Читать книгу For Evil to Flourish - Dubya Ph.D Lorimer - Страница 10

Chapter 5

Allan was throwing dirty football kit in the washing machine when Julie got home. Their son John played for his school's football team, and they had obviously just returned from Saturday morning's match.

'Hi' he said looking up.

'Hi yourself,' she replied, leaning down to give him a peck on the cheek,

'Win lose or draw?' she asked, indicating the dirty kit.

'Win! John scored a goal. He's chuffed to bits but trying to act casual about it.'

'Where is he now?'

'He went straight out to see his friends, so they can tell him how great he is. Mandy's next door on the computer. How was your night of being treated like royalty?'

'Fantastic, I could live like that all the time,' (Not lying, she told herself), 'How was your night, what did Chalky want with you?'

'Oh.....just a neighbourhood watch kind of thing, I told him I wasn't really interested. Fancy a cup of tea?'

'Love one, I'll just say hi to Mandy before I nip upstairs to change.'

Life, it would appear, was carrying on entirely as normal in the Ross household.

North Street police station was relatively quiet on a Saturday, Ian Hopkins was the only detective occupying a desk in the CID room.

'Hi Ian, you're just the very man I'm looking for.' He looked up to see Amrita Bachchan approaching.

'Wow, I've been waiting all my life for a gorgeous woman to say that to me!'

'Yeah, right, I bet it happens to you all the time,' she laughed, 'But what I should have said was, “Just the detective sergeant I'm looking for.”

'I can't say I'm not disappointed, but still, what can I do for you Amrita?'

'I need you to look at something on the MyPals social networking site, decide whether it's worth investigating.'

'Let's take a look.'

She placed the laptop she was carrying on his desk.

'A couple of people mentioned this to me when I was in the Craigends this morning.'

PC Bachchan was the community officer for the Craigends area, and she was liked and trusted by the more honest residents who made up the majority in the district. This was no small achievement considering the animosity experienced by many officers called to incidents in the area.

'This is Benny Patterson's page, showing a video which was posted last night. Apparently he sent texts to lots of people, saying stuff like,

”Check out my page guys, see how stupid I look”, “Hear how I got a girl killed, see me shit my pants”, that kind of thing. When I say he sent them, I mean they were sent from his phone. I somehow don't imagine he would be very keen for people to see this!'

She clicked on a button and the video began to play. Ian Hopkins watched, fascinated, as a very frightened looking Benny Patterson was questioned about the death of a teenage girl and the supply of drugs by the Hills. He visibly winced when the concrete block was dropped from the window.

'Well, well, well, what have we got here then, a bunch of vigilantes trying to do our jobs, and getting a bit more entertainment from it than us!'

'Ssssh, better not let her upstairs hear you say that, you're supposed to be outraged by that kind of behaviour.'

'Oh she's all right, she'll probably feel the same way, she just won't admit it.'

'Yeah well, I would still watch what you say,' she warned, 'Anyway, what do you make of it?'

'That is Benny Patterson, minor drug dealer, pimp, and general good-for-nothing, as you probably know. He is an associate of Darren Hill, which again, you probably know.' Amrita was nodding in agreement.

'The incident being referred to here was the death of Linda Hope, fifteen years old, who died from a drug overdose, and her friend Liz Kingsley, who ended up in hospital. As they say in the video, the drugs were supplied by Darren Hill.'

'So you know all this already?'

'Sure do. We just can't prove it. Nobody wants to grass on the Hills family. And if you listen to Patterson, he doesn't really admit to anything useful.'

'Is this of any help to you at all?'

'Doubt it. You can't possibly use any of this in court. A guy with a concrete block tied to his dick, “Tell us what we want to hear or we throw the block out the window”, bye bye wedding tackle! His lawyers, and the Hill's, would just laugh at us. Of course he's going to tell them what they want to hear, what man wouldn't? Did you hear anything else about the Hills when you were out and about?'

