The initial plan had been for him to go on his own and to check out the two men, but he was known in the area. Also, he had to meet up with Rasta Joe, the dreadlocked Jamaican again, although he was not involved, certainly not as a member of the syndicate. However, the man had his ear to the ground.
‘Do we have enough for an arrest?’ Isaac asked in the office.
‘There are some fingerprints at the warehouse,’ Larry said. ‘Windsor and his team found them easily enough.’
‘But whose are they?’
‘Certainly Pinto’s, and the others, or at least some of them would be Stewart’s.’
‘Have you checked Stewart’s accommodation yet,’ Isaac asked.
‘Not yet,’ Wendy replied.
‘Then you’d better do it today. I want an arrest on Friday, not surveillance. And besides, where are these two men now?’
‘They’ve not been seen for the last few days,’ Larry replied. ‘We assume they’re lying low.’
‘Which means they may not be at the pub on Friday.’
‘That’s a possibility.’
‘Okay, check out Stewart’s flat and get some fingerprints.’
Wendy and Larry left the office soon after. Stewart’s flat, they knew, was in a tenement building close to Notting Hill, not far from the expensive houses in Holland Park. However, as they knew from the address, there was nothing fancy about Stewart’s place of residence. It was definitely downmarket, and for a man who had supposedly been paid well to transport heroin and cocaine, there was little to show for his efforts. The flat was on the third floor, the lift did not work, and Wendy was puffing after the climb. Two of Gordon Windsor’s team had accompanied the two police officers. A uniform was already standing on duty outside the door and not enjoying himself. ‘I don’t go much for his neighbours,’ the policeman said.
‘Giving you trouble?’ Larry asked.
‘Scum from God knows where. It’s the kids who hurl abuse at me. They know I can’t retaliate.’
Larry could sympathise. Where Stewart lived was low income, full of welfare recipients with little chance at the big game. Most of the young children would be on the street and into crime soon enough; a fair proportion would become members of gangs, menacing society, trading drugs. Statistically, Larry knew, between five and ten per cent would be dead before their twentieth birthday.
Wendy was in the flat with the CSIs. A small television stood in one corner, an old chair had been placed six feet away from it. The kitchen was compact, with one of the cupboard doors hanging haphazardly on its hinges. In the sink, there were still some dirty dishes.
‘Not much to look at,’ Grant Meston, one of the CSIs, said.
‘His housekeeping is no worse than mine,’ Wendy replied. The place felt eerie to her, but she did not mention it. The flat may have been unloved, and definitely not desirable, but it had been the residence of a man, not a torso dumped in a canal.
‘There’s plenty of prints,’ Meston said.
‘Stewart’s?’
‘The most reliable will be in the bathroom: toothbrush, razor. And from what we can see, he lived here on his own; no sign of a woman.’
Rose Denning, Meston’s assistant, was in the bedroom. She called out, ‘No woman in here.’
Wendy looked through the door of the bedroom. A double bed, its headrest broken, a sheet crumpled and pulled back.
‘No action in here,’ Rose said.
‘How do you know?’ Wendy asked.
‘Look at the sheet. One side is more crumpled than the other.’
‘Both sides look well used to me.’
‘They’ve not been changed for a while. Mind you, I don’t think many women would want to come up here, do you?’
Wendy had to agree, but they were not there to discuss Stewart’s love life. They were there to obtain his fingerprints and to check out the flat. Larry looked around the main room. He opened the doors of a sideboard. Inside he found some ganja, almost certainly supplied by Rasta Joe. There was no sign of heroin or cocaine. On a table, there was a photo of a woman. She looked old enough to be Stewart’s mother. It was known that Stewart had come from Liverpool and his mother was still alive. A local detective had dealt with the difficult task of informing her that her son was dead.
‘There’s not much here,’ Meston said.
‘Fingerprints?’ Larry asked.
‘Enough. We’ll isolate Stewart’s and Pinto’s at the warehouse.’
Another policeman was left guarding Stewart’s flat as the team left. Crime scene tape had been applied to the door, but Larry and Wendy knew that as soon as there was no police presence, the flat would be vandalised.
***
‘It’s Stewart’s head,’ Gordon Windsor, the CSE, said over the phone.
‘Arms and legs?’ Isaac asked.
‘Not at the warehouse, although Meston’s working on the fingerprints from Stewart’s flat.’
‘What else can you tell us about the head?’
‘Bullet through the brain.’
‘That killed him?’
‘Yes.’
Isaac knew that Pinto’s confession had been one hundred per cent accurate. Isaac could see that it was an easy route for someone with an addiction to become involved with serious crime. He had a friend at school who after smoking some hash had become addicted, and ended up on the street with a dirty needle and heroin. Isaac remembered trying hash once, the result of a stupid dare at school. He had seen no benefit in it. After that, he had smoked cigarettes for a few months, but even that had stopped soon enough. To him, some people, Pinto as an example, although his vice was gambling, are susceptible to addiction, others are not.
Pinto’s bail application was due to be heard. The charge for drug trafficking remained in place.
Katrina Hatcher had been busy doing her homework and had compiled an extensive list of precedences as
