Episode 19 - Guilty or not guilty

The rest of the afternoon at HQ was taken up with the administrative duties that went with the job of superintendent.

Nigel had made a list of purchases to bring Gary’s office up to the standard he was used to, digital equipment and a state-of-the-art expresso maker being top priorities. The shopping-list would be passed on the finance department, in other words to Henry down the corridor, since Henry was in charge of finances. Henry drank tea made from a little spiral power plunger that also worked in the cigarette lighter of his car to boil water in a mug in his office which he then enhanced with a teabag, so he did not yet appreciate the fine palette of a coffee-drinker, but Nigel had recently shopped for him when his teabags had run out and it was on the cards and told him about a machine that could boil water and make decent coffee and Henry had been enthusiastic as long as he got his share of the coffee and could even make proper Irish coffee if they stocked long-life cream to enhance it. Gisela, the third in the triumvirate, quite liked Gary taking an interest in the ambience, and loved Nigel for taking her mother shopping in his car when Gisela had no time. Things had altogether improved with Gary’s presence.

Henry Waterman had been at HQ for longer than anyone could remember. He was sly and shrewd. Henry had never been a policeman, but had applied for his accountancy job and got it on grounds of impartiality. He knew everyone in the town hall and was adept at persuading the need for extra finance for HQ, thus making himself indispensable at HQ and respected for loosening the purse-strings if the maor, Mr Cobblethwaite, needed something for his office – and that was often.

Gary disliked Henry and the feeling was mutual, but Henry had a soft spot for Nigel, so Gary would leave it to him to sort it all out, and after all, the new espresso machine, a small fry investment to a finance department, would be enjoyed by all since it could also boil water for tea. And even whip cream for the Irish coffee.

However, Nigel was not as confident about trying to get Henry to approve the purchase of fast cars so that homicide would get its fair share. The economist would argue that it had been all right so far even if numerous gangsters had been able to escape justice thanks to the absence of cars fast enough to take up the chase. They would have escpes anyway, was his argument. Gisela tended not to join in this discussion, though she would have liked a second security van.

There were also numerous staff shortages that had already led to cops being borrowed from other constabularies, which in its turn had led to Mike Curlew joining the homicide team without proper character scrutiny.

Gary had to face the fact that Roger Stone had only been ticking over rather than thinking ahead after being reinstated in the superintendent job he had subsequently handed to Gary. Eleanor Stone was now serving a life sentence for killing Roger’s ‘affair’. Since when had the husband of a murderess been a police chief? No wonder he was glad to bow out, but Gary was left with the fall-out and he wanted to put an end to it. A laid-back management was not suitable for fighting crime. Attitudes had to change and he decided that his task was do this.

“Before we draw a line under today, where is Jet Black now, Nigel? Has Greg put him behind bars?”

“He’s out there somewhere,” said Nigel. “You had nothing to charge him with. Remember?”

“Where’s he living?”

“With his pop band, I assume.”

“Find out, please. Bertie said the pop band was one of Jet’s stories.”

“Bertie might not have been telling the truth all the time, Gary. I’m surprised how seriously you take him.”

“So am I, Nigel.”

“I’ll get onto it, shall I?”

“Don’t circumvent Greg entirely, Nigel. He’s officially head of Homicide.”

“Only 50%. There’s Mia too.”

“Except that she’s not on this case now Gibbons has been taken care of.”

“What about the Camptons, Gary? They are still smouldering downstairs.”

“Chris is looking at all the stuff they confiscated from the car salon, remember? We’re waiting for those results.”

“I could call him now,” said Nigel.

“I’ll do it.”

“I’ll get onto my show contacts then and find out about Jet’s pop band, shall I?”

Gary nodded. Sometimes it took Chris a while to answer the phone. Gary was well into a doodle by the time he heard Chris’s voice.

***

“What about the Camptons, Chris?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Chris.

“Busy.”

“All of you?”

“Seems like.”

“The Camptons are sitting comfortably and waiting to see their lawyer, Gary.”

“Jasper Collins, I assume.”

“That doesn’t make them gangsters, but their record of money-laundering does. I can’t understand why people hang on to such damning evidence,” said Chris.

“They think they’re immune.”

“You’ll have to wait till Collins turns up again. They’ll try to get him to get them out of clink and then you can throw the book at them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain. Mrs Campton’s handwriting is all over the crooked transactions, so she knew all about them.”

