Silent as the Grave Read online

  “So what went wrong?”

  “We’d had an eye on Obsanjo for some time, but we couldn’t ever link him with the operation. Most of the dealers that we arrested were too far down the totem pole to give us a name and those that were more connected wouldn’t say anything. Obsanjo might be small-time but he had convictions for assault and there were unconfirmed rumours that he wasn’t above threatening families and loved ones to ensure people kept quiet.”

  “So you had nothing? Why not just fit him up? It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

  Sheehy opened his mouth, before closing it again. After a brief pause, he continued, “He was a slippery bugger. Every time we thought we had him, he’d get away before we could arrest him at the scene. We’d be left with a few pot plants, a couple of wraps of heroin and if we were lucky, some dumb idiot who was too stoned to run away when we bashed the door down.

  “Anyhow, it was his own arrogance that got him in the end. He hit his girlfriend one time too many and she reported him for assault. She knew that if he found out she’d been to the police he’d probably kill her, so she gave us details of where and when we could find him with some of his product. This time, when we made the raid we hit seven properties simultaneously. We caught him with his pants down—literally, he was in the back room getting favours off some junkie.”

  “OK, so where do you come into all of this?”

  Warren had his suspicions, but he wanted Sheehy to spell them out for him.

  “I was DCI here in Middlesbury, as you know, and I helped coordinate the investigation and organise the raids in this area. The thing with Obsanjo though was that although he was running this operation, he was a dumb shit. We couldn’t figure out how he kept one step ahead of us. Seriously, he was mean and violent and ambitious, but he wasn’t at all bright. He simply shouldn’t have been able to avoid us like he did.

  “Anyhow, we’d finally got him and we charged him with intent to supply, unlawful production, the whole works. Good enough to get him twenty years if the judge and jury saw it our way. We just put his avoidance down to luck—his good luck, our bad luck.

  “Anyway, a few weeks after the operation was concluded, we’d all moved on and suddenly Professional Standards arrive at my house. Six a.m. on a Sunday morning, mob-handed, brandishing warrants. I’d come off a night shift and so Judith answered. It frightened the hell out of her. By seven a.m. I was in custody suite one, waiting for my lawyer. I still didn’t know what it was all about.”

  Sheehy had stopped pacing and was now grinding his teeth.

  “They said that Obsanjo had claimed he was able to avoid arrest for so long because he was getting regular tip-offs about when raids were about to occur. He was bribing a member of Middlesbury police to tell him what our plans were.”

  Warren contemplated the man before him.

  “And he named you?”

  “Not in so many words, but he gave a description that could have been me. He claimed his source would disguise himself or conceal his identity whenever they met. He’d phone him on a Pay-As-You-Go mobile phone.”

  “Well they must have had more to go on than that. Trying to get a more lenient sentence by co-operation is hardly a new ploy and claiming to have been helped by some bent copper is old hat.”

  “He had copies of internal memos about the operation that he claimed had been passed to him by his source. In return, he handed over bundles of cash. Used notes mostly, wrapped in elastic bands and stuffed in envelopes.” Sheehy paused. “Somebody was dirty, make no mistake about that. But it wasn’t me.”

  He continued his story. “Anyway, they interviewed me all day. By mid afternoon, I wasn’t really that concerned any more. Allegations are made all the time. You know that. I figured that Professional Standards were under pressure to put on the whole cart-and-pony show because of the politics—you know that they have been looking for an excuse to close us down ever since we survived the merger. But the fact was I hadn’t done anything wrong and I was confident that there was nothing to worry about. I’ve grown a pretty thick skin over the past few years and I figured it would all be over in a couple of weeks: ‘nothing to see here, move along’.”

  He went quiet. “But I was wrong. About four o’clock in the afternoon the investigator in charge, some DCI Lowry, came back in, brandishing a fistful of photographs like a trophy. They’d found a shoebox hidden in the loft, with about eight grand in used notes all rolled up neatly in elastic bands, just like Obsanjo claimed.

