Looking at dead police
GAOL STREET, MONDAY morning. Bliss turning away from his office window, sitting down behind his laptop on the desk, bringing up another piccy of the garage man’s upper half, lying in black grease and showing off the hole in the shaven side of his head.
‘And now we know exactly what did that,’ he said to Annie. ‘It’s this.’
He brought up another pic of a little automatic pistol with a brown handle, and turned the lappie to face her across the desk.
‘Makarov 9-mil. Apparently a Russian old faithful from Soviet days.’
Annie studied it. She was in her dark blue business suit, white shirt, her white-blonde hair tied back. In half an hour she’d be chairing morning assembly in the Major Incident Room. There was already a buzz around Gaol Street, excitement not shared by Bliss. If he’d been sentimental about gun crime he’d be back Up North by now.
Annie looked up.
‘Many of these getting imported? Do we know?’
‘Of late, yeh. Less fashionable in Russia since the last cold war ended, so bargains to be had. Doesn’t mean the Russian mafia, they’re all over Eastern Europe. There’s a Russian video on YouTube of some fat twat loading one and firing it. I say fat twat, because his gut’s all you ever see.’
YouTube and Google. It had come to this. Not too long ago, you’d have to wait for some boffin in ballistics to serve up the background and it might take an hour or so; now it was a couple of clicks away. They were still waiting for the PM.
Annie opened her primeval spiral-bound notebook.
‘Let me get this absolutely right, Francis, before we go in there. Jaglowski was shot with one of his own guns.’
‘Not necessarily, but it’s a working theory.’
Karen’s team had found them wrapped in oily cloth in a strongbox at the bottom of the inspection pit under the ramp in Jag’s garage. Also five boxes of bullets that looked like little Duracell batteries with rounded ends.
‘The bullets that did for Jag were not your ordinary nine mil. Makarov ammo was made significantly bigger so they’d be incompatible with Western pistols in case there was a war and some got nicked by the enemy. Paranoid bastards, the Soviets.’
‘But he wasn’t killed by one of the pistols found in the garage.’
‘None of them had been fired.’
Slim Fiddler, the chief SOCO, had told him all this. Bit of a ballistics expert, Slim. Been a hobby of his for years. Surprising what you didn’t know about your colleagues.
‘Fiddler was in a gun club, Annie. Used to go target shooting at an army range. Gorra Walther PPK of his own. Like James Bond?’
‘Not at home, I hope.’
‘Kept at the club, under lock and key. Obviously, we don’t know where Jaglowski got these, but I expect they’re all over Birmingham.’
‘The point is he was dealing guns from Hereford.’
She looked faintly outraged. Annie had been born here. Now Hereford – on her watch – was becoming a city housing heavy-duty villains. As if a virulent infection had got in under cover of the fog and soon there’d be kids shooting kids in alleyways and across the spare land beyond the Plascarreg.
‘Until his death,’ Bliss said, ‘all we knew about this man was that he was a small-time criminal fencing stolen farm machinery. If we’d known about that two or three weeks ago, had him under obbo – assuming we could afford that – we could be looking at a serious result by now.’
‘We could also be looking at dead police,’ Annie said soberly.
He didn’t say anything. He’d never liked guns, never even wanted an airgun when he was growing up in a part of Merseyside that still had fields. Never done firearms training, felt nervous standing next to some bugger with body armour and a stubby machine gun, even if they were on the same side. Still…
‘Don’t like to talk about poetic justice, Annie, but if the only man trading in Russian handguns in Hereford is the first victim of one of them… No evidence of these weapons circulating in the city. Norra whisper. You wouldn’t hold up a Tesco Express with one, would you? Chances are he picked them up for peanuts, couldn’t bring himself to say no.’
‘Do we know how many Makarovs were originally in that strongbox? Was it open?’
‘No, all locked up. They found the key on his keyring – not very professional of him. Annie, listen… it’s one feller. Not like there’s been an eruption of gun crime. Jag was a general dealer operating behind a second-hand car business. Maybe this was a first time for him, and the fact that he let himself get shot is an indication of his inexperience.’
‘Why didn’t whoever it was take the rest of the guns?’
‘Maybe somebody was making an example out of him. Gerrin a bit too ambitious. Lorra work to do here, Annie.’
‘Yes, well, I’ve asked for expert advice. Someone’s coming over from Hindlip.’
‘You think that’s really necessary?’
‘They do. When I’m specifically invited to request assistance I tend to comply. One final thing. His girlfriend, the person who found him…’
Bliss smiled. Last chance saloon: could it have been a simple domestic?
‘Don’t think we didn’t consider it. I got Karen to talk to her. She’s a local girl, Danielle James, twenty-two. Danni. Nice middle-class family. Dad’s a dentist. She met Jaglowski at a club. She thought he had… style.’
Bliss found a picture of Jaglowski, alive. Black hair, shaven at the sides, long and implausibly wavy on top. Wide moustache. Annie was unimpressed.
‘Looks like a Hollywood pirate. She lived with him?’
‘Quite a nice rented flat in that new block down the bottom of Bridge Street. Not cheap. Been with him about three months. He was evidently doing all right for somebody who’d been here less than a couple of years.’
‘She knew what he was into?’
‘We reckon she knew he was into something. Part of his appeal, Karen thinks. Danni was all over the place last night, lorra squealing. But then, when Karen talked to her again this morning at her parents’ place, it was all very different. Karen thought she was quite excited. Boyfriend getting gunned down? How often does that happen?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I blame computer games. They don’t know where reality begins. Anyway, she gave us her DNA, prints, good as gold. Let us search the flat. She could be cleverer than she seems, but Karen thinks not. We’re gonna bring her in this morning for a proper job. She might be the best we’ll get. In English anyway.’
‘Out there,’ Annie said, ‘there’s a handgun. Probably with somebody’s hand around it. And he – or she – has done it once.’
‘Done it more than once, you ask me.’
Annie looked quite unsteady. Not like somebody who’d be going upstairs in about twenty minutes to conduct the orchestra; this was someone who was afraid the concert season was only just beginning. He came round the desk, eyeing the closed door. Annie squirmed away.
‘For God’s sake…’
‘It’s only a career,’ Bliss said.
Or two. Maybe two. They’d slept last night at his house in Marden, in the flatlands beyond the city. Not quite so careful any more – what was the point now that Charlie knew? – and yet they’d still done the usual working-morning bit, him leaving alone by the front door, her departing more discreetly by the back door ten minutes later. Making their separate arrivals at Gaol Street.
‘I was quite enjoying the fog,’ Annie said. ‘Not being able to see things coming.’
Closing up her big black bag with the spiral-bound notebook inside.
‘It’ll all work out,’ Bliss said. ‘Lorra decent Poles in this city don’t like the way fellers like Jag are gerrin them a bad name. Somebody’ll get fingered before long. And if it links up to regional organized crime, like Vaynor says, they might start taking each other out for a while, till it settles down.’
Not exactly the best line to take. Various situations had settled down nicely when her old man had been head of CID, and they all knew why that was.
‘On the other hand,’ Bliss said, ‘Jag might just’ve been storing them for somebody who didn’t think he was reliable.’
She didn’t look at him. Some of the cold edge had gone from Annie and, for reasons he didn’t care to contemplate, he’d grown quite fond of that.