‘He’s rough round the edges, but apart from fancying himself with the women, we can trust him,’ O’Shaughnessy had said.
‘If you vouch for him,’ Hughenden’s reply.
‘Outline the plan,’ O’Shaughnessy asked.
The drug trade, especially in heroin and cocaine, was burgeoning, and they intended to take control of their part of the city. Hughenden had outlined the plan in all its simplicity: make sure we’re the only supplier.
O’Shaughnessy liked a simple plan, and he liked violence and Bach and expensive paintings.
‘You’ve no aversion to dealing with anyone who interferes?’ Hughenden asked.
‘None,’ O’Shaughnessy replied, which had not been entirely truthful as he had not killed a man in cold blood before, expect for a Taliban in Afghanistan when he had been a soldier, but that didn’t count. The tribesman had been standing in front of him with a Kalashnikov pointing at him.
O’Shaughnessy knew that an innocent man had died when he had been involved in an attack on a supermarket to steal that night’s takings. It had been close to Christmas, and the standard procedure of emptying the tills and transferring the money with adequate security was not in place.
Then, he knew that it had been a complicated plan: wait until you get the signal, check that the store’s security is distracted, and there are no customers close to the till. Then check and check and when you’re ready, the four of you go in and empty all the cash registers, and remember the safe in the manager’s office. It’s bound to be full of money.
An old-time criminal had meant well when he put the plan together, making the four that were to rush the store practise over and over again, even setting up desks in the room where they met to simulate the supermarket checkouts. Even at the time, O’Shaughnessy thought it elaborate. He would have just waited till they transferred the money to a security van later that night. Then they could have rushed the guards carrying the money and forced them to the ground, or smashed them around the head with a cosh. But the old-time criminal had won out. His plan was to be implemented.
The men waited for the right moment that fateful night. They entered full of bravado, only to be spotted by the manager of the store. ‘Stop. I’ve called the police.’
One of the other three raised his rifle and pointed it at the man. The manager kept coming forward; the gun man, a timid youth of nineteen, pulled the trigger. The manager fell to the ground, dead.
In the pandemonium, all four of the robbers rushed for the exit. O’Shaughnessy remembered tripping and two men holding him down until the police arrived. He had not fired the shot, but he was guilty by association. A ten-year sentence, although he was out sooner, had curtailed his activities. No, he thought, a simple plan works better.
Chapter 11
A dredging boat was not how Duncan Fogarty had imagined his life at sea. He had dreamed of sailing the seven seas aboard his own yacht, or a life with the merchant navy, but life takes people down different paths.
He had sailed when he was young, a small single sail craft he had constructed as a school project. He had even crewed on a couple of trips across the Atlantic on fifty-foot yachts, but he was not a charming man, quite the opposite, and he did not make friends easily. He had tried the merchant navy, officer class, but they needed academic qualifications, not a desire to see the world, and Fogarty knew he was not bright. In fact, that was his only redeeming feature: his ability to recognise the truth of what he was.
He had always lived near to the River Thames, and the advert to work on a boat that plied the Thames, dredging the bottom, aiming to maintain the navigation channels, seemed his best hope. He applied, was accepted, and started work. That was seven years ago, and now he was the captain that he had always longed to be.
Normally it was silt and the rubbish of society that they brought up, even the occasional bomb from the last war.
‘What the –?’ one of Fogarty’s team shouted as they made their daily run down the river. ‘Stop the dredge!’
‘What’s the problem?’ Fogarty shouted back.
‘You’d better come and have a look.’
Fogarty took one look and called the police.
Isaac Cook and his DI boarded the boat at East India Docks. They had only received notice that there was something that may be of interest late in the day. The vessel was impounded as a crime scene, with Fogarty complaining that he wasn’t paid to work extra hours.
The local DI who had attended first, and aware of the torso in Regent’s Canal, had phoned Isaac after eliminating all other possibilities.
Isaac had walked down the gangway resplendent in a new suit and a white shirt with a tie.
‘I hope you brought some old clothes,’ Fogarty said.
‘I’ve protective gear,’ Isaac replied. The stench was noticeable, and he held a handkerchief to his nose.
‘You get used to it.’
Isaac was sure he never would, but the dirty, smelly boat had something of interest.
An officer from the local station introduced himself. ‘It looks like one of yours,’ he said.
Isaac and Larry walked across the deck of the boat and peered under a tarpaulin. Isaac walked away and phoned Gordon Windsor. ‘You’re in for a long night,’ he said.
‘The one night of the week when I wanted to get off early,’ Windsor’s reply.
‘Not tonight. There’s not much for you to work with, but I have my suspicions.’
‘Pinto?’
‘Judging from what I can see, I don’t believe it is.’
‘Very well. Give me ninety minutes to round up the team.’
***
Crime Scene
