Whispering Grass

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Featuring the worldly wise DI Brock and his wry sidekick DS Poole - When Jimmy Spotter Gould is shot dead within seconds of emerging from Londons Stone Mill Prison, Brock and Poole are faced with a baffling crime. Enquiries uncover an embezzling solicitors clerk, a dodgy undertaker and a dubious motor trader. A Bosnian doctor and Her Majestys Revenue and Customs also feature in a tale that eventually culminates in the uncovering of a complex smuggling operation . . .

Release date: October 1, 2008

Publisher: Severn House Publishers

Print pages: 240

Sample

The forecourt of Stone Mill prison is a desolate place at the best of times, but on a cold February morning with the rain lashing down it’s
particularly dire.

Within feet of the prison’s massive wooden doors, a small tent had been erected which, I presumed, contained the body that was to be the subject of my latest murder investigation. If it
didn’t, I’d have wasted my time coming all the way out here from Curtis Green.

It is not generally known, but Curtis Green lies just off Whitehall between the fortress that is the Ministry of Defence and the grandiose apartments where our parliamentary representatives flog
their guts out on our behalf, or so it is rumoured. It is where Serious Crime Group West has its offices, and from my discussions with various members of the Metropolitan Police its location
appears to be a well-kept secret. From the police, that is.

The Serious Crime Groups are the outfits that handle murders likely to be too protracted for the local nick to investigate – poor overworked darlings – and those
‘specialized’ deaths that the multifarious other squads at the Yard disdain to look into because they’re ‘specialist’ squads. But I ask you, what’s more
specialist than common-or-garden murder?

But enough of that.

The usual blue-and-white tapes had been strung out around the area in such a way as seriously to obstruct entry to and exit from the prison. Deliberately, I suspect, but there’s not a lot
of love lost between the Old Bill and the screws.

Two or three police officers in oversized, unflattering yellow jackets marked POLICE – in case you didn’t know – were standing around, arms folded, and overseen by a youthful
Uniform Branch inspector from the local nick. The PCs looked bored, the inspector looked important, despite the rain dripping from the peak of his cap. Aware of his enhanced status as
‘incident officer’ he marched up to me waving a clipboard.

‘And you are?’ he demanded pompously.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Brock, Serious Crime Group West.’

The inspector nodded, mumbled, ‘Sir,’ and wrote down my name on the piece of rain-sodden paper that adorned his clipboard. He pointed his government-issue ballpoint pen at Dave.
‘And you?’ he asked, looking down his nose. I suspected he had not long been an inspector and was intent on flexing the two stars on his epaulettes.

Dave Poole, my black detective sergeant, loved jousting with petty authority. ‘Colour-Sergeant Poole, ditto . . . sir.’

The inspector had obviously been on one of the ethnic-awareness-and-anti-discrimination courses that now lie at the heart of Metropolitan Police be-nice-to-everyone strategy. Unfortunately such
‘diversity’ courses did not cater for sergeants of West Indian origin who made racist remarks about themselves.

We moved on, leaving the important inspector wondering why his pen didn’t work in the pouring rain.

The armed-response vehicle had been the first unit on the scene. Its crew, dressed in black combat suits and girt about with firearms, stood around and looked disappointed.

‘I’m afraid we got here too late, guv,’ said their sergeant.

‘Bad luck,’ I said, and sent them back on patrol. I was never happy working in close proximity to policemen with guns. People tend to get shot. And not always the right people.

I approached a man in civilian clothes sheltering beneath a colourful golf umbrella. I hazarded a guess that he was a CID officer, although it’s not always that easy to tell these
days.

‘DI Newman?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, that’s me.’

‘DCI Harry Brock, SCG West,’ I told him, ‘and this is DS Poole.’

Newman laughed. ‘You caught this one, then, guv?’ he said. ‘Bit tasty by the look of it.’

This is the sort of encouraging remark one gets from local detectives once they’ve discovered that a particularly tricky murder has been offloaded to the Serious Crime Group.

‘I reckon so,’ I said, making no pretence of being enthusiastic about my latest murder enquiry. ‘So what have we got?’

‘Guy gets released from the nick at eight this morning,’ said Newman, waving at the prison’s huge doors, ‘and far from being greeted by the usual welcoming shapely blonde
in nothing but a skin-tight dress and a Mercedes who’s going to carry him straight off to bed, like it is on television, some finger takes a potshot at him from a passing vehicle. On closer
examination, guv, you’ll see a hole in the centre of the victim’s forehead, thus killing him and rendering him unable to tell us who did it. Or to give us the index number of the said
vehicle,’ he added as an apparent afterthought.