  “Forensics found traces of drugs on the notes above the usual background levels and Obsanjo’s thumbprint on one of the envelopes. They also found a Pay-As-You-Go SIM card in my desk at work that matched the number Obsanjo claimed had been used to call him.”

  The man went silent, waiting.

  Warren thought hard. What the man was saying was incredible; the evidence as he’d laid it out was compelling and he could see why Professional Standards had arrested and charged him. The man in front of him was desperate, of that there was no denying and there was no reason to accept what he was saying as the truth. Except that the evidence he had given Warren so far had been largely true. And what did he have to gain by lying? The chances that Warren would find evidence to exonerate him were slim—even more so if he wasn’t actually innocent.

  “So why do you think Delmarno is behind this?”

  Sheehy sighed. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Vinny Delmarno made it clear that he wanted revenge, that he wanted those responsible for sending him to prison to suffer. This happened barely six months after he was released. Then in December, Anton Liebig is killed in a supposed car accident and finally Reggie Williamson is stabbed to death on Middlesbury Common. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  It wasn’t enough. Warren knew, but he couldn’t dismiss it. “So who was feeding the information to Obsanjo? You said that you thought it was authentic, that somebody had been passing material on.”

  Sheehy shrugged. “I don’t know. You know how big these sorts of operations are. Middlesbury was taking point because of our local knowledge and connections but there was a huge team behind this down at Welwyn. It could have been any one of them. Vinny Delmarno’s got deep pockets; he could definitely afford to pay somebody.”

  Warren chewed his lip, thinking hard. The idea that there were other corrupt officers beyond Sheehy—maybe even officers he knew and worked with—left a sour taste in his mouth. “What about Tony?”

  Sheehy grimaced. “What they did to him was spite, pure and simple. There was no reason to suspect him, other than his friendship with me. They humiliated him, dragging him into this. Poor bloke didn’t even know what it was about.”

  “You know that he’s been summonsed?”

  Sheehy nodded and sighed. “I’m innocent, but I’m a detective—I can put myself in their shoes. I can see why they arrested me and why they are confident of a conviction. But there’s no need to drag Tony into this. What’s he going to say? That I sometimes used my mobile phone or that I wasn’t always available?

  “These trumped-up charges have been a godsend for some. I freely admit that I’ve been a pain in the arse and that fighting to keep Middlesbury CID open made me more enemies than friends, but so be it. Frankly I’m proud of it and I’ll take the flak on the chin, but it’s hurt people I care about. I pretty much guaranteed I’d never make it above DCI, and that’s fine. Heading that unit was the best job I ever had and I’d happily do it until retirement—but I always regretted that it probably scuppered Tony’s chances as well. He’s too good to stay as a DI—you know that—and it’s not right that standing next to me for a cause he believed in should kill his future ambitions.”

  Warren said nothing, but Sheehy’s words rang true. Before Sheehy’s disgrace, many assumed that Tony Sutton would one day head up the unit. The police service was not a monarchy. Jobs were given on merit, but Sutton’s experience and local knowledge would ordinarily have stood him in good stead, if and when the vacancy b
ecame available.

  And that was perhaps why Warren decided, there and then, that he would investigate Sheehy’s claims. Tony Sutton had shown himself to be a good and loyal officer and his passion for policing in the small area that Warren was starting to call home was second to none. Warren thought back to the massive row that he and Sutton had shortly after his arrival at Middlesbury. Sutton had claimed that he had no desire to be promoted further—that may be true, but it offended Warren’s sense of right and wrong that politics should deny the man the chance.

  And then there was the future of Middlesbury CID. If Sheehy was convicted of corruption, it could very well be just the lever needed to close the unit for good. And Warren knew that he couldn’t let that happen without a fight.

