moszynskis in Chelsea, where Nancy Haynes was also staying. He's had experience doing this kind of work for the police in Canada. In fact, it was he who suggested to me we should get it done. I thought I might ask him to have a look.'

Brock gazed at her for a moment and thought he detected a slight awkwardness in her manner. It did sound a bit odd.

'Have I met him?'

'I don't think so, no. His name is John Greenslade, a professor of linguistics at McGill University. I've checked him out.'

'So he's not a possible suspect?'

Kathy hesitated. 'Well, I suppose no one in Cunningham Place is completely in the clear until we find whoever was paying Peebles. But it seems unlikely.'

Brock frowned and rubbed his chin. 'I remember the hotel, but haven't been inside. When I get on top of things I must go and take a good look. Okay, go ahead.'

It was almost ten o'clock that night when Kathy called in at Cunningham Place on her way back to her flat in Finchley. She might have left it till the following day, but told herself it would be another job done.