Authors: James Raven
T
HE BREAKTHROUGH CAME
the next morning, Saturday, when a woman named Megan Trent arrived at the central police station in Southampton.
Temple was behind his desk going through the notes left by the night shift detectives when he got a call from the front desk. The duty inspector said that the woman had information on Cole Renner and that she was insisting on speaking to him. She was actually the fourth person to turn up that morning in response to the various appeals. Hundreds more had phoned the task force hotline in the hope of claiming a share of the multi-million pound reward. Most were deliberate time-wasters or people who genuinely believed they had spotted Britain’s most wanted man.
For that reason Temple’s reaction on being told about Megan Trent was less than enthusiastic.
Until the duty inspector mentioned that she was a local landlady.
And that she was pregnant.
That’s when his pulse kicked up a gear and he jumped to his feet.
‘Get someone to bring her straight up to my office,’ he said.
Three minutes later Megan Trent was escorted into his office. She was in her early thirties and about three months pregnant. She had a sharp equine nose and blond hair that was wispy and unwashed. Her face was square and chubby and without makeup. She was wearing black leggings and a dark blue anorak. On her feet she wore a pair of snow white Adidas trainers. The word chav came to mind and it struck him that she didn’t look like a typical landlady.
Temple got up from behind his desk and introduced himself.
‘Please sit down, Mrs Trent,’ he said.
‘It’s Miss,’ she said. ‘But just call me Megan. Everyone does.’ Her voice was hard-edged and with the hint of a Hampshire accent.
‘May I take your coat?’
She placed her large fake leather handbag on his desk and let him help her off with her coat. Beneath it she had on a tight fitting yellow T-shirt that clung to her bloated body like an extra layer of skin.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked. ‘Tea? Coffee?’
She shook her head. ‘No thanks. If I do I’ll need to wee. I’d rather just tell you why I’m here.’
Temple sat back down and rested his elbows on the desk.
‘I gather it’s about Cole Renner,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I know where he is.’
Temple felt his chest contract.
‘Really? Where?’
She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. ‘He’s in my house. He’s my tenant. I’ve been renting the upstairs flat to him for the past couple of months.’
Temple stared into her wide green eyes and leaned further across the desk towards her.
‘Are you absolutely sure it’s him?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I’m bloody positive. It’s the name he’s been using. And I saw his picture this morning.’
‘So why didn’t you phone us?’
‘I came into town early to do some shopping. Parked opposite the station and went into Tesco. That’s when I saw the newspapers and his picture on the front pages. I got a shock I can tell you. Almost gave birth there and then. I walked straight over here because I knew it’d be quicker than phoning.’
‘So you didn’t see his photo last night on the news?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t watch the news much, especially not on Fridays. There’s too much else on the telly.’
‘So where was he when you left home?’
‘He was in bed. I heard him because he snores loud enough to wake the dead.’
‘Does he always sleep in late?’
‘Most mornings he does,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a job.’
‘So what else can you tell me about him,’ Temple said.
She shrugged. ‘Not much. He keeps to himself. Most days he goes out in the afternoon and doesn’t come back until the evening. Then he goes straight upstairs and I don’t usually hear a peep from him. He keeps his door locked when he’s not there. The flat is self-contained and has its own bathroom and kitchenette.’
‘Does he have his own transport?’
‘He has a motorbike that he usually leaves out front on the drive, but it wasn’t there this morning for some reason. I thought at first it was because he wasn’t home. Then I heard him snoring.’
‘You did the right thing coming here,’ he said.
‘If I’d known sooner, I would have told you,’ she said. ‘I feel so bad about that. To think that he’s been living under my roof all this time and I didn’t realize he was a murdering scumbag.’
‘It’s not your fault, Megan. You weren’t to know.’
‘It still rankles, though. I don’t want people to blame me for not sussing him sooner.’
Temple got up and walked around his desk to place a hand on her shoulder.
‘No one will do that,’ he said. ‘Now just sit quietly for a moment and try to relax. I need to go and talk to my colleagues about this. And I need your address.’
‘It’s twenty-seven, Purbeck Road. That’s in Southampton.’
