Ross was standing on the side of the road, the father of the dead youth with him. The father was in tears; Larry assumed it was the usual ‘he was a good boy’, ‘never forgot my birthday’. Always, he knew, after the event, the parents who had failed the child remembered the good, omitting the bad.
‘Shot,’ Bill Ross said as he excused himself from the father.
‘A gang?’
‘Not likely. A shot from the other side of the road. We’re checking CCTV cameras, but there aren’t many around here.’
‘Professional?’
‘The gangs are more into knives, although they’re keener on guns than they used to be, but this was daylight, no more than fifty minutes ago. No self-respecting hoodie would contemplate causing trouble in the early morning; they’re strictly night time.’
‘Any witnesses?’
‘The father said he was looking out of the window, saw his son fall to the ground. He couldn’t have seen the shooter. What the crime scene team have ascertained, a car was parked on one of the side streets, twenty yards back. There’s a fire escape up the side of a building there, a metal structure, the ideal place for a marksman, a clear view of Garvey’s flat and the road. The man could have been waiting there for Garvey to come out, or he could have phoned him.’
‘The number?’
‘Who knows? Slip one of Conroy’s gang some money, and they’ll tell you anything.’
‘We’ve got an all-points out on Gareth Rees.’
‘If it’s him, it means he’s frightened, making sure that anyone who can connect him to the murders is eliminated.’
‘Garvey knew nothing,’ Larry said.
‘Maybe he didn’t, but this Rees character doesn’t know that. He’s trapped, lashing out, trying to protect himself.’
‘Which means others closer in to the murders are under threat.’
Larry took out his phone and called Isaac, conferencing in Wendy. ‘It’s not a random death; this has been well-executed. And if it’s Rees, we’re trying to confirm that, then the man’s clearly deranged. We need the chief superintendent to authorise protective custody for the Robinsons, the Winstons, and for Meredith Temple. We’re dealing with a mad man, a man who knows how to kill.’
‘Consider his approval given,’ Isaac said. ‘If it’s Rees, see if you can find out the car he was driving, and then Bridget can work her magic.’
Wendy left the office immediately, her first port of call, the Robinson household. As much as Tim Winston disapproved of Brad Robinson and his mother, as suspicious as Wendy was of the man, the two families would need to be in the one location, and unless anyone objected, not that she intended to let them, they were all to move in at the Winstons’. A patrol car was already on its way to the Winstons’; another was around the corner from the Robinsons’. It wasn’t sufficient protection for either of the families.
Meredith Temple had been phoned, but she had lectures to attend, and regardless of Wendy’s protestations, study took preference, although the woman promised to be careful.
At the crime scene, possible witnesses were being interviewed. A video copy from a camera at the corner of New Barn Street and the A13 up to Dagenham was with the CCTV officers at Canning Town, and with Bridget, who before joining Homicide had been a CCTV officer.
A uniform came over to where Bill Ross and Larry were standing; at her side a young woman in her twenties, a small child in a pushchair.
‘I was taking a picture of her,’ the young woman said, her accent thick and Slavic; she stroked the child on the head as she spoke.
‘In the background,’ the female uniform said. ‘A man on the fire escape.’ She handed the phone over to Larry, who enlarged the picture as best he could. It was blurry, but it was a good likeness of Gareth Rees.’
‘What do you reckon?’ Ross said.
‘I reckon it’s him. I’ll forward the photo on to Bridget, see if she can enhance the image.’
‘It makes no sense. Why would he still be around? Why kill people on the off-chance?’
‘We’ll know when he’s in custody.’
‘Can I keep the phone?’ Larry said to the mother. ‘It’s evidence.’
‘I saw the car,’ the reply.
‘A photo?’
Larry couldn’t believe that twice lucky with the same witness was possible.
‘It’s in the photo.’
Larry looked at the picture again, realised that there was a car, blue in colour, almost certainly a small Toyota.
‘The registration number on the plate?’
‘I didn’t see it. Should I have?’
‘No, not at all. It’s just that we’ve been looking for this man for some time. We regard him as dangerous.’
Larry texted Bridget to focus on the car in the photo, to use whatever image-enhancing software was at her command.
‘Where do you live?’ Bill Ross asked the woman.
‘Here,’ pointing to the same building that Garvey had lived in. The two police officers understood that not everyone in the building was a criminal or lazy or uneducated. The young woman and her child were well-dressed, very presentable, and no doubt honourable and decent. Larry felt sorry for them that circumstances, the need for a better life than where they had come from, had condemned them to purgatory, although he was sure that in time the woman and her husband would earn their way out of there by hard work and a positive attitude.
***
The net was closing on Gareth Rees, now generally regarded as verging on the psychopathic. It was considered by the team in Homicide and on advice from a psychologist that Rees needed to be handled with a great deal of care. Pressure had been applied by Chief Superintendent Goddard to the military to obtain a transcript
