Justice Delayed Read online

  Justice Delayed

  David Field

  © David Field 2019

  David Field has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  Published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.

  “The evil that men do lives after them”

  William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  ‘I was expecting you back on Monday,’ Detective Inspector Dave Petrie announced, in a tone just south of critical, as he placed his plate of bacon sandwiches and mug of tea on the table across from DCI Mike Saxby in the ‘Dining Hall’, as it was pompously named, where Mike was seeking some sort of motivation to begin his bowl of cereal.

  ‘You obviously receive as much communication from Andy Willows as you give him, which is a centimetre short of bugger-all,’ Mike growled back. ‘I got his sanction for a few days of extended leave, to deal with a minor crisis with my daughter’s accommodation in Oxford, but it was worth it.’ He smiled inwardly as he remembered the night of re-ignited passion with his wife Alison in their hotel. ‘Obviously he didn’t see fit to advise you.’

  ‘I’m stuck with this murder enquiry I mentioned before you went away,’ Dave grumbled. ‘ACC Willows says you’re in charge of it now you’re back, and what the fuck’s that you’re eating?’

  ‘High fibre breakfast cereal,’ Mike explained sadly. ‘It’s meant to promote your “inner cleanliness”, which means it makes you shit a lot.’

  ‘Looks like you already did, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind, but do you happen to know of any racehorse with an unwanted plate of bacon and eggs that would like to trade me for this excellent bowl of equine pellets?’

  Dave began his second sandwich with no obvious sign of guilt or sympathy, then swilled it down with a mouthful of tea before changing the subject back again.

  ‘You remember Jeremy Giles of course?’

  ‘Of course – haven’t laughed so much since I cut myself shaving.’

  ‘Well no doubt you were surprised to learn that he was murdered last Wednesday?’

  ‘Not half as surprised as he was, I imagine.’

  ‘If you remember, we spoke just before you went on leave after wrapping up that Pelican Club business with your Bollywood sidekick. And before you ask, Willows pulled me off that to deal with this Giles thing, apparently without bothering to tell you.’

  ‘Can’t say I noticed,’ Mike sneered back. ‘You weren’t exactly at my elbow every minute anyway. And if I wait any longer for an e-mail from you, they’ll have to include it in my funeral valediction.’

  ‘Assuming you get one,’ Dave shot back, then apparently realised that the cheek level had risen above that appropriate from a DI to a DCI.

  ‘Look, let’s start again,’ he suggested. ‘Willows says you’re heading up this Giles enquiry, and I’ve got an office full of paper already.’

  ‘That must be a first,’ Mike grinned back. ‘Can I borrow some of it when this hi-bran breakfast cereal begins to earn its keep?’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m well aware that my nickname around this place is “Paperless Petrie”. Would you like to know yours, by the way?’

  ‘No, just tell me about the paper.’

  ‘I’d rather show you, instead,’ Dave replied, ‘so if you’re not “incommoded” for the rest of the morning, is it too much to ask you to come up and see me some time?’

  ‘Consider me already there,’ Mike assured him, ‘but don’t hold me responsible for the atmosphere in there if you get me excited.’

  Fifteen minutes later he took the lift up to the second floor of Avery House, the Brampton Police Headquarters building known to the troops of the County Constabulary as ‘Ivory Tower’. Its interior fit-out was clearly supervised by a senior officer with an eye to rank.

  The fourth, and topmost, level was an administrative shrine to the incumbent Chief Constable, Sir William Beattie, with the predictable office that looked as if it could be licensed for dancing, plus outer offices, a Boardroom, conference suites, secretarial boudoirs and a small television studio. Below him on Level Three were his immediate Deputy CC and a raft of advisers, most of them of the media variety, along with the four Assistant Chiefs, only one of whom was operational, and their adjunct lackeys, plus the only two operational Detective Superintendants. The real work began on Level Two, with its handful of DCIs, and below them on Level One was a series of team offices, each headed by a DI, their more active duties underlined by the fact that they had less distance to travel down to the real world.

  Mike had been allocated the Second Level office which, on the day he had arrived six weeks previously for what had been meant as a temporary secondment, had belonged to the late DCI Alec Ross. Mike was now filling a dead-man’s shoes, but any superstition on that score was amply balanced by the consolation that he was no longer paper-shuffling in the Northwood District Office gulag to which he had been condemned on his promotion the previous year.

  He pushed open the swing doors to the Level One suite labelled ‘Homicide Team 2’, waved and grunted acknowledgements to the team members hunched over their computer screens in the outer area, then entered the inner office, which had taken on the appearance of the storage room of an antique bookshop. Dave sat chewing his pen and reading a print-out. He looked up and waved Mike into a seat.

  ‘See what I mean?’ he asked. ‘All this lot was pulled from Giles’s place after they found his body.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  ‘The body? The upper level of a disused soap factory down by the river. Very popular with junkies and street kids, two of whom were obliging enough to remain on the premises and show us where to find the late unlamented.’

  ‘And the house?’