‘Great. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
He stepped out of his office and closed the door behind him, then dashed through to the incident room.
He quickly called for silence and told the team what Megan Trent had said.
‘Bloody hell,’ DS Vaughan bellowed, jumping out of his seat. ‘Is she sure about that?’
Temple nodded. ‘She has no doubt it’s him and don’t forget he told Ryan Addison his landlady was pregnant. She says Renner was in bed when she left the house earlier. With any luck he still is. So I want an armed unit ready to move in ten minutes. I’ll let Beresford and Vickery know.’
Temple went back into his office and asked Megan Trent if there was anyone else in the house with Renner. She said there wasn’t. She said she lived alone downstairs and explained that her former boyfriend had left her several months ago.
Temple then went to his computer and brought up Google Earth.
‘I’d like you to show me your house on this,’ he said.
Temple typed her address into the search box and within seconds he was zooming in on Purbeck Road. He turned the screen towards her.
‘That’s my house,’ she said, pointing.
It was a 60s-style terraced house in a nondescript street. Temple adjusted the mouse and used the street-view mode to study the property from all angles. It had two floors, a short driveway and a small front garden. The fenced-in rear garden had a square lawn and small crazy-paved patio. It backed on to another garden.
‘This image is probably quite old,’ Temple said. ‘Has it changed much?’
‘No. It looks exactly like that now. More’s the pity. It needs renovating, but I can’t afford to do it.’
‘Are the houses either side occupied?’
‘The one on the right is. A couple with a teenage son. The one on the left is empty because the owner is very old and quite ill. He’s been in hospital for months.’
It was all the information Temple needed.
‘Now listen to me, Megan,’ he said. ‘We intend to go to your house right away. I want your permission to make a forced entry if we have to. Is that all right?’
She clamped her lips together and nodded.
‘Good,’ Temple said. ‘And I want you to wait here. I’ll get someone to take care of you.’
He stood up and moved towards the door, adrenaline flooding through his veins.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said.
He stopped, turned.
‘Sure. What is it?’
Her eyes narrowed slightly. ‘It’s the reward money. Will I get it if you manage to arrest him?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘But there’s usually a long drawn-out process so be prepared to wait it out. And keep your fingers crossed in the meantime.’
She gave a little smile. ‘I will.’
B
EFORE DESCENDING ON
Purbeck Road in force Temple sent an unmarked police car to recce Megan Trent’s house. The officers parked across the road and reported back that there was no sign of life and the curtains were drawn across the upstairs windows.
The head of the Tactical Firearms Unit was told to assume
that Cole Renner was inside and that he was armed with a sniper rifle. Therefore extreme caution was called for.
Three armed response vehicles moved into the immediate area along with dozens of officers in protective vests and military style helmets with visors lowered. They carried semi-automatic weapons and Taser guns.
Temple knew that this was going to be a delicate and dangerous operation. It was a residential street and it wouldn’t be possible to evacuate the residents without raising the alarm. But he also knew that they had to move in quickly. They couldn’t afford to hang about. The longer they left it the riskier it became.
Megan Trent had given him her door key and he discussed with the team the possibility of simply going up to the house, unlocking the front door, and rushing in. It was a risky manoeuvre, though.
They also considered calling on the house phone. Temple had got the number from Megan who told him the phone was downstairs in the kitchen. If Renner answered then they could try to talk him into giving himself up. But if he was still asleep then they didn’t want to wake him. Key to success with most police raids was the element of surprise; the aim was to swoop suddenly and forcefully and to catch the suspects unaware, and preferably while they were half asleep and disoriented.
The problem was they had no idea if he was in bed or up and dressed. Or if he was even in the house. In the end they decided to storm the property from both sides and give Renner as little time as possible to react. They’d go in with stun grenades and tear gas.
First step was to gain entry to the house directly behind Megan’s property. This was achieved easily enough, although the family living there were understandably alarmed when they were asked to open their home to a bunch of helmeted storm troopers.
Once the officers were in place and ready to charge the back of the house, the head of the Tactical Firearms Unit gave the command for Purbeck Road to be sealed off at both ends. Then his officers hurried along the pavement towards the house.