  It had been a steadily growing feeling over the past few months. At first Warren had seen command of the unit as a valuable stepping stone in his career. The closure of Middlesbury would not impact him directly—how could it? He had no association with Sheehy and the events before him, and under his direction the unit had achieved many notable successes in a relatively short space of time. John Grayson might be the one to take the public plaudits, but Warren was the senior investigating officer and those who mattered knew exactly who had done the legwork. Warren could move on from Middlesbury with plenty of commendations in his file for a job well done.

  But he didn’t want that—not yet anyway. He liked Middlesbury CID. The officers under his command were fine detectives and getting better. And besides, he and Susan were settled. Their first house was turning into the home that they had dreamed of; Susan’s job was proving to be challenging beyond her expectations, but the school was predicting a modest rise in exam results for the first time in several years.

  Both of them were settled and neither wanted the upheaval of moving across the country or the stress of a long daily commute—and of course if everything went to plan, within the next couple of years the spare bedroom would be turned into a nursery.

  “What do you want me to do?” Warren listened; it wouldn’t be easy and he’d need help.

  Walking back to the car, leaving Sheehy to find his own way home, he pulled out his phone. It was answered on the second ring.

  “Tony, we need a chat. Fancy a pint?”

  * * *

  “So this is the man that Gavin claims is responsible for his recent spell of bad luck.” Sutton had been grinding his teeth for the past few minutes; he clearly still resented the fact that Warren appeared to be taking the man’s assertions seriously.

  “So he says,” Warren responded neutrally, too tired to get into another argument.

  The mens’ meeting an hour earlier in the back room of the Rose and Crown had been a tense affair. Sutton had been extremely unhappy when he heard that Warren had spoken again to Sheehy.

  “Why do you trust him? We’ve still got no evidence that this Delmarno character has anything to do with Reggie Williamson’s death. We can’t even prove that Williamson ever worked for Delmarno—Inland Revenue, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, got back to us. Williamson was basically self-employed throughout the eighties, mostly cash in hand. He declared whatever he could get away with and paid flat-rate National Insurance. There are no details of who paid him or who he worked for. For all we know Gavin’s just yanking our chain. We should drop it; let Professional Standards sort it out.”

  Despite his reticence, Sutton had agreed to accompany Warren back to the station.

  “Well I suppose the first thing we need to do is find out what this Vinny Delmarno has been up to over the past couple of years.” He held up the sheet from the probation service. “I’ll see if we can get anything from his probation officer. Maybe he can tell us if Delmarno was around when Reggie Williamson was stabbed.”

  Warren shook his head. If Delmarno was still connected enough to arrange for Gavin Sheehy to be framed for corruption, then who knew where else he might have influence. Sutton voiced his scepticism.

  “Look, Tony, even if we find out that Delmarno had a cast-iron alibi for the time of Williamson’s murder, Sheehy said that he ordered his killing, not that he did it himself. Let’s keep this to ourselves for the time being.”

  Sutton looked at him suspiciously. “Why do I get the impression that you are keeping a lot more to yourself?” His eyes bored into Warren’s. “What else did Gavin say to you during your walk in the park? You were up there over half an hour and you were as pale as a ghost when you came back down.”

  Warren felt his ears burn. He shook his head. “We argued before he told me what he knew about Williamson.”

  Sutton continued to stare at him for a few more seconds, before finally looking away. “If you say so, Boss.”

  Warren pulled over the latest pile of papers left on his desk by DS Kent. “Operation Leitmotif—catchy moniker.”

  Sutton said nothing, still brooding.

  Kent had been right. The available documentation was patchy. An operation the size of Leitmotif, spanning two counties and involving officers from two forces, would have generated tens of thousands of individual records, most of which would be sitting in brown cardboard boxes in an archive somewhere. Modern protocol called for every piece of evidence, witness statement or scrap of paper to be recorded, annotated and scanned into the massive HOLMES2 database before being divided into physical evidence, which had to be kept so that it could be produced in court, and non-physical evidence, which could be securely destroyed, the electronic version being sufficient. Back in the early days of computerisation, such a job would have been a mammoth undertaking and so whoever had been in charge of archiving the case had clearly been selective. Many of the documents had also been scanned only retrospectively, Warren noted, with accession dates several years after the case’s conclusion.

