cleared his throat self-consciously, remembering he was supposed to keep his thoughts to himself, but needing to share what he had learnt.
‘Something else to add that couldn’t wait, DS Corrigan?’ Featherstone asked.
‘Sorry,’ Sean apologized. ‘It’s just I went to see the victim at the mortuary and …’ he cleared his throat again, ‘managed to persuade the pathologist to recover the bullet.’
‘You did what?’ Featherstone asked, his back stiffening.
‘I didn’t think we could wait until the post-mortem,’ he tried to explain. ‘With all the media attention I thought we needed the most important piece of evidence immediately.’
‘And what did you discover – if anything?’
Again Sean could feel the eyes of the room boring into him. ‘That the bullet’s homemade too and not very well. Forensics have promised to get back to us as a matter of urgency.’
‘A homemade bullet and a re-commissioned replica or poorly made blank-firing revolver,’ Featherstone spoke his thoughts out loud. ‘I guess we can rule out a professional hit then.’
‘Maybe it was all the hit-man could get?’ one of the gathered DCs suggested.
‘Maybe,’ Featherstone half-heartedly agreed, ‘but his approach and escape are all wrong too. No decent hit-man is going to risk covering that sort of ground to the victim. A shooting out in the open – why isn’t he riding pillion passenger on a motorbike, or at least riding one himself? That’s the norm these days isn’t it? Ride up, pull the gun out, fire the shots and speed off. Simple. Clean. This is all too much of a mess.’
‘She was very attractive,’ Sean changed the direction of their communal thinking. ‘Beautiful, even and a celebrity. She must have attracted her fair share of unwanted attention.’
‘The flame that drew the moth, eh?’ Featherstone nodded. ‘I’ve already got DC Benton checking it out. Will someone turn the bloody lights back on please? Can’t see a damn thing.’
A few seconds later bright light from the overhead fluorescent tubes flooded the room just as DC Zack Benton hurried in looking like a man who’d made a great discovery. Featherstone noticed it immediately.
‘You got something for us, DC Benton?’ he asked.
‘Looks like we have a possible suspect,’ he announced to the listening detectives.
‘Possible suspect?’ Featherstone queried.
‘She had a stalker,’ Benton explained.
‘And does this stalker have a name?’ Featherstone pressed.
‘Yes sir,’ Benton told him. ‘She reported him for harassment about four months ago and had a restraining order issued preventing him from approaching her in person or by letter, email etcetera – the usual stuff. Suspect’s name is Ruben Thurlby.’
‘And what do we know about Ruben Thurlby?’ Featherstone demanded.
‘IC1,’ Benton began, using the police racial code for white/European, ‘six foot three inches tall, heavy build, forty-two years old with some learning difficulties. Apparently he likes to dress in combat clothing and has a generally unkempt appearance. He has no previous convictions other than the harassment charge, although he was arrested for breaching the restraining order only a few weeks ago. Home address is a council flat on the Rockingham Estate, SE1. He lives alone.’
‘So,’ Featherstone nodded, ‘he just couldn’t stay away from our victim eh?’
Sean could already see Ruben Thurlby in his mind – sitting alone in his council flat, dressed in filthy combat clothes, surrounded by cuttings from magazines and newspapers of Sue Evans as he made the homemade bullets to fit the reactivated replica or blank-firing revolver he’d probably had for years. He could almost hear Thurlby mumbling to himself as he prepared the weapon he’d use to take his revenge on the woman who’d so cruelly turned down his love and betrayed him to the police.
‘What do you reckon, Sean?’ Featherstone sought his opinion, dragging him back to the real world. ‘Sound good to you?’
‘Sounds like we need to speak to him,’ he agreed.
‘Good,’ Featherstone confirmed. ‘Put a team together and let’s have him nicked, but use SO19 to take him down. As far as we know he’s still armed. The shooting was only hours ago so he’s probably still a forensic goldmine. The sooner we have him in the better chance we have of preserving the evidence that’ll convict the bastard. I’m beginning to smell an early result people, so let’s get on it.’ He rubbed his hands together with glee. ‘As soon as he’s nicked let me know.’
Sean nodded and turned to Benton. ‘Grab four people you trust – full body armour, just in case. You never can tell which ones want to go out in a blaze of glory.’
***
Sean and Benton sat in the unmarked car parked in Tiverton Street on the Rockingham Estate in Southwark – a sprawling, brown brick monstrosity built in the 1950s to replace bombed-out housing from the war. They were far enough away from Thurlby’s fourth floor flat so as not to be too obvious, but close enough to be able to see him if he came out of his front door and onto the communal balcony-walkway that led to the stairs and lifts. Several of the local youths had already clocked them as police – keeping a watch on them from a distance like a group of meerkats tracking a snake in the grass. Sean hoped that Thurlby’s learning difficulties meant he wouldn’t be as alert as the local neighbourhood police watch. But even they hadn’t noticed the nondescript satellite-dish installation van and another disguised as a self-drive rental. Each contained half a dozen heavily armed SO19 officers who were just waiting for the word that the target was out and in the open from the observation point in an empty flat in the block opposite Thurlby’s. As soon as that happened all hell would break loose.
‘D’you think he’s our man?’ Benton asked.
‘Looks about right,’ Sean shrugged, ‘but I won’t know for sure until I see him – until I speak to him.’
‘You mean until we interview him?’ Benton thought he’d corrected him.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Sean lied. ‘Until we interview him.’
‘You were a DC on an MIT too weren’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Sean answered sounding uninterested.
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