  ‘An up-market apartment in Denman. Seems that our Mr Giles liked the finer things in life.’

  ‘You could have fooled me. He looked like an unmade bed the only time that I met him,’ Mike recalled.

  ‘That was just his artistic pose, it would seem. In the past week or so I’ve learned quite a bit about Jeremy Pearson Giles. Public school educated, degree in Journalism from one of these new plastic universities, a couple of published minor novels, plus of course his intended “magnum opus” on the ill-fated, some say “cursed”, building in Cavendish Square that featured so prominently during our last little outing together. Aged forty-one, parents dead, allegedly kicked with the left foot, and a snappy dresser in his spare time.’

  ‘The reference to the left foot – was he what we are pleased to call “gay” these days?’

  “You can call it “gay” if you like. “Screaming faggot” was the description I received from a neighbour during the door-to-door. Seems he frequented the Rainbow Club in Maltby Street on a nightly basis. Unless you’ve been on the moon most of your life, you’ll know that it’s a queers’ hang-out.’

  ‘Thank you for saying “the moon”, and not “Uranus”, in the circumstances,’ Mike grinned back, ‘but I take it you’re working on the obvious angle?’

  ‘You mean was it limp-wrist related
? One of my team is working on that possibility. Very reluctantly I may say –complains that it does nothing for his image in his rugby club. But I think Giles himself gave me the strongest lead before he croaked it. Something he was working on, it seems.’

  ‘Hence all this unaccustomed paper, none of which you’ve presumably read?’

  Dave leaned back in his chair and waved an arm backwards to his right.

  ‘In the blue box is all the stuff I’ve read, which is now all yours when you select “catch-up” mode. There’s more of the same in the other boxes, as far as I can make out, but there’s also something missing. At least, something Giles told me was the key to what he was working on, which I haven’t found yet. Four of my team went through the remaining boxes for two days, and generated nothing except dry-cleaning bills from the accumulated dust of generations.’

  ‘So what was this hot lead?’ Mike enquired. ‘The name of his tailor, the home address of his latest boyfriend, or the identity of his killer?’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be nice? All he told me was that it was an old document connected with that Ursula Winthrop business.’

  ‘I thought we’d finished with all that crap,’ Mike complained.

  ‘So did he, it seems, until he was placed in possession of this document he was banging on about, and he claims that it gave him a hot lead to one of the unexplained deaths in that house in Cavendish Square that became a brothel.’

  ‘Did he say which death, exactly?’ Mike asked. Petrie sighed.

  ‘We’re talking about Jeremy Giles, remember? As tight as a fish’s arse when it came to specific detail, no doubt fearful that someone would get hold of it and beat him to the publisher.’

  ‘So we find the document, then compare whatever’s in it with the detailed content of his unpublished book – “The House That Screamed Injustice”, from memory.’

  ‘Why do you think I had my team heads down and arses up in all those boxes? Not a whisper of anything that he hadn’t recorded for posterity already.’

  Mike folded his hands into a triangle in front of his face and thought out loud.

  ‘If we follow the line that whatever he had in his little hot hand got him killed, then it must have been very important – to him, and to whoever killed him. He’d probably be carrying it around with him – what was in his possessions when you found him?’

  Petrie snorted contemptuously.

  ‘I think I mentioned that he was found by a couple of street kids. By the time they alerted us to the body, it had been picked clean apart from a monogrammed shirt – which gave us his identity – and a handkerchief. We found the shirt lying in a corner of the building, by the way, as if he’d been stripped above the waist prior to death, which he probably had, if you take into account the mutilation. The kids swore black was white that they hadn’t stolen anything from the deceased, but then some people still believe in immaculate conceptions.’

  ‘I take it they were searched at the locus?’

  ‘What do you think? I may be a bit slack with paperwork sometimes, but dereliction of duty is off my personal agenda, believe me.’

  ‘Tell me about the mutilation.’

  ‘It was non-fatal, even I could tell that. Prof Gillies is back from leave, by the way, and she did the PM with yours truly in attendance. She claims that it was probably ritualistic, and that cause of death was a ruptured spleen.’

  ‘I seem to recall that you told me – before I went on leave – that he’d been found hanged. “Strangled and dangled” was your precise expression. The hanging was presumably also part of the ritual, if cause of death was a good kicking.’

  ‘Well he certainly didn’t die from hanging, let’s put it that way. So you may be right – a very strange ritualistic business altogether.’

  ‘Were the street kids able to say if they’d seen or heard anything of Mr Giles’s last moments, and do we have even vague addresses for them?’

  ‘Uniform knew the pair of them from previous dealings. One of them lives on the Carswell with his invalid father occasionally, and the other’s a street dealer he hangs out with’. He clicked something on his computer screen, and continued.

  ‘Kevin Doughty’s the one on the Carswell, and his mate – Troy Lesley – has lots of form, mainly for pushing. They shouldn’t be too difficult to find again, if we need to.’

