‘How?’ the chief murmured.
‘I became his grass, within the force. I told him everything we knew about him. Every time he was under surveillance he knew about it. If one of his boys was ever done for anything, Ah’d fix the evidence, or I’d give Bazza a list of the witnesses against him and he’d sort them.’
‘You mean he killed them?’
‘No, he never needed to go that far. That would have been stupid, and he wasn’t.’
‘So you were his safety net within the force?’
‘Aye. And I got uniforms for him, once before.’
‘You did? When?’
‘About six months before I was kicked out. He gave me the same story: a fancy dress party. That time he did give me them back, after they’d been used in a robbery at an MoD arms depot. All the guys that were in on it were caught eventually, apart from Bazza.’ He frowned. ‘That was a funny one, a Special Branch job rather than our CID.’
And I know why, Skinner thought. Bazza was off limits on the NCIS database because he’d grassed on his accomplices in the robbery. . or possibly set the whole thing up for MI5.
‘How did you get the uniforms, then and this time?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got a friend who works in the warehouse. I asked for a favour.’
‘I don’t imagine it was done out of the goodness of your friend’s heart.’
Mann shot him a tiny smile. ‘It was, as it happened.’
‘Eh?’ The chief constable was taken aback. ‘So why did you have that cash from Bazza Brown?’
‘Ah told him that Ah had to pay the supplier.’
‘What’s your friend’s name?’
‘Aw, sir. Do ye really need it?’
Skinner stared at him, then he laughed. ‘Are you kidding me? Of course we do. The guy’s as guilty as you are, almost. Name, now.’
‘Chris McGlashan,’ the prisoner sighed. ‘Sergeant Chris McGlashan. And it’s no a guy; it’s Chris, as in Christine. Please, sir,’ he begged. ‘Can ye no’ leave her out of it? Can you not say I broke intae the warehouse and stole them?’
‘Why the bloody hell should I do that?’
‘She’ll deny it.’
‘I’m sure she will, but we’ll lift her DNA as well, from the package and the equipment.’
‘Aw Jesus, no! Lottie. .’
The obvious dawned. ‘Aw Jesus, indeed!’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘You stupid, selfish, irresponsible son-of-a. .’ he snapped. ‘This Chris, she’s your bit on the side, isn’t she? You’re an addictive personality right enough, Scott. The booze, the horses, the women. . Is she the only one you’ve been two-timing Lottie with, or have there been others?’
Mann seemed to slump into himself. ‘One or two,’ he sobbed.
‘Mr Skinner,’ Viola Murphy ventured, ‘is this relevant to your investigation?’
‘Probably not, but it does demonstrate what a weak, untrustworthy apology for a husband and father your client is. . let alone what a disgrace he was as a serving police officer.’
He turned back to his subject. ‘How did Bazza react when you were chucked out of the force, Scott? I don’t imagine you could have worked off all that ninety-odd grand, just in doing him favours.’
‘He was okay about it, more or less. He told me he’d still come to me for info, and that he’d expect me to get it through Lottie, but he never really did, no’ until this business. To tell you the truth, I half expected tae wind up in the Clyde, but nothin’ happened.’
‘No, you idiot,’ Skinner’s laugh was scornful, ‘because the debt was never real! The poker school, where you supposedly lost all that dough. Did it never occur to you that it wasn’t just the first few hands that were rigged in your favour, but that the whole bloody thing was rigged against you, to set you up? Who were the other guys in the school? Did you know them?’
‘A couple of them; they were Bazza’s drivers in the taxi business.’
‘Then they must have been on bloody good tips, to be able to sit in on such a high-roller card game. You got taken, chum, to the cleaners and back again, just like everyone else who was involved with your friend Mr Brown. Did you really never work any of this out?’
‘No. Now you say it, I can see how he done it, but honest, sir, he had me scared shitless most of the time and on a string. He was even the reason I got chucked off the force.’
‘What? Are you saying he fed you the booze?’
‘It had nothin’ tae do wi’ the booze. The station commander caught me liftin’ evidence against Cec, one time he got arrested for carvin’ up a dope dealer that had crossed the pair of them. I photocopied the witness list. He walked in on me while Ah was doing it, and saw right away what it was about. He gave me a straight choice: either Ah resigned on health grounds and blamed alcoholism, or I’d go down for pervertin’ the course of justice.’
‘Why did he do that?’
‘For Lottie’s sake, he said.’
‘And who was this station commander, this saviour of yours?’
‘Michael Thomas,’ Mann replied. ‘ACC Thomas, he is now. He was a superintendent back then.’
‘Indeed?’ Skinner murmured. ‘And what happened to Cec? I don’t recall any serious assault convictions on his record.’
‘The charges were dropped anyway. The two key witnesses withdrew their evidence. They must have got to them some other way.’
‘Not through you?’
‘No. I never knew who they were. Ah never got that far. They must have had another source in the force.’
Forty-Three
‘Do you ever feel like you’re in a movie, or a TV series?’ Lowell Payne asked.
Neil McIlhenney laughed. ‘All the bloody time. My wife’s an actress, remember. As a matter of fact, she’s just been offered the lead in a new TV series, about a single mother who’s a detective, but it would have meant spending months at a time out in Spain, so she turned it down. Why d’you ask? Are you a frustrated thesp?’
‘Hell, no. No, it’s being down here, in this place, where all the names come straight off the telly. Highbury earlier on; now it’s the Elephant and bloody Castle, for God’s sake. Makes me feel like Phil Mitchell.’
‘Nah, you’ve got too much hair, mate.’
‘Where does the name come from anyway?’
‘I’m told by my cockney colleagues that it goes back to one of the worshipful companies that had an elephant with a castle on its back on its coat of arms. Somehow that became the name of a coaching inn on this site, about two hundred and fifty years ago.’
‘So it’s got fuck all to do with real elephants, or castles.’
‘Absolutely fuck all.’
The two detectives were standing on the busy thoroughfare they had been discussing, having been dropped off by their driver in the bus lane that ran past the Metropolitan Tabernacle Baptist Church, a great grey pillared building.
‘Where’s the office?’ the visitor asked.
‘On the other side of the road, on top of that shopping complex; that’s what I’m told.’
Payne looked at the dual carriageway, and at the density of the fast-moving traffic. ‘Crossing that’s going to be fun,’ he complained.
‘No. It’s going to be dead easy,’ his companion replied, heading towards a circular junction. At the end of the road was a subway, running under the highway and surfacing through the Elephant and Castle tube station. ‘The office should be just around the corner here,’ he said, as they stepped out into the sunlight once more.
They walked up a ramp that led into a shopping centre, and found the block without difficulty, and the board in the foyer that listed the tenants, floor by floor.
‘There we are,’ McIlhenney declared. ‘Rondar Mail Order Limited, level three, north. Just two floors up.’
They took the elevator, at Payne’s insistence. ‘I’d an early start, and I am knackered. Buggered if I’m walking when there’s an option.’
As they stepped out, they saw, to their left, the Rondar logo, emblazoned across double doors of obscured glass. There was no bell, no entrance videophone, so the two officers walked straight through them, into an open space furnished with half a dozen desks and a few tables. At the far end, there were two partitioned areas, affording privacy. They counted five members of staff, all female, all white, all dark-haired, all in their twenties.