“We can get her for forcing her daughter to have an abortion, Chris, but having her implicated in Campton’s dirty deeds is an additional perk.”

“You sound relieved,” said Chris.

“I am. Greg can arrest them. That’ll keep him happy.”

“Go slow, Gary. That was not superintendent niveau.”

“What is?”

“You tell me. Greg’s a decent guy and wants to get things right. Don’t make it hard for him.”

“He’s in my job.”

“You handed it to him.”

***

“Back to business. Now we only need to find Fish’s killer.”

“There you go again, Gary. You are the superintendent. There is no simple ‘we’ and you can’t do the job of homicide boss at the same time.”

“I seem to have to.”

“That’s your view. What about those two receptionists?” Chris asked, quite surprised that Gary had not bitten his head off.

“What about Ivan Davis, Chris. What have you got on him?”

“He had capsules of that nerve drug in a drawer behind the bar, Gary, but someone might have planted them there. There were no fingerprints.”

“I’ll get Greg onto that, or can you tell him about what you find and get him to react?”

“Delegating? There no point in that. Whoever obtained them could get them easily on the internet,” said Chris. “We can’t track that transaction, whoever made it. The dark net isn’t just pornographic, and Ivan may have been framed.”

“We have a witness, Chris. Aggie Flint had no reason to lie. She identified him.”

“Can you prove Aggie Flint’s honesty?”

“I haven’t tried.What axe could she have had to grind?”

“Money, Gary.”

“He’ll deny all knowledge, of course,” said Gary. “And Aggie will not have kept any gratuities in a bank account.”

“Can we search his living quarters?”

“I’ll get a search warrant ready for you.”

“Now, please, Gary. He has a small apartment in Middlethumpton in addition to his room at Fish’s house that was clean, but who knows what we’ll find at his private place.”

“Nigel’s getting a search warrant ready. I’ll sign it now and Nigel will bring it down to the lab. OK?”

“Brilliant. I hope we aren’t too late. Greg hasn’t been doing anything, has he?” said Chris.

“Greg’s fallen in love, Chris. Don’t be too hard on him.”

“Don’t tell me that when you have been massively mean to him.”

“Not deliberately.”

“How else? But before you tell me, I have to admit that you should be in charge of the case, Gary. Greg is not ready for his job if he can be so easily distracted!”

“I hope you’re wrong, Chris. Nigel is on his way down now.”

“Thanks. I’ll phone you.”

***

“I thought the Ivan case  was open and shut,” said Nigel.

“Our pet defence lawyer will make mincemeat of the prosecution if we don’t provided enough evidence, Nigel. You know that.”

***

Gary was glad to get out of that superintendent office and home to his family. Cleo was glad to see him. He hadn’t phoned all day and she was curious, though she did not think he could have made spectacular progress, or he would have told her.

“It’s a waiting game,” Gary announced without following up the remark.

“Have you arrested anyone?”

“Not in so many words.”

“How many words?”

“Collecting evidence.”

“That’s all as clear as mud, Gary.”

“I can’t be bothered talking about it now.”

“OK. Go tend your offspring!”

***

Later, after two informative phone-calls, Gary was prepared to put Cleo in the picture.

“Chris has found that nerve poison in Ivan’s private apartment. I can at last charge him with murdering Maureen.”

“Greg should do that. What about Irene?”

“I think it was Jet Black assisting Fish after going to Daphne’s flat hoping she would be back from her outing to the Fish establishment that he had arranged. He caught Fish there with Irene and Irene was already unconscious.”

“But Jet Black gave him the flat key,” said Cleo.

“Maybe he wanted to catch Daphne in flagranti with Fish.”

“Speculation.”

“Probable.”

“So Fish must have had access to that nerve drug,” said Cleo.

“He might have taken it from a drawer behind Ivan’s bar.”

“Forensics should have found the used syringe at the flat, Gary.”

“Not if Jet Black took it away with him, which he must have done. I’m going to put the whole scenario to him tomorrow and then ask him if I had got it right.”

“That’s what I would have suggested, but surely he can’t be that stupid,” said Cleo.

***

“Who’s stupid?” Charlie piped up.

“A guy who owns up to a crime,” said Gary.

“That’s an oversimplification,” said Cleo.

“What’s an overplication, Daddy?”

“O-ver-sim-pli-fi-ca-tion is when you put two and two together and make five,” Gary explained, separating the syllables and adding the missing one, which led to Charlie practising it for her next school essay, as she explained.

