This day will change him forever, though he doesn’t know it yet.
Detective Inspector Zachariah Boateng laces up his trainers on the stairs. Pats his pockets: wallet, keys. All set.
‘Let’s go, Dad, come on!’ Amelia bounces on tiptoes. ‘Can I have it now?’
Zac raises his eyebrows.
‘Please,’ she adds, her smile revealing the little gap between her front teeth. She extends a palm.
Fishing in his wallet, he produces two pounds fifty. Sixteen years in the Met Police and he’s a pushover for a nine-year-old.
‘Back soon, love,’ he calls down the hallway. His wife, Etta, raises a mug of tea in acknowledgement, phone clamped to the side of her face. Miles Davis’s trumpet drifts in from the living room. Through the kitchen window he can make out Kofi, their five-year-old, punting a football in the garden.
Pulling the front door to, he squints in the sunlight. The air is already warm, heat coming off the pavement. Amelia skips ahead, singing to herself.
‘Not too far, Ammy.’
Watching her, he remembers the tiny bundle Etta handed to him in the hospital. That first day, he held her as if she were made of glass. A time will come when she doesn’t want to be seen with him, when the highlight of her Saturday is no longer their ritual of pocket money and sweets. Enjoy this while it lasts, he tells himself.
The morning is still, quiet. Ahead, Amelia turns off the road, confident on their well-trodden route to the newsagent at the top of Peckham Rye Park.
‘Stay where I can see you’
Turning the corner, he glimpses a flash of her yellow dress disappearing around the next bend. Relax, he thinks. She knows where she’s going, it’s only one street away. Maybe he’ll pick up a weekend paper. Do they need milk, or—
Sound rips the air.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Zac freezes. No mistake: a handgun, 9 mm. He starts running.
Crack, crack.
‘Amelia!’ He can’t see her up ahead.
Crack.
Zac’s body tells him to get away. Police training and a Father’s instinct propel him towards the noise.
Crack.
Louder now.
‘Amelia! Where are you?’
A motorbike engine revs hard. Shouting, screaming.
He reaches the main road and turns, scanning, frantic. No sign of her.
‘Amelia!’
The newsagent. Two people are outside, staring.
‘I’m a police officer.’ He pushes through, smashes the door open with his shoulder.
The young man at the counter is motionless. Face down on the floor, three small entry wounds in his back, blood pooling around him.
A gasp from the next aisle.
‘Please God, no,’ he whispers.
There she is, on her back, feet splayed. Eyes shut, breathing quickly, a red stain expanding rapidly in the centre of her yellow dress.
‘Get an ambulance,’ he yells through the open door. ‘Call a fucking ambulance!’
Kneeling next to her, he presses one hand on the wound and feels warm liquid oozing over his skin. His throat constricts.
‘Shh’ He cups her head in his other hand. ‘It’s going to be ok, Ammy.’
Her eyes open a fraction. ‘Daddy.’
The blood isn’t stopping.
‘I’m here.’ He pushes down harder and she moans. ‘Help’s coming, baby.’
‘I’ve called 999.’ A woman from outside stands in the doorway.
‘Check his pulse.’ Zac nods at the young man’s body. What the hell happened here?
‘Daddy, I’m tired.’
Losing consciousness, getting colder. He clamps both hands to the wound now. ‘Come on, Ammy, stay awake.’
Her eyes shut and flicker open. ‘I want to sleep.’
‘No!’ he barks. ‘You’ve got to keep your eyes open, do you understand?’ Zac hears the desperation in his voice. Her only chance is to stay conscious. Keep her talking.
‘What happened, Ammy? What did you see?’
Her breath is slowing now. ‘Man.’
‘A man?’
She drifts again, eyes closing. When they open, her gaze is unfocused.
‘Ammy! Look at me.’
Tilting her head, for a second she’s with him. Then lost again. She draws a long breath.
His hands are soaked, slippery. Leaning over, he turns a cheek to her mouth and looks down her chest. Waits. Counts to ten. No air, no movement.
Puts two fingers on her carotid artery.
No pulse.
Scrambling to his feet, he lunges past the shop counter, searching for the box. Please, God, let them have a defib here. Please.
Behind the counter the older Bangladeshi owner is slumped on the floor, his blood splattered over the cigarette boxes stacked in the open cabinet above him.
‘Jesus Christ.’
And no defib box.
‘He’s dead.’ The woman stands and steps back from the young man, her trouser legs dark where she’s knelt in the puddle of blood.
