Tennison (40 page)

Renee carried the hard-backed chair by her bed over to the wardrobe, opened the door and got up on the chair. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach for the hat box at the back of the shelf behind the shoeboxes. She eased it out and unsteadily got down before sitting on the chair and opening the lid. She lifted the soft tissue paper and removed the pristine white gloves, followed by the dark navy straw hat which had a yellow rose sewn onto the headband. She had worn it to a wedding twenty years ago, but not since. Now that the hat box was empty she pushed one side of the flat base up from the outside so she could remove the false interior bottom.

The notes were all ironed flat, and covered the entire secret compartment. She didn’t touch them but stared at the thick neat rows. Some of the money she had discovered in the airing cupboard after Clifford’s arrest. She had lied and intimated that the detectives searching the flat must have nicked it, which her husband and John had accepted. Now Clifford was home she wondered if the money would be safe in the hat box, but she could think of nowhere better to conceal it. She thought about what David had said about the £5 notes and began to sort them out, stacking them on the bedside table one by one.

Renee returned the other notes to the hat-box compartment, put back the false base, then carefully replaced the hat and gloves and the tissue paper before concealing the hat box once again behind the shoeboxes in the wardrobe. She began to count her £5 notes but stopped abruptly when she heard Clifford shouting for her.

‘Eh, where are you at, Renee?’

She quickly stuffed the notes into her underwear drawer and covered them with stockings and panties.

‘Renee, what yer doin’?’ he shouted.

She stared at her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. ‘Wishing I’d run away,’ she said softly to herself.

She went to the lounge where Clifford was standing, legs apart, a large tumbler of Scotch in his hand, as he chatted to two friends who were sitting on the sofa drinking port and brandy mixers.

‘We’re starvin’ – fry us up something.’

‘Where are the boys?’ she asked.

‘Takin’ some pals home and then goin’ out to a club.’

‘Bacon an’ eggs, sausages and baked beans do?’

‘Yeah, and do some of that fried bread, luv, and a pot of tea.’

Renee gave a smile and walked out. It was almost 9 p.m., and it surprised her that David had gone out clubbing – after all it wasn’t as if he could dance.

It was almost 10 p.m. by the time John finished fixing the brake on David’s wheelchair and dropped him off at the top of the multistorey car park, as the lift was still broken. David sat in the chair, put on some gloves, and wrapped the blanket he’d brought with him around his knees. John handed him the walkie-talkie and a small bottle of whisky.

‘Don’t go drinking it all and falling asleep on us. Just take a wee sip if you feel cold.’

‘Cold? It gets bloody freezing up here! I’ve had to put on long johns, a vest, two jumpers and a thick coat to try and keep warm.’

‘Good, then you won’t need to drink too much of the whisky,’ John said cynically as he closed the rear door of the van.

‘God, it stinks of piss up here,’ David said, pulling a face.

‘Yeah, the tramps take a slash down on the first floor and the smell travels up the stairwell. You’ll be OK now. Only make contact if you see someone or something suspicious. And don’t use names, all right?’

‘Yeah, don’t worry ’bout me, I’m good.’

John drove down to the exit, turned right and passed the café and the bank before taking a small turning into a narrow lane behind the buildings. He pulled up by the café’s yard, got out and opened a tall double wooden gate, then drove the van inside, parked up and closed the gates. Silas was waiting by the back door. The small yard was piled high with garbage and John noticed a few rats scuttling amongst the bags of waste food.

‘Lookout’s in place,’ John said quietly, and went down to the basement followed by Silas.

Pots of paint, brushes and dust sheets were laid out and the fake painted plasterboard had been removed revealing the hole in the wall. John could see that Danny had dug a hole under the bank’s basement to get access to the bits of the iron bars that were embedded underground, which he had now cut away with the oxyacetylene torch. He told John he had done an electric-circuit test on the bars and they were rigged up to an alarm, but he had managed to bypass it.

‘I reckon our best bet is to dig the tunnel wide and deep enough for us to get in and out easily,’ Danny said.

‘What about the fat Greek?’ John smiled.