“That’s more of a riddle than the explanation, Charlie,” said Cleo. “Your daddy’s teasing you.

“I know what a riddle is,” said Charlie. “I’d get my criminals to confess by getting them to tell the story five times without doing silly arithmetic.”

“Why five times, Charlie?”

“To get five versions of the story, Daddy. It’s a bit like postman’s knock.”

“That’s a good idea, Charlie. I’ll do that tomorrow of I need to.”

“You probably will,” said Cleo.

***

“What will you do if Jet Black denies everything?” Cleo asked as she served their traditional nightcap coffee in front of the log fire.

“Charge him if I can get enough information about his past before I talk to him.”

“At the moment you only have weak circumstantial evidence, Gary. You can’t charge him on speculation.”

“There’s no other solution, Cleo. He has to have helped in Irene’s murder.”

“What about Fish? You haven’t traced his killers yet.”

“I’ll go for Black and Daphne, though Ivan is a candidate I don’t want to leave out,” said Gary. “Who knows how many of those guys have been canoodling with her.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it. You’ll have to use that word in Charlie’s presence. I’d like to hear your explanation.”

“I’ll tell her it’s when you go out in a canoe.”

“You can’t do that. She’s nearly a grown woman. She’ll call your bluff,” said Cleo.

“As usual,” said Gary. “But she’s just a kid to me.”

“Can you get a confession from Daphne?”

“Black might involve her, but why should she admit to anything if someone else can take the rap?.”

“Rather you than me on that investigative jaunt!”

***

Nigel spent most of the following night finding enough evidence to contradict much of what Black had told them about his whereabouts on that fatal weekend. His band tour really had existed, but they had all been back in Middlethumpton early on Sunday morning after their gig on the Saturday. Nigel had actually traced their agent. ‘The Colour Black’or TCB as they liked to call themselves, was apparently an up and coming band that was prepared to play for a small fee. No doubt the agent took most of it, thought Nigel.

So Black could have gone to Daphne’s flat that day and had been lying when he said he had only gone there on the Monday. He had sort of admitted that he had sent Daphne to Fish, but that did not mean they had had no previous contact, and Black would have been concerned about that. He might have genuinely cared about Daphne, though he had a strange way of showing it.

Gary phoned Greg about the Black questioning, but Greg had taken a week’s holiday without his knowledge. Disciplinary action should follow, Gary decided, forgetting that as head of the homicide squad Greg could decide for himself when he took time off. Gary did not remember taking time off without telling the superintendent and certainly not in the middle of a case.

Nigel was more philosophical.

“You’ve elbowed your way bck into this case, Gary,” he said.

“You should not talk to me like that,” said Gary.

“What are you going to do? Fire me or trust my judgment?”

“You are right, Nigel. I want the best of both worlds.”

“You’ll have to decide on one, Gary. If you don’t want to be superintendent, resign.”

“All in good time.”

“I’ll get Black up from the waiting room, shall I?”

“Is that where he is?”

“You haven’t arrested him yet.”

“Get Len Wolfe in, Nigel. He was with me when we found Black at Daphne’s flat.”

***

“Why were you hiding on the balcony when we found you there?” Gary asked.

“I thought it would be Daphne and did not want her to find me there.”

“And you did not even use the bathroom,” said Gary. “So you did not find the body of Irene in the bath.”

“No.”

Jet Black was nervous.

“You don’t expect me to believe you, do you?”

Black shrugged his shoulders,

“Why did you really go there again?”

“I needed my sports bag, but I’ve told you all that before, haven’t I?”

“If you needed it, why did you only take it to Daphne’s flat on that Sunday? That explanation does not make sense especially as you said you were still on the road with your band on Sunday.”

“I was a bit mmixed up. I wanted to go to the gym later and thought I had left my stopwatch at Daphne’s because it wasn’t in my sports bag.”

“Left there on the Sunday, Jet.”

“I suppose so.”

“When did you notice your stopwatch was missing?”

“It wasn’t in the bag.”

“But the bag was at Daphne’s flat,” said Gary. “Where is the watch now then, Black. I’m having a problem believing you.”

Black took a stopwatch out of his pocket.

“Here it is.”

Gary reflected that there was no way to discredit that explanation.

“So it was all the time, was it?”

“Yes.”

“You were about to move in with Daphne, weren’t you?”

“We had talked about it.”

“Why didn’t you take clothes there in that sports bag.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“That’s not what it sounded like when you explained your presence there.”