‘Check him too.’ Zac nods down to the shop owner.
Racing back to Amelia, he kneels again and begins compressions. Both hands, fingers interlaced, his body weight bearing down on her. Pumps hard, counting aloud. On twelve some ribs crack. He keeps going. Twenty-nine thirty.
Zac pinches her nose and tilts her chin down. Covers her mouth with his own and breathes into her slowly. Her chest rises and he watches it fall. A second breath. His hands are trembling as he returns to compressions. Thirty more. Harder. Two breaths.
She doesn’t move.
‘He’s dead as well,’ the woman calls.
‘Help me!’ shouts Zac. ‘Press on the wound here. Seal it off. Ammy, come on.’
The woman kneels next to him and pushes on Amelia’s abdomen. ‘You know her?’
‘She’s my…’ His voice cracks. ‘My daughter.’ Tears are falling onto her body. He keeps pumping his hands over her chest. But she feels cold now. Thirty more. Two breaths. Wipes his eyes on his sleeves. Keeps going.
Nothing.
‘Please,’ he mumbles, gathering her in, clutching her tight to him. ‘Ammy, don’t…’
Facial muscles straining, tears flowing, he barely makes a sound.
The siren comes too late.
The pawnbroker’s shop on Deptford High Street offered ‘Payday Loans, Cheques Cashed, Gold Bought’.
Zachariah Boateng lifted the tape marked ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ to allow Detective Sergeant Kat Jones through. He hated these places: sharks preying on the weak. Up to five hundred pounds instantly? Then pay back five thousand for the privilege. Must be lucrative, selling money to desperate people in a recession. But their presence here was not a good sign for business.
A passer-by had called it in an hour ago, around 7 a.m. Twenty minutes later he’d been woken, as senior officer in the duty team. Pulled on a shirt and suit trousers. Scribbled a note for Etta and Kofi – both still asleep – and jumped in his Audi. Down the road from their home in Brockley, he’d picked up a sleepwalking Detective Kat Jones from her New Cross flat. She was in jeans and a leather jacket, her dark brown hair in a loose ponytail. Jones nodded silent approval at the Ray Charles track he put on. Five minutes later they’d arrived.
Scene of crime officers were already at work, spectral figures shifting around the shop in all-white hooded suits, faces masked. Boateng knew the drill: he and Kat had donned overshoes, masks and latex gloves.
He glanced around the front door. ‘No sign of forced entry here. Alarm wire and locks are intact. Same over there.’ He nodded to the internal door on the right. In front of them, a counter bisected the room, glass screen extending to the ceiling.
‘Back door?’ suggested Jones.
‘Probably. Much more discreet.’
Behind the glass a white suit moved aside, affording a full view of the body. Jones recoiled: her first murder case.
‘Come on.’ Boateng laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s go through and pay our respects.’
He identified forensic pathologist Mary Volz by the wisps of grey escaping from her hood.
‘Morning, Dr Volz.’
‘DI Boateng.’ Identifying him was probably easier for Volz: there was only one black inspector working murder cases in Lewisham.
‘This is DS Kat Jones. She’s just joined our team.’
Volz inclined her head. ‘And this was Ivor Harris.’
The first thing you noticed wasn’t the man. It was the hammer. Embedded in his caved-in skull, its claw and handle sticking up from matted hair like bizarre animal horns. Head forward, Harris was sitting in a chair. Plastic ties at his wrists and ankles said not by choice. His face was heavily lined, with a chain smoker’s sallow skin – he was probably forty but looked fifty. Silver gaffer tape covered his mouth. Patches of blood had soaked into the cheap carpet around him.
Boateng examined the wound. ‘Penetrating trauma?’
‘Leading to intracranial haemorrhage, I’d expect. Perhaps a release, in the end.’
‘Meaning?’
Volz gently lifted Harris’s hands, curled over the arms of the chair like a bird’s claws. ‘Two fingers amputated. On each side.’
‘How?’
‘Mechanical blade of some sort. It’s gone clean through the bones. There’s signs of blunt force trauma to the back of his head too.’
‘Knocked out?’ suggested Boateng.
‘Could explain how he ended up tied to this chair. The restraints affect rigor mortis slightly but I’d put time of death around two, two and a half hours ago.’
‘Does an alarm give a time of entry?’
‘The system was deactivated at 5.27 this morning.’
‘CCTV?’
‘Disabled. Tech guys are examining it now.’
‘Anything else so far?’
