The Veteran (4 page)

Luke Skinner was left to handle the media, to whom Burns had a deep aversion. Anyway, the D S did it better. He was that fairly rare phenomenon, the public-school-educated policeman, with a polish much mocked in the canteen, but very useful on occasion.

All press enquiries had to funnel through Scotland Yard, which had an entire bureau dedicated to public affairs, and they had asked for a brief statement. It was still a low-interest case, but apart from a serious wounding there was also a missing-person angle. Skinner’s problem was that he had no good description and certainly no picture, because the injured man was simply unsketchable with his bloated head swathed in bandage.

So Skinner would simply appeal for anyone who had gone missing from home or work in the Tottenham/Edmonton area the previous Tuesday and had not been seen since. A man who walked with a pronounced limp, between fifty and fifty-five, short grey hair, medium height, medium build. August was a thin month for news; the media might carry the item, but not intensively.

Nevertheless, there was one paper that might give the item a good run and he had a contact on it. He had lunch with the reporter on the Edmonton and Tottenham Express, the local rag that covered the whole area of the Dover Street nick. The reporter took notes and promised to do what he could.

The civil courts may go into recess for a long vacation in the summer, but the network of criminal courts never ceases to labour. Over ninety per cent of lawbreaking is handled by the magistrates’ courts and the processes of the law have much to go on seven days a week and every week in the year. Much of the day-to-day work is carried out by lay magistrates who take no pay but work as a civic duty. They handle the mass of minor offences—traffic violations, issuing of warrants for arrest or search, drinking-licence extensions, minor theft, affray. And the granting of extensions to police custody or remands to prison to await trial. If a serious case comes before the magistrates’ court, it is the modern custom for a paid stipendiary magistrate, a qualified lawyer, to take the bench, sitting alone.

That afternoon. Court No. Three at the Highbury Corner court was in the charge of three lay magistrates, chaired by Mr. Henry Spellar, a retired headmaster. The issue was so simple it took but a few seconds.

When it was over. Price and Cornish were led away and driven back to Dover Street. Burns reported to Detective Superintendent Parfitt.

“How’s it going. Jack?” asked the head of the whole CID branch at Dover Street.

“Frustrating, sir. It started fast and well, with an excellent witness who saw it all. Start to finish. Respectable shopkeeper across the road. Good citizen. No hesitation at ID and prepared to testify. I am short of the missing wallet taken from the victim. Plus forensic linking Price and Cornish to the time and the place. I’ve got Price’s broken nose and the treatment of that nose in St. Anne’s just three hours later. It tallies perfectly with the eyewitness statement.”

“So what is holding you?”

“I need the wallet, linkage to the thugs; I need forensic to hurry up, and I’d like to ID the victim. He’s still a UAM.”

“Are you going to charge them?”

“If Mr. Patel picks them out of the line tomorrow, yes sir. They mustn’t walk on this one. They’re both guilty as hell.”

Alan Parfitt nodded.

“All right. Jack. I’ll try and chivvy forensics. Keep me and the GPS informed.”

At the Royal London dusk fell again but the man in ICU did not see it. It had been forty-eight hours since the operation; the effects of the anaesthetics were long gone, but he did not flicker. He was still far away in his own world.

FRIDAY

The newspaper came out and it had given Luke Skinner a good spread. The story was the second lead, front page. The reporter took the angle: Limping Mystery Man—Who Is He? Police Ask. There was a description of the assault and reference to two local men who were ‘helping the police with their inquiries’. This is one of those much-used phrases comparable with hospital bulletins that describe people in absolute agony as being ‘comfortable’. It means the opposite and everyone knows it.

The reporter gave a good description of the victim, his height, build, short grey hair and that giveaway limp, then ended with a query in bold capital letters: DID ANYONE SEE THE LIMPING MAN? D S Skinner grabbed a copy and took it to his canteen breakfast. He was pleased with the coverage.

A small sidebar mentioned the renewal of custody and a further twenty-four hours.