“I don’t remember,” said Black.

“Do you even remember why you went to the flat the day Fish was going there?”

“I thought he would be there with Daphne.”

“But you had sold her to Fish? How much did he pay you, Mr Black?”

“What for?”

“For sending young women to him.”

“He got performances for the band,” said Black reluctantly. Gary was pleased with that explanation. Dependency is the key to loyalty, he mused.

“Did he now? So he knew you would be away on the weekend Irene was killed, didn’t he? And he knew where Daphne was, of course.”

“I suppose he did.”

“So it was all clear at Daphne’s flat, wasn’t it?”

“It should have been, but we got back from the gig early.”

“And it occurred to you to control whether Fish was using Daphne’s flat for his tryst. Were you expecting to find Daphne there”

“I did not know about Irene. She left me.”

“Where did she leave you, Black? Not in Italy.”

“Yes, Italy. How do you know that? Irene is dead.”

“Exactly. She must have known something she should not know. She thought Fish was her friend and you had taken her away from him. I don’t suppose you impressed her much in Italy, did you?”

“I’m not a lover-boy,” said Black. “I wanted to get her away from that sort.”

“Very decent of you, Black. But Irene was fascinated by Fish and went back to him. But when you saw what Fish had done to her in Daphne’s flat…”

“What had he done?”

“Come on, Black. You removed that syringe when you left the house.”

Jet Black looked consternated. How could that cop possibly know what had happened that Sunday afternoon in the flat?

“You had two choices, Black. Either you called an ambulance and made an effort to save the poor woman, or you colluded with Fish to finish her off.”

“I didn’t.”

“So you admit the rest of what I’ve just said.”

“I did not kill her.”

“But you admit to being there and not helping her to survive.”

“No one survives that nerve poison.”

“So you knew about that drug, didn’t you?”

“I knew it existed, then when I saw the syringe I put two and two together.”

“So it didn’t matter if you helped Fish to make her death look like suicide, did it?”

“It was Fish’s idea,” Jet insisted.

“Was it now?”

“I arrest you for helping Ronnie Fish to kill Irene Smith,” said Gary. “Short of arresting you for murder, that’s the best I can do. The public prosecutor will decide how to define your felony. You will remain in custody. Do you want to say something that might help your defence?”

“You could ask Daphne why she shot Fish,” Jet said.

“Did she do that?”

“He threw her out of his house, didn’t he?”

“Did he? I thought she ran away.”

“Did she tell you that?”

”Yes.”

“Daphne was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a prostitute even if Olaf thought she was. It was a piece of bad casting.”

“So she used Ivan Davis to get revenge, did she?” Gary said. “She knew she had been drugged and abused, Black, so she did have a cause, though your story may just be in self-defence. Are you still thinking of moving in with her?”

“I gave up that idea when I found out what was really going on.”

“But you sent her to Fish and you’ve just said she is not a hooker and was kept at Fish’s without her consent.”

“He paid me. I thought it was just for one night, but he kept her there longer, didn’t he. I’ve no idea if she wanted to stay.”

“You sold Daphne down the line, didn’t you.”

“I regretted it later and on that Sunday afternoon I wanted to apologize. That’s really why I went there. I diodn’t know Fish was still holding her.”

“You must have been shocked to find Irene Smith there.”

“I was relieved that it wasn’t Daphne.”

“Did you ask Fish where Daphne was?”

“He said he would let her go eventually, and he did.”

“Don’t you realize how monstrous the whole affair was?” said Gary. “He was holding Daphne hostage and plotting to get rid of Irene who must have thought, or been made to believe, that Fish wanted her back.”

“I did not discuss anything with him. He told me that Daphne was a cold fish and even Olaf was not getting through to her.”

“And you did not ask him how he came to be in that flat with Irene?”

“I thought he’d kill me for witnessing what he had already done to Irene, so I kept quiet.”

“At least that explains why you helped Fish.”

“I wanted him to believe I was on his side, and I’m still alive to tell the tale, whereas he isn’t.”

“That would be a motive for killing him, Black.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Sometimes I can’t get over just how naïve men can be about women.”

“You sound as if you knew that from personal experience.”

“Believe me, Black, I do.”

The guard that Nigel had taken the precaution of ordering took Black down to the cells. He did not kick up a fuss. Gary had the feeling that he was relieved that it was all over. Gary certainly was. 

But Ronnie Fish’s killer was still at large.