the force, DI Harry Jackson had been transferred to Ilford. He had been there when North and his gang had robbed the local Midland Bank, knocked out Pauline Lewins’s front teeth, and shot Fairbairn the branch manager dead. That was surely why Brock had recognised Jackson on their first meeting, for although Jackson hadn’t been directly involved in the hunt for North, there had been considerable contact between Brock and his team and local officers in the days after the robbery.
So what? North had committed armed hold-ups in a dozen different police divisions before he fled the country, and hundreds of officers would have had direct experience of his handiwork. All the same, Brock would have been happier if Lowry had mentioned Jackson being in Ilford, although he may not have known. But surely Jackson would have remembered why Brock recognised him?
The unmarked car had slowed as Harry Jackson’s Opel showed its brake lights a hundred yards up ahead and pulled over to the kerb. As they cruised past, the two men had seen Jackson behind the wheel, a mobile phone to his ear. They stopped just short of the next corner and waited, distracted for a moment by the karaoke din coming from the crowd in the Red Lion, audible even through car windows closed tight against the cold wind.
‘How long did he talk?’ Brock asked.
‘Not long, sir. No more than a minute.’
He recognised the ponderous, formal manner of the two men as their defensive reaction to the mortification they must be feeling.
In the mirror the driver had seen Jackson’s indicator, and then the Opel moving forward again. He’d let it go well past before he pulled out after it. A second time it had stopped, and again they’d overtaken it. But this time it had made a rapid U-turn and disappeared fast back the way they had come.
‘I pulled over,’ the driver reported, ‘and waited till Jackson’s tail lights had rounded the bend in the road, then swung round after him. When we reached the bend, the road ahead was empty. I put my foot down until we were stopped by the next set of lights. Then I saw him in the mirror, sitting on my tail.’
‘He’d spotted you?’
The driver gave a stiff nod, as if the gesture hurt. Brock knew that it wasn’t necessary for him to labour the point. These two were from TO14, specialists in covert surveillance.
‘When the lights changed I drove slowly back the way we’d come, to his flat. He followed on my tail all the way.’
Harry had had a little game with them, Brock thought. Why would he do that?
‘Sorry, sir,’ the driver said, through clenched teeth. ‘I’d swear he changed his pattern after the phone call, as if he’d changed his mind about what he was going to do. It’s possible he spotted us then, because the traffic was thin.’
Brock sensed the ‘but’, unspoken because the man didn’t want to sound as if he was making excuses.
‘I need an honest assessment,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in anything else. You were there, I wasn’t.’
The other man spoke up. ‘He was tipped off, chief. That’s my honest opinion. Whoever phoned him told him he had a tail.’
Brock nodded. There wasn’t much point in being coy with Harry Jackson any more.
*
He seemed in cheerful mood as he was shown into the interview room, his face fresh and pink as if he’d just had a run or a good laugh.
‘Evening, Mr Brock,’ he said, taking the offered chair. ‘Your lads were very silent on the way in. I was trying to tell them they didn’t need to pick me up. You should have given me a bell and I’d have come straight over. Is it about my little game with your boys in the Astra? Couldn’t resist it.’
‘Has he been cautioned?’ Brock asked. Bren shook his head.
‘Cautioned?’ Jackson said, shocked, and Brock began to intone the formal words, ignoring his protest.
‘That’s well out of order, chief,’ Harry said. ‘Okay, I had some fun, but it’s me you’re talking to, Harry Jackson, twenty-one years in the force.’
‘Who rang you in the car this evening?’ Brock said sharply. ‘Who warned you about the tail?’
Harry smiled. ‘Don’t know what you mean there, chief. I spotted the Astra myself, no bother.’
‘Who was on the phone?’
‘Some call centre, doing a survey on voters’ attitudes. I told them to get stuffed.’
‘Where were you on the afternoon of Saturday last, the eighteenth of December?’ Brock said abruptly, and watched Harry’s face go pale.
‘Oh.’
They waited in silence as he looked from one to the other.
‘Caught me out, have you, chief?’
Brock said nothing.
Harry bowed his head, groaned softly and said, ‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s me finished.’
‘I want a statement,’ Brock said. ‘Last Saturday afternoon.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Jackson sighed, turned towards the tape machine and began to speak slowly, eyes lowered. ‘I left the conference in central London at about twelve-thirty, and caught the tube out to Upminster, where I’d left my car. I drove over to Brentwood and parked in the town centre. I got a sandwich at a pub, then went to Boots, where I stood outside on the pavement and waited.’
‘What time was that?’ Brock said.
‘I got to Boots at five to two. I’d arranged to meet someone there at two. They were late. At about a quarter past, I was seen there by Sharon, who works for me at Silvermeadow, and her male companion, don’t know his name. My rendezvous arrived soon after they left, around twenty past two.’
He stopped and seemed disinclined to go on.
‘Come on, Harry,’ Brock said wearily. ‘Get it over with.’
‘Yeah… We walked to my car-’
‘We?’
A scowl came over Jackson’s face. ‘No names, Mr Brock. I won’t tell you that.’
Brock looked at him, thinking that he was to be pitied. ‘Go on then.’
‘We walked to my car, and I drove us home to my place in Dagenham, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon.’
‘Eh?’ Brock said, as if he’d misheard. ‘Doing what, for God’s sake?’
Jackson flushed, glared at Brock, then said. ‘What do you think? We went to bed.’
‘You what?’ Brock said. He tried to get his mind around the idea of Harry Jackson and Upper North in bed together.
‘You heard,’ Jackson said truculently. ‘I took her back to pick up her car at Brentwood at about six, maybe a bit later.’
‘Her?’
‘Yes, her. Jesus, what do you think I’m saying? Her, my girlfriend. Who do you think?’
‘Whose name you can’t reveal for fear of compromising her reputation.’ Brock shook his head sadly. He felt genuinely upset that a man with Jackson’s experience could offer him such a pathetic cliche. ‘Gavin Lowry told me you were too old to have a girlfriend, Harry.’ Jackson looked at him with a startled expression. ‘I disagreed with him, but maybe I was wrong. If you think anyone’s going to swallow that old line you must be well past it.’
At that moment there was a tap at the door and Kathy looked in. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. There’s something I need to check with you.’
Brock got to his feet. ‘Don’t say a thing until I get back, Harry. I wouldn’t want to miss a word of this.’
Outside the room, Kathy said, ‘We’ve traced the number that rang Jackson’s mobile at twenty to eight this evening, Brock. This is the number, and the name and address of the subscriber.’ She gave him a slip of paper.
He read it and felt that chill that comes when some unavoidable truth finally has to be confronted. It was Gavin Lowry’s name and address.
‘You’re not surprised?’ she asked.
‘It was one of the possibilities,’ he said, though he had never really believed it. He had given Lowry the opportunity to betray them, confident that he would not. He had been wrong.
‘I got them to double-check. There’s no mistake.’
‘The bloody fool.’
