Whispers Under Ground

accurate information you needed to be a bit trickier.

In our pre-interview discussion the consensus was that the problem with Zach was not going to be making him talk, but getting him to talk sense. We didn’t think low blood sugar would be helpful but, as Stephanopoulos pointed out, we didn’t want him hyper either – hence the offal sandwich.

‘Let’s talk about your friend,’ I said.

‘I’ve got a lot of friends,’ said Zach.

‘Let’s talk about the one that’s good with his hands,’ I said.

Zach gave me a blank look but he wasn’t fooling me.

‘Pale face,’ I said. ‘Hoodie, digs out concrete with his bare hands.’

Zach glanced at where the twin cassette tapes whirred in the recorder.

‘Are you allowed to talk about this stuff?’ he asked.

‘It’s just us here,’ said Lesley.

If only, I thought. There being a good chance that Nightingale, Seawoll and Stephanopoulos were watching on the monitor and maintaining a blow-by-blow commentary complete with score cards.

‘You tried to stall me at the underground rave,’ I said. ‘You didn’t want me going after him.’

‘And look what happened,’ said Zach.

‘So you do know him,’ said Lesley.

‘We may have crossed paths,’ said Zach. ‘Done a little business, socialised a bit.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Lesley.

‘His name’s Stephen,’ said Zach. ‘Any chance of a Mars bar?’

‘Surname?’ I asked.

‘Hot chocolate?’ asked Zach. ‘Nothing finishes off brawn like a hot chocolate.’

‘Surname?’

‘They don’t go in for surnames,’ said Zach.

I wanted to ask who ‘they’ were, but sometimes it’s better to let the interviewee think they’ve got one past you. So I asked where Stephen was from.

‘Peckham,’ said Zach.

We asked whereabouts in Peckham, exactly, but he said he didn’t know.

‘Do you know what he did with his gun?’ I asked.

‘What gun?’ asked Zach.

‘The gun he used to shoot at us,’ I said.

For a moment Zach was staring at us as if we were mad. Then he frowned.

‘Oh, that gun,’ he said. ‘You must have done something, because that gun’s purely for self-protection. I mean, I wouldn’t want you thinking that he just goes around shooting at anyone.’

‘Has he shown it to you?’

‘What?’

‘The gun,’ I said. ‘You ever seen it?’

Zach leant back in his seat and gave an airy wave. ‘Course,’ he said. ‘But not to hold or nothing.’

‘Do you know what kind of gun it was?’ asked Lesley.

‘It was a gun,’ said Zach making a pistol shape with his hand. ‘I don’t really know guns.’

‘Was it a revolver or a semiautomatic pistol?’ asked Lesley.

‘It was a Glock,’ said Zach. ‘Same as what the police use.’

‘I thought you didn’t know guns,’ I said.

‘That’s what Stephen said it was,’ said Zach. He turned to Lesley. ‘Any chance of that hot chocolate – I’m dying here.’

As a largely unarmed police force, the Met have some fairly serious views about the illegal possession of firearms. It tends to get a lot of attention from senior officers who are willing to devote substantial resources to the problem and usually ends in a visit from CO19, the Met’s firearms unit, whose unofficial motto is guns don’t kill people, we kill people with guns. Given that Zach must know how seriously we take it, the question had to be – what was so important that he was willing to implicate his friend Stephen in a firearms charge just to cover it up?

Especially given that having interviewed all the witnesses and searched Oxford Circus the Murder Team were pretty certain that Zach’s good friend ‘Stephen’ hadn’t been carrying one when he’d got off the train.

‘Hot chocolate was it?’ asked Lesley getting up.

‘Yes please,’ said Zach.

Lesley asked if I wanted coffee, I said yes and I told the tape recorder that PC Lesley May had left the room. Zach grinned. Obviously he thought he’d kept his secret – which was exactly what we wanted him to think.

‘Your friend Steve?’

‘Stephen,’ said Zach. ‘He doesn’t like Steve.’

‘Your friend Stephen from Peckham,’ I said. ‘How long have you known him?’

‘Since I was a kid,’ he said.

I checked my notes. ‘While you were at St Mark’s Children’s Home?’

‘As it happens, yes,’ said Zach.

‘Which is in Notting Hill,’ I said. ‘Not five minutes’ walk from James Gallagher’s house. That’s a bit of a way from Peckham.’

‘Neither of us likes to be confined,’ said Zach. ‘What with the free bus and everything.’

‘So you used to hang,’ I said.

‘Hang?’ asked Zach. ‘Yeah, we used to hang. We’d often chill as well. And on occasion we’d be jammin’.’

‘Around your ends,’ I said. ‘Portobello, Ladbroke Grove?’

‘There’s always something happening at the market,’ said Zach. ‘Stephen’s a bit of a culture freak isn’t he – and we used to earn a bit of cash running errands and stuff.’

‘Was he into art?’ I asked.

‘He’s good with his hands,’ said Zach, and something about the way he said it made me wonder why he’d be reluctant to talk about art.

‘Did he make pottery?’ I asked.

Zach hesitated, and before he could answer Lesley came in with a tray of hot chocolate, coffee and a plate of biscuits. Unfortunately, this part of the interview had been scripted. So instead of pushing Zach I made a note on the pad in front of me. Stephen > Pottery? > Motive?

Lesley identified herself for the tape and then leaned in to murmur; ‘I swear this nick has the worst coffee.’ I gave Zach a meaningful look.

‘Really,’ I said. ‘Interesting.’

Zach looked carefully unconcerned.

‘You say your friend has a pistol,’ I said.

‘Had a pistol,’ said Zach. ‘He’s probably ditched it by now.’

‘He didn’t have one at Oxford Circus,’ I said.

Zach took his hot chocolate. ‘Like I said – he must have ditched it.’

‘No he didn’t,’ said Lesley. ‘Not on the train, not on the tracks not anywhere between the stairs at Holland Park to the platform at Oxford Circus. We’ve looked.’

‘And the funny thing is,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t shot at with a pistol, I was shot at by a Sten gun. And trust me on this, it’s very easy to tell the difference.’

‘Not to mention simple to differentiate in the ballistics lab,’ said Lesley.

‘So I think there was at least two of them,’ I said, and took a sip of my coffee. It was vile. ‘Two big-eyed and pasty-faced geezers, and I don’t think either of them are from Peckham. Are they?’

‘They’re brothers,’ said Zach and you had to admire him, if only for his persistence. But it didn’t matter, because in an interview a lie can almost be as good as the truth. That’s because all good lies contain as much truth as the liar thinks they can get away with. This truth accumulates and, because it’s easier to remember the truth