‘What’s it to be, Stuart?’ Ramsden said. ‘You want to talk here or down the station?’
‘I got a choice?’
Ramsden grinned, showing crooked teeth.
‘Just wait, yeah,’ Dyer said, ‘while I get me fuckin’ coat.’
‘Take it easy on him, yeah?’ his mum said, once he was out of the room. ‘Lot of mouth, but he’s not very bright. Easy led, know what I mean?’
Taking back the remote, she raised the volume loud.
Dyer sat uneasily, rocking the chair back on its metal legs. Grey drawstring hoodie with A amp; FITCH in white lettering down the sleeve. Tangle of dark hair. Something of a pretty-boy face, save for a cluster of whiteheads sprouting around his mouth. Half-hidden beneath his lashes, grey-green eyes.
Ramsden had asked one of the officers to fetch a Dr Pepper from the vending machine and Dyer drummed on it haphazardly with his fingers, nails bitten down.
Feigned nonchalance.
If he wasn’t already squirming inside, he was really as stupid as his mum had made out.
‘The Volvo,’ Ramsden said, ‘let’s start there.’
Nothing.
‘Come on, Stuart, don’t piss me about. The one you dumped in Erith. Snagged it from Westfield, remember? Volvo, S60, dark green. Asked for it special, did he, Arthurs? Dougie Freeman, maybe. Whoever it was, brought you in as driver. Get us a nice motor, Stuey, something with a bit of speed, comfortable. Volvo’d be handsome.’
‘Dunno what you’re talkin’ about.’
‘Come on, Stuart. Your prints are all fucking over it and, if that weren’t enough, we’ve got you barellin’ down the road to Stansted on CCTV.’
‘Bullshit!’
‘You think so?’
Dyer took a swallow from the Dr Pepper, bought a little time. Cleared his throat.
‘Just say. Just say, mind — and I’m not admitting anythin’, right, but, like I say, just s’posin’ I took the motor, right, like you said, all that’d be, takin’ and drivin’ away. No one’s gonna send me down for that. Lose my licence, maybe, six months, a year. Small fine, time to pay. Pro-fuckin’-bation.’
‘Stuart, Stuart, you’re not listening. The minute you got behind that wheel, that journey out to Stansted, you were getting into something a lot more serious. More serious than you believe. Accessory, Stuart, that’s you. Accessory to torture. Better than that, murder.’ Ramsden shook his head. ‘You done it this time, boy, and no mistake.’
The colour had blanched from Dyer’s cheeks and there was a pronounced twitch in one of his grey-green eyes.
‘You want to take a look, Stuart? Take a look at these?’
With exaggerated care, Ramsden fanned out half a dozen photographs taken inside the storage unit, three bodies, like so much casual slaughter, hanging down.
‘Pretty, don’t you think?’
Dyer bit into his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
‘Of course,’ Ramsden said, a change of voice, change of tone, ‘I can understand why you’d have wanted to be involved. Jamie Parsons, him as was gunned down in Camden, he was your cousin, yeah?’
Dyer nodded.
‘Any kind of payback, only right you’d want to be involved. Family, yeah? Your mum’d have told you, I’m sure. Got to stand up, Stu. Be counted on this. But I bet she never, you never, thought it would come to this …’ Tapping the photographs. ‘Am I right, Stuart? Am I right? You never …’
There was panic now, bright and darting, in his eyes. The kind you see in rats, Ramsden thought, trapped up against the wire.
Slowly, he leaned in, not enough to frighten, just enough to reassure. ‘What we need to talk about, Stuart, is how you got yourself mixed up in all this. See if there isn’t something we can do. Some way round this, don’t leave you in the dock along with everyone else. Culpable homicide, Stuart, three times over. Life inside. You don’t want that.’ Reaching across, Ramsden patted his hand. ‘Okay, Stuart? Okay? Let’s see what we can do.’
‘This is all on tape?’ Karen said. ‘Transcribed?’
Ramsden grinned his crooked grin. ‘Even as we speak.’
They were in her office, evening, late, but no one was going home. Sandwiches, half-eaten; coffees, growing cold. Through the blur of half-glass, other officers moved around as if underwater, sat hunched over their desks, computers, accessed this list and that, pressed keys, made calls.
‘He’s named everyone?’
‘Everyone in the car, the van. Everyone involved.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Les Arthurs, Kevin Martin, Jason Richards riding with Dyer in the Volvo, Dougie Freeman and Mike Carter up ahead in the van.’
‘Just Kevin Martin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not Terry?’
Ramsden shook his head.
‘Shame,’ Karen said.
‘Yes. No Dooley, either. Too careful to get his hands dirty, this kind of business. Just a name, where Dyer’s concerned. Barely that.’
‘Who was it, then, set him up?’
‘Arthurs, apparently. Told him there was going to be some serious payback for what had happened to his cousin, Jamie. Give them a good working over, that’s what Dyer reckoned. What went on out at Wing, he didn’t know about. Not till after.’
‘Even though he was there?’
‘Sent him off for pizza, didn’t they? His story. Twenty-mile round trip in search of fifteen-inch pepperoni pizzas. Maybe when this is over he’ll get a job with Domino’s.’
‘You believe all that? Believe him or d’you think he’s just stringing us along?’
Ramsden shrugged. ‘I’d say, bit of both. But right now, it suits us to take what he’s saying as gospel. Long as it keeps him talking. And, besides, what he’s given us so far, Carter and Arthurs doing most of the heavy stuff, fits in pretty well with what we might have guessed. Nasty bastards, both of them. Sooner they’re off the streets the better.’
Karen nodded. ‘I’ve had one conversation with Burcher already. Due another one tomorrow.’
‘No plans for lifting Arthurs and the others till then?’
Karen shook her head. ‘Watching brief only. Till we’re told otherwise. My guess, they’ll want to wait till they’re sure everything’s in place, make one fell swoop.’
‘Just so long as they don’t hold off too long, let ‘em slip away. And make sure they remember who got ‘em this far. Don’t let the bastards grab all the glory.’
A rueful smile came to Karen’s face. ‘Trust me on that one, Mike. Trust me.’
48
This time the meeting was in a hotel close to the Westway, a conference room on the eleventh floor. Corporate anonymity. Silent through triple-glazed windows, three lanes of slow-moving traffic eased their way, ghost like, towards the city centre; drivers, whey faced, bored, listening absently to the radio, smoking, illegally using their mobile phones. On the table, jugs of water, glasses, a selection of sweet biscuits, notepads and pens bearing the hotel’s crest and name. At intervals the air conditioner cut in above the radiators’ low hum.
Sterile enough, Karen thought, should it be necessary, to perform an operation.
Burcher.
Cormack.
Alex Williams.
Charlie Frost.
Karen had made her report first, bringing them up to speed on her team’s progress: the links between Dennis Broderick and Gordon Dooley; the evidence that placed Valentyn Horak and two others on their way to Stansted inside the van Broderick had leased at Dooley’s request; Stuart Dyer at the wheel of the second vehicle — Dyer who placed five of Dooley’s known associates at the place where Horak and two others were tortured and probably killed.
‘No chance he’s going to recant?’ Cormack asked. ‘This witness?’
‘Always a chance,’ Karen said. ‘What I’d be more concerned about is someone getting to him. Persuading him to change his mind or shutting him up for good.’
‘We can cotton-wool him, surely,’ Alex Williams said. ‘Protective custody.’
‘Not something we’ve been conspicuously good at recently,’ Cormack chipped in.
‘We won’t lose him,’ Burcher said. ‘Lessons learned.’