Drumfire

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

One Saturday night, a masked gunman walks into a jazz club and murders the drummer with a sawn-off shotgun. Shortly afterwards, Detective Chief Inspector Brock and Detective Sergeant Poole find themselves taking an interest in the guests at a party in Surrey's stockbroker belt - a party where naked girls were thrown into the swimming pool by the villains who were with them. This leads them back to a five-year-old robbery and a series of interviews with a number of armed robbers. Then numerous extra-marital affairs come to light and a bullion van is attacked . . .

Release date: October 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 336

Sample

It was a beautiful, warm summer’s evening on a Saturday in early July. My girlfriend Gail Sutton, a gorgeous, leggy blonde and sometime
actress and chorus girl, had just poured me a brandy. We’d enjoyed a very pleasant dinner à deux – she’s an exceptionally good cook – at her town house in
Kingston. Now we were relaxing in the sitting room on the first floor, gazing out through the open French windows and at peace with the world.

And at nine o’clock my mobile rang.

Gail shot me a glance that forbade me to answer it, but she knew that I couldn’t ignore it; I was liable to get calls at any time of the day or night. That was one of the penalties of
being a detective chief inspector on – are you ready for this? – one of the major investigation teams of Specialist Crime Directorate 1, in our case known as Homicide West. We used to
be called Serious Crime Group West, but the Metropolitan Police takes great delight in changing everything from time to time. Not that it makes any difference. Same detectives, same job.

‘Harry Brock,’ I said into my little plastic box. I’m not exactly a dab hand with mobile phones, but I can just about manage to use one for the basics. Like receiving and
sending calls. Sending text messages is, however, a foreign country. If I’m silly enough to try, I usually finish up sending an incomprehensible, misspelt message to someone I don’t
even know.

‘It’s Gavin Creasey, sir,’ said the night-duty incident-room manager at Curtis Green, the headquarters of Homicide West. Curtis Green is a little-known turning off Whitehall in
Westminster, although not many people know that, including the police. The CID officers of Homicide West have the misfortune to be responsible for investigating murders – murders that none of
the elitist squads of the Metropolitan Police want to demean themselves to investigate – in that broad swathe of London that stretches from Westminster to Hillingdon in the west, Barnet in
the north and Richmond in the south. And that includes Chelsea, a place where the poor naive taxpaying residents believe that they are immune from any such nastiness.

‘What is it, Gavin?’

‘You’re not going to believe this, sir . . .’ Gavin began.

‘Try me,’ I said.

‘The Starlight Club, Fulham Palace Road.’

‘What about it?’ I began to feel disturbing vibes already. Anything involving a club always turned out to be a problem. In my case, anyway.

‘It’s a jazz club, guv. At about eight-thirty, a guy wearing a mask entered the club with a sawn-off shotgun, and fired at the drummer. Completely destroyed the bass drum.’
Creasey emitted a coarse laugh, but that is the sort of incident that will activate a policeman’s black sense of humour. ‘But then he lets off a second round and kills the
drummer.’

‘And?’ I queried.

There was another laugh from Creasey. ‘He escaped in the ensuing confusion, sir.’

‘I presume you mean the gunman escaped, not the victim,’ I said sarcastically, and made a wry face at Gail. Gail just sighed; she knew what was going to happen next. ‘Get a car
down here for me, Gavin. I’m not going to risk driving myself.’ There is nothing the Black Rats, as we of the cognoscenti call the traffic police, like better than to catch a CID
officer with a positive breathalyser reading.

‘Right, sir,’ said Gavin. ‘Er, home address?’ he queried archly.

‘No,’ I said, and gave him Gail’s address. ‘Have Dave Poole and the rest of the supporting cast been informed?’ Dave Poole was my black sergeant bag-carrier, a term
the Criminal Investigation Department uses to describe an investigating officer’s assistant. But in my case, Dave was probably more useful than my right arm. What I didn’t think of, and
that was a fairly long list, Dave certainly would.

‘On their way to the scene as I speak, sir.’

Five minutes later, considerably quicker than if I’d been a civilian reporting an ongoing burglary, an immaculate traffic car drew up outside.

The driver, a white-capped constable, wound down his window. ‘Understand you want a lift to Fulham, guv,’ he said, and yawned.

‘Yes. The Starlight Club in Fulham Palace Road.’

