Her expression relaxed and she managed a surprisingly pleasant smile. 'Perhaps it was,' she said. 'It's a very difficult job that you both do.'
'Someone's got to do it,' said Stegs, trying hard not to sound too much like Clint Eastwood.
She pursed her lips, the conversation at an end. 'I hope I see you again soon, Mark. I don't know when the funeral will be. It could be a while.'
'I'm sure they'll do their best to wrap everything up as soon as they can,' he said, before turning away and walking down the footpath in the direction of the street.
It had started to rain again and the sky was an iron grey. He was still speeding but the urge to drink had gone. He needed to walk. To walk and to think. What exactly had Gill meant back there? How well had he known Yokes? Very well, he'd always thought. But like anything in life, you can never quite tell. People you know always have the ability to shock you. But Yokes? No, he'd always had the run of Yokes. I knew him well enough, Gill.
Definitely well enough.
It was four o'clock when he eventually got back to the car. The rain had stopped but the clouds remained, thick and foreboding. He'd walked for a while, but his thoughts had been a jumble: mainly memories of old Yokes interspersed with concerns about his own future now that he was suspended, until finally he'd found himself with a strong desire to go home and have a cup of
tea. He hoped the missus wasn't in nagging mode, and that Luke was either asleep or in good cheer.
But he'd picked a bad time to drive back and he got caught in an almighty jam on the North Circular. He tuned into Capital and found that there'd been an accident further up at Staples Corner (according to the Flying Eye, it was a four-car pile-up), so he was stuck in it, wondering how on earth four cars could have actually got up to the sort of speeds necessary for a collision like that. Usually, you never got to more than thirty miles an hour tops on either of the circulars during the day.
At five to five, when he was stationary again, with the beginnings of a headache and the flashlights of the emergency services visible a few hundred yards ahead, he got a call on the private mobile. He picked it up off the front passenger seat and for the second time that day didn't recognize the number.
'Jenner.'
'Stegs, it's John Gallan. There's a few things I need to speak to you about, and I need to do it sooner rather than later.'
'Do you want to meet somewhere?'
'It's official business. Can you come down here?'
'Where? Islington? To be honest, I've been out all day and I'm on my way home. Can we do it tomorrow?'
He heard Gallan sigh down the other end of the phone, but he was in no mood to be helpful. A black Mercedes in the next lane tried to nudge in front of him and Stegs inched forward, blocking his way.
Tomorrow's a bit late.'
'Is it urgent?'
Gallan paused. 'It's important,' he said eventually.
Now it was Stegs's turn to sigh. He was tired, but he knew from experience he wasn't going to get out of it. 'Listen, if it's that important, come up to my house. I'm nearly there now.' He
gave Gallan the address.
' 'We'll try to make it as quick and painless as possible.'
'We?'
'WDS Boyd and me. We'll be with you in an hour or so, traffic
permitting.'
The traffic in this town never permits,' said Stegs, and hung
up. At the same time, the driver of the Mercedes a
stressed young
commuter who appeared to have gone prematurely bald, probably in this traffic jam snarled
at him, actually baring teeth. Stegs pulled out his warrant card and pushed it against the window, at the same time mouthing 'fuck off and inching forward still more. The Mercedes driver backed off.
He wondered if he was going to make it home in an hour himself.
10
Stegs Jenner lived on an estate consisting mainly of 1950s and 1960s semi-detached houses off Cat Hill in east Barnet. Some were quite substantial, and attractive for post-war housing, but Stegs's semi was one of the smaller and newer ones and looked a little forlorn opposite its bigger neighbours.
A thick, oppressive layer of cloud hung over Barnet that evening, and a light rain spat weakly as Tina Boyd and I got out of the car. I looked at my watch. It was quarter past six, and I was getting hungry. It had been a long day and a draining one. I'd been on the stand for more than two hours in court that afternoon testifying in the rape trial, much of it under detailed and laborious cross-examination from the defence barrister, who was doing his utmost to get his client off on a technicality now that it was becoming patently obvious to all concerned that he was guilty. I think I did OK, but sometimes it's difficult to tell. Particularly when you're tired, and I was as tired as hell.
