Trespass (P.I. Johnson Carmichael Series - Book 2) (9 page)

The
BBC
’s man-in-a-crisis, Marshall Lancaster, straightened his tie, using his reflection in the van’s windscreen. His naturally strawberry blonde hair was now greying and wilting and the bald patch on the crown of his head was growing by the day. He scrunched up his face and mentally counted the crow’s feet around his eyes. His wife had been trying to talk him into having some cosmetic enhancement to his face, but he had vehemently told her that he had to be taken seriously as a journalist and, for that reason, he could not go under the surgeon’s knife. Now just inside the entrance to
H.M.P Isle of Wight
, he was beginning to question this stance. After all, if he wanted to continue his career for a bit longer, the younger he appeared the better.

It was nearly ten p.m. and the crisis in the prison had been running since breakfast. When the call had reached the news desk that there was a riot in one of Britain’s oldest and once most-feared establishments, he had been quickly kitted up and sent out in one of the vans designated for outside broadcasts. His crew, a seventeen year-old pimply probationer responsible for holding the boom and a forty year-old camera technician with a sixty-a-day habit, were busy in the back of the van testing the feed. They were due to report live for the ten o’clock bulletin and Paul, the older of the two men, was on the phone to the broadcast’s director, back in London. The director was urging them to hurry up as the anchor was already seated and waiting to begin.

Lancaster skim read his notes a third time, committing as much detail to memory as possible. They had been reporting from the prison for the last six hours so most viewers would already be familiar with what was going on. That didn’t matter as he was still required to give a recap for those who had yet to catch up with the day’s events.

‘Marshall, you ready?’ said Paul, squeezing out of the van and instantly putting a cigarette to his lips.

Lancaster tried to hide his disdain and nodded. The probationer exited the van and held the boom aloft proudly.

‘You gonna’ smoke that now?’ Lancaster asked.

Paul pulled the cigarette from his lips and pushed behind his ear, muttering, ‘Force of habit,’ before hoisting the camera onto his shoulder and pointing it in Lancaster’s direction.

‘And we’re live in five, four, three,’ said Paul mouthing the numbers two and one.

Lancaster tried to ignore the big halogen lights hovering above Paul’s head, and listened out for the anchor’s voice in his ear piece.

‘A little after ten o’clock this morning, the inmates of Wing-C in the building behind me, began a violent protest against the new prison governor, Natasha Swinton. Disgruntled by a rumour that traditional Christmas celebrations were to be cancelled this year, the prisoners gathered in the canteen area of the wing and took hostage a group of ten prison officers who had remained inside in an effort to restore peace. The hostages were badly beaten as the protest ensued and it was left to trained riot police, drafted across from the mainland, to finally take the wing back. That wasn’t until considerable damage had been done to the cells and communal facilities. Estimates for the cost of the damage will be tens of thousands of pounds of tax payers’ money.’

Marshall paused to allow the anchor to ask some scripted questions for clarification.

‘Well I managed to speak with Governor Swinton earlier this evening and she denied any knowledge of the decision to cancel Christmas celebrations. She stated that no such decision had been made and she put the rumour down to a prison guard with an overactive imagination. She wanted to stress that a full investigation would be carried out to understand who had started the rumour and that the guilty individual would be handed the strictest of punishments.’

Another pause for a question in his ear.

‘The police entered the premises just before lunch, with a view to securing the safety of the unconscious guards. The injured men were taken to a nearby hospital where their injuries are being treated. There are numerous broken bones but nothing more serious thankfully. The police returned to the canteen area and began to secure the inmates in their cells and, despite some initial resistance, once Governor Swinton had confirmed that traditional Christmas festivities would be observed, order was promptly restored.’

The anchor asked a question about prisoner injuries.