  Most of the material was of no interest to Warren, concerning the ins and outs of Delmarno’s empire. Much of it was in the form of witness statements from informants, often listed only by code name.

  “I wonder how many of these characters actually showed up to testify?” sniffed Sutton who had finally become interested in the case, despite himself.

  “Not many, by the sounds of it. Delmarno was acquitted of most of the charges laid against him. There isn’t a lot of forensic evidence backing up the claims, so his lawyers managed to tear them apart. We need a list of who these code names refer to; some of them might still be alive.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on it. I’ll bet a fair few of them ended up the same way Frankie Cruise did.”

  “Speaking of which, here it is.” Warren held up a sheaf of papers. “The reports surrounding Cruise’s murder.” He fanned them out on the table. “Let’s see: ballistics report on the bullet retrieved from the scene, autopsy report, no witness statements obviously—” he moved to another page “—another ballistic report, this time for a handgun retrieved at the scene of a drugs bust up in Hillfields, Coventry.” He scanned the page. “Tests show it was the same gun that fired the bullet that killed Cruise.” He picked up another sheet. “Fingerprints were retrieved from the gun: a clear thumbprint on the grip and an index finger and thumb on the top-slide, and a partial print on the trigger. Lots of others, but none clear enough to identify.” He lifted a final page. “Confirmed match to Vinny Delmarno.”

  “So Delmarno’s handgun definitely killed Cruise then?”

  “It certainly looks that way. The question is: how did a gun that Vinny Delmarno supposedly kept in his house in Hertfordshire end up in the neck-end of a Coventry housing estate?”

  “Any explanation?”

  Warren scanned through the rest of the papers. “None here. It’s definitely a mystery and it must have been something the defence asked in court. However, according to this account—” he pushed another sheet across the table “—the drugs bust didn’t net anybody. They scarpered before the raid team could catch them. The gun was left behind with a few packets of cocaine and heroin.”

  “So nobody could explain where the gu
n came from or contradict the team’s account of how they found it. Bloody convenient.” Sutton’s eyes had taken on a familiar glow; despite everything he was clearly intrigued. “I wonder what the officers in question had to say about it.”

  Warren shuffled through the papers again. “Nothing. I can’t find the officers’ statements.”

  Sutton frowned. “Well that can’t be right. They’d have been cross-examined in court and their statements read out.”

  “It looks as though they were never scanned into HOLMES.” Warren scowled. “What do you think the chances are that the paperwork is still sitting in a box in the West Midlands Police archives twenty years on?”

  Sutton snorted. “I wouldn’t bet my pension on it. I’m pretty sure that if it was assumed to have been scanned into HOLMES the original would have been destroyed long ago. It would be good practice. If the information is captured, the original paper statement wouldn’t be considered physical evidence so there’s no need to retain it.”

  “So, what Sheehy claims could be correct? He could have left the gun at the scene?”

  “Assuming he was there. I haven’t seen anything naming officers involved in the raid yet.”

  Sutton was right. Warren quickly rifled through the papers one more time. “Nothing relating to the raid at all. We have no idea who was present or who else was working with Sheehy.”

  Sutton looked at him curiously. “You think Sheehy had an accomplice?”

  Warren had skirted over the mention of his father in the affair.

  Why had he done that? Was he trying to protect his father’s memory—such that it was—or was he just not ready to bring up the subject yet? Warren’s head was still in turmoil over the rest of Sheehy’s revelations and he needed some time to clear it before deciding who to share the information with. Unbidden, his eyes flicked towards his briefcase where he’d stowed the documents and the newspaper clipping about Anton Liebig’s fatal car accident.