‘Who said it was a passing vehicle?’ I asked. I always enjoyed having a dig at locals who’ve jumped to conclusions.

DI Newman thought about that. ‘Well, now you come to mention it, guv, no one.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Very useful. So you’ve no idea where the shot came from.’

‘Not really, no.’ But Newman was clearly set upon not having his theory entirely discounted. ‘Except I don’t think it came from inside the prison.’

This is the sort of enquiry that my colleagues and I on SCG West always seem to get lumbered with, given that we’re responsible for investigating all the serious crimes in that broad
swathe of London that stretches from Westminster to Hillingdon in the west, Barnet in the north and Richmond in the south. Those enquiries, that is, that aren’t the preserve of the
aforementioned ‘specialists’.

‘We’ve got a name for him,’ volunteered Newman helpfully.

‘I suppose you would have as he’s just emerged from doing porridge in there.’ I indicated the prison with a slight jerk of my umbrella. ‘So who is he?’

‘Jimmy Gould, known as “Spotter”,’ said Newman. I raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘He was a lookout man, you see,’ the DI added. ‘Got a handsome bit of
form too, even though he’s only thirty-two. Just finished an eight-stretch for a blagging down Stepney way. Only did five, though. Paroled for good behaviour.’ He laughed cynically and
offered Dave and me a cigarette. ‘Probably wishes he’d stayed where he was.’

‘Any known enemies?’ I asked.

‘Hundreds, I should think.’

‘Smart-arse,’ I said.

Thanks to the diabolical state of London’s traffic, not helped by the closure of the road outside the prison while policemen poked about in the gutters, it had taken me forever to get
here. But somehow the crime-scene examiners had arrived before me, and so had Henry Mortlock, the Home Office pathologist. I opened the flap of the tent and found Henry on his knees, humming some
vaguely sacred tune, and already at work with the tools of his trade.

‘If you’re offering up prayers to New Scotland Yard, Henry,’ I said, ‘you’re facing the wrong way.’

Completely ignoring what, in my case, passed for humour (Henry thinks he’s got the monopoly on witticisms and sarcasm), he stood up. ‘I suppose you’re going to ask the cause of
death, dear boy,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s almost certain to be that.’ And he pointed at the hole in Spotter Gould’s forehead. ‘Mind you, it’s always possible
that he succumbed to the catering in there,’ he continued, pointing at the prison, ‘and would have died anyway. On the other hand, he might have had a heart attack seconds before being
shot.’ Henry was never one to make assumptions.

‘In other words, Henry, you’re telling me to wait for the results of the post-mortem.’

‘Indeed, dear boy.’

‘All right to move the body?’

‘Yes. Usual place.’

Henry’s ‘usual place’ was the Horseferry Road mortuary in Westminster. He had an ingrained dislike of working anywhere else. Don’t ask me why, but that’s Henry for
you. I left him to his ministrations.

Linda Mitchell, the chief crime-scene examiner, walked over, all bright, bubbly and sexy in her white coverall suit, rubber boots and latex gloves. ‘We’re done here, Mr Brock,’
she said. ‘I’ll let you have everything we’ve got ASAP. Incidentally, the victim had a prison-issue plastic bag with him, but it only contained the usual bits and pieces, like
clothing, a razor and comb and that sort of thing.’

‘Are you sure it’s a prison-issue plastic bag?’ I asked teasingly.

‘Fairly certain,’ said Linda. ‘It’s got “HM Prisons” written on it.’

DI Newman joined me again. ‘I’ve got a team doing a fingertip of the road, guv,’ he said, ‘but there’s nothing so far. The cartridge case is almost certain to have
fallen into the vehicle . . . ’ He paused. ‘Er, if there was one,’ he added cautiously. ‘But there’s always an outside chance we might find something, I
suppose.’

‘Not when I’m investigating a topping there’s not,’ I said gloomily. Beside me, Dave nodded, also gloomily. ‘And if it was a revolver, the cases wouldn’t have
been ejected anyway.’

‘I doubt a revolver would have been used, guv,’ said Newman, determined not to let me have it all my own way. ‘Would have to have been a bloody lucky shot at that distance. And
in the rain.’

I was bound to agree with him, unless a witness came forward to say that he saw a man approach Gould and place the barrel of a pistol against his head. I was forced to conclude that we were
probably looking for a sniper. But from where? A house opposite? Or was Newman right, that Gould was shot from a passing vehicle?