At eleven. Price and Cornish were taken by van to the St. Anne’s Road ID suite. Burns and Skinner followed, with Mr. Patel. There were two parades, each with the suspect and eight others of roughly similar appearance. Due to the state of Price’s nose, the other eight burly men in his parade had a strip of plaster across the bridge.

Mr. Patel did not hesitate. Within twenty minutes he had positively identified both men and again confirmed he would testify to what he had said in his statement. Burns was happy.

Neither thug had seen him, neither ran with a gang; with luck Mr. Patel would remain unintimidated.

They drove him back to his shop. The volunteers were paid and left. Price and Cornish were restored to the cells where Burns intended to charge them formally when he returned.

He and Skinner were entering the nick to do precisely that when the desk sergeant called out.

“Jack, there was a call for you.” He studied a notepad. “A Miss. Armitage. A florist.”

Burns was puzzled. He had ordered no flowers. On the other hand. Jenny was returning in another week. A bunch of flowers might help with the romantic side of things. Good idea.

“Something about a limping man,” said the sergeant.

Burns took the address and went back to the car with Skinner.

The Misses Armitage, twin sisters of many summers, ran a small flower shop on the Upper High Road. Half of their wares were inside the shop, half displayed on the pavement. The latter blooms fought a battle for survival with the billowing clouds of fumes from the juggernauts heading south towards Highbury or north to the industrial midlands.

“It might be the man,” said Miss. Verity Armitage. “He seems to answer the description. You did say Tuesday morning, did you not?”

D I Burns assured her that Tuesday morning would have been about right.

“He bought a bunch of flowers. Not an expensive one, in fact about the cheapest in the shop. Oxeye daisies, half a dozen. From his appearance he did not have much money, poor dear. And the paper says he has been injured.”

“Badly hurt, ma’am. He cannot speak. He is in a coma. How did he pay?”

“Oh, cash.”

“In coins, from his trouser pocket?”

“No. He produced a five-pound note. From a wallet. I recall that he dropped it and I picked it up for him because of his leg.”

“What kind of wallet?”

“Cheap. Plastic. Black. And then I gave it back to him.”

“Did you see where he put it?”

“In his pocket. Jacket pocket. Inside.”

“Could you show me a bunch of oxeye daisies?”

They lunched back at the Dover Street canteen. Burns was glum, disappointed. A credit card would have left a record: name, and from the credit company an address or a bank account. Anything. But cash ...

“What would you do, on an afternoon in August, with a bunch of flowers?’ he asked Skinner.

“Take it to a girlfriend? Give it to your mum?” Both men pushed their plates aside and frowned over the mugs of tea.

“Sir?”

The voice was timorous and came from further down the long table. It was from a WPC, very young, just arrived from training school. Jack Burns looked down the table.

“Mmm?”

“It’s just an idea. Are you talking about the limping man?”

“Yes. And I could use a good idea. What’s yours?”

She blushed a fetching pink. Very new PCs do not usually interrupt detective inspectors.

“If he was walking where he was, sir, he would have been heading for the High Road five hundred yards ahead. And the buses. But five hundred yards behind him is the cemetery.”

Burns put down his mug.

“What are you doing now?’ he asked the girl.

“Sorting files, sir.”

“That can wait. We’re going to look at a cemetery. Come along.”

Skinner drove, as usual. The WPC, who came from the borough, directed. It was a big cemetery, hundreds of graves, in rows. Council owned and ill maintained. They started at one corner and began to patrol, taking a row of headstones each. It took nearly an hour. The girl found it first.

They were withered, of course, but they were oxeye daisies, dying in a jam jar of stale water. The headstone indicated that it covered the earthly remains of Mavis June Hall. There was a date of birth, the date of death and the letters RIP. She had been dead twenty years and even then she would have been seventy.

“Look at the date of birth, guv. August, 1906. Last Tuesday was her birthday.”

“But who the hell was she to the limping man?”

“His mum, perhaps.”

“Maybe. So perhaps his name is Hall,” said Burns.

They drove back past the Armitage flower shop and Miss. Verity identified the daisies as almost certainly hers. At the Dover nick. Skinner contacted the Missing Persons Bureau for the name Hall. There were three, but two were women and one a child.