‘You don’t need me to tell you we’re dealing with a perpetrator of considerable physical strength to put a hammer through someone’s skull.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
Volz resumed her work on the body as they stepped to one side.
‘So…’ Boateng turned to Jones. If she was in shock she was hiding it well. A month ago she’d been a Detective Constable in the Cyber Crime Unit. Then she made sergeant – in five years, one of the quickest promotions in the Met – and applied immediately to join Lewisham Major Investigation Team. Jones was just twenty-six and her career was moving impressively fast. In the interview, she had said she wanted to get out from behind a desk and back on the street. This was one way to kick things off.
‘First homicide,’ he stated. ‘What do you think?’
She took a breath. ‘Attackers enter and exit via the back door, deal with the alarm and CCTV – so they knew the place, or did their homework.’
‘I agree. Multiple attackers?’
‘It’d be a lot easier to restrain Harris with two, three guys.’
‘Forensics will tell us more. Could’ve been just one guy if he jumped him out of nowhere. Possible motive?’
‘Aggravated burglary, by the look of it.’
‘Money. Logical.’ It wasn’t a bad guess, though he wondered how many aggravated burglaries with murder she’d seen.
‘They torture Harris to get him to give up the safe code or some other information,’ she continued. ‘Except he keeps quiet. Robbers get in a rage and one of them smashes the hammer into his head.’
‘Why put gaffer tape over his mouth if you wanted him to talk?’ replied Boateng.
‘Stop him screaming for help?’
‘Maybe.’ He scoured the room before raising his voice. ‘Anything taken?’
‘Petty cash,’ called out one of the SOCOs. ‘No jewels gone. Safe’s shut – we don’t think it’s been opened.’
Boateng cocked his head. ‘So Harris loses four fingers and still doesn’t give up the safe’s code? Then we’ve either got the toughest pawnbroker in the world or the least competent interrogator. Our attackers gain entry – maybe follow Harris in after he’s deactivated the alarm – and somehow disable the CCTV. One smashes Harris over the head and ties him up. Then with a toolbox of torture instruments they can’t get the number out of him? Bring a mechanical blade anywhere near me, I’d tell you anything.’
‘Could be something really significant in the safe?’ ventured Jones. ‘And he wanted to protect it.’
‘With his life? Well, we’ll find out once we open it. But let’s follow the financial motivation theory for a second. Why doesn’t he use the hammer, or whatever it was that cut off Harris’s fingers, to break open these cabinets and grab some gold or watches?’
‘Maybe there was a noise, a disturbance or something, and he had to run.’
‘Have you heard of Occam’s razor?’
Jones shook her head.
‘Principle that the explanation with the fewest steps is the most likely. Named after William of Occam, old school. Basically, keep it simple.’
‘Right.’
‘So, what’s most probable? Thieves plan and execute a complex job but only take a few quid in cash? Or they didn’t want the other stuff?’
‘Why wouldn’t they want the valuables?’
‘Maybe whoever did this wasn’t burgling the place.’ Boateng moved through the back door into a narrow alleyway and Jones followed. Outside, a SOCO was photographing small numbered signs placed on the ground to mark evidence. Another white suit brushed powder onto the alarm box. Boateng removed his mask and paused while Jones detached her own, studying the concrete floor as she reconfigured the pieces of information.
‘Debts?’
‘Go on,’ he urged.
‘Victim loans money to our attackers, or someone very close to them. Time passes, the interest racks up, it’s out of control. He or she can’t pay. Harris starts making threats. Debtor doesn’t know what to do, resorts to violence to make Harris go away.’
‘That’s more like it.’
Something in his voice indicated she was slightly off. ‘But?’
Boateng scratched his stubble. ‘If you owe Harris, why not just run away, hide?’
‘He might’ve threatened their family or something.’
‘And what would that tell you about the killer’s motivation?’
Jones paused. ‘Revenge. Retribution?’
‘Fits. Could explain how Harris ends up with a hammer in his head. Also, might suggest just one attacker… much simpler that way. You could get your mates to risk prison time for big money. Not so easy signing them up for your vendetta at a cost of life inside if anything goes wrong. Volz said “considerable physical strength”, right?’
She nodded.
‘But that alone isn’t enough. You’d have to be in a rage to split a man’s skull point-blank. Revenge works. There are a lot of easier ways to kill someone. This was personal. Must’ve been something serious.’
‘So we look for Harris’s enemies?’
‘Good place to start.’
