Murder Ring (A DI Geraldine Steel Mystery) Read online

  On the point of calling the police she thought better of it and rang Jack instead. He wouldn’t thank her for contacting the police. Besides, there was a chance Jack had accidentally locked his brother in his room before going out, or he might even have taken Theo out with him. He did occasionally take him out for a walk, although he had never kept him away for longer than an hour. Her hopes were dashed when Jack answered his phone. He had no idea where Theo was. As she had expected, Jack insisted it would be a mistake to invite the police to poke around in their business.

  ‘I ain’t letting no one take my bro away. They gonna say you ain’t able to take care of him. They’ll take him away from us and bang him up. They ain’t good to loonies, ma. You know it.’

  ‘Your brother ain’t no loony.’

  ‘We know it, but you know what they gonna think.’

  Jack offered to come straight home, and made her promise not to do anything before he arrived.

  ‘We gonna find him, ma. He ain’t gone far.’

  ‘You better be right.’

  Jack was as good as his word. Within an hour he was home, breathless and stressed. He had seen no sign of Theo as he had made his way across the estate and up the stairs. Rosa begged him to go back out and search for his brother again, but he seemed more interested in searching Theo’s room.

  ‘What you wanna look in there for? You ain’t gonna find nothing in there. It’s fulla junk. You need to get outside and find your brother. He ain’t gone far, you said so yourself. You gotta find him.’

  Jack glared at his mother. ‘Fuck off telling me what to do. Ain’t no one tells me what to do. I gotta find something in my bro’s room so get outa the way, will ya? There’s something in Theo’s room I gotta find, and you don’t need to know no more.’

  Rosa was really frightened now. ‘What he got in there that you so keen to find? What you been giving him? What you got in there?’

  ‘Fuck off. I ain’t given nothing to my bro. I look out for him.’

  He pushed past her and she heard him swearing as he rummaged around in his brother’s room.

  ‘Theo don’t like no one messing with his stuff,’ she muttered, wondering what Jack was so desperate to find in there. ‘You stashed weed or crack in there, you as good as killed your brother.’

  Jack didn’t answer.

  41

  THE TELEVISION APPEAL took longer to record than anyone had anticipated. For a start, Luke’s father refused to speak on camera.

  ‘He’s shy,’ his wife explained, while he shrugged, red-faced and awkward.

  Luke’s mother was keen to participate, but kept breaking down in tears. Her crying was only natural, but she quickly became incoherent. What with his silence, and her hysterics, the filming dragged on. There was little Geraldine could do to speed it up. She had to remain seated at the table making sure all of the key points were included. At last they finished and she arranged for a patrol car to take Mr and Mrs Thomas home.

  ‘Do you think a witness will get in touch with you after this?’ Mr Thomas asked, finding his voice now the recording equipment had been switched off.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Geraldine replied. ‘These appeals sometimes help to jog someone’s memory, or it might prompt a witness to come forward when they’ve been in two minds over whether to get involved.’

  She didn’t add that it was anyone’s guess whether they would receive useful information as a result of their afternoon’s work, or just the inevitable barrage of deluded and mistaken responses.

  ‘One day one of our regulars is going to come up with a genuine lead and no one’s going to pay any attention,’ Sam said, referring to the cranks who contacted them every time an appeal was made. ‘My money’s on Psychic Sue,’ she added, with a grin. ‘Imagine her excitement if she witnessed a real murder.’

  ‘Imagine her giving evidence in court,’ a constable added. ‘She’d insist on taking her crystal ball with her. She’d start by telling the judge all about her past life as a hangman, and then she’d predict his future with an exotic stranger –’

  ‘But if she witnessed a murder she wouldn’t know it was real,’ another constable interrupted. ‘She can’t tell the difference between the real world and the world that goes on inside her head.’

  ‘What if a killer disguised as an alien committed a murder in front of Annie?’ someone else added. ‘Has anyone actually kept a note of all her sightings? Who would have thought so many aliens would want to prowl around the streets of Hendon!’

  ‘Why would a killer disguise himself as an alien?’

  ‘I don’t know. A fancy dress party?’

  ‘This speculation is all very entertaining, but can we please focus on the job in hand,’ Geraldine interrupted the chattering. ‘And as for you, DS Haley,’ she went on, addressing Sam with mock severity, ‘you should know better than to encourage your constables to waste their time like this.’

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ Sam replied, with a grin.

  A young constable new to the job glanced anxiously from Geraldine to Sam and back again, before visibly relaxing on realising the reprimand wasn’t serious.

  It was growing late by the time Geraldine finally left her office. Stopping off at a garage en route, she realised she had no idea of her mother’s favourite flowers, or whether she preferred red or white grapes. Hoping she had inherited her mother’s taste she selected what she herself liked, a small bunch of brightly coloured freesias, splashes of bright purple and orange. Prevaricating, she picked up a plastic punnet of grapes, half white and half red. Armed with these inadequate offerings, she drove to the hospital.

  ‘I’m here to see Milly Blake.’

  The nurse on the desk glanced up at a clock.

  ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘Yes, I’m her daughter.’

  ‘Go on in then, but don’t disturb her if she’s asleep, will you? She didn’t pass a good night.’

  ‘Oh, OK. I wouldn’t wake her up anyway, but what does that mean, she didn’t have a good night? Is she all right? She seemed to be making a good recovery and then I was told she had another coronary.’ It was a struggle to keep her voice even.

  The nurse shook her head. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, she just had a minor setback, but it’s important she rests as much as possible.’

  Geraldine couldn’t help feeling disappointed when she found her mother asleep. Childishly, she had been waiting to see her mother smile on seeing the flowers she had brought. They could hardly establish a relationship based on a preference for the same flowers, but somehow Geraldine felt as though that would help. At least it would give them something to talk about. On her way to the hospital, she had imagined the conversation. It would begin with her mother smiling at the flowers.

  ‘They’re lovely! How did you know I like freesias?’

  ‘I didn’t. They’re my favourites.’

  ‘Mine too!’

  ‘The colours are so vivid.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Their eyes would meet in mutual understanding and Geraldine would feel a connection to the woman she had never known, deeper than any other, a bond forged in blood and flesh. Instead she sat gazing at dry skin stretched taut across sunken cheeks.

  ‘I’m here,’ Geraldine whispered. ‘I’m here, Mum.’ A word so often used with her adoptive mother to express annoyance, or make a demand, the term had become a plea. The sleeping woman didn’t move, but the green line on the monitor progressed with quiet regularity across the screen, reassuring an observer that the patient was alive, at least. Geraldine waited for about fifteen minutes before putting the flowers and grapes down on the table beside the bed. She wished she had thought to buy a card and wondered if her mother would even find out she had been there. She rummaged in her bag and tore a page from her notebook.

  ‘Get well soon, love Erin,’ she wrote, then shoved the page in her bag and tore out a second sheet of paper. This time she omitted the word ‘love’ from her message. It seemed a bit presumptuou
s to use it with the mother she had only met once. But she added a kiss.

  ‘Tell her I came to visit,’ she called to the nurse at the desk. ‘I left some flowers and grapes. I’m her daughter, Erin.’

  ‘Erin,’ the nurse replied, smiling. ‘She was talking about you and Helena.’

  ‘Who’s Helena?’

  The nurse looked surprised. ‘No, I must be getting her confused with someone else. But she was definitely talking about you today. She’ll be pleased you came by. I think she was expecting you earlier.’

  ‘Yes, I meant to get here before now but I couldn’t get away.’

  ‘Not to worry. There’s always another day.’

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that.’ She smiled. ‘It’s good to give her something to look forward to. Mind you don’t let her down again.’

  42

  ON SATURDAY, GERALDINE decided to spend the morning visiting her mother. She was due some time off. Going to the hospital before work meant she couldn’t be sidetracked into going to see her mother later than she intended. If Milly was asleep when she arrived, Geraldine could wait at her bedside until she woke up, even if it meant staying at the hospital all day. It wasn’t as if the investigation would grind to a halt without her. For the first time in her adult life she was putting someone else before her work. It was liberating but frightening, acknowledging that another person was so important to her.

  She finished a late breakfast and set out for the hospital. On the way she stopped off to buy a large bunch of flowers, almost a bouquet, and more mixed grapes. As she laid the flowers carefully on the passenger seat, her work phone rang. Glancing down she recognised Sam’s number. She ignored it and drove off. The phone shrilled again. When it rang for the third time, she answered it.

  ‘This had better be important.’

  ‘The gun’s turned up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The gun we’ve been looking for. It’s turned up.’

  ‘What? Where? Are you sure? How do you know it’s the same one?’ Her hospital visit temporarily postponed, Geraldine made a quick turn and headed towards Hendon. ‘I’m on my way right now. Tell me everything you know. I just want the facts.’

  Sam told her that a young man had been apprehended somewhere in Central London. As far as Sam knew, he had been either blind drunk or else high on drugs, or possibly both. He had been seen threatening passersby with a hand gun. The street had been cordoned off and the armed response unit summoned.

  ‘They threw the whole lot at him, as you can imagine, but in the end it seems he gave up quietly and it was all over pretty quickly. A bit of a non-event really, except that when they examined the gun, some bright spark in ballistics matched the idiosyncrasies on the barrel to the bullets that were used to shoot our victims, and there it is. We have the gun and what’s more, we’ve got the guy who was running around town with it! Looks like we’ve got our killer, just like that. I knew we couldn’t go on much longer without any sort of a break. Two people shot dead. No one does that and gets away with it.’

  Geraldine wasn’t convinced the case would be quite so easily wrapped up.

  ‘We’ve got the weapon, anyway,’ she agreed.

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, Geraldine, even you can’t pour cold water on this. What else do you need? A signed confession in triplicate and video evidence of him shooting the victims? I’m telling you, we’ve got him.’

  ‘All right. Where is he?’

  ‘They’re bringing him over to Hendon right now. He should be here in about half an hour.’

