Isaac had to admit it looked suspicious, but it wasn’t often that the homeless were violent. There was the occasional fracas over a sheltered place under a bridge or next to a heating vent, even over a position close to an open fire, but they were invariably committed while under the influence of drink, or nowadays after taking illegal drugs. Even then, they were not injury inflicting, at least, not in the main, although there had been a case a couple of years previously where one of those being pushed had fallen into the river and drowned. Not that anyone ever came forward afterwards, and the homeless encampment had been vacated long before the police arrived on the scene, remarkable given that they typically moved slowly, always protested when being moved on, which was all too often.
Legislation recently enacted by the local council was disliked by the homeless, those who could understand its ramifications, as well as the protectors of civil liberties, in that the homeless were to be assigned to an area north of their current neighbourhood. There, there would be proper supervision, shower blocks, and medical care if needed. There had been protests, inevitable given the fractious nature of the society, by those who opposed it. Those who supported the move were the wealthy and those whose businesses had been impacted by a tramp sleeping in their doorway at night, leaving their makeshift bed and shopping trolley, even an old cupboard sometimes, for people to walk around.
Bob Robertson, Isaac knew, was one of those on the side of the disadvantaged, so much so that it seemed a possible motive. The man had not been the most vocal, not even the most influential, in that a member of parliament, a rabble-rousing individual by the name of Gavin Crampton, had taken the cause of the homeless and was using it to his political advantage. Isaac knew Crampton personally, having met him through the previous commissioner of the Met.
The former commissioner had introduced him to Crampton, unavoidable at a function to celebrate the relationship between the police and the general public. Isaac remembered that the MP had been sneering in his condemnation of any improvement and thought that the police were only there to subdue the downtrodden, to inflict their rules on those who needed support. The man was a bigot, Isaac knew, who had been elected in a marginalised constituency, one of the most deprived in the country.
Crampton, he knew, preached one view, lived another, and he was not to be found with those he publicly cherished, but privately was more likely to be at his house in Bayswater, or out in one or another restaurant around London, not that it stopped his proselytising.
Bob Robertson had been vocal in his condemnation of the legislation to relocate the homeless, even expressed his views on the radio, and it still remained a viable motive, but apart from that, there seemed no other reason. The building where the hostel was located hardly appeared to be a reason either, in that it was owned by a local businessman, the rent was paid on it, and the real estate market was flat. It could have been some other local residents who felt that their properties were being devalued, but Robertson had improved the area since he had taken over. Isaac remembered the adjoining streets from before, even though it was over ten years ago. Back then, there had been drug pushers who’d run at the sight of a police officer, teens shooting up heroin in alleys, prostitutes hawking their wares in the entrances to seedy buildings. Inside would be a room set up with fairy lights, smelling of cheap perfume, where the man partaking would be treated to ten to fifteen minutes before being hustled out into the street. There had been a disturbance where Isaac and his partner at the time, an older police officer, had had to intervene after the whore’s pimp had wrested a knife out of the hand of a man who had just enjoyed his fifteen minutes’ worth and subsequently found his wallet missing. By the time the two officers had arrived, the man had received a cut on the arm. All three, the whore, the pimp, and the victim, had spent a few hours at the police station before being released.
Katrina Ireland, Isaac remembered, had sold herself from the club where she had gyrated, sometimes from a phone number pinned up in a telephone box, although there were not many of them left, but never in a seedy doorway.
Chapter 6
Larry had spent two days visiting the local areas where the homeless congregated, even asking Wendy to assist him on a few occasions. As well as the two of them, Larry had also brought in a few additional officers.
It wasn’t as if Big Greg was not known, as he certainly was, and by most of those on the street; it was just that the man was not around.
‘He used to be here with me some nights,’ said an old man who had found a warm spot around the back of Paddington Railway Station. Larry could see why, with a heating vent emitting warm air over those closest to it.
‘What’s your name?’ Larry asked, not looking at the surroundings, which were grim. The man had an old dog tied on a lead; it looked as if it needed a vet. It had growled when Larry had entered into the homeless man’s inner sanctum, a roughly constructed area bordered on one side by a shopping trolley overladen with at least one hundred plastic
