Life, it seems, never goes quite the way you want it to go, and what you think might happen often never does. DCS Noel Flanagan, the head of SO7, was uncovered as the leak to Neil Vamen. There’d been some canteen talk in the dim and distant past centring on the fact that he wasn’t quite as straight as he’d have the Brass believe, but no one ever expected him to have been responsible for providing information that led to the death of an officer from his own unit, and that came within seconds of collapsing the case he and SO7 had been working on for years. Not only was it out of character, it was always going to be impossible to do without being found out. It was the police equivalent of a suicide note. Rumours abounded as to why he’d done it, and there was even talk that Vamen’s operatives had kidnapped his daughter and used her to extract the information from him, but no-one ever knew for sure, and neither father nor daughter ever said a word about it. Neither did we find out who the anonymous caller was who’d given Malik those few minutes’ warning that an attack on Jack Merriweather was imminent. Again, rumour suggested it might well have been Flanagan, perhaps suffering a fit of guilt (although it seemed a little strange, him incriminating himself), but no-one ever found out for sure.
Initially, Flanagan was not only suspended but also charged with perverting the course of justice. However, the charges were later quietly dropped due to lack of evidence, and he left the police, having denied any wrongdoing. He now lives in France with his wife, while his daughter continues her studies at university in the UK.
Stegs Jenner also left the Force. He was questioned at length about a number of crimes emanating from the hotel and their aftermath, but he too denied everything and the evidence against him remained weak. When confronted about his relationship with Trevor Murk, who’d been confirmed now as the shooter in the O’Brien/MacNamara killings, Stegs expressed shock. He admitted to having had a long and well-documented relationship with Murk, but claimed to be wholly unaware that his erstwhile informant was also a killer with not only the deaths of O’Brien and MacNamara to his name, but also the earlier murder of the garage owner Paul Bailey, as well as the strange killing of Hans Rieperman, otherwise known as Tino Movali, a small-time Dutch porn actor whose body was found two days later in the same building where Murk had been killed. He’d been shot with the revolver Murk had been carrying when he’d died, and it was surmised that he had been the one responsible. Intriguingly, Stegs admitted to meeting both men in the days leading up to their deaths, but explained that the reason for this was that Murk had introduced him to Rieperman, who was a drug dealer, in order to set him up and claim a financial reward. Stegs said that, even though he’d been suspended at the time, and it went against all the police rules to have unofficial contact with informants, he’d gone along to the meeting out of curiosity. It had, he said, been the last he’d seen of both men. As for his visit to Vamen’s solicitor, the reason for this, apparently, was to let Carroll know that Stegs was on to him and his client, and that he was going to make them pay for almost getting him killed at Heathrow.
An unlikely story, but somehow it left me thinking, not for the first time, that some parts of this case will forever be shrouded in mystery. Sadly, that’s often the way it goes. Endings in the real world are never usually neat.
One interesting little question that was answered, though, was how Murk had got into the building where he’d murdered O’Brien. We’d assumed that Kitty MacNamara had let him in, but the truth, or the most likely version of it anyway, turned out to be far more interesting. Apparently, he’d had a brief affair in the weeks leading up to the shooting with the married woman living in one of the ground-floor flats. She’d been away on holiday with her husband and young son while the investigation had been going on, but on returning had heard about what had happened, seen Murk’s photograph, and approached us discreetly to say that she thought he might have copied her key and used it to gain entrance. The affair, she’d said, had been ended abruptly by him a week before the killings, and she’d been so nervous that he might break in during her absence that she’d left her jewellery in the hands of her mother. Whatever else you said about Murk, he’d been professional to the end.
During the course of this tale, more than one person has alluded to the cunning of Mr Stegs Jenner and whether or not what he was telling us was true (and most of us thought it was far too coincidental to be the truth), but he was sticking to his version of events and, as a result, he was eventually released from police custody without charge. Since then, his wife has sued for divorce, and the last I heard he was dividing his time between London and Spain.
Neil Vamen suffered badly as a result of his attempt to tip the scales of justice in his favour. The Law Society began an investigation into claims that his solicitor, Melvyn Carroll, was acting as his mouthpiece and had had a part in setting up the safe-house attack on Merriweather, and the investigation is still going on. Merriweather himself was moved to another safe house, reputed to be within the British naval base in Gibraltar, where he is guarded round the clock by armed marines and where the chances of anything happening to him range from somewhere between slim and none, but veering towards the latter. As for Vamen himself, such was the public outcry at news that a supposed crime lord could strike so blatantly at those ranged against him that the prime minister himself made a statement claiming that such lawlessness could not, and would not, be tolerated. He sounded like he meant it as well.
Vamen’s trial has been put back yet again and he faces new charges as a result of the testimony of twenty-one-year-old Francis Taylor, the only survivor of the three-man assassination team. It’s believed that Taylor is going to implicate Melvyn Carroll and Vamen directly. Perhaps this time Vamen might finally get the comeuppance he so richly deserves.
Tina recovered from her injuries quickly and was out of hospital within the week, and back at work within the month. Two weeks after that, we went on safari to Kenya, spending five days in the Masai Mara before flying on to Mahe in the Seychelles where we stayed for another week, soaking up the equatorial sunshine in surroundings that seemed to melt away all the stress and pressures of the daily grind. I even got to take my advanced diving course. The whole trip broke the bank, of course, and for a long time afterwards we were both paying off the debts accrued, but it was worth it. Sometimes you’ve just got to let go.
In late July, a few weeks after we’d got back from the trip, the two of us (now officially an item at the station) went for a barbecue at the Malik household on a fine, sunny Sunday. Malik’s two daughters were eight and five, and Tina played with them like a natural. I even got the idea that she might be getting broody, and funnily enough, it wasn’t such a bad thought. An expensive one, perhaps, but not a bad one. We toasted our combined successes on the O’Brien case, and the fact that we were all still here to talk about it, and in the evening, when the kids had gone to bed, Malik raised his glass, and said, ‘To the future.’ Tina and I, and Malik’s wife Kaz, repeated the toast, and I remember that, at that precise moment, I was the happiest I’d been in a long, long time.
To the future. When we left that night, I felt a renewed sense of optimism. Which was ironic really, because I’d never see Asif Malik alive again.
But that’s another story. For this one at least, the book was closed.