'There was a rumour that old Gerry Hill bashed some kid in a shop recently when he was back home on a visit, but when I enquired, I got the old three monkeys reaction.'

Ian nodded knowingly,

'See no evil, hear no evil, and most definitely, speak no evil. This gang of vigilantes would probably have more luck than us when it comes to getting people to talk about incidents like that!'

Amrita frowned,

'So what happens now?'

'D.I. Morrison is in this morning, I'll show it to her, see what she says.'

'She's often in here these days, when she's supposed to be off duty.' Amrita commented.

'Yeah, well, you know how it is.' he replied non-committally. It was all round the station that their boss had recently broken up with her long term boyfriend.

'Maybe she has her eye on you!' said Amrita mischievously.

'She'd be wasting her time, I'm spoken for,'He leaned in conspiratorially, 'But perhaps I could be tempted by a certain community officer?' and he wiggled his eyebrows ridiculously at her, making her laugh.

'You've got no chance, I'm far too good for you!' and she headed off, still laughing.

Detective Inspector Ann Morrison had watched the video three times, and was now staring at the blank screen, her lips pursed. Finally she looked at Ian Hopkins.

'What do you think, Ian?'

'I don't think it's of any benefit to us. Quite the contrary in fact. It would appear we have a bunch of nutters on the go, taking the law into their own hands. That won't go down to well with the management.'

'My thoughts exactly.'

She sat in silence for another short time.

'As I see it, we have three objectives here. One is ongoing, which is finding evidence to nail those responsible for Linda Hope's death. Secondly, we have to be seen to be responding to the accusations made on the video, so we pull Patterson and Darren Hill in for questioning. It won't help with the first objective, we're not going to get anything that way, but it covers our backsides. The third is, we have to find out who these vigilantes are and stop them. Agreed?'

Ian nodded, and said,

'There's not really a lot to go on as far as tracing these jokers is concerned, the video appears to have been shot on Patterson's own phone, and the quality is pretty poor. They're wearing overalls and masks, and their voices are disguised. They have gloves on, so I wouldn't hold out much hope of getting fingerprints from the phone, or anything else for that matter. We don't even know where it was filmed.'

'Perhaps when we speak to Mr Patterson he will be happy to assist us with our enquiries, help us to find those responsible for putting him through that terrible ordeal.' she said, deadpan, with hardly a hint of sarcasm.

'Yeah,' Ian laughed, 'and pigs might fly!'

St Catherines Road exuded an air of restrained affluence, with it's stone built villas sitting well back from the street. The wealthy merchants and bankers who built these houses were long gone, and new money had paid for most of the houses to be converted into commercial properties. Front gardens which once would have been lovingly tended by an army of gardeners had been paved over to be used for parking. Design consultants, architects, lawyers and others wishing to give an impression of solid dependability had their offices here.

Hillburns Property Developments occupied one such villa, an early Victorian town house with the minimum of changes to the exterior. Inside, the building impressed with stylish modern décor of the highest quality, with the usual office clutter kept to a minimum.

As was normal on a Saturday afternoon, the reception area was deserted, but in a plush office, David Burns was sitting at his desk, his eyes on a computer screen as he moved the mouse around, a smile hovering around his mouth as he clicked on file after file filled with the information he sought.

There was a knock on the door, then his partner stuck his head round,

'Hi George, come on in.'

'I was on my way to the football, thought I would call in and see how it was going Dave, got anything useful on there?'

'Sure have George, everything we needed and more, couldn't have been better. We should be ready to send out the first of the tenders sometime on Monday.'

'I always knew I could depend on you Dave, with your good looks and charm!'

'Well, we have a bit of work to do yet, but it's certainly looking good.'

'I'll leave you to it then, wouldn't want to hold you back. See you Monday.'

'See you,'

Content with the way things were progressing, George headed for the door, leaving David to carry on going through the files, still smiling to himself.