Her eyes darted around. ‘Ask his family and friends. Search for previous disputes, altercations – there might be something on record.’
‘Probably want to check out his creditors too – flip your debt theory around. Maybe Harris was the one who owed money. If it was a corporate job then we could be dealing with multiple assailants. And we should see who’s got form for hammer attacks. Hope you didn’t have any plans for your weekend,’ he smiled.
Jones returned it. ‘Not now.’
Boateng knew she needed no incentives. He remembered the buzz of his first murder case: thirteen years ago, a pimp killed in his own home in Lewisham. Since then he’d been to a hundred more dark places on behalf of the Met. And after Amelia had died five years ago, he’d worked even harder, as if every case he closed made a tiny dent in the truth that her killer had never been caught.
‘Same here,’ he said. Etta was used to him working weekends. Though the Met had tried to freeze overtime as part of cutbacks, murders didn’t fit neatly between nine and five. The key investigative period was the first forty-eight hours after a body was discovered. After that, suspects had time to destroy evidence, go to ground. Then the chance of catching the perpetrator dropped significantly. As a lawyer, his wife based her career on probabilities like that. And she knew how important her husband’s work was to him.
Boateng checked his watch. He’d planned to take Kofi to the park for football training today. Maybe even get a run in himself: the slight paunch under his shirt suggested he needed it. If he could get his team into the office and set things in motion this afternoon, he might be home in time to read his son a bedtime story and have a drink with Etta.
‘Time we called for some reinforcements.’ He reached for his mobile. ‘I’ll give Connelly a shout. You see if Malik’s free. And if he isn’t, tell him to come in anyway. Briefing in the station at nine thirty. And when you’ve spoken to him, get the details of the person who found our body. The uniforms outside will have logged it all.’
‘Gotcha.’ Jones replaced her mask and entered the shop.
Boateng called Detective Sergeant Patrick Connelly and, after asking his older Irish colleague to abandon the courgettes on his allotment for the day, stood alone with his thoughts for a moment.
Something didn’t quite fit.
Go back to basics: psychology. He’d studied the theory and the experiments. Four years’ hard slog at Birkbeck, University of London. Evening lectures and assignments in his spare time, getting up before dawn to read. Etta respected his drive for education and Boateng never shirked his childcare responsibilities during that time. He just slept less. The result was more than the letters BSc after his name, the psychology degree on his CV. It was scientific insight into the mind: human motivation and behaviour. And this scene wasn’t right.
There was a disconnect in the profile he’d sketched out. Cool detachment to disable the CCTV, planning ahead to bring plastic tags. The guy knew he was going to restrain Harris, intended to torture him, sourced the tools. This was stuff on the psychopathic spectrum. Then the blind rage to smash a hammer into someone’s head, right up close. That was anger, in the moment, out of control. But what had given rise to that rage?
An hour ago Boateng had been looking forward to a quiet Saturday with his family. Damn. That was the Job.
If it didn’t seem inappropriate, Boateng would have described the office of Lewisham Major Investigation Team as dead that morning. His MIT colleagues had open cases, of course, but none pressing enough to warrant a Saturday at work. Boateng’s own team had been working an attempted murder in New Cross. Knife attack outside a nightclub. There were witnesses, decent forensics and a teenager in Lewisham hospital with a stab wound who could tell them the story. Most importantly, they had a suspect on remand. The rest was essentially paperwork. Not an uncommon incident: violent altercations peaked in the summer months when more people were out and tempers flared in the heat. This new case taking priority was altogether different. There was planning, detail, calculation.
Boateng didn’t want anyone on his team who wasn’t up for the challenge. No pen-pushers, no jobsworths. Just men and women who wanted to catch people who were making London more dangerous. Those driven to never let a criminal get one over on them. Experience showed these were the coppers who’d go further, who’d always put in the extra shift. The ones who made it personal: us versus them.
Detective Constable Nasim Malik was one such officer. After Jones’s call he’d been first in. A faint whiff told Boateng he’d not had time to shower after working out, but at least he’d changed shirts. As usual, his beard was meticulously shaped, a high fade in the short black hair. Malik was a broad-shouldered twenty-four-year-old whose parents had fled Iraq under Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War. Born and raised in Acton, Malik grew up hearing stories of police you couldn’t trust on the streets of Baghdad. Balaclava-wearing men who’d shake you down for a few dinars, bang you up for your faith. Execute a man just for his name. At eighteen he’d signed up for the Met to be part of something he believed in: justice that was the same for everyone. Twenty-one years’ service made Boateng question if that really existed. But experience had not diminished Malik’s motivation and he was reliable and hard-working.
