Dick Jarvis raised his hand. “But why risk the noise of the gunshot alerting hospital staff?” he asked in his frightfully posh accent. “Surely it would have been more prudent to drug him like the others?” Dick was the youngest person on Tyler’s team and the most recent addition. A graduate entry, he was still a little wet behind the ears, and the wanton brutality of the people they had to deal with on AMIP still surprised him at times.
Dillon shrugged. “You have to understand that Winston isn’t rational. If Morrison resisted when they went to inject him, or if he said something disrespectful, or if he even looked at him in a manner he didn’t like, that would be reason enough in Winston’s eyes.”
The room had gone deathly silent as the detectives digested Dillon’s words, and Jack could tell from the thoughtful expressions on their faces that every officer present was mentally putting themselves in Morrison’s place and imagining what he must have gone through. And for what? The killing had not only been senseless, it had been totally avoidable.
“It’s a sobering thought, and an indication of how dangerous the man we’re hunting is,” Holland said, indicating for Dillon to sit down again. “We know they planned to leave the hospital in a stolen car, but when Mr Dillon and his two colleagues turned up unexpectedly, Winston had to radically alter his plans. There’s no denying that the gang were incredibly lucky; one of the suspects made good his escape on foot while the other three managed to make their way to the roof and hijack the HEMS helicopter. That was found on wasteland in Canning Town a short time later, and we think it only put down there because India 99 and India 98 were rapidly converging on it. I’ll hand over to Mr Quinlan to take you through the investigation from that point onwards.”
“Thank you,” Quinlan said, standing up and self-consciously fiddling with his glasses. “Killing a policeman obviously wasn’t enough to satiate their bloodlust because, after landing, the fugitives shot the pilot, a man called Peter Myers. Fortunately, they waited until they’d alighted the aircraft to open fire on him and, as luck would have it, the plexiglass windscreen deflected both bullets. One shot missed entirely, the other gouged his helmet. Although he was rendered unconscious by the impact and he sustained a nasty concussion, no permanent harm appears to have has been caused.”
“Was he able to shed any light on where they went afterwards?” Steve Bull asked. He was sitting next to Dillon in the front row.
Quinlan shook his head. “No, Steve. As I said, he was badly concussed and we haven’t been able to speak to him yet, but that’ll be addressed as a priority today, and hopefully, he might be able to provide some useful information. Perhaps, I could ask you to look into that for me?”
“Of course,” Bull said, wishing he’d kept his gob shut.
Another hand shot up in the third row. “I think I’m going to ask you all to hold back on your questions until I’ve finished,” Quinlan said, waving the man’s hand down. He smiled reassuringly at the man who was now looking rather embarrassed. “Don’t worry, I promise you’ll get another chance to ask your question, but I want to complete my overview first.”
He cleared his throat. “So, as I mentioned earlier, one of the suspects made good his escape on foot. He then carjacked a London Taxi outside the hospital, but this was later spotted by DS Sergeant and DC Murray, and they followed it along East India Dock Road until SO19 arrived and carried out a hard stop just shy of the slip road to the Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach. Instead of surrendering, the suspect pulled a gun on them and promptly got himself shot. Unfortunately, despite making it through surgery, he passed away during the night.”
“Not exactly a loss, is it boss?” Murray said, earning himself a look of disapproval from George Holland.
Quinlan carried on as if no one had spoken. “A wet set was taken from him at the hospital during the early hours and rushed up to NSY for urgent comparisons. Do we have a result back yet?” The question was addressed to Susie Sergeant.
“Yes, boss,” she said, consulting her blue daybook. “The deceased is an IC3 male called Errol Heston, a low-level thug with petty form for possession of cannabis, a couple of ABHs and some public order offences. Basic research hasn’t revealed any obvious connection between him and Winston.”
Quinlan thanked her. “So, where are we as far as the investigation is concerned? Well, we’ve already seized all the CCTV from inside the hospital, and I’m hoping its footage will yield clear facial shots of Winston’s, as yet, unidentified accomplices before they donned their masks. The getaway car’s been impounded and will be forensically examined later today. Hopefully, that will give us the unknown suspect’s fingerprints and DNA. The car itself was stolen from Beckton train station a couple of hours before the escape, and we’ll combine local authority CCTV and ANPR to backtrack its movements between those times.”
Every time a vehicle passes an Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera its details are run through the database to see if there are any interest reports on it. If there are, for instance, because it’s shown as being stolen, concerned in crime, making off without payment – which basically means that the driver has