‘Hop in, guv. Urgent, is it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, but not without some misgiving. A misgiving that proved to be fully justified. The car swung out of the mews and carved its way through the Saturday evening traffic
with the aid of its siren and blue lights. Most other road users wisely avoided us, but one ageing Toyota driver stopped dead, right in front of us. My driver swore volubly, mounted the footway
– policeman always call pavements ‘the footway’ – and suggested that Toyota man should buy a copy of the Highway Code and get someone to read it to him. Unfortunately this
useful piece of advice was lost; the windows were closed and Toyota man didn’t hear it.

Eventually, however, I was deposited, somewhat shaken, at my destination. Eight miles in about as many minutes through London’s dense traffic is enough to unnerve even the bravest, and I
am definitely not in that category.

‘Thank you,’ I said as I staggered from the car.

‘Any time, guv,’ said the driver cheerfully.

I determined that there wouldn’t be another time if I could possibly avoid it.

The usual blue-and-white tapes had been strung out around the building that, with any luck, contained the Starlight Club, where my latest investigation was about to begin.

Registering my arrival with the incident officer – a tired inspector who looked as though he’d rather be someplace else – I learned that Fulham’s centre of hot jazz was
in the basement. But where else would it be?

Descending a dark, uncarpeted staircase, I found that the Starlight Club comprised little more than a number of cellars knocked into one. There were tables with dirty check tablecloths, and
candles in bottles that were, I supposed, intended to provide a subdued and intimate lighting. But the effect had been rather spoiled by the floodlights that the forensic-science team had brought
with them and set up around the stage in order to take photographs of the scene.

Dave Poole was in earnest conversation with Henry Mortlock, the Home Office forensic pathologist. Although Henry and I are on separate call-out lists, we always seem to arrive at the scene of
the same murders. Perhaps he likes my sense of humour, although I have to say that his perverted and cynical outlook on life would rival that of the most hard-bitten, long-serving detective.

‘Harry, nice of you to come,’ said Henry, as though he were welcoming me to a select soirée arranged especially to listen to the latest work of an obscure composer.
‘Cause of death was a shotgun blast to the chest at close quarters. Time of death about eight-thirty.’

‘You’ve been talking to the witnesses,’ I said.

‘No, I haven’t, but Sergeant Poole has.’ Henry waved a thermometer in Dave’s direction. ‘I’ll let you have a report in due course.’ And with that he
departed. Obviously Henry was not an aficionado of jazz played in basements.

‘Do we know who this guy is, Dave?’ I asked, drawing closer to the stage and surveying the drummer’s body. It was not a pretty sight: the chest area and the bottom half of the
face were a mass of blood and torn shirt.

‘Just as well he won’t be needing that shirt again,’ commented Dave, and glanced up. ‘Goes by the name of Rod Skinner, guv,’ he said. ‘Or did.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. Have the CSEs finished yet?’ I asked, using the accepted abbreviation for crime-scene examiners.

‘They’re not called that any more,’ said Dave, glancing up from his pocket book. ‘They’re now called forensic practitioners: senior forensic practitioner, forensic
practitioner and assistant forensic practitioner, as applicable.’ He gave me an owlish grin.

‘Ye Gods!’ I muttered. Obviously the boy superintendents in the funny names and total confusion squad at Scotland Yard had been at it again. ‘I suppose I’m still a
detective chief inspector,’ I observed sarcastically.

‘Probably depends on the outcome of this murder, guv,’ said Dave drily.

‘And have the forensic practitioners finished, by any chance?’ I asked, repeating my original question, as amended, and laying emphasis on their new title.

‘Here, Mr Brock.’

I turned to find Linda Mitchell standing behind me, the very picture of a sexy scientist in her fetching white coveralls and plastic overshoes.

‘Dave’s just been telling me you’ve got a new title, Linda,’ I said.

Linda’s pretty face adopted an expression of displeasure. ‘Unfortunately, Mr Brock, it makes no difference to my pay,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why they
bothered.’

‘Welcome to the club,’ I said. I concluded that Linda had been working with case-hardened detectives for too long. It had left its mark and some of the scepticism had rubbed off.

We were joined by Kate Ebdon, attired as usual in jeans and a white shirt, her auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. Kate, an Australian, is the detective inspector in charge of the
‘legwork’ team that does all the day-to-day enquiries that are inevitably spawned by a murder. She was a useful addition if for no better reason than that she scared the life out of
villains, and had been known to charm the pants off male detectives. Literally. Or so it was rumoured.