Tina had filled me in on the details of the earlier murder squad
meeting not
that there were many of them. So far there'd been no sightings of O'Brien on the day of his murder, and we were still waiting for further tests on the bodies to determine more specific times of death. SOCO hadn't reported any obvious clues left by the killer, and no-one among those interviewed in the surrounding area had seen anything suspicious. Perfect. As for the three phone calls made on the mobile in O'Brien's possession to Stegs's mobile, all had been made since Sunday, the last on the previous morning, but none had lasted more than a minute, so it was possible he was simply leaving messages. Either way, it was inconclusive.
Stegs's wife, Julie, answered the door, a very miserable-looking baby under one arm. The baby eyed me belligerently. Julie, meanwhile, tried to appear welcoming, but it was clear the day was getting on top of her. She was an attractive woman, taller I think than Stegs, with big brown eyes and full lips, but exhaustion and stress had given her a tense, almost haunted look.
Tina spoke first. 'Good evening, Mrs Jenner,' she said with a smile, 'we're here to see your husband.'
'Oh yes, he said something about that. Come in, come in. He's in his study.' She opened the door and we followed her inside into a tiny entrance hall. 'It's opposite you at the top of the stairs. You'll have to excuse me, I'm feeding Luke.'
I told her that was fine and followed as Tina led the way up the almost unfeasibly steep staircase which was about as child-friendly as an unattended pond.
Stegs was waiting for us at the top, wearing a cautious grin, as if he was letting us know that he wanted to be friendly but it was up to us whether we allowed him to be. 'Evening all,' he said. 'Come on through.'
He led us into a tiny room, half of which was taken up by a single bed. A PC running a screensaver featuring brightly
coloured fish swimming around was perched on a desk at the end by the window. The desk took up about another quarter of the room, which didn't leave room for much else.
'You'll have to sit on the bed, I'm afraid,' said Stegs, taking the seat at the desk and maneuvering himself round so he was just about facing the spot where he wanted us to sit. 'I don't really want the missus hearing any of this. Can you shut the door please, John?'
I did as he asked and then the two of us sat down side by side on the bed facing him. It was all very cosy.
'What can I do for you then?' he asked.
'We've got some bad news, Stegs,' said Tina.
He raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yeah? What's that?'
'Slim Robbie O'Brien's dead.'
He looked shocked. 'How did that happen, then? And when?'
'He was shot. We don't have a time of death yet.'
We let it sink in for a few moments, watching him. He rubbed a hand across his brow, the other hand drumming a rapid tattoo on the side of the chair. I thought he looked stressed. His face had taken on a reddish tinge and he appeared pumped up, making me think that he might be suffering from some sort of delayed shock. I wondered briefly whether he'd been offered counselling. If not, he should have been.
'Christ,' he muttered, wiping the hand back across his forehead. That's not going to make things any easier.'
'No,' I agreed. 'Quite the reverse.'
'Who do you think could have done it?' he asked.
'Slim Robbie O'Brien? I imagine the list of suspects is going to be pretty long. When did you last see him?'
'I said all this yesterday evening.'
'Humour us, Stegs. We wouldn't ask unless we had to.'
'Last Sunday night at a pub called the Shakespeare near Barbican Tube. Me and Yokes met up with him.'
'You said yesterday O'Brien was involved in setting up the final meeting,' said Tina in formal tones, looking up from her note-taking. Stegs eyed her suspiciously as she continued. 'What part did he play exactly?'
Stegs sighed. 'Quite a few of SO10 got involved in setting up yesterday, but Fellano was suspicious of blokes he didn't know so he wanted to keep O'Brien in the loop because he trusted him. That meant O'Brien was the main man who kept in contact with him between the test-buy we did at the end of Feb and the final meeting. Me and Yokes also had a couple of conversations with Fellano as well you
know, just to show that we were keen -and I know that he was using contacts in this country to check the two of us out. But he still liked to talk to O'Brien, which is what me and Yokes were meeting him about in the pub. O'Brien was getting worried that when the op went down and Fellano got nicked it was going to be pretty bloody obvious who was behind it. In fact, he wasn't just worried, he was scared shitless. He was talking about pulling out.'
'But you managed to reassure him?' said Tina.
He nodded. 'Well, yeah, obviously. But he still wasn't very happy about it. He started harping on about us having to get him a new identity with all the trimmings if it all went wrong. I told him we'd see what we could do, but we weren't going to promise anything.'