‘That’s right. The bodies of two inmates have been discovered. The first, whose identity has yet to be confirmed, was located in the wash block, brutally stabbed and with a cut throat. It is believed the crime was gang-related but at present there are no suspects in custody for the crime. The second body was located in one of the cells. There are no obvious causes of death at the moment and a post mortem is set to be carried out in the next day or so. This inmate’s identity has been confirmed as Nathan Green. He was convicted of three sexual assaults and murder more than twenty years ago. He was a relatively young man in good health so his sudden death is somewhat unexpected and foul play has yet to be ruled out.’

The anchor thanked him for the update and proceeded to tell the watching audience more on the history of the prison.

‘And we’re out,’ said Paul, lowering the camera from his shoulder and grabbing the cigarette from behind his ear in one motion. The pimply probationer raised his hand in an effort to instigate a high-five with Lancaster. The weary journalist ignored the gesture and walked over to the van and climbed in. They were due to give one final live broadcast for the
BBC News 24
channel in ten minutes but it was too cold to stay outside waiting. They were booked into Newport’s
Premier Inn
and he desperately hoped the bar would still be open by the time they got there.

*

‘Did you see the news report?’ the deep voice asked.

‘Yup,’ she replied.

‘You wanted to know what your thirty thousand pounds would get you; now you know.’

She gulped, uncertain whether she was pleased with this outcome or not. What she had done…what she had paid to do…what she had ordered…
was it worth it
?

‘Are you still there?’ the male voice asked.

She confirmed she was.

‘Listen,’ said the man, ‘I know it’s not easy to deal with the guilt. You shouldn’t feel bad about it. You have helped rid the world of one sick son of a bitch.’

She found it mildly amusing that the man on the phone, who had helped engineer Nathan Green’s final moments, could be so judgemental of a fellow killer.

Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone
, she thought, but then realised the hypocrisy of the thought.

‘Did he suffer?’ she asked, not sure why she cared.

‘Not especially so. His death would have been quite quick. The poison applied by the killer was subtle and would have closed down the major organs pretty quickly. He will have known he was dying but there would have been no pain.’

This brought the woman a moment of relief, but she was still struggling to come to terms with what she had done.

‘When do I transfer the rest of the money?’ she asked trying to focus on less emotional things.

‘My solicitor will be in touch in the next day or so. He will instruct you where to pay the remaining fifty percent.’

‘Will I ever hear from you again?’

‘No you will not,’ he replied, eager now for the call to end.

‘Okay, then I guess I’ll…’

The line was dead before she could finish the sentence. So that was it: Green was dead. Justice had been served.

Why does it not feel like it, though
?

She had attended a number of rape crisis meetings since that night and one question they always asked new members was
if you could have your revenge, would you
? It was meant purely hypothetically to help the victim find closure. For her, it had triggered a thought that had led to where she was now. It had taken her twenty years of nightmares to pluck up the courage to carry out the act but now it was done: he would not rape again.

Cat Jurdentaag replaced the phone on the hub and walked to the kitchen. She knew it would take several more months, maybe years, until she achieved true closure. Opening the fridge, she removed the chilled bottle of vodka and poured herself a shot.

Good riddance
, she thought, before knocking back the drink.

Johnson Carmichael pointed the lens of his
Canon
camera out of the window of the Hyundai I-20. It was the car he always used for such exercises as it was indistinct, and so avoided attention. The couple he was watching had been at the small table outside of the café for twenty minutes already and were just starting to tuck into the sandwiches they had ordered. It was a surprisingly mild and dry day in Southampton, considering the time of year: it looked like it wouldn’t be a white Christmas yet again.

He pulled his tie down slightly and unfastened the top button of his shirt. He had spent many a long day sitting in a similar spot, just watching people. It was the dullest job he had ever done, but he liked the freedom he had to take on jobs when
he
wanted and not just when he was told. Surveillance operations like this one took time to set up, but even longer to carry out, if they were to be effective. It was why he made himself a flask of hot, black coffee every morning. The current day’s flask was already empty and he was feeling incredibly parched, but moving now would draw unwanted attention to himself, and it could lead to him missing out on the break he needed.