‘I’ve got the surviving four-fifths of the band over there, guv’nor.’ Kate waved a hand at a disconsolate and ageing group of musicians corralled at a table in a corner.
I later discovered that they were a saxophonist, a double-bass player, a trumpeter and a pianist. But the demise of the drummer had clearly not blunted their thirst; each had a glass of beer in
front of him. ‘The missing fifth member, who only recently played his last paradiddle, is lying on the stage in amongst the wreckage of the bass drum, sundry snare drums, a tom-tom, cowbells,
maracas and a hi-hat.’

‘Yes, I’ve just had a look at him.’

As I approached the little group of musicians, the double-bass player – a man of at least fifty – told us he was called Les Roper and appointed himself spokesman.

‘How much longer do we have to hang about here, chief?’ he demanded.

‘How long would you have been here otherwise?’ asked Dave from behind me.

‘Midnight at least,’ said Roper.

‘You’ve still got a couple of hours in hand, then,’ said Dave dismissively. ‘By the way, what d’you play?’

Roper was obviously mystified by that question. ‘What do we play? Well, I play bass, and Jim—’

‘What sort of music?’ asked Dave patiently.

‘Oh right. Jazz, of course.’

‘Trad or modern?’

‘Trad. There’s a lot of people who don’t like modern jazz.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m one of them,’ said Dave. ‘But that blows one motive out of the window,’ he added, turning to me.

‘What motive?’

‘If they’d been playing modern, we could have been looking for a trad-loving killer.’

As I may have mentioned before, Dave Poole has a quirky sense of humour, but he’s an outstandingly good detective. What’s more, he’s very well educated, which is pretty unusual
in our trade. He has a good degree in English from London University, something that’s obvious from his dislike of people who bastardize the language. Mind you, he can speak the lingua franca
of the criminal fraternity when it suits him.

‘How long have you known Mr Skinner, Mr Roper?’ I asked, determined to make a start on finding out who had killed the drummer and perpetrated an act of criminal damage on his drum
kit.

‘About three weeks, I suppose,’ said Roper.

‘And the rest of you?’ I asked.

‘The same,’ said the trumpeter, whose name, Kate said, was Cyril Underwood. ‘He only joined us three weeks ago. The last drummer did a runner and we rooted around until we
found Rod. He reckoned he was a sessions musician. Well, we all are really, but the four of us have been together for about a year. That’s right, isn’t it, lads?’ He looked around
at his fellow bandsmen, and they nodded. ‘We’ve been playing gigs here, off and on, for about six months. We call ourselves the Jazz Kittens.’

Kate Ebdon stifled a laugh. Anything less descriptive of this little group of geriatric jazz players as ‘kittens’ would have been hard to envisage. ‘I’ve had the lads
take brief statements from that lot, guv,’ she said, waving a hand at the thirty or so jazz enthusiasts who were seated at various tables around the gloomy cavern. ‘All right to let
them go?’

‘Anything useful, Kate?’ I asked.

‘Not really. The first that most of them knew of anything was when this guy loosed off at the bass drum. Then he discharged his second cartridge and hit the drummer fair and square in the
chest. People started screaming and leaping about, and while that was going on the guy with the shotgun took off.’

‘Didn’t anyone try to stop him?’ I realized immediately that it was a stupid question. When a guy with a sawn-off shotgun decides to escape through a crowd of panic-stricken
patrons they tend to afford him right of way.

‘No,’ said Kate. ‘I don’t think they tried.’

‘Description?’

Kate laughed. ‘Ah yes. Now let me see.’ She glanced briefly at her pocket book. ‘Between five-six and six-two. Slim to heavy build. Dressed in blue jeans or maybe khaki chinos,
with a black T-shirt or possibly a light blue one or even a white one, with or without an anorak, thin or bulky. The one thing those who saw him were agreed on was that he was wearing a stocking
mask over his head.’

‘Terrific!’ This was shaping up to be the usual sort of murder I investigated. ‘Is there a bouncer on the door of this place?’

‘No, guv,’ said Dave. ‘And if you want my opinion the management is breaching about twenty fire regulations and more Health and Safety laws than you can shake a stick
at.’

‘Make a note,’ I said. ‘It might be all we’ve got to go to court with.’ I was joking of course, even though it might turn out to be true. ‘Yes, Kate, you can
let the so-called witnesses go. By the way, who called the police?’