  Geraldine glanced at the time. ‘Don’t let Adam start without me!’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best, but it’s not exactly my shout.’

  Geraldine grunted. It was typical that the killer would be picked up just when she was away from her office.

  ‘So, back to the facts. Who is he? What do we know about him?’

  On that point Sam was less forthcoming. It seemed no one had yet managed to discover the suspect’s name, or anything much about him. All she could say was that he was around twenty, and he refused to say anything. Neither his prints nor his DNA had ever been entered on the system so they had no way of identifying him yet.

  ‘The arresting officers think he might be a bit odd,’ Sam added.

  ‘Odd in what way?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh well, I guess we can make up our own minds about that. See you soon.’

  Geraldine put her foot down and reached Hendon ahead of the suspect who was still being processed out of the London police station where he had been overnight, prior to his transfer. The paperwork was going to take a while, which gave Geraldine time to study the report on his arrest. Sam’s summary had been accurate, as far as it went. The suspect had been picked up on Thursday night and the station in Hendon had only been notified on Saturday when the gun had been identified as linked to their case. Other than that, the account of his arrest seemed to confirm that he had been spaced out when the police picked him up, too far gone even to speak.

  She smiled, reading the report. It was a massive step forward. They had been searching for the murder weapon for days without getting anywhere and now it had just dropped into their laps together, hopefully, with the killer himself. There was an atmosphere of elation in the incident room that contrasted with the deflated mood last time Geraldine had been there. Some of the officers were beaming. For others, the enormity of the breakthrough was only just beginning to sink in. Even Adam was smiling as he greeted her.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got him,’ he said, echoing Sam’s words.

  Geraldine nodded. ‘Let’s hope. What time will he be here?’

  They discussed the practicalities for a while. Adam wanted Geraldine to accompany him in the interview. She agreed with alacrity. The excitement in the team was infectious. Within an hour or two they expected to secure a confession, after which they would start to prepare a case to present to the Crown Prosecution Service. The end was near. While they waited for the suspect to arrive, Geraldine read through the account of his arrest again. As Sam had told her, the actual event had been low key once the police had arrived on the scene. The suspect hadn’t resisted arrest, and had handed over his gun without demur. The whole time he had refused to utter a word.

  At last the message came through that the suspect was waiting, along with a brief. The interview could begin.

  ‘Come on then,’ Adam muttered, ‘let’s see if we can make him talk.’

  ‘I don’t really see how he can hold out now,’ Geraldine replied. ‘He was caught virtually red-handed, with the gun in his possession.’

  ‘Yes, he was holding it, waving it around, so he can’t spin some cock and bull story about it being planted on him without his knowledge. He must at least tell us where he got the gun, if he wants to claim it wasn’t him shooting people with it a week ago. Either way, we’re home and dry.’

  Geraldine nodded. She hoped he was right. Adam opened the door to the interview room and stood aside for her to enter first. With a terse smile in appreciation of his good manners, she walked in and faced the man accused of shooting two people dead.

  43

  AGED AROUND TWENTY, the suspect looked faintly oriental. Beneath a mop of curly black hair, a pair of wild, dark eyes stared round the room from a thin pale face. His shoulders jiggled as the tips of his bony fingers tapped out a rhythm on the table. His demeanour suggested he was high, although it was difficult to tell whether his pupils were dilated, because his irises were almost black. As soon as Geraldine began to talk he sat perfectly still. Only his eyes roamed all around the room, as though he wasn’t listening to a word she said. Probably he was familiar with the preamble to a police interview.

  With worried blue eyes and a snub nose, the lawyer at his side looked about fifteen. When he leaned forward his sandy-coloured fringe flopped over his high forehead. He spoke rapidly in a low voice as though he didn’t want to be overheard. ‘I
n my opinion my client is not in a fit state to answer any questions. I haven’t been able to get a single word out of him. We don’t know how old he is. If he’s under age, your attempt to interview him is illegal, as you well know.’

  Geraldine studied the suspect who stared back at her. ‘What is your name?’

  He didn’t respond. She turned to the lawyer and asked for his client’s name.

  ‘I’ve no idea who he is.’ He sounded like a sullen adolescent. His studies had not prepared him for this circumstance. ‘I just told you, he refuses to say a word to me, although I’ve explained very clearly that I’m here to help him. He just won’t speak to me.’

  ‘That’s going to make it difficult for you to represent him.’

  The lawyer shrugged. ‘If he won’t speak to me, I’ll have to withdraw. I’ve tried my best. He doesn’t seem to understand any known language.’

  While this exchange was going on, the suspect fixed his attention on Geraldine and sat silently watching her, his mouth slightly open.

  ‘He looks pretty out of it,’ Adam admitted.

  The lawyer mumbled under his breath as Adam attempted to persuade the suspect to state his name. ‘If you think you can get out of this by simply refusing to speak to us for long enough, you’re mistaken,’ Adam went on, turning to threats in his efforts to loosen the suspect’s tongue. ‘We may struggle to get anything out of you, but we’re not letting you go until you tell us your name and where you live –’