A prison officer ventured out into the rain and joined Newman, Dave and me.

‘Are you likely to be much longer, Chief?’ he enquired, shoulders hunched, and hands in the pockets of his raincoat. ‘We’re supposed to be doing some transfers this
morning, but we’ve had to send the van to Brixton, to hold them there until it can get in here.’

‘As long as it takes,’ I said, ‘but now you’re here, you can show me to the governor’s office.’

The governor of Stone Mill prison was a tall, emaciated individual who looked as though he suffered permanently from a duodenal ulcer. I think I would if I was responsible for
running this place.

‘I’ve just ordered some tea, Chief Inspector,’ he said once Dave and I had introduced ourselves. ‘Would you care for some?’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Now, about Jimmy Gould.’

‘Ah, Gould, yes.’ The governor put on his glasses, pulled a clipboard across his desk and spent a few moments studying it. ‘Released this morning.’ He took off his
glasses and afforded me a worried smile.

‘Didn’t get far,’ I said. ‘He’s camping out in the tent that’s obstructing your entrance.’

‘Yes, I heard about that.’ The governor spoke airily, obviously thinking that once Spotter Gould was out of his prison he could wash his hands of him.

But I know a thing or two about the law. ‘He’s still within the curtilage of your premises, though,’ I said.

‘Mmm! Yes, I suppose so. Well how can I help you?’

‘I’m going to have to interview all the prisoners who knew him.’

‘Good God, there must be hundreds.’ The governor thought about that for a second or so. ‘But none of them could have killed him, could they?’ he added
archly.

‘Probably not,’ I said, ‘but they might know a man who did.’

‘You could start with the prisoners on his landing, I suppose.’ The governor was clearly unhappy about my intention of disrupting the routine of his correctional facility.

‘I don’t propose to start until tomorrow anyway, Governor, but in the meantime perhaps you’d give me the address Gould was going to. Presumably he’s still on licence
until the termination of his sentence?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ The governor pressed a switch on his intercom and asked the responding, disembodied voice of his secretary for that information.

Moments later a willowy blonde stepped into the office, smiled sweetly at Dave, and put a tray of tea and a file on the governor’s desk. Dave is black, six feet tall, well built and
handsome, and women always seem to fancy him. Probably because he’s black, six feet tall, well built and handsome. It’s an unfair world.

‘Walloch Street, Poplar,’ said the governor. ‘Flat 37, New Labour House.’

‘With any luck that might be the right address,’ said Dave. Dave had tried finding ex-prisoners before.

‘But it’s the one he was required to furnish as part of his parole.’ The governor spoke in shocked tones as if it would be unthinkable for an inmate to give a false address
when he was released. ‘And it was checked out.’

Oh boy, you do have a lot to learn, I thought. And that turned out to be more prophetic than I realized.

‘Well, if it happens to be wrong, we’ll let you know,’ said Dave. ‘Then you can do him for it.’

The governor did not seem comforted by this.

Having arranged to start interviewing prisoners the following morning, Dave and I made our way to Poplar.

New Labour House did not have the appearance of being a salubrious neighbourhood in which to live. The usual assortment of vandalized cars, upturned wheelie bins, hypodermic needles, used
condoms and other detritus abandoned by what Dave describes as the ‘effluent society’ added a pop-art touch to the council’s vain attempt at landscaping. Several feckless youths
were hanging about and eyeing our car with felonious interest.

Dave, however, was ahead of the field. He strolled across to the largest hooligan of this group of unemployed burdens on the taxpayer.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Whatcha wanna know that for?’

‘Because I collect interesting bits of information like that,’ said Dave, standing menacingly close to his victim, who was in the unenviable position of having his back to the wall.
In more ways than one.

‘Wayne Gibbs.’ The youth did not have to enquire who Dave was. He knew. It was in his genes. And as I mentioned previously, Dave is six feet tall and a heavily built fifteen stones
in weight.

‘Prove it,’ said Dave.

Remarkably, Wayne Gibbs produced a P45, the official government form given to persons whose employment has been terminated. In Gibbs’s case it was a very old piece of paper, but at least
it showed that he had been employed during some distant period of his life. ‘Whatcha wanna know that for?’ he asked again.