‘About six of them, guv,’ said Kate. ‘All on their mobiles, except for those who found they couldn’t get a signal while lying face down underneath a table in a
basement.’

Funny thing about CID officers, they all seem so terribly cynical. I can’t think why.

Linda came back to me. ‘We’re about done here, Mr Brock. I’ll let you know what we’ve found as soon as possible, and I’ll run the fingerprint check as soon as I
can.’

I returned to Cyril Underwood, the trumpeter. ‘You said earlier that you found Mr Skinner about three weeks ago.’

‘That’s right.’

‘How?’

‘We put an ad in the local paper.’

‘Which local paper?’

‘The Fulham Gazette.’

‘So he must live locally,’ I mused.

‘Dunno,’ said Underwood. ‘I don’t know where he lived. It didn’t matter. He turned up for a session here one afternoon when we were rehearsing, and we took him
on.’

‘What d’you know about him?’ asked Dave.

‘Nothing, except he was a good drummer. You see, chief, there’s lots of people who think they can play drums, but when it comes down to it, they’re just amateurs. But Rod was
bloody good.’

‘Did he ever say anything about his personal life? Or did he mention any enemies?’

Underwood laughed. ‘No, he never said anything at all really. Kept himself to himself. But we didn’t care, did we?’ He glanced at the other three members of the group, and they
shook their heads. ‘See, we’re only interested in playing jazz. It’s a sort of passion, if you get my meaning. Just can’t help doing it.’

‘How old was Rod Skinner?’ I asked. I had formed my own opinion when I viewed the body, but it’s good to get confirmation.

Les Roper, the bass player, sucked through his teeth – presumably as an aid to thought – and eventually took a guess that Skinner had been about forty-five years old. Which was
exactly what I’d thought.

‘Have you got the Jazz Kittens’ names and addresses, Kate?’ I asked.

‘Yes, guv,’ said Kate, coughing to hide another outbreak of laughter, ‘and brief statements. I’ve arranged for them to come to the local nick tomorrow and give detailed
statements.’

‘OK,’ I said to the group of musicians, ‘you can go now, but I may want to see you again in the near future.’

The band began to pack up their instruments. Their conversation seemed to lack any regret at the passing of Rod Skinner, other than the inconvenience it would cause them in having to find a
replacement drummer.

‘Happy bunch, aren’t they, guv?’ said Kate as the instrumentalists disappeared up the stairs and into the night.

‘Is there a manager in this place?’ I asked, having suddenly realized that we had yet to speak to anyone in authority.

‘Yes, there’s an office in the corner behind the bar,’ said Dave. ‘I told her to stay there until we had time to speak to her.’

‘Her?’ I don’t know why – call it male chauvinism, if you like – but I always imagined that a place like this would have a man in charge. Doubtless, Gail
would have had a few pithy words to say about that.

Erica Leech was in her late thirties or early forties, with short blonde hair cut in a mannish style. She wasn’t slim, but all the bulges were the right shape and in the right place. Her
yellow vest top revealed the sort of well-developed shoulders of someone who might have been a serious swimmer in her youth. When we entered her office she was sitting behind her desk nursing what
looked like a large Scotch.

‘I understand you’re the manager, Ms Leech,’ I said once introductions had been effected.

‘I’m the owner,’ said Erica. ‘And this sort of palaver doesn’t do my business any bloody good at all.’ I rapidly came to the conclusion that Ms Leech
wouldn’t be laying a bunch of flowers at the front of the stage. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ she asked.

‘No thanks. The drummer is the man who was killed,’ I began.

‘Yeah, I heard. He was good, that boy.’

I was amused at her description of Skinner as a boy. We were fairly sure that Skinner was in his mid-forties and, therefore, older than Erica.

‘What d’you know about him?’ I asked.

Erica drained her glass and stood up to refill it from a whisky bottle on top of a filing cabinet. ‘Nothing, really. All I do is to hire the complete package. If I get wind of a good
group, I’ll go and have a listen and if they’re up to the mark, I’ll take them on. This lot performs here twice a week. Fridays and Saturdays.’

‘Did you ever get anyone here enquiring after him?’ Dave asked, keen to discover if anyone had been sussing out the place in general and Skinner in particular.

‘Not as far as I know. No one asked me, anyway. I’ve got a couple of wait. . .