  ‘We need to,’ Mike assured him. ‘It’s amazing how often those who begin with the line “I told you lot all this already” finish up remembering something significant.’

  ‘I’ll get them pulled in,’ Dave confirmed, jotting down a note on the topmost piece of the mountain of scrap paper on his desk. ‘What are your movements today?’

  ‘Largely of the bowel variety, if what I feel building up is what I hope it is,’ Mike replied with a smirk. ‘When the storm subsides, I’ll be in my new office. Have one of your team make up a dummy hard copy case file for me, and bring it upstairs – Room 209, in case you’ve forgotten during my brief absence.’

  ‘OK,’ Dave confirmed, as Mike studied the two photographs on Petrie’s desk top, not quite buried by files that no doubt required urgent attention a week ago.

  ‘Nice kids,’ he observed.

  ‘Nicole’s sixteen, and Daniel’s fourteen. Fortunately they communicate with me more assiduously than their mother does – or ever did, for that matter.’

  ‘Divorced?’

  ‘Eight years ago. That disciplinary enquiry over the Jenkins business was the final straw, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mike mumbled, ‘but I had no choice, given the volume of complaints from the victims.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it – you probably did me a favour anyway. Christine was drifting further and further away from me, and it turns out that she was getting her jollies from her golf coach. My golf coach as well, as it happens, but at least he had the decency to transfer to somewhere in Surrey, taking Christine with him.’

  ‘So who’s this lady in the other photograph?’

  Petrie reddened slightly.

  ‘I know she looks old enough to be my mother, but she isn’t. Her name’s Joy, and she brings me lots of it, trust me. She’s only in her early fifties, despite the greying hair, and she and I share the same interests. She has an unfortunate history of domestic violence, so she’s very reluctant to commit again, but you wouldn’t believe what an advantage it is, socially, to be able to go places as a couple, rather than as two spare people that the hostess felt obliged to invite.’

  ‘So what, if you don’t mind me asking, brought the two of you together in the first place?’

  ‘Her golf swing, or rather the lack of it. I went back to golf, once the former professional left the club with his trophy games mistress, and Joy was using one of the driving ranges close to mine. Her grip was everywhere, and I offered to show her how it’s done. We got talking, went around the course together, shared a coffee afterwards, and bingo.’

  ‘You learn something new every day,’ Mike observed. ‘I wouldn’t have put you down as the domesticated type.’

  ‘Neither does Joy. She tries her best to smarten me up, but I still manage to look like a crumpled McDonalds’ carton, most days. This is all confidential, by the way. The team have assumed that she’s my older sister or something, and I’d be obliged if you didn’t disillusion them.’

  ‘Consider my lips sealed,’ Mike assured him. ‘And now I’d better get into this case, so that you can spend more time on the golf course. Might even make you human, one day.’

  ‘I’ll get that file up to you in the next hour,’ Dave assured him.

  ‘Make it half an hour,’ Mike winced. ‘By then, I should be out of the karzie. If you’re lucky, I’ll be out of here before the opening salvo.’

  Chapter Two

  His estimate of thirty minutes proved to be optimistic, and he was already behind his own desk when a familiar face appeared in his doorway.

  ‘That file you wanted,’ Geoff Keating beamed as he walked in.
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br />   ‘Good,’ Mike replied, ‘I was looking for something to occupy my mind. But aren’t you in Van Morton’s team?’

  ‘She swapped me for Sonia Kelman,’ Geoff replied, ‘and she’s on leave anyway. Seems that some of her family are over from India, and she’s showing them the sights.’

  ‘How far into this Giles case have you got?’ Mike enquired.

  ‘I helped search his apartment, then headed up the door-to-doors,’ Geoff replied. ‘That was fun, believe me – most of the snooty shits in that street believe that police officers have the same social status as gardeners or coachmen.’

  ‘I gather that Giles was gay.’

  ‘So we were told, but there was nothing in his apartment to suggest it. A bog-standard bachelor pad, not even any porn on the walls.’

  ‘Was there a computer somewhere? There should have been, given his occupation.’

  ‘Yeah, in the spare bedroom which he’d converted into an office. Plus all those bloody boxes the DI had us ferreting through for a couple of days.’

  ‘Where’s the computer now?’

  ‘In “Property”, as far as I know.’

  ‘Get it sent to the IT lab, just in case.’

  ‘Will do,’ Geoff replied, then froze as he caught sight of a flash of silver pips in the doorway behind him, where ACC Willows stood waiting to gain entry.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ Mike breezed, preserving the protocols while trying to put Geoff at ease. ‘Meet DC Keating, and take my advice and stay away from his judo throw. He was personally responsible for the apprehension of an armed gorilla during that trip to Leicester in connection with that Korakis business.’

  ‘A good job all round,’ Willows nodded, before raising an eyebrow. Mike took the hint.

  ‘OK thanks, Geoff. Don’t forget to send that computer to IT.’

  ‘Will do, sir. Excuse me, sir,’ he added as he slipped gratefully past the ACC.

  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Mike enquired as Willows took a seat without invitation.