Reap the Whirlwind

4

4

I Got Stripes – Johnny Cash

Not much was said on the short drive to Denmark Hill nick. They wanted me on tape. Dixon asked if I wanted a brief. I declined. I figured I’d let this run its own course and end up where it would. But it didn’t look like it would end well from where I was sitting in the back seat of a police car that smelt of stale McDonald’s.

At least it gave me time to think. Paranoia was on the rampage. I was being set up. But why? Was it some kind of karma? Where had the cash from the robbery come from? Or was it all an elaborate plan to help the cops get Stowe-Hartley? Maybe that money wasn’t from the robbery at all. I only had Burke and Dixon’s word for it. I sat in the back of the cop car where the air con wasn’t working properly, just bubbling some faint memory of a chilly draft from when the motor was factory fresh, watching the pedestrians on the street going about their usual business. Lucky them.

Downstairs at the cop shop smelt even worse than the car. s**t and cheap disinfectant. They took my photo front and side then put me in a bare room with just a table and four chairs, all bolted down. On the table was the recorder. The lights were fluorescent and too bright. But at least it was cooler than outside, although the walls were leaching something nasty and toxic.

The two detectives joined me with coffee, informed me I was still under caution, unwrapped two cassettes and started. We three identified ourselves for the tape, and Dixon asked me again if I wanted a solicitor present. I declined again.

Then they began. I could have done a no comment interview, but where was the fun in that? I was innocent. At least of these charges, and wanted them to know it. This is how it went.

Dixon: ‘Mr Sharman, about the money that you paid into your bank that has been identified as part of the cash stolen from the National Bank in Knightsbridge on the spring bank holiday weekend this year. Can you explain how you came by it?

All around the Mulberry Bush again.

Me: ‘I’ve already told you. I got a call from a bloke calling himself Martineau. He asked me to deliver some papers to a lawyer in Holborn. The fee was two hundred quid in cash. It came in the post with the papers. I did the job and he was waiting for me outside. Flash dresser. I told Burke they would probably have got on. He then identified himself as DI Spencer. Bought me a drink and asked what I thought of the solicitor, then gave me another two hundred to keep quiet.’

D: ‘Which you’re not.’

Me: ‘Then I didn’t expect to end up here.’

B: ‘And why would the Met care what a scrote like you would think of anyone?’

Me: ‘That’s rude. And I don’t know. He just did. Then he told me this solicitor was a fixer. Architected jobs including the bank job.’

D: ‘Alright. The name of the solicitor again.’

I told him. Burke left the room. Dixon and I stayed. Five minutes later Burke came back.

B: ‘There’s nothing on the solicitor. Clean as. No DI Spencer on the bank job.’

Me: ‘Look, I don’t know where Spencer came from. I don’t know where he went. All I know is, he was there, and everything I’ve told you is the truth.’

D: ‘But most interestingly, how did he get money from the bank? No money has been recovered.’

Me: ‘Don’t ask me. I’m completely in the dark. Not for the first time.’

D: ‘I think we’ll leave this for now. Let’s see what the searches to your home, office and car turn up.’

All I added before they locked me up again was that, if four hundred quid was my cut from a robbery that had netted three million quid according to the reports I had read at the time, I had to be a low man on the totem pole. Although I read once that the most important figures depicted were the ones at the bottom. Funny the things you remember.

Anyway, after we’d done wasting each other’s time, they sent me to a cell where I was fed a cold egg mayo sandwich and a warm cup of tea.

The one good thing was that there was nothing to find at my flat, office, or in my car. Not anymore. At least that was what I thought.

I kicked my heels in the cell all afternoon, then Dixon appeared and told me the search of my flat had turned up another eighteen grand and change in new notes. Same sequence. In the freezer of all places. How original.

So Spencer had really done a number on me. But why? But I had a horrible feeling I would soon find out.

I was released on police bail later that afternoon after agreeing to surrender my passport, which the cops already had from the search.

They kicked me out at six o’clock, handing me back only my keys and a copy of the interview cassette. What I was supposed to do with that, Christ knows. It was hardly Abba’s greatest hits. Luckily, I had my Oyster card to get the bus home, which was full of commuters sweating their bollocks off. The inside of the bus smelt nearly as bad as the cop shop. I was sweating mine off too when I got back to my flat, which looked like a bomb had hit it, so I spent the evening putting Humpty back together again and decided to leave seeing what they’d done to my office until morning.