Temple stood back behind the cordon. He’d donned a ballistic vest and was clutching a radio. His heart was pumping as he watched the operation get underway. He had a view of the front of the house as the officers closed in.
But just as the assault team reached the driveway to number 27 an explosion of breaking glass stopped them in their tracks.
Temple watched, horrified, as one of the ground floor windows crashed outwards and the officer who was leading the raid was blow off his feet.
‘Pull back, pull back, pull back.’
The team leader’s frantic words blared out of every radio.
Even as he issued his order, another shot was fired, this time through a window at the back of the house. All hell suddenly broke loose. The wounded officer was dragged back along the pavement by two of his colleagues, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. At the same time the street cordons were moved back and everyone shifted position so they were no longer in the line of fire.
Much to Temple’s relief word quickly came through that the second shot had not hit anyone. The bullet had been fired into the lawn. But one officer down was one too many. It was a disaster that showed they had under-estimated their quarry. Cole Renner had obviously spotted them closing in. Maybe he had even been waiting for them to appear, having seen himself on the news.
And now he was determined to make a last stand. He was armed and lethal and had nothing to lose but his life.
The gunshots had alerted the other residents in the street to the fact that something was happening. People opened their front doors and appeared at their windows. It prompted a senior officer to issue a warning through a megaphone for them to stay indoors and away from windows.
An uneasy quiet descended on the street, broken only by the passing of a low-flying aircraft overhead.
Temple felt sick at the thought of a long drawn out standoff. They would have to try to evacuate the other homes now
and that wasn’t going to be easy. The whole situation had spiralled out of control. It had become even more dangerous and unpredictable.
‘It’s a fucking mess,’ Beresford said as he arrived on the scene. ‘What the hell are we….’
But he didn’t get to finish the sentence because just then another shot rang out.
This time Renner did not fire through a window. The shot was confined to the inside of the house. It immediately gave rise to speculation that Renner had taken his own life. It was a common enough scenario. An armed felon is cornered and sees no way out other than suicide. But, of course, they couldn’t be sure. Maybe he had fired the shot to make them think that’s what had happened, so that he could get them to break cover and take down more police.
Temple grabbed the megaphone and moved along the pavement towards the house at a half-crouch. He made sure he remained screened by garden hedges and when he was close enough he put the megaphone to his mouth and spoke into it in a flat voice devoid of intonation. ‘Come out of the house, Mr Renner. There’s no escape. Disarm yourself and open the door.’
There was no response.
Temple took out his mobile and called Megan Trent’s home number. He let it ring for a full thirty seconds, but there was no answer. He retreated back along the pavement and spoke to Beresford and the head of the Tactical Firearms Unit. They decided to fire tear gas shells into the house through the windows. Then follow through with a frontal assault.
The signal was given a few minutes later. Guns popped and windows caved in. Smoke started to fill the inside of the house.
There was a lot of shouting and screaming as cops in masks charged forward. The front door was smashed in with a battering ram and men poured into the house.
It took them five minutes to announce that there was no longer a threat. But it was another ten minutes before Temple was able to enter the house.
C
OLE
R
ENNER WAS
in the living room slumped on a leather sofa. There was no mistaking him even though his head was virtually severed from his shoulders.
His right hand still clutched the rifle he’d used to shoot himself in the throat. It was lying next to him on the sofa and Temple saw immediately that it was the same model as the one the sniper had been using.
Dark-coloured blood had exploded out of the gaping wound along with shreds of bone and dark gristle. His eyes stared ahead, glazed and expressionless. His mouth hung open, tongue lolling out. The blood was everywhere: on his face, his clothes, the wall, the sofa, the carpet. He was wearing a white T-shirt, black jeans and a pair of casual brown shoes. There was stubble on his chin and it looked as though he hadn’t shaved in ages.
Temple stood in the small, grim room taking in the scene, his eyes smarting from what remained of the tear gas. The firearms officers had ascertained that there were no other persons in the house. And a quick search had determined that there were no explosive devices waiting to go off.
