It was a sultry evening so, although the car was air-conditioned, I lowered my window as we drove up the London Road and out towards Milldean.
My phone rang as we passed under the high railway viaduct, which I always regarded as the boundary between the city proper and its outskirts. I recognized the number. Rupert Colley, Leader of the Council, a man who prided himself on his grass-roots politics. However near his ear was to the ground, I didn’t believe he could have heard so quickly, although he would have seen me leave the dinner. Not that it would have made any difference. I would still have ignored the call.
Traffic was light so we sped past Preston Park then swung right on to the estate. We followed the labyrinth of pitted streets until I saw a large crowd of people. Milldean was a typical fifties council estate: low-rise but with many of the problems a decade later associated with high-rise.
Wide avenues, cheap houses but a lot of them. In one part of the estate there were a couple of hundred prefabs still in use. When they’d been put up at the end of the Second World War they were only meant to be a short-term solution to the housing shortage.
The mood was unpredictable. We edged by the crowd and pulled up in front of a set of steel barricades.
The divisional commander for the area came over to the car as half a dozen uniformed officers cleared a way for us. He slid into the car beside me.
‘We’ve got to disperse these people,’ I said as we passed through the barricade. I could see more people milling at the far end of the street.
‘I’ve got two dozen officers in riot gear on their way,’ he said. His name was Lewis. He was a by-the-book officer, competent enough but lacking in originality. And he was rattled. He spoke in staccato sentences. ‘There are a few troublemakers among this crowd. People heard the shots, of course. Mostly when that happens round here people know to stay indoors. There are wild rumours. The police have shot a pregnant woman. A ten-year-old girl.’
‘And did we?’ I hissed.
‘No ten-year-old girl,’ he said quietly. I looked at his pinched face. He looked back at me with sad eyes.
‘We don’t know at this stage if the woman is pregnant.’
I clenched my fists and tried to control my breathing. I have a tendency to rage. It’s not something I’m proud of, although it has served me well when I’ve been in physical jeopardy, as I often was during my army service.
Jack approached the car, neat as ever in a lightweight blue suit. He held the door as I got out.
‘Sorry about the hacks,’ he said, nodding towards a middle-aged man and an attractive young woman standing in the street some twenty yards away. The man was looking nervously at the crowds gathered behind the barricades then scribbling in a notebook. The woman – bespectacled, hair twisted into a knot, vaguely familiar – was talking intently into a microphone.
‘Not your fault. Bad timing. Who are they?’
‘Just locals so we shouldn’t have a problem. The guy from the Argus – Vince Proctor – is solid.’
‘And the girl?’
Jack lowered his voice. ‘She’s fluff from the local radio station. A trainee.’
I nodded.
‘Do they know how many dead at this point?’
Jack shook his head. I touched his sleeve.
‘Openness is our policy, but we have to play this carefully. Organize a press conference for noon tomorrow. That should give us enough time to sort out what has happened. Everyone will expect us to close ranks, as the police always do. But we won’t.’ I looked around. ‘Where’s Danny?’
Jack looked at me oddly.
‘Danny Moynihan? He’s not here.’
‘So who was the silver commander?’
The gold commander took strategic command of an armed response incident. The silver commander decided on the tactical response and was in charge of the actual operation. I had the same problem with the silver commanders as with the gold – there were too many of them. Given how rarely such officers fulfilled this role, how could we expect them to do it with confidence? However, I had absolute faith in Moynihan.
‘Charlie Foster was silver, sir.’
‘He’s in the IR van with the guys?’
‘And the girls, sir. It was a mixed team.’
‘I was using guys in the American way,’ I said absently. ‘Do we know who the victims are? The woman?’
‘We have no clear identification yet. It was a rented house. You may have heard a rumour about the woman -’ I nodded – ‘I don’t know whether or not that’s true.’
‘Bad enough that we shot her in the first place,’ I said quietly.
I thanked him and went into the house. A couple of people in white bunny suits were kneeling beside a man lying on his back in the kitchen. Blood had congealed around his body. I could smell its thick iron tang. A third man straightened and pointed me towards several more sets of overalls.
I suited up and climbed the stairs. At the top another man in white coveralls barred my way.
‘Sorry, sir. Can’t risk you contaminating the crime scene. You can see from here well enough.’
I nodded and looked past him through the bars of the landing guard. I saw a man slumped on the toilet, as if in the middle of a particularly difficult bowel movement. By pulling myself up and leaning over the top of the banister I could just see the dead couple in the front bedroom.
The divisional commander was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Terrible business,’ he said as I stripped off the overall.
‘Something of an understatement,’ I said, bunching the overall in my fists and tossing it in the corner. ‘Call Philip Macklin, will you? We need an immediate debrief – tell him to set up a post-incident room. I also need him to call the Police Complaints Authority and alert them, then choose a force from the MSF to investigate on the PCA’s behalf. Suggest Hampshire – I rate Bill Munro.’
Bloody acronyms. MSF stood for Most Similar Family. All forces in the country were grouped into ‘families’ on the basis of social, demographic and economic factors rather than size, proximity or regional location. Our other MSF included Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Essex, Kent and Thames Valley.
‘I’d like us all to get the hell out of here but the scene of crime team are going to need to be in this house for the next week or so. If we can’t disperse the crowd, they’re going to be doing their work under siege.’
I used to brag that I worked best under pressure. Now my mind was in overdrive, considering possibilities, predicting outcomes. A part of me stood back and contemplated what a selfish shit I was, as some of my thinking was about how it was going to play in the press.
I was determined to come through this unscathed. I had ambitions to go higher in the police service. I knew I could make a difference. I wasn’t going to let this bring me down.
I left the divisional commander and went to the immediate response vehicle parked across the street. I had to be careful what I said to the officers inside because at the moment I didn’t know what had happened, didn’t know if they were culpable.
Even so, I wanted to support them. I know from my army days what it’s like to walk into an apparently controlled situation that goes haywire.
I rapped on the back doors of the van, pulled them open and hauled myself in. It reeked of stale sweat. It was crowded with officers hunkered down in black swat team T-shirts and trousers. Two groups of four men, talking in low rumbles at the far end of the van. That loudmouth Finch among them.
By the door, two women. I recognized one as DC Franks. She was pale, tense and dry-eyed. She was being comforted by another woman, who was whispering in her ear. The other woman turned her head to look at me and my heart sank. DS Sarah Gilchrist was the last person I wanted to see there.
I left Milldean at three in the morning. The situation on the street had been tense and there had been some stand-offs but no real problems had developed. When I climbed into bed beside Molly she didn’t stir. The smell of alcohol was heavy in the room, a bottle and a half-empty tumbler of whiskey by the bed.
I was up again by six. The phone rang just as I was on my way out of the house. I hurried back in to answer before it woke Molly. William Simpson’s velvety voice was distinctive.
‘Bob, terrible business.’