“Someone must have known this bugger. Why don’t they report him missing?” fumed Burns. It was getting to be one frustration after another.

The pretty and bright WPC went back to her files. Burns and Skinner went down to the cells where Price and Cornish were formally charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on an unidentified adult male. At quarter to four they set off for Highbury Corner, where the chief clerk had exceptionally managed to find a last-minute slot in the sitting schedule. This time, the two thugs would not be returning to Dover Street. Burns intended that they should be lodged in a real prison on a week’s remand, probably Pentonville.

Things had changed at the court. They were in Number One this time, where the prisoner’s dock is dead centre, facing the bench, rather than in one corner. The magistrate was now a stipendiary, or ‘stipe’, in the form of the experienced and highly qualified Mr. Jonathan Stein.

Price and Cornish arrived by police van again, but another van in the livery of HM Prison Service was on standby to take them to jail. Mr. Lou Slade was at his table facing the bench, but for the GPS a young barrister would make the remand submission.

Years ago, it was the police who handled their own prosecutions up to and through the magistrates’ courts and many old-timers preferred it that way. But for a long time all prosecutions have been handled from the first appearance to the final trial, if any, by the unified structure of the Crown Prosecution Service. Among their tasks is to assess whether a police-prepared case has a realistic chance of a conviction before a judge and jury. If the GPS thinks not, the case is withdrawn.

More than one disgruntled detective, seeing a case on which he has worked long and hard against a real villain withdrawn from the lists, has referred to the GPS as the Criminal Protection Service. It is not always a happy relationship.

A big problem with the GPS is that it is under-funded, overstretched and pays in peanuts. As a predictable result, it is sometimes regarded as a mere stepping stone for the young and inexperienced before they move into private practice and on to better things.

Miss. Prabani Sundaran was very bright and very pretty, the apple of her Sri Lankan-born parents’ eye. She was also on her first major case. But this should not have been a problem.

The remand in custody was going to be a formality. There was no way Mr. Stein was going to grant bail to Price and Cornish. Their records for violence were appalling and he had them in front of him. Remands can only last for a week, so there would be several more yet to come before the defence was chosen, engaged, prepared and ready. Then would come the process of committal, when the prosecution evidence would be produced in full and the magistrate would commit the thugs for trial at the Crown Court, complete with judge and jury. By then. Miss. Sundaran would be assisting a full-fledged Treasury Counsel, possibly even a Queen’s Counsel, who would be engaged by the GPS to try to achieve a conviction. All she had to do was go through the motions. The procedures, just the procedures.

At a nod from Mr. Stein she rose and, reading from her notes, gave the briefest outline of the charge. Slade rose.

“My clients will deny the charge and in due course will enter a full defence,” he said.

“We seek a remand in custody for one week, sir,” said Miss. Sundaran.

“Mr. Slade?” The stipe was asking if Mr. Slade intended to ask for bail.

Slade shook his head. Mr. Stein gave a wintry smile.

“Very wise. Remanded in custody for one week. I shall ...” He peered at both lawyers over his half-moons. “Put this down to be heard before me next Friday morning.”

The entire court knew perfectly well that he meant he would listen to, and grant, a further remand in custody for another week, and so on until both prosecution and defence were ready for committal to Crown Court.

Price and Cornish, still handcuffed but now flanked by prison officers, disappeared below decks in the direction of the Ville. Mr. Slade went back to his office knowing that by Monday morning he would have an answer to his application for legal aid. His clients clearly had no assets with which to pay for their own defence, and he would have to try to find a barrister from one of the four Inns of Court to take the case for pretty small pickings.

He already had in mind a couple of chambers whose all-powerful chief clerks would consider it, but he knew he would probably get a freshly qualified sprog who needed the experience or an old blowhard who needed the fee. No matter. In an increasingly violent world a GBH does not set the Thames on fire.

Jack Burns returned to Dover Street. His desk was full. He still had a huge workload, now forming a backlog. And on the matter of the limping man he had some problems to solve.