Danny laughed. ‘Yeah, maybe a bit bigger then, but we’ll need more wood to shore the tunnel up, and we can dig under the other iron security bars on the right-angle wall of the bank’s basement. Once we’re a little way under the vault we drill through the concrete floor. It should be easy street from there on in.’

John was pleased, realizing the job might be completed sooner than he had initially thought. He said he had more wood in the lock-up garage. He pulled on his overalls as Danny handed the pieces of cut iron bar and bricks through the hole to Silas, who put them into a rubble sack.

David stared down at the dark street below. Once more he was glad that the height of the concrete wall of the car park was low enough to allow him to sit in his wheelchair, as he would have been in intense pain if he had had to stand throughout the night.

He raised the binoculars and began to scan the streets surrounding the café. He felt increasingly tired as the hours passed, and only a few cars, buses and black cabs moved up and down the otherwise empty roads. He figured it was so quiet because the location bordered on the City of London with its banking and financial offices, which were all closed at night, and there was little residential housing in the area.

It was 3 a.m. when he was suddenly woken by the sound of raised voices and glass breaking down below in the car park, directly opposite the café. Due to the angle he couldn’t see who was making the noise, unless he leaned over the car-park wall.

He cursed himself for dozing off as he pressed the button on the walkie-talkie. He was about to say ‘David to John’ when he remembered they weren’t supposed to use names, but John had not said anything about coded call signs so he improvised on the spot.

‘Eagle to Brushstroke . . . Eagle to Brushstroke, over,’ he said, released the talk button and waited for a reply.

In the basement John and the others were taking turns digging, and filling sacks with soil. When they heard David on the radio they looked at each other with bemusement.

‘What the fuck is he on about?’ John exclaimed angrily as he grabbed his walkie-talkie and indicated for Danny and Silas to stop working so he could speak with David.

‘I said no contact unless urgent.’

‘It is, persons opposite you, over.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t know, can’t see them.’

‘Well, get in a position you can!’

David sighed as he hated heights and certainly didn’t fancy leaning further over the wall, which was nearly fifty feet from the ground. He slowly raised himself out of the wheelchair. He felt dizzy as he bent over the wall and looked down to see a silver bulbous rose which he recognized straightaway as being the top of a policeman’s helmet. The officer was remonstrating with a drunk vagrant who had obviously, from the wet stream on the pavement, been having a piss up against the car-park wall. David could see brown glass from a broken beer bottle glistening in the street light. He assumed the vagrant had dropped or thrown the bottle. He watched as the officer gave him a slap round the head and told him he was nicked.

David crouched down, pressed the talk switch and whispered, ‘Stay quiet, it’s a rozzer nicking a pissed-up tramp.’

There was a crackle and David was unsure if he’d got through.

‘Do you read me? Keep the noise down – he’s right opposite the front of the café, over.’

‘Make contact when you have the all-clear, over,’ John answered, knowing that a paddy wagon would probably be on the way to pick up the arrested vagrant.

He whispered to Silas and Danny that they would have to stop work and remain totally silent for as long as it took for the drunk to be carted off.

David stayed crouched down and a few minutes later heard the sound of the policeman’s radio, but not what was being said. He peeked over the wall and saw the officer lift the vagrant by the scruff of the neck and drag him across the road towards the café. His heart began to beat rapidly and his mouth went dry as he wondered whether or not to make further contact with John. As the officer turned and looked up the street David ducked down and he could feel himself shaking with nerves, and although cold he began to sweat as he called John.

‘Stay quiet, he’s outside the café now.’

As John pressed the received button, Silas dropped the brick he had been holding straight onto a large tin of paint, sending a loud reverberating clang echoing around the room, which came through on David’s radio.

Shit, shit, shit! David thought to himself as he watched the officer, who was now peering in through the café window. His mind was racing. He was panicking and wondered if he should scarper in his wheelchair, but he knew his brother would beat him black and blue if he did. He pressed the talk button.

‘For Christ’s sake what’s going on in there? The copper’s lookin’ in the window now.’

Below in the basement the men froze and John glared at Silas for his blundering stupidity.