He had begun his career, as a fresh-faced college graduate, in the Metropolitan Police. He had walked the beat for the requisite two years but had always sensed that he was destined for greater things and passed his detective’s exam and interview board at the first attempt. Joining C.I.D. at Notting Hill Police Station was one of his proudest moments. The dim reality of surveillance operations, bureaucratic red tape and criminals evading capture soon set in and made him begin to question his career choice.

He had been an intelligent young man with a refreshingly naïve consideration of the British justice system, and it was this that had got him recognised as a strong candidate for development, despite his African heritage, in what was a pretty closed-minded institution. But it was a time of growing diversity and so the ambitious black detective was soon plucked from the obscurity of C.I.D. and fast-tracked into the first task force against organised crime under the new Police Commissioner. The team was made up of ten detectives of varying grades with the sole purpose of minimising the impact of inner city crime. It was a task he was born for, or so he thought.

The task force was a lot less-formal than what he had grown accustomed to: jeans and t-shirts were acceptable office uniform, when required.

The team’s first big case was against a known Russian family, the Stratovskys. The head of the family, Nikolai, was living in Russia at the time and so the day-to-day businesses were being run by Nikolai’s two nephews: Victor and Janus. The two brothers were very close and many regarded them as Russia’s answer to the Kray twins; they did everything together: if someone hadn’t paid their bill, Victor and Janus would torch the person’s premises. If another family wanted to meet to discuss a joint proposal, Victor and Janus attended the meetings together. Despite the likelihood of sibling rivalry, the two brothers remained loyal to one another, neither particularly keen on usurping the other for more power.

The D.C.I. running the operation, Martin Saunders, knew the end game was to collect enough evidence to see that Victor and Janus would end up behind bars; but that was the long-term goal. In the meantime, they needed to attack the smaller fish in the operation and see if they could
convince
any of them to testify against the heads of family. This was where Carmichael and the other Detective Constables came in. They were assigned duties of shaking down known offenders, eliciting details of upcoming operations and making sure that they knew what was going on in any given place on any given day. He took to the task like a duck to water. He soon built up a network of informants, who could be pressed into sharing their secrets with the right level of force. He was young, fit and strong: his right hook could leave a man with concussion for days.

Saunders was a good boss: he gave his men the freedom they needed to carry out their duties. Whilst violence against the criminal fraternity was not encouraged, it was not formally discouraged, and Carmichael soon developed a reputation for using force to get what he needed.

Two months into the operation, the body of Janus Stratovsky had been found in the burnt out shell of a black London Taxi near Brixton. The victim’s hands, feet, teeth, eyes and tongue had been removed post mortem, and the body had been burnt beyond recognition, suggesting that the victim’s clothes had had an accelerant applied to them. The body would have remained unclaimed but for a small metal plate in the victim’s arm. Janus had badly broken his left fibula as a toddler and a metal plate had been fitted to hold the bone in place. This plate had included a serial number, which was tracked back to a small hospital outside of Minsk, and so the identification had been made. Whoever had killed Janus had gone to great lengths to hide the true identity of the victim, and had the left arm been severed too, the victim’s identity would never have been discovered.

Victor Stratovsky was distraught and openly vowed to get revenge on the perpetrator, offering significant bounties for any information that led to the killer’s identity. It was suspected initially that the hit was a revenge-killing from one of the other families, and Victor focused his attention on working out who had done it and why. Eventually, Uncle Nikolai had arrived on U.K. soil, determined to take over operations.

Because Saunders’ team had been working an open case against the Stratovskys, an internal investigation had been launched into the team’s activity and soon questions were being asked about the level of force being exerted to gather evidence and tip-offs. Fingers started to be subtly pointed at Carmichael’s level of involvement in the case, and when someone suggested to the Complaints Investigation Bureau that Carmichael had a real dislike of Janus, he soon became the focus of the investigation.

