Doubt flickered across Mullings’s eyes and he squirmed in his seat uncomfortably. “Bullshit,” he said, but there was a note of concern in his voice.
“We now have CCTV of the stolen car you were driving arriving at the hospital, and the three people you were carrying getting out, dressed in hospital uniforms.”
“So what?” Mullings said with forced nonchalance, but he was starting to look on edge.
“Are you prepared to name the three people you drove to the Royal London Hospital yesterday?”
“No comment.”
“Who’s the male dressed as a doctor?”
“No comment.”
“What about the woman dressed as a nurse? What’s her name?”
“No comment.”
“What about the bald man dressed as a porter?”
“No comment.”
“Come on,” Murray said, “You must know him? Looks like the lead singer from the seventies funk band, Hot chocolate, but without the snazzy moustache.” He did an impromptu dance move in his chair and sang a couple of lines from the hit song, You sexy thing.
Mullings stared at him as though he had gone mad. “No comment.”
“Did you take these people there willingly or were you acting under duress?” Susie asked, returning to her questioning.
Mullings seemed insulted that she should infer anyone might be able to make him do something against his will. “No comment,” he said, angrily.
“We also have extensive CCTV of these same people moving through the hospital on their way to the room Claude Winston was being held in,” she continued.
“Never heard of him,” Mullings said.
“Don’t be stupid,” Murray said, impatiently. “We can prove you’ve been working for him as a low-level drug runner for a couple of years.”
“Officer, there’s no need to call my client names,” Clarke interjected, eyeing the rake-thin detective with disdain.
“It was a statement of fact, not an insult,” Murray responded tartly.
“We also have CCTV of the three people you brought to the hospital leaving with Claude Winston a short time later, after they had fatally shot one of the officers guarding him and drugged the other two,” Susie said.
Mullings shrugged. “Even if that’s true –”
“It is true,” Murray snapped. “We’re going to play you the footage soon. We made that obvious in the written disclosure we served on you prior to the interview. Didn’t your spray tanned solicitor bother to go through it with you before we started?” He turned on Clarke accusingly, his face a mask of contempt.
Clarke’s orange face turned the colour of puce. “How dare –”
“Mr Clarke,” Susie said, and her eyes were burning with anger, “Please tell me that you went through the disclosure with your client.”
Clarke opened his mouth to protest, but the withering look she gave him stopped him in his tracks. “I – I …”
“Don’t just sit there spluttering,” Mullings blurted out. “Do something! These motherfuckers are trying to fit me up with some serious shit I didn’t even do.”
“That’s just it, Gifford,” Susie said patiently, “Under the law governing Joint Enterprise, driving them to the hospital to break Winston out makes you a party to everything that subsequently went down inside, regardless of the fact that you were outside at the time. When your so-called friends killed that officer, they made you as guilty of his murder as if you had pulled the trigger yourself. So, you see, to paraphrase your earlier comment, your mates are the ones responsible for landing you in ‘some serious shit,’ not us. My advice – if you really were just a getaway driver – is talk to us and tell us everything you know. That way, the Crown Prosecution Service will be able to make an informed decision on the most appropriate charges to bring against you. Otherwise, I suspect there’s a very strong likelihood that you will be jointly charged with murder when all the evidence has been gathered.”
Suddenly looking more like a frightened schoolboy than a hardcore gangster, Mullings stared bug-eyed at Susie, then at Clarke and then down at the table.
“Shit!” he said despondently.
“How very eloquently put,” Susie said.
◆◆◆
Jack was sitting in his office at Arbour Square when his landline rang. He was just finishing off an e-mail, and then he was going to pop over to Quinlan’s office to see how the manhunt for Winston was progressing.
“DCI Tyler speaking.”
It was Steve Bull with an update from Newham General. “Boss, I’ve just finished speaking to the pilot, Peter Myers, and I’ve got some interesting stuff you need to hear.”
“Steve, you should be telling Mr Quinlan this, not me,” Tyler chided him gently.
“Sorry boss,” Bull said, sounding a little sheepish. “Force of habit, I guess. I just spoke to Tony Dillon and he said to let you know straight away. Shall I phone Mr Q instead?”
Jack grinned and reached for a pen. “No, give me what you’ve got. I’m going over to see him in a minute, so I’ll pass it on and he can call you back if there are any ambiguities.”
Bull fired out the salient headlines: there was a possibility that Winston was the phoney doctor’s uncle; a call had been made from the helicopter to someone called Rodent; they were going to stay at Rodent’s place for a few days until they could get Winston out of the country; Rodent had been driving a red Rover 214 or 216; Winston was the one who had shot Myers.
“That’s excellent work, Stevie. Well done. As soon as he’s released, I need –” Jack realised what he’d said and paused “– or rather Mr Quinlan will need Myers to be key witness interviewed on tape.”
A key witness was someone who had witnessed a serious indictable offence or events that were closely related to it, or had received a confession from the culprit. Clearly, apart from having witnessed his own attempted murder, he was the main witness for the hijack and he also provided key evidence of Winston fleeing the murder of the police officer.
“Did he say he would recognise any of them again?” Tyler asked.
“Yep. He’s confident he’d be able to pick out both men in a line-up, but not the woman –
