‘You see, Mr Roscoe, this isn’t just about my husband. It’s also about me and my daughter, who comes home from school next week. And it’s about my home…’
He did this talk most often with serious players in organised crime. If the player dealt in cocaine shipments, had reneged and was under threat, Roscoe would have been in an office, in a Kent mansion, and the woman would have been in her fifty-thousand-pound kitchen and would have stayed there. He wasn’t used to dealing with wives who demanded answers. Neither was he used to having the husband sagging on the end of a lounger, the sun full on his face, cheeks unshaven and shirt not changed from the previous day. It was a big debate area in SCD7: how much detail could be given out concerning a contract threat? Give no information and mount surveillance: end up with a grandstand view of the hitman slotting the intended victim before the armed police could intervene and everybody finishing up in the high court on a duty-of-care action. Give too much information: the potential victim might identify the threat coming his way, preempt the process and do the shooting himself. It was a fine line.
‘What if I happen – God forbid – to be beside him when a shot is fired? What if there’s a bomb under the car, and they don’t know which car I drive and which is his? And I have a fifteen-year-old daughter – it’s her home as much as mine. Can I have, please, Mr Roscoe, some answers?’
Roscoe had brought Bill and Suzie with him. Bill would be padding round the garden, checking out the boundaries of the property, and Suzie would be in the village, learning about the community and routes into it. It was, indeed, a minefield. The Flying Squad liked to put the people in place, then wait for a hit or a snatch to be just about there, in good clear view in front of them, before they intervened. Then they ended up with the proper charges, not a conspiracy offence, but it made for difficult judgements and frayed nerves. He came clean, about as clean as he could.
‘Your husband – as I am sure he’s told you – was involved with people in Croatia in 1991. The degree of involvement, and what happened, he has chosen not to confide to us, but he has let us understand that a disputed matter lies between the parties – himself and a village in the east of the country. We don’t yet know why the matter has been resurrected after nearly two decades. If your husband, Mrs Gillot, has been perceived as a cheat, and this community has identified him – maybe located him – we have no reason to doubt their motivation to move on him and, perhaps, you, your daughter and your home. I see no reason not to take such a threat seriously.’
Breath hissed through Gillot’s lips. Roscoe realised the man had side-stepped from spilling it to his wife. Since he had arrived he had not heard them exchange a word, and there had been precious little eye-contact.
‘“Take such a threat seriously”. That is what you said?’
‘It’s the initial assessment. There are indications we should take seriously-’
‘Indications? That’s a pretty bland word when we’re discussing my daughter’s and my life, and the security of my home.’
‘And, of course, Mrs Gillot, we’re also discussing your husband’s life, and “indications” of a “threat” to it.’
Gillot caught Roscoe’s eyes. For the first time there was a flash of light in them, as if he had found – about time – a friend. She looked away, didn’t accept the rebuke, and stared out to sea. Her shorts had ridden up. But Mark Roscoe was not Harvey Gillot’s friend. Work had pitched them together. There would be as much bonding – or as little – as if Harvey Gillot dealt class-A stuff in the sink estates of south-east London. The man was a gun-runner. He lived in a big property with a great view, had a degree of success dripping off him and was probably inside the legal limits of his trade most of the time, but he would get no more, no less, support than a drugs-trafficker. Roscoe would not have said that made him any sort of zealot, just that it was the way he operated – and she had reacted as if his remark was a swat on the nose.
‘Can we, at your convenience, start with some answers, Mr Roscoe?’
‘Because we take the threat seriously, and believe there are indications of the validity of the intelligence forwarded to us, we-’
‘Stop the bullshit, Mr Roscoe, and get to the point.’
He did. At times, in this scenario, he might have played it soft and sought to reassure, but he was at the point, and it was sharp.
‘There is no question of us providing an armed protection unit to move into your home.’
‘I assume that’s not for negotiation.’
‘Neither, because of the indications of a threat and our responsibility to our own personnel, will unarmed officers be deployed to your home. That means they’d have to go shopping with you, maybe attend your daughter’s school and social engagements.’
‘Understood.’
‘We would hardly be likely to request from the local force that they do anything more than maintain a sporadic watch on the road through the village. They might extend a normal patrol pattern and come by this way, but that’s difficult. Why difficult? We don’t encourage officers – unprotected, likely young and inexperienced – to approach a car in which an armed man may be doing surveillance of your home.’
‘Of course. And when we’ve finished listing all the health and safety involving your people and your lack of resources, what about me, my daughter and my home?’
‘Two options, Mrs Gillot.’
She gave a brittle laugh. ‘What are they?’
‘You can stay, and we’ll offer full advice on the installation of additional home-security equipment. You can take your chance and hope the intelligence was faulty. Of course, should you activate a panic button, police response will be governed by the availability of armed officers – it might not be immediate.’
‘Or?’
‘You can pull out, Mrs Gillot. You and your husband can move, go off the map. The next question is usually “For how long?” Don’t know, can’t estimate, open-ended. You disappear, maybe take on new identities. That, also, we can advise on. The hitman, if our intelligence is correct, turns up here, finds an empty house and-’
‘He isn’t here already, watching us, is he?’
‘We don’t think so. Usually there’s quite a lengthy period of surveillance and reconnaissance. I’ll not gild it. A contract of this sort would be initiated with serious and careful people, not a cowboy who’ll charge in. They would look for an opportunity. As I say, you can pull out, Mrs Gillot, and let him turn up here. I’m not saying we’re lacking in the field of intelligence gathering but, I emphasise, we don’t have the resources for round-the-clock protection.’
Vern was driving as they passed the 2012 Olympics site and came across the causeway. His sister was beside him and his brother slouched in the back.
Vern thought of his sister as the ‘kid’, an afterthought between their parents, her conception timed after a lengthy spell his father had served in HMPs Wandsworth and Parkhurst. He thought of his brother as the ‘young ’un’. The difference? He would have called his sister ‘kid’ to her face, but he would never have addressed his brother disrespectfully. Leanne had a good temperament and could laugh not just at others but at herself. She was popular, and could drink in the pubs if she fancied it. Robbie, the young ’un, had no humour in his face, seldom laughed at others, never at himself, and didn’t drink.
Vern had driven carefully from south-east London. Behind them, left there, was all they knew well. The route Vern had chosen had taken them past the yard where George Francis had been done by a hitman for losing Brinks Mat money he was minding; past the flat where a small-time villian had been killed and dismembered – later, the killer had sat in the back of a car taking the pieces out to the Essex marshes for dumping and waved a severed arm at motorists going the other way; past the armourer’s home, a little terraced house, anonymous, with a reinforced shed out the back; past pubs where a tout or an undercover wouldn’t have lasted long enough to buy a pint before he was busted; past the garages where the cars were fitted up for them; and past the Osprey Estate where a boy had been beaten and killed – a gang of kids had thought a ‘wall of silence’ would protect them but they were doing time because the wall had been holed by the police; and past the complex of housing-association homes where the Irish contract killer had shot a Brindle brother right under the sights of police guns. Vern had flicked a glance in the mirror to watch the young ’un’s reaction, and there had been none.
Interesting that there was no reaction as they went down Needleman Street. Vern, like Leanne, their mum and dad, Granddad and Grandma Cairns, was supposed to know nothing of the woman kept there. Vern knew. He reckoned Leanne did – not that he’d told her. He reckoned the parents didn’t know, or the grandparents. He had seen, from a car, the young ’un come out of the block’s main entrance and pause on the pavement to look up. He’d followed the eyeline, stationary in a traffic foul-up, and had seen the woman, her little hand gesture at the window,