‘Because my chief inspector and I are visiting this pearl of council architecture and if, when we return, there is any damage to that vehicle’ – Dave gestured at the police car
– ‘I shall come and find you and hold you personally responsible, Wayne Gibbs of 64 New Labour House, Walloch Road. Like nicking you for it.’ Dave recorded the information in his
pocketbook and looked Gibbs straight in the eye. ‘Got that, have you . . . Wayne?’

Gibbs nodded dumbly.

‘Good,’ said Dave. ‘Now you be a good boy while I’m away.’

We mounted the stairs to the second-floor balcony, and stepping over piles of accumulated rubbish and a bicycle frame, eventually reached number 37.

After a considerable delay, a small boy of about six opened the door. He had a dirty face and a T-shirt bearing the word ‘STUFFED’. But what appeared to be the remains of a hamburger
and a liberal quantity of tomato sauce obscured whatever other words might have appeared above it.

The child was clearly not in a conversational mood because he just stared at us. But the impasse was broken by the arrival of a careworn woman wearing jeans and a baggy sweater that reached
almost to her knees. Her dyed blonde hair – black at the roots – hung in rat’s tails about her shoulders. Perhaps it was the prevailing fashion among the female residents of New
Labour House. She held the edge of the door with one reddened, chapped hand with chipped nail varnish, while the other clutched hold of a small girl of about three.

‘What is it?’

‘Are you by any chance Mrs Gould?’ asked Dave.

‘What if I am?’ The woman gave Dave a suspicious glance. Not that he looked like a Mormon or any of the other assorted religious people who make a nuisance of themselves by knocking
on busy people’s doors.

‘We’re police officers,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah?’ The woman gave Dave an even more suspicious glance. The small girl began to cry. ‘Shut yer racket,’ said her mother. I hoped she was the child’s mother;
I could do without dealing with a case of an unregistered child-minder.

We produced our warrant cards and I repeated my question.

‘Yeah, I’m Terry Gould, but if you want Jimmy, he’s in the nick. And as you lot put him there you oughter know.’

‘I think we’d better come in, Mrs Gould,’ I said.

Untidy would have been a complimentary term to apply to the sitting room: it was a tip. In fact, I’d go further: in a competition with a council rubbish dump, the Gould abode would have
come first. The nylon carpet was stained and torn in places, and the cheap threadbare three-piece suite shared the room with a Formica-topped dining table chipped at the edges. Where it didn’t
bear the marks of cigarette burns, that is. Broken toys littered the floor and a large television was showing a Western film. The noise of a radio came from somewhere else in the flat.

‘I thought I told you to clear this bleedin’ lot up, Craig,’ shrieked Mrs Gould. She detached herself from the small girl. ‘Take yer sister in the other room, and
don’t make no noise. And turn that bleedin’ radio off. Go and play wiv yer computer or sumfink.’

Dave crossed the room and switched off the television, and Terry Gould screamed once again to Craig to turn off the radio.

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mrs Gould.’ All right, so she was a villain’s wife, but I took the unusually charitable view that that didn’t necessarily make
her a villain. In fact, she’d probably been holding the family together on very little while Spotter was weight-training, playing volleyball and watching television in the nick.
‘Jimmy was killed this morning.’ There was no easy way to do it, and over the years I’ve found that to come straight out with it is the best way. Okay, so it’s brutal, but
then so is sudden death.

Terry Gould sat down. ‘But he was s’posed to be coming out today. Who done ’im? One of the screws, was it?’

‘I very much doubt it. He was shot just as he left the prison.’

‘Left the prison?’ she echoed. ‘Who’d’ve wanted to do that?’

‘That, Mrs Gould, is what I’m trying to find out,’ I said.

Having escaped from her brother’s custody, the small girl came back into the room and climbed on to the sofa next to her mother. Dave gazed briefly at the child, and I anticipated that he
was doing mental arithmetic. If Terry Gould’s daughter was three years old, and Spotter Gould had just done five in the nick . . . Oh well, who cares these days?

We heard a key in the door and seconds later a shaven-headed yob with the obligatory earring and tattoos appeared in the room.

‘Wass all this then?’ he demanded of no one in particular.

‘It’s the law, Darren,’ said Terry.

I thought that to be an unnecessary observation; I had no doubt that Darren had been forewarned of our presence by the aforementioned Wayne Gibbs into whose safekeeping Dave had placed our
police car.

‘What d’you lot want then?’ demanded the shaven-headed one truculently. ‘Can’t you leave her alone? You’ve already got her old man banged up.’

‘Jimmy’s been murdered.’ Terry loo. . .