He was formally suspended while the investigation was carried out and Senior Met Officials began to tell the press that Carmichael had received and adhered to warnings about his conduct. It was a witch-hunt of the worst kind. Convinced that he was to be used as a scapegoat, he did what anyone else in his position would do: he shifted the focus to somebody else. At the time, he used to run regularly at night around the back streets of Hammersmith, near his home. This had brought him into contact with various homeless addicts and vagrants. One night, while out running, he found the body of one such vagrant and removed one of the man’s hairs, planting it on Janus’ body at the morgue where it was being stored, and placed it in the mouth of the victim.

An anonymous tip-off encouraged the forensics team to re-examine the body where the stray hair was located. A D.N.A. match was found on the P.N.C. database and the vagrant’s body was located. Unfortunately, the man, in his late forties, was not dead and began to plead his innocence of any such crime, however, due to his lack of alibi, the case against him continued.

Carmichael was invited back to work with sincere apologies, but he soon resigned, citing the lack of support he had received during the investigation, as the cause of his resignation. Six months later, he successfully took the Metropolitan Police to a tribunal for constructive dismissal, claiming the task force had been rife with racism, and he had received a rather handsome redress. It was at this point that he had decided to move away from London and to go into business by himself. Choosing Hampshire as his base location, he soon settled in his chosen vocation: private investigator. At the time, he had imagined a glamorous lifestyle, solving the crimes the police couldn’t or didn’t have the resources to crack. However, the truth was: the only jobs he tended to get were wives looking for him to prove that their husbands had strayed from the marital bed. That was why he was pointing his camera in the direction of Mr James Benold and the attractive young blond with whom he was eating lunch.

Benold was typical of the kind of man that Carmichael was asked to track: tall, handsome, rich and with an unnerving belief that
he
was above the rules. Benold was an international trader by profession. Having spent long hours setting up the business in his younger days, he was now CEO of
Benold Trading
and so had the time to indulge his fancies. An average day now was two to three hours of email management and the occasional site visit.
Benold Trading
had offices in London, Plymouth and Hampshire and the CEO lived in Southampton, about as central as he could be to the operation.

Mrs Francesca Benold, Frankie to her friends, was a stay-at-home mum but with her two teenage children now in secondary school and in the throes of adolescence, she had found she had more free time on her hands than she had been used to. Sure, she could still go to the tennis club, yoga lessons and the occasional coffee morning, but she still found herself sitting at home on the sofa for large portions of the day whilst her husband was off gallivanting. She had begun to suspect that his affections had wandered, but she was not aware of just how far her husband had strayed, or how many times.

The services of Johnson Carmichael had been brought to her attention by a tennis club friend who had used him to secure a very generous divorce settlement. She had told Frankie that he was very discreet, yet uncompromising, in his approach to the work. When he had told Frankie his fee, she had waved her hand dismissively.

‘Money is not an issue, Mr Carmichael,’ she had added for good measure. ‘Just catch the bastard!’

He had done his research, following Benold for the past three weeks, learning his routine, getting inside the man’s head, understanding the type of woman he was attracted to. It was simple: short, blonde and slim; quite the opposite to his spouse, who was tall, brunette and athletic. It amazed him how Benold could even be tempted to stray when he had the strikingly beautiful Frankie at home waiting for him.

He began to take photographs with the
Canon
. The lens was zoomed in on Benold’s face, and even though he was with a beautiful companion, even now his eyes would wander as other ladies walked past the table. His companion didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t demonstrate that it bothered her.

Benold took a mouthful of his baguette and must have cracked a joke as the woman at the table giggled hysterically. Benold watched her as she laughed, probably imagining what it would be like to get her into bed. A waitress brought fresh drinks to the table, and Carmichael got some great photos of Benold staring at her bottom as she walked away. There was an arrogance to the man that made Carmichael’s skin crawl: it reminded him that whilst this work wasn’t saintly in nature, at least it saw some kind of justice served.