The Hand of God

by James Craig

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

England, Summer 1986 When journalist Hugh Scanlon and his wife Marjorie are murdered, veteran cop Walter Callender finds himself on the trail of rogue Secret Service agent Martin Palmer. Enlisting the help of rookie John Carlyle, Callender turns to previously unheard of technology, DNA testing, to try and trap the degenerate killer before he strikes again.

Release date: December 5, 2013

Publisher: C & R Crime

Print pages: 75

Sample

London, 1986

‘Welcome to the shittiest estate in London.’

Carlyle looked at his fellow constable and grunted.

The officer stuck out a meaty paw. ‘You new here?’ he asked, his accent betraying Midlands roots.

‘Nah.’ With some reluctance, Carlyle shook his hand. ‘I’ve been working out of the Borough High Street station for almost a year now. It’s my first time in the Castle Vale, though.’ He looked up nervously, half expecting to see a piece of masonry being dropped on his head from the aerial walkway above.

‘You can relax.’ His colleague grinned. ‘The bad lads won’t be out of bed yet. They don’t come out before dark.’

That’s reassuring, Carlyle thought grimly. Castle Vale had been built on a thirty-acre site south of Elephant and Castle in the 1960s. With almost 2,800 flats, housing 11,000 people, it was, at the time, the biggest housing estate in Europe. In 1972, when the first tenants moved in, it was described as the most ambitious housing scheme in London. Five years later, by the time the final units had been completed, the place was already crumbling. On a visit to the site, the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer famously bemoaned how the design ‘actually encouraged people to commit crime’. A geographer from King’s College had listed fifteen ‘design disadvantages’ conducive to antisocial behaviour. Not needing the analysis, postmen, milkmen, taxi drivers and doctors routinely refused to enter the estate. Unable to accept that it should just be torn down, politicians began tinkering at the edges, looking for a quick fix in the manner of a blind squirrel hoping to find a sustaining nut. The government’s Urban Renewal Unit continued to throw money at the problem, installing security features such as video entry phones and better lighting. Despite all the window-dressing, the place still looked very much like its nickname – ‘Hell’s waiting room’.

Tearing his gaze from the pedway, Carlyle looked his newly discovered colleague up and down. Podgy and pasty-faced, he looked to be Carlyle’s age, or maybe a year or so older. He tried to recall seeing the officer previously, but his mind came up blank. ‘I haven’t clocked you before.’

‘I’ve not been around for a while – been on the sick.’

‘Ah.’ Carlyle knew better than to enquire any further. In his experience, police officers were often very fragile creatures; sickness was common and absenteeism rife.

‘I’m Dudley, by the way. Dudley Stockbridge.’

‘John Carlyle.’

‘Very nice to meet you, John,’ Stockbridge said amiably. ‘Shame it’s just you and me.’

Carlyle grunted his agreement. There was no way that the two of them should have been left deep in enemy territory on their own. However, he knew better than to hope for reinforcements. As usual, the Metropolitan Police was overspent and under-resourced; there was nothing anyone could do about that. Apart from anything else, the bitter News International dispute, across the river at Wapping, was soaking up hundreds of thousands of police man hours and blowing already fragile budgets to smithereens. Over recent months, Carlyle had spent his fair share of Saturday nights in the company of 6,000 angry newspaper workers as they tried to stop the procession of lorries leaving Rupert Murdoch’s grim bunker with the next morning’s newspapers. Having already experienced what had happened to the miners, Carlyle had no doubt as to the ultimate outcome. The march of new technology, backed by the iron fist of the state, would prove invincible. The days of hot metal and Fleet Street were gone, never to return. Now it was just a question of how long it would be until the print unions’ protest collapsed.

‘Where were you before Southwark?’ enquired Stockbridge.

‘I moved from Shepherd’s Bush,’ Carlyle mumbled, not really interested in making conversation with his fellow plod. ‘Just over a year ago.’

‘Any good?’

‘Yeah. Not bad.’ Despite what Dudley had said, Carlyle found his gaze drifting upwards as he kept a wary eye out for incoming missiles. In his relatively short police career, he had already felt what it was like to take a half-brick to the back of the head, and he had no desire to repeat the experience. Standing in a narrow courtyard, they were vulnerable to attack from all sides. Many of the Castle’s residents took a perverse pride in living on the most violent estate in London’s most violent borough. Always a tinderbox, the place had exploded two days earlier when an attempted arrest had gone badly wrong. A woman had been shot by officers looking for her two sons in connection with the robbery of a sub-post office. As news of the shooting spread, residents armed with rubble, bin lids, hammers and knives had fought with police for more than six hours. Fighting had continued the following night, with rioters adding petrol bombs and baseball bats to their armoury. Shots had been fired from an unidentified weapon. A dozen cars had been torched and the local off-licence looted. A TV cameraman had been killed instantly when he was hit on the head with a breezeblock, less than twenty feet from where Carlyle now stood. Another forty-six people had been treated for a range of injuries and there had been more than two hundred arrests. The woman, Carole Lovelock, was in a critical but stable condition in Guy’s Hospital; according to the newspapers, she had been left paralysed from the waist down. The sons were still at large.

In the last twenty-four hours, a tense calm had descended on the Castle. For fear of sparking off more violence – and running up additional overtime costs – the police presence had been quickly wound down. Stockbridge and Carlyle had been placed outside number 32 Goscote Way, Mrs Lovelock’s maisonette, to keep looters at bay and also on the off chance that Gareth and Roger Lovelock might reappear.

The upsurge in civil unrest was not totally unconnected to the weather. After an interminable delay, summer had finally arrived in the city with a bang. Temperatures had jumped above thirty degrees, with the promise of more to come. Even in the shade, the atmosphere was stifling. Yawning, Carlyle watched a skinny dog wander through the courtyard. The mutt, some kind of mongrel, eyed the policemen blankly as it cocked its leg on a pile of rubbish, finishing its business before casually wandering off and disappearing into the shadows.

Pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket, Stockbridge huffed and puffed as he mopped his brow, looking every inch like a character from an Ealing comedy. Placing the hanky back in his trousers, he jerked a tired thumb towards the door behind them. ‘How long do you think they’re gonna keep us standing around here?’

‘Dunno.’ Carlyle tried to raise some spit, but his mouth was too dry.

‘I mean,’ Stockbridge continued, ‘it’s not as if the Lovelock boys would be stupid enough to come back, is it?’

‘Dunno.’ Carlyle shrugged. As a cop, he had quickly come to realise that the sheer stupidity of your average criminal was never to be underestimated.

‘Not when they know that we’re after them.’

‘Stranger things have happened.’ Out of the corner of his eye, Carlyle saw a figure appear from his right. Head down, face hidden behind the . . .