Ten minutes later a muddy DS Connelly arrived straight from the allotment in Herne Hill. Depending on the season, they could expect bagfuls of free veg to turn up in the office. The more the better as far as Boateng was concerned, even if they weren’t the staples of West African cooking he and Etta loved. At fifty-two, Connelly was one of the oldest in Lewisham MIT. He was a wiry ex-boxer with a crooked nose and full head of curly grey hair. Bushy eyebrows danced when he spoke, his accent still strong. As a young man in County Wexford, Ireland, he’d chased the ladies until his parents chased him off to London to get a job at sixteen. In Southwark he’d progressed through the building trade, from labourer to plasterer’s mate and on, for two decades before deciding there was more job security in the police. That was important when you had three kids. They were adults now and his marriage had long since broken up, but Connelly had found his new home in the Met. And despite his lack of formal education, common sense had carried him slowly up the ranks to Detective Sergeant.
As they pulled chairs around the briefing board, Boateng poured out mugs of coffee. Malik dumped three sugars in his, black, while Connelly had insisted on brewing his own mud-thick tea. The board was practically the only free wall space in their room. They’d moved into the new office two years ago, and while top brass had given orders to be ‘paperless’, no one seemed to have told the MIT. Computers lay buried under files, notes taped to the walls, boxes crammed under desks. On her first day, Jones had asked how anyone found anything.
‘Victim is Ivor Harris,’ began Boateng, pinning an A4 mugshot to the board. ‘Deptford pawnbroker. Forty-three, unmarried, lived alone above his shop. When Kat and I saw him this morning, he looked like this.’ Another photo, from the crime scene.
Connelly and Malik exchanged a glance.
Boateng described Harris’s injuries and their theory about who might have wanted to do this to him. He sat down, took a big slug of coffee to give them a moment to process. ‘Kat, what did you get on the person who found the body?’
She glanced down at her notebook. ‘Rosa Lopez. Female, fifty-seven, market trader. Sells second-hand goods. On her way to set up the stall this morning. Passed Harris’s shop, saw the light wasn’t on, looked closer—’
‘And got one hell of a fright,’ interjected Connelly.
‘She was pretty shaken up. I had to calm her down. Uniforms gave her the usual info about seeing your doctor if you get nightmares. She’s got family at home to look after her.’
‘Did she know Harris?’ asked Malik.
Jones checked her notes again. ‘Said she saw him most days she ran the stall. He was usually in early. They’d sometimes exchange pleasantries, nothing more. Lopez thought he seemed a quiet sort.’
Boateng tapped his pen on the table. ‘Any chance she was involved?’
‘Unlikely,’ replied Jones. ‘Physically she couldn’t have managed it – on her own at least – and her behaviour was pretty consistent with shock. But they’ve swabbed her anyway and I can check her alibi for 5 to 7 a.m.’
‘Let’s do that. Once they’ve processed the DNA and fibres that’ll probably exclude her.’
‘Should be ready by tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Kat. Alright.’ Boateng stood again. ‘First things first. Nas, can you run Harris through our system, see if there’s any record on him.’
‘On it.’ Malik slid the chair over to his desk and began tapping away at his PC.
‘There must be CCTV for the surrounding area,’ continued Boateng. ‘Pat, I want you to check if we’ve got a camera active on the High Street. Then find out what other surveillance is going on there – banks, council, shops opposite.’
‘Grand. Three or so hours beforehand on the footage?’
‘To start. Then make it six if we need to. Jackpot’s the back alleyway around 5 a.m.’
Connelly smiled, jotting notes. ‘You’re hoping for the luck of the Irish there.’
Malik pushed back his chair. ‘Boss, I’ve got a hit.’
Boateng spun round. ‘Our man?’
‘Seems like it, name and date of birth match. But I don’t understand… Have a look.’
They gathered round the monitor.
Jones read off the screen. ‘“You are not permitted to access this file.” What’s that about?’
Boateng studied the text. He’d seen this once before. ‘It means Harris was into something bigger than just running a pawnshop. He was cooperating with us in some way.’
She frowned. ‘A protected witness?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Informer?’ suggested Connelly.
‘Probably.’
Informants, officially titled ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources’, were the murkier side of the Met’s work. Forensics could only go so far. And if you were gathering DNA, fibres and toxicology reports, it was already too late. Across all command units, officers relied . . .
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