‘Bodies?’
‘His grandma got killed as well.’ I explained that she lived in the same building as O’Brien.
She sighed. ‘That sounds like a professional job.’
‘I can’t see the timing being coincidental. Let’s get over there. There’s no point going to collect your car. I’ll say I picked you up.’
‘OK, but weren’t Berrin and Hunsdon meant to be watching his place?’
I shrugged. ‘That’s what I thought. Maybe they just weren’t paying attention.’
I indicated, pulled into the bus lane and turned down a side street, taking a short cut in the direction of Slim Robbie and his grandmother’s temporary resting place, wondering just how much more complicated things were going to get.
7
Slim Robbie O’Brien lived in a first-floor apartment in an immense Georgian townhouse that stood regally on an upmarket residential street just north of Highbury Corner, and an area he knew well, although he’d actually been born a mile away in the less upmarket Barnsbury, one of six children of Irish immigrants from south of Dublin. His parents had died young — his father of a heart attack, his mother of cancer — and his grandmother had come over from Ireland to look after Robbie and one of his sisters, the two youngest of the brood. Robbie had been fourteen at the time and had lived with his beloved gran for four years, before finally moving out to become a violent and integral member of the Holtz crime family, who were already well established in the area. He’d never forgotten what she’d done for him, though, and when he’d bought his current place five years earlier, he’d bought the apartment opposite for her. He’d never been much interested in women, due in part to his size, and the story went that when he wasn’t out drinking or on business he’d be round at her place watching the box and eating her ample helpings of traditional Irish fare. Some of the braver members of the Holtz fraternity had even taken to calling her his girlfriend, which wasn’t an entirely inaccurate summary.
I’d never met her but had heard that she was a good-hearted woman who, though she’d always refused to see any bad in her undeniably sadistic grandson, had never been in trouble in her life, and was spoken of fondly by those who knew her. It seemed a pity that she’d met such an ignominious end, and I hoped that she hadn’t suffered unduly.
When we pulled into Robbie’s street twenty minutes later, a uniformed officer I didn’t recognize in a fluorescent jacket immediately stopped us. Up ahead, the road was closed in front of the house where the murders had occurred and the houses on either side of it, scene-of-crime tape sealing it off from the public. A number of police vehicles and two ambulances were double-parked on either side, while small groups of residents watched the proceedings with rapt, nervous interest from their doorsteps.
I brought down my window and showed the uniform my warrant card. ‘DI John Gallan, and DS Tina Boyd. Any idea how they died?’
‘Shot, I heard,’ he replied, a tone of boredom in his voice.
People get shot all the time these days, particularly in Greater London. Twenty years ago it would have been front-page news. Today, it barely raises an eyebrow.
We parked up behind one of the ambulances, whose two-man crew were leant against it, smoking cigarettes. Over by the front door of the house, I could see DCI Knox standing talking to one of the white-overalled scene-of- crime officers. Knox was looking pissed off, which wasn’t surprising. When you’re as busy as we were, and after a day in which our original legwork had led to a meeting that had ended in six deaths, a double murder in the heart of our patch was not what you’d call helpful.
We got out of the car and walked over. Knox saw us approach and nodded curtly. ‘Morning, John, Tina. This is Sergeant Andy Davies, SOCO. They’re up there now.’
We shook hands all round and I asked Davies what we’d got so far. ‘Two bodies, both IC1. One female, mid to late seventies. One male, early thirties. Both shot in the head from close range. From the look of the injuries, I’d say it was a smallish-calibre weapon, probably a.38. The bodies are in separate rooms. The male appears to have been killed where he’s fallen in the living room, but, from the position of her body, we think the female was moved to the bedroom after she’d been shot.’ He spoke matter-of-factly, in a curiously high-pitched voice that didn’t fit with the rest of him. He was a big man, late forties, with a thick beard and very brown, intelligent eyes. As far as I was concerned, his voice should have boomed.
‘Were they killed at the same time, do you think?’ I asked.
‘Too early to say. The doctor’s up there now doing tests, so we should know fairly shortly.’
I nodded, knowing we wouldn’t be getting any theories out of Davies. Like a lot of scene-of-crime officers, he only liked to deal in bald facts, and it was still very early days, with the inquiry less than an hour old, so there weren’t even very many of them.
‘We haven’t had a final positive confirmation,’ said Knox, who’d also met O’Brien before. ‘I haven’t been up there yet. But I can’t see it being anyone else, and it would certainly fit, given the events of yesterday.’ Davies looked at him quizzically when he said this, but Knox didn’t elaborate. ‘We’re going to be coming in a few minutes to ID him, if that’s all right.’
‘OK,’ said Davies, ‘but you’ll need to get kitted up.’
Knox nodded, then led us over to a police van with its rear door open. A young uniform handed all three of us sterilized overalls, hats, overshoes and hoods to put on so we didn’t contaminate the scene in any way. Fully togged up, we headed back in the direction of the house.
‘This is looking bad,’ said the DCI, turning to us both. ‘Very bad. Operation Surgical Strike, and I can’t think of a more inapt name, was badly compromised, and there’s going to be a huge amount of pressure to get a result. If the body in there is O’Brien, and I’d bet my mortgage that it is, then we’re in a lot of trouble.’
I didn’t say anything. Neither did Tina. There wasn’t a lot to say. He was right. Not only did it suggest that O’Brien — our informant — was the source of the leak, but also that we’d been powerless to prevent him being eliminated from under our very noses.
Which was the crux of Knox’s concern. Our station had had its fair share of negative attention over the years, most famously (or infamously) when one of Knox’s men in CID, a DS Dennis Milne, was unmasked as a contract killer with at least five, and probably many more, corpses to his credit. That nasty little affair was two and a half years old now and finally sinking into the past. The last thing Knox needed was something like this to throw it back into the limelight.
An attractive blonde woman in her late twenties stood in the doorway of her apartment as we stepped inside the building. She was dressed in a smart business suit and looked worried. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on? I’ve got an important meeting in the City at half-nine, and I’ve been told by someone that I’ve got to stay here.’
Knox smiled at her, unable to stop himself from sliding his eyes down to her shapely, nylon-clad legs, and not even being very subtle about it. ‘I understand you live here, is that right, miss?’
‘Williams,’ she answered. ‘Dana Williams.’
‘I’m afraid there’s been a serious incident in one of the other apartments.’
‘Whose?’
‘I can’t tell you at the moment.’
‘It’s Robbie O’Brien, isn’t it?’
‘As I say, Miss Williams, we can’t tell you at the moment. If you go back into your flat, someone will be down to take a statement as soon as possible. But it might be wise to make your meeting for this afternoon. This may take some time.’
‘I’m afraid time is what I haven’t got a lot of. This meeting’s extremely important.’
‘This is also very important. So, if you’d go back inside.’ Knox’s tone was firm and only just the right side of annoyed, and she relented, giving him a dirty look and mumbling something less than complimentary.
The wide, thickly carpeted hallway on the next floor was busy, with a number of SOCO coming in and out of one of the doors, some carrying plastic sample bags that they placed carefully in cases lined up against the wall. We stepped gingerly through this activity and into the apartment’s living room where we were immediately confronted by the ample corpse of Slim Robbie (and it was him, there was no mistake) lying on its side in an