The room smelled strongly of blood and cordite. In one corner a large flat-screen television was switched on and showing BBC rolling news. They were still reporting on the sniper attack on the M4 and no doubt Renner would have seen the photograph of himself and realized the game was up.
Temple’s mind was a whirlwind of emotions. He was glad it was all over and that Lance Corporal Cole Renner no longer posed a threat to the public. But at the same time it was a shame he was dead as now they wouldn’t be able to question him and might never know why he’d done it.
The house was gradually filling up with SOCOs. Temple and Beresford decided to explore before the forensic work got under way in earnest. They went into the downstairs kitchen which was small and drab, with fading lino on the floor and a back door to the overgrown garden. The downstairs bedroom,
where Megan Trent presumably slept, was clean and tidy and the bed had been made. The fitted wardrobe was crammed with women’s clothes.
There was a landing at the top of the stairs. The loft hatch in the ceiling was open and an aluminium ladder had been lowered. A police officer was up there checking it out.
‘It’s a shared loft space with the house next door,’ he said when he appeared through the opening and saw Temple and Beresford looking up at him. ‘But it’s virtually empty and there’s nothing up here but a few boxes of junk.’
‘Leave them be,’ Temple said. ‘Forensics will need to go through them.’
To the left of the landing was a bathroom and to the right a door that gave access to the studio flat that Renner had been renting. The flat was pretty basic and consisted of a tiny living room with a built-in kitchenette and a bedroom. In the bedroom they found a treasure trove of evidence linking Renner to the sniper attacks.
A rucksack similar to the one being carried by the man in the CCTV footage was hanging off the back of a chair. Inside was a box of .338 cartridges and a can of red spray paint. In one of the bedside drawers they discovered a fold-away map of Britain’s motorway network and the locations of the four sniper attacks were marked with red felt-tip pen. There was also a fifth mark around a spot on the M40 near Bicester.
‘There are no more after that,’ Temple said. ‘I wonder why he decided to stop there.’
Beresford shrugged. ‘Maybe he just hadn’t got around to selecting any more targets.’
In the free-standing wardrobe they came across an anorak with a hood, a few shirts and three pairs of shoes. Under the bed was a battered suitcase filled with documents and photograph albums and a range of personal belongings such as old watches and books. But there wasn’t much else in the flat. No laptop computer, no diary, no journal containing an explanation of his motives.
In that respect it was a disappointing outcome. But Temple
wasn’t going to let that spoil the fact that they had finally brought Cole Renner’s reign of terror to an end.
Crowds quickly gathered at either end of Purbeck Road. A police officer with a video camera was recording the scene while another was taking photographs. This was now routine on major incidents.
Other officers started calling at every house in the street to reassure frightened residents and explain to them what was going on.
Dr Frank Matherson, the pathologist, arrived to examine the body and formally pronounce Renner dead.
‘He probably pulled the trigger with his thumb,’ he told Temple. ‘It’s an awkward way to kill yourself but usually does the trick.’
He said he would carry out a post-mortem first thing the following morning, but did not expect to come up with any surprises.
Before long the area was packed with newspaper reporters and television camera crews. DCS Vickery turned up late morning and made a beeline for Temple who was standing outside the house briefing a couple of his detectives.
‘So I missed all the fun,’ Vickery said with a broad grin before he went on to congratulate Temple on bringing the case to an end.
‘It could have gone better,’ Temple said. ‘Renner’s dead and an officer was shot.’
‘Well, I’ve just been told the officer’s condition is not serious,’ Vickery said. ‘He suffered a shoulder wound. A couple of inches to the right and it would have been a different story. As for Renner, well I never expected him to give himself up anyway.’
Temple gave Vickery an account of how it had all come about.
‘Megan Trent is at the station,’ he said. ‘We need to get a formal statement from her and explain that she needs to find alternative accommodation for a while.’
‘I suppose she’s in line for the reward then,’ Vickery said. ‘Last I heard it had reached just over two and a half million.’
‘She’s already asked me about that.’
Vickery shrugged. ‘Who can blame her? I for one won’t begrudge her a penny of it. Christ only knows how many more people would have been killed if Renner had survived beyond today.’