Boateng checked his watch. He’d planned to take Kofi to the park for football training today. Maybe even get a run in himself: the slight paunch under his shirt suggested he needed it. If he could get his team into the office and set things in motion this afternoon, he might be home in time to read his son a bedtime story and have a drink with Etta.
‘Time we called for some reinforcements.’ He reached for his mobile. ‘I’ll give Connelly a shout. You see if Malik’s free. And if he isn’t, tell him to come in anyway. Briefing in the station at nine thirty. And when you’ve spoken to him, get the details of the person who found our body. The uniforms outside will have logged it all.’
‘Gotcha.’ Jones replaced her mask and entered the shop.
Boateng called Detective Sergeant Patrick Connelly and, after asking his older Irish colleague to abandon the courgettes on his allotment for the day, stood alone with his thoughts for a moment.
Something didn’t quite fit.
Go back to basics: psychology. He’d studied the theory and the experiments. Four years’ hard slog at Birkbeck, University of London. Evening lectures and assignments in his spare time, getting up before dawn to read. Etta respected his drive for education and Boateng never shirked his childcare responsibilities during that time. He just slept less. The result was more than the letters BSc after his name, the psychology degree on his CV. It was scientific insight into the mind: human motivation and behaviour. And this scene wasn’t right.
There was a disconnect in the profile he’d sketched out. Cool detachment to disable the CCTV, planning ahead to bring plastic tags. The guy knew he was going to restrain Harris, intended to torture him, sourced the tools. This was stuff on the psychopathic spectrum. Then the blind rage to smash a hammer into someone’s head, right up close. That was anger, in the moment, out of control. But what had given rise to that rage?
An hour ago Boateng had been looking forward to a quiet Saturday with his family. Damn. That was the Job.
Chapter Two
If it didn’t seem inappropriate, Boateng would have described the office of Lewisham Major Investigation Team as dead that morning. His MIT colleagues had open cases, of course, but none pressing enough to warrant a Saturday at work. Boateng’s own team had been working an attempted murder in New Cross. Knife attack outside a nightclub. There were witnesses, decent forensics and a teenager in Lewisham hospital with a stab wound who could tell them the story. Most importantly, they had a suspect on remand. The rest was essentially paperwork. Not an uncommon incident: violent altercations peaked in the summer months when more people were out and tempers flared in the heat. This new case taking priority was altogether different. There was planning, detail, calculation.
Boateng didn’t want anyone on his team who wasn’t up for the challenge. No pen-pushers, no jobsworths. Just men and women who wanted to catch people who were making London more dangerous. Those driven to never let a criminal get one over on them. Experience showed these were the coppers who’d go further, who’d always put in the extra shift. The ones who made it personal: us versus them.
Detective Constable Nasim Malik was one such officer. After Jones’s call he’d been first in. A faint whiff told Boateng he’d not had time to shower after working out, but at least he’d changed shirts. As usual, his beard was meticulously shaped, a high fade in the short black hair. Malik was a broad-shouldered twenty-four-year-old whose parents had fled Iraq under Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War. Born and raised in Acton, Malik grew up hearing stories of police you couldn’t trust on the streets of Baghdad. Balaclava-wearing men who’d shake you down for a few dinars, bang you up for your faith. Execute a man just for his name. At eighteen he’d signed up for the Met to be part of something he believed in: justice that was the same for everyone. Twenty-one years’ service made Boateng question if that really existed. But experience had not diminished Malik’s motivation and he was reliable and hard-working.
Ten minutes later a muddy DS Connelly arrived straight from the allotment in Herne Hill. Depending on the season, they could expect bagfuls of free veg to turn up in the office. The more the better as far as Boateng was concerned, even if they weren’t the staples of West African cooking he and Etta loved. At fifty-two, Connelly was one of the oldest in Lewisham MIT. He was a wiry ex-boxer with a crooked nose and full head of curly grey hair. Bushy eyebrows danced when he spoke, his accent still strong. As a young man in County Wexford, Ireland, he’d chased the ladies until his parents chased him off to London to get a job at sixteen. In Southwark he’d progressed through the building trade, from labourer to plasterer’s mate and on, for two decades before deciding there was more job security in the police. That was important when you had three kids. They were adults now and his marriage had long since broken up, but Connelly had found his new home in the Met. And despite his lack of formal education, common sense had carried him slowly up the ranks to Detective Sergeant.
As they pulled chairs around the briefing board, Boateng poured out mugs of coffee. Malik dumped three sugars in his, black, while Connelly had insisted on brewing his own mud-thick tea. The board was practically the only free wall space in their room. They’d moved into the new office two years ago, and while top brass had given orders to be ‘paperless’, no one seemed to have told the MIT. Computers lay buried under files, notes taped to the walls, boxes crammed under desks. On her first day, Jones had asked how anyone found anything.
‘Victim is Ivor Harris,’ began Boateng, pinning an A4 mugshot to the board. ‘Deptford pawnbroker. Forty-three, unmarried, lived alone above his shop. When Kat and I saw him this morning, he looked like this.’ Another photo, from the crime scene.
Connelly and Malik exchanged a glance.
Boateng described Harris’s injuries and their theory about who might have wanted to do this to him. He sat down, took a big slug of coffee to give them a moment to process. ‘Kat, what did you get on the person who found the body?’
She glanced down at her notebook. ‘Rosa Lopez. Female, fifty-seven, market trader. Sells second-hand goods. On her way to set up the stall this morning. Passed Harris’s shop, saw the light wasn’t on, looked closer—’
‘And got one hell of a fright,’ interjected Connelly.
‘She was pretty shaken up. I had to calm her down. Uniforms gave her the usual info about seeing your doctor if you get nightmares. She’s got family at home to look after her.’
‘Did she know Harris?’ asked Malik.
Jones checked her notes again. ‘Said she saw him most days she ran the stall. He was usually in early. They’d sometimes exchange pleasantries, nothing more. Lopez thought he seemed a quiet sort.’
Boateng tapped his pen on the table. ‘Any chance she was involved?’
‘Unlikely,’ replied Jones. ‘Physically she couldn’t have managed it – on her own at least – and her behaviour was pretty consistent with shock. But they’ve swabbed her anyway and I can check her alibi for 5 to 7 a.m.’
‘Let’s do that. Once they’ve processed the DNA and fibres that’ll probably exclude her.’
‘Should be ready by tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Kat. Alright.’ Boateng stood again. ‘First things first. Nas, can you run Harris through our system, see if there’s any record on him.’
‘On it.’ Malik slid the chair over to his desk and began tapping away at his PC.
‘There must be CCTV for the surrounding area,’ continued Boateng. ‘Pat, I want you to check if we’ve got a camera active on the High Street. Then find out what other surveillance is going on there – banks, council, shops opposite.’
‘Grand. Three or so hours beforehand on the footage?’
‘To start. Then make it six if we need to. Jackpot’s the back alleyway around 5 a.m.’
Connelly smiled, jotting notes. ‘You’re hoping for the luck of the Irish there.’
Malik pushed back his chair. ‘Boss, I’ve got a hit.’
Boateng spun round. ‘Our man?’
‘Seems like it, name and date of birth match. But I don’t understand… Have a look.’