I cleared my throat, thinking that I was very thirsty and could do with a cup of tea. Somehow, though, I didn't think one would be forthcoming. I got the distinct impression Stegs didn't like our presence in his house, though I suppose you could hardly blame him. No-one likes being questioned by the police, particularly the police. 'But you said last night he didn't know the actual location of the meet itself.'
'He didn't. He knew roughly when Fellano was going to be flying in . . .'
'And that was?'
'I think he came in Tuesday night. Late.'
'So who set up the actual location for the rendezvous?'
'Fellano did. He spoke to me on Tuesday night. I phoned Yokes afterwards.'
'And Fellano said that the meeting was going to be at the Donmar Hotel?'
Stegs shook his head. 'No. He told me that the meeting was going to go ahead on the Wednesday, yesterday, but he didn't say where, because they like to leave that sort of thing until the last minute. It's safer that way. But SO11 had a tap on my phone and they used it to trace his call to the vicinity of the Donmar, so we concluded it was almost certainly going to be there. And at that point it became common knowledge among everyone on the op, which was what? Ten o'clock Tuesday night. That gave it eighteen hours to leak.'
'Well, not really,' I said. 'You and Yokes knew because the information on the location of Fellano's mobile was relayed to you by DCS Flanagan He knew, obviously, as did the operator who actually pinpointed the call, and Malik, I believe, because he was with Flanagan at the time. But they were the only ones. We weren't made aware of it' I
pointed to myself and to Tina 'until we arrived at New Scotland Yard yesterday morning for the briefing. Neither was anyone else on the team. It was a very secretive operation, as you for one ought to appreciate.'
'So you didn't speak to O'Brien at all at any point after you found out the location of the meeting?' asked Tina.
The big question.
'No.' There was the first sign of annoyance in his voice. Then his expression clanged. 'Hold on, tell a lie, I had a quick twenty-second conversation with him on the way into work yesterday morning. He rang me on my private mobile, the one I give to people who know my real identity. He was hassling me about what we were going to do to protect him when everything was over. I told him it was out of my hands, but that he'd definitely get protection. I hung up on him. That was it. As far as I know, Yokes didn't speak to him either. There'd have been no point.'
'Where were you when you made the call to Yokes on Tuesday night?' I asked.
'I was here, at home. In this very room, in fact, and I stayed at home for the rest of the night. You can ask the missus if you want. Or SO11. They'd have a record of the call and where it was made from. I'm not hiding anything, you know.'
I put up a hand to calm him. 'Listen, Stegs, we're not here to interrogate you or pick holes in any of your answers, we're just trying to find out what, if anything, O'Brien knew which might have acted as a motive for someone killing him. You have to admit, the timing of his death is worryingly coincidental.'
Stegs sighed loudly. 'Yeah, all right. Fair enough.'
He fidgeted in his seat, trying to get comfortable, and I noticed he was still sweating even though the room was cool.
'Can you give us your movements for yesterday morning, Stegs?' asked Tina, trying to sound as casual as possible. 'Starting from when you left the house.'
'Hold on, am I a suspect for something?' he demanded, trying hard to keep his voice calm. 'Are you making out I murdered him? Because if you are, or you think I might possibly have done it, then I want to stop this right now until I've got a federation rep here, or even a lawyer.'
'No-one's saying any of that,' Tina reassured him. 'But you know the score. We wouldn't be doing our duty if we didn't
eliminate everyone involved from our enquiries. It's just routine.'
He didn't look convinced but gave her a detailed rundown of his movements anyway, including the times. There was nothing untoward or inconsistent in anything he said. While Tina wrote it all down, he stood up, opened the window as wide as it would go, and lit a Marlboro Light, blowing a lungful of smoke into the drizzling dusk.
'Whose idea was it to leave the money behind in the car when you went into the meeting, Stegs?' asked Tina when she'd finished.
He took a long drag on the cigarette before he answered, then fixed her with an expression only just this side of contemptuous. 'Both of ours,' he answered simply, daring her to disagree.
He continued smoking while we continued questioning him as carefully and as diplomatically as possible about aspects of his testimony the previous evening, trying our best not to rile him, but I think it was too late for that. He answered the questions without pause and didn't appear to be lying, but of course you wouldn't have been able to tell with a man like him anyway. His whole job was one long lie after another, so there weren't going to be many people out there better at it than him.