appreciate your desire to get into the industry, and we’re always on the look-out for new blood, so I’m going to give you the number of an agent I know.’ Underneath the signature, he wrote down his brother-in-law’s name and number. ‘When you ring, you’ll get either him or his secretary. Just tell them Charlie the Chopper said for you to call, and make sure you say too that you’ve heard there’s a vacancy in one of Ben Dover’s new productions, and that you’re interested. And don’t forget to give them your cock size — that’s always at the top of their list of questions. And make sure you add an extra inch.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Don’t worry. Everyone does it.’
He smiled. ‘Thanks, Charlie. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.’
‘Good luck, son.’
The young man called Pete thanked them both, deposited the beermats in the pocket of his anorak, then did the honourable thing and left them alone.
‘What number did you give him?’ asked Tino. Stegs told him, and a smile cracked the Dutchman’s features. ‘Man, you are one hell of a good actor, Mark. Just like that dolt Trevor.’ He shook his head, the smile disappearing as he remembered the position he was in. ‘I cannot believe that he did this to me. Did you put pressure on him to make him betray me?’
Stegs shook his head. ‘He rang me up and volunteered the information. He makes money out of betraying people. We pay him when his information secures us a conviction.’
‘The bastard! I show him kindness and this is how he pays me. By being a, what is it you call it?’
‘A grass.’
‘A grass, yes. It doesn’t seem right.’
‘And it isn’t right. And I think you might get the opportunity to pay him back in kind.’
For the first time, Tino eyed Stegs with something akin to suspicion. ‘What do you get out of all this, Mark? You are a policeman, no? So why help me?’
‘Because you’re going to do something for me, Tino.’
‘What am I going to do?’
Stegs pulled a photograph of a girl of about twenty from the pocket of his jacket. In the photo, she was standing in what looked like a central London street with high buildings on either side, dressed in winter clothing and smiling at the camera. Judy Flanagan wasn’t particularly pretty, but there was something natural in her expression that gave her a certain attractiveness. Her cheeks were rosy, her smile genuine, and her whole demeanour that of a young, well-educated, middle-class girl who was almost certainly kind to animals and fellow human beings in equal measure, and who probably bought the
‘Who is this chick?’ asked Tino, inspecting the photo carefully like he was searching for the hidden prize. ‘She has a strange nose.’
‘She’s someone I want you to get to know. And when you get to know her, which is going to happen very quickly, I want you to take her away for a couple of days.’
Tino gave him a confused look. ‘Why, my man?’
There was silence for a few moments as Stegs finished his pint. Then, taking his time, he lit a cigarette and explained.
18
Saturday began just like any other working day for those of us on the O’Brien case.
The Met’s detection rate for murders has come under a lot of criticism in recent years, with clear-up rates of a little over seventy per cent lagging far behind those of the rest of the country, mainly because there are too many murders and, given the trend among CID for early retirement, not enough senior detectives. So when you had an increasingly high-profile double-killing (the papers that morning had finally picked up on the fact that Robbie O’Brien was linked to the botched operation at Heathrow), those officers involved were expected to pull out all the stops.
At the murder squad meeting that morning, Flanagan informed us that he had another news conference set for eleven a.m. to try to, as he said, play down the connection between Slim Robbie and the events of Wednesday. On the one hand, such a connection raised the profile of the case and therefore made it easier to appeal to potential witnesses, but this was outweighed by the fear that those witnesses might well end up keeping quiet if they thought there was some strong ‘organized crime’ element to what had been going on. No-one wants to make themselves a target or end up lost in a witness protection programme, and Flanagan was as aware of this as anyone, and was acting accordingly. I also don’t suppose he was vastly keen on the idea of an intrepid reporter finding out that the man who’d led and planned Operation Surgical Strike was also the one leading the O’Brien murder inquiry, but his demeanour (tenser and more strained than it had been the previous day) suggested that he didn’t discount it as a possibility.
However, he was also excited about our new and potentially ground-breaking lead: the first description of the killer. At last we had something to go on. ‘We’re going to bring the witness in this morning to see if we can get some sort of e-fit together,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know how good a likeness we’re going to get, she didn’t see him for long, but you never know. As soon as we’ve got something, we’ll knock on every door within a quarter-mile radius and see if the face rings any bells. I’ve been promised the use of thirty uniforms, but even so it’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of houses in that part of Islington.’
Next, Flanagan moved on to the material I’d spotted hanging from the rusty nail. Apparently, there wasn’t much of it, but tests at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Lambeth were still continuing to see if there was any way of identifying the make, and therefore where it might have been sold. ‘They haven’t been able to pinpoint it yet,’ he told us, ‘and even the forensics guys aren’t miracle workers. It was only about an inch of cloth, and that’s not a lot to go on, but it is top priority down there.’
Flanagan was right, it wasn’t a lot to go on, but at least on this case the resources were going to be there.
The meeting continued with members of the squad bandying about ideas for widening the search and trying to see if there was any angle we hadn’t covered yet. I mentioned the weapon used. ‘Is it possible it was used before? Has anyone checked HOLMES to see if it might have been?’
As yet, no-one had, though Flanagan wasn’t especially confident that it was going to turn up anything, particularly as we’d yet to recover the gun itself. ‘He was a pro, the man who did this, as much as anyone who kills people is a pro. But the point is, he’s been careful all the way down the line so I can’t see him using a dirty weapon. It will need to be checked out, though, just in case the bullets used can be matched with any that have been fired in separate incidents. I know that the Forensic Science Service did ballistics tests at the crime scene. Speak to Roy Catherwood down at Lambeth, can you? He’s the one who’ll be in charge of documenting all the results.’
I said I would.
‘Also, sir,’ said Tina, ‘if he is a pro, then he’s going to have done something like this before, isn’t he?’
Flanagan nodded severely, not even looking at her. ‘Good thinking,’ he said, which, with him, was about the best compliment you were going to get. ‘Take a look through HOLMES, see if there’s any other killings with the same MO in London in the past three years, and if any of them throw up a description of the killer.’
Tina said she would, then brought up what she’d found out about Stegs Jenner’s partnership with Jeff Benson, his former colleague in SO10, and how it had ended with the latter’s cover being blown. ‘It’s possible he betrayed a colleague once, so he could easily have done it again. Which means he’s got be worth considering as a suspect for leaking the details of Operation Surgical Strike.’
Flanagan nodded, not looking too displeased with what Tina had said, which wasn’t surprising. ‘Mr Jenner still has some questions to answer, but at the moment we haven’t got an adequate motive for him, or any real evidence. Keep digging, though, and something might come up. And that goes for all of you. Keep digging. We’re unearthing clues. They might be few and far between, but the harder we work at it, the more we’ll turn up.’
So dig we did. I didn’t see much of Tina that weekend. We were like ships passing in the night. When she