David sat on the ground, his knees squeezed tight to his chest, his arms and head buried between them. Hearing the ringing sound of a police-van bell he raised his head and saw the blue flashing light flickering in the sky around him. The van pulled up outside the café and the vagrant started to play up, shouting abuse and saying he wasn’t getting into the van. The driver got out, opened the rear doors and the two officers picked the vagrant up by the arms and legs then unceremoniously flung him in the back, slamming the doors shut before the van drove off.

David breathed a sigh of relief. Saved by the bell, he thought to himself, and smiled as he radioed John.

‘OK, rozzers and tramp gone, over.’

‘Are you givin’ the all-clear? Over.’

The incident had made David so nervous he now needed to take a leak. It got worse as he squeezed his legs together.

‘Yeah, they’ve left in the paddy wagon. I’m freezin’ cold and I really need to go to the lav, over.’

‘Well, piss against the wall, or wait for me to collect you in ten minutes – I’m calling it a night now, over and out.’

Silas shook his head in disbelief. ‘Why we stop? We have cut through bars, started to dig tunnel to vault so let’s keep going.’

John prodded him in the chest. ‘Cos I said so. That was a close call, thanks to your greasy fingers dropping that fucking brick. If the rozzer heard it he might get suspicious and come back, so we clean up, replace the plasterboard and call it a night right now.’

David was by now desperate and ended up partially wetting himself in his hurried effort to undo his fly and pull down his long johns. By the time John came to collect him he was shivering uncontrollably and was near to tears.

Renee was woken by the sound of the flat door closing and realized it was the boys returning home, but after looking at the bedside clock she was surprised to see it was half four in the morning. She turned over to go back to sleep but could see Clifford getting out of bed and pulling on his dressing gown.

‘It’s half four, Cliff – why you gettin’ up now?’ she asked.

‘Need the toilet – besides, I’m used to rising early in the nick, you know that.’

After a few minutes Renee heard voices coming from the kitchen. She put on her dressing gown and walked in. John and Clifford both fell silent.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes – go back to bed, woman,’ Clifford said.

‘Shall I make a cup of tea?’ she asked.

Clifford glared at her. ‘No, just bloody well go back to bed!’

She closed the door and went to the bathroom.

‘David, are you all right in there?’ she asked as she tapped gently on the door.

David was lying in the bath water. Every part of his body ached and he felt like he was on fire.

‘I’m just having a nice soak, Mum.’

‘Will you need me to help you get out?’

‘No.’

Renee stood in the hallway feeling irritated that she couldn’t even go into the kitchen and brew up a cup of tea. She already suspected John and David were up to something, but now her husband was home she was certain all of them were. The way John and Clifford had just looked at her was behaviour she’d seen from them many times before when something was going to go down. Then there would be the inevitable knock on the door from the rozzers. She worried her David was yet again being dragged into something. She decided she would find out what as soon as she was alone with him.

Jane arrived at work to find a note from Bradfield telling her she would have to return to normal duties. She wondered if she had upset him but, not wanting to question his decision, she reported to the duty sergeant. The Julie Ann case had gone cold.

They had also questioned Dwayne Clark, who had come in accompanied by Stonex. Detectives had not found any drugs at Clark’s address, or at his friend’s flat in Coventry, and as he had a strong alibi for the murder of Julie Ann he was released without charge pending further enquiries. The toxicology tests on the blood samples taken from the body of Eddie Phillips were under way and early indications were he had injected himself with pure heroin and in a drug-induced stupor fallen over and then collapsed into the canal where he drowned. The scientist concluded that the overdose alone would have killed him within a few minutes. It was believed that O’Duncie had deliberately supplied Eddie Phillips with the lethal heroin, intending to kill him as he feared he would tell the police about his drug dealing and abuse of Julie Anne. However, as much as it angered Bradfield, he knew he didn’t have enough evidence to prove that it was O’Duncie who supplied Eddie and therefore couldn’t charge him with his murder. Experience had taught him that ‘some you win, some you lose’, and no matter the result of a case you had to move on and not let it fester in your mind, but putting O’Duncie away for the rest of his life was something Bradfield would’ve loved to do.