A Case Gone Cold

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‘No. They arrested the bastard that burgled us less than forty-eight hours after we reported the break-in, but it was too late.’ Her hand shook as she poured herself more tea,

‘You know, they reckon he’ll have got less than a hundred pounds for the stuff he stole.’ She shook her head. ‘Less than a hundred pounds for the only link my husband still had to his dead parents. For what? A nose full of cocaine? An armful of heroin?’

* * *

Hastings made his excuses shortly after Ian Bedford came downstairs. To look at him, Mr Bedford could have been the far side of sixty, yet, according to his wife, he was twenty years younger. The central heating in the house was turned too high for Hasting’s tastes, nevertheless Bedford wore a chunky cardigan over a knitted shirt and thick woollen socks inside his slippers.

The saggy skin around his jowls spoke of sudden and dramatic weight loss, whilst the fine fuzz of hair on his skull did little to hide the vivid pink scar that crossed the right side of his temple. A recently healed cut on the bridge of his nose came from his first seizure in months, when he’d collapsed barely an hour after Scenes of Crime had completed their investigations. He’d had a half-dozen since.

The man’s opening question left Hastings in no doubt as to the impact of the burglary on the couple.

‘Have you found Dad’s watch? It’s his anniversary next week.’

* * *

‘According to the PNC check, Aaron Wallace is well known for burglary and handling stolen goods, but there’s nothing of a violent or sexual nature in his record. He did six months in 2011 and he’s looking at a lot longer for these offences.’ Karen Hardwick had printed out the record for Wallace from the Police National Computer and was highlighting sections of it with a fluorescent green pen.

‘Which is presumably why he put his hands up this time – he’s savvy enough to realize he’s definitely going down and he’ll get a reduction in sentence for admitting it,’ she continued.

‘What about accomplices?’ asked Sutton.

‘Two that we know of, both of whom were convicted alongside him for the 2011 offence but obviously they are both already in the system.’

‘Well, keep on digging. Gary has confirmed that the shoes don’t belong to the homeowners. Let’s also see what the attending officer has to say, before we go and speak to Mr Wallace about what happened the night of the burglary.’

* * *

PC Keith Stibbald was just about to head out on patrol when he answered Warren’s call.

Warren could hear the click of a mouse in the background as Stibbald accessed the HOLMES2 database to refresh his memory.

‘Yes, I do remember this one. Abbey View Terrace; middle-aged couple back off holiday found the French windows around the rear smashed. The exact timing of the break-in was unclear, since they had been away for a week. In theory, the best we’ve got is sometime prior to about 9 p.m. on Sunday the eighth of September, when they returned.’

Warren heard the creak of a seat as Stibbald settled back in it.

‘A neighbour says the burglar alarm went off on the Wednesday evening of that week, but she walked around and saw that the house was secure, with no sign of a forced entry. She didn’t have keys and didn’t want to call them back off holiday for a fault, so she just put up with the flashing light and periodic ringing until they got back.’

‘I assume the burglar was checking to see that they wouldn’t be disturbed?’

‘Yeah, we’re seeing that more and more these days. Thieves see that the driveway is empty and figure the owners are probably on holiday. But they don’t want to run the risk of some overzealous neighbour coming around to see what’s going on and catching them inside, so they sneak around the back and set off the motion detectors.

‘If the blue light is still flashing twenty-four hours later, then obviously the owners are away and nobody has any keys. Then they come back that night and break in. Even if the alarm goes off again, it doesn’t matter since nobody bothered to investigate before. It clearly isn’t linked to a security company and you know what response times are like for us; it’s unlikely we’d even come and look, let alone arrive in the five minutes they’re in the house.’

‘So walk me through it.’

‘Nothing especially unusual. Entry was gained through the French windows. Most of the safety glass was knocked in, but a few fragments remained; enough for the CSIs to pick up some fibres and a spot of blood. It had been raining on and off all week, so the kitchen floor and the stairs were a complete mess, but we isolated a couple of usable footprints on the patio and one on the kitchen floor. There wasn’t much of a search; he grabbed an iPad and a laptop from the downstairs office, then went straight to the master bedroom and helped himself to the owner’s jewellery, which was in a small wood and glass display cabinet. Nothing too expensive, but lots of sentimental value. The CSIs found two more spots of blood on the stairs and another next to the display cabinet.’

‘And you have arrested the alleged thief?’

‘Yeah. He was picked up two days later when he was stopped and searched. He was equipped to burgle and carrying a knife. That was enough to raise a warrant and go have a look-see at his flat. No sign of the jewellery, but underneath his bed was enough electrical equipment to stock a branch of PC World. Loads of it was marked with UV pens or SmartWater, including the iPad and laptop from Abbey View Terrace.’

‘And that was enough for him to confess?’

‘He admitted it and asked for a dozen other offences to be taken into consideration within an hour of meeting his solicitor at the station. He’s not daft. He knew there was no point fighting it, he may as well put his hands up and hope the court takes that into account when sentencing.’

There was a pause at the end of the line.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why the sudden interest? It’s a bit run-of-the-mill for a DCI to be getting involved.’

‘Most of the blood spots match the accused, Aaron Wallace, but one of them is a positive match for a cold case. I’m trying to work out who else was with him that night.’

There was another pause, this time longer, and when he finally answered, Stibbald sounded apologetic.

‘We found a second set of footprints on the patio outside. The footprint that we found in the kitchen and the fibres on the remains of the French windows matched Wallace and he confessed immediately, so we didn’t pursue it any further. To be honest, I completely forgot about the pending DNA tests and the other footprints. Sorry.’

His story matched the report in the computer. Warren decided there was nothing to be gained from giving the officer a hard time for not tying up all the loose ends; it wasn’t just CID feeling the pressure of the government’s swingeing budget cuts.

‘Does Wallace have any acquaintances that you know about?’

‘You’re asking the wrong person, sir. But, I can give you the name of the officer who arrested him. She knows him a lot better than I do. That’s why she stopped and searched him; she knew there was a good chance something would turn up.’

* * *

PC Fiona McGinty was busy in court and it was after midday before she returned Warren’s call.

‘Yeah, I know Aaron. He’s one of my regulars. What’s he done this time?’

PC McGinty’s tone reminded Warren of his wife when she spoke about one of her naughtier pupils. Mild exasperation, tinged with a degree of affection.

‘It’s about the burglary, up on Abbey View Terrace.’

‘Sorry, the name doesn’t ring a bell. Is this a new or historic offence?’

‘Recent. It’s one of the cases linked to the Stop and Search you executed back on the tenth of September.’

‘Oh, now I remember. I spotted him hanging around the back of Park Street at half past nine at night. Claimed he was meeting a mate for a pint, but he had his burgling bag with him, a zip-up holdall just the right size for anything he likes the look of. I asked him for a look inside and he was a bit reluctant. Normally, if he hasn’t got anything to hide he’s pretty cooperative. He knows I play fair with him and he’ll be on his way soon if he doesn’t play silly buggers. So I did a Code A Stop and Search.’

Warren had the form on the computer screen in front of him.

‘I see that he had a toolkit and a knife.’

‘Yeah, silly sod. He always tries to claim that he’s going to do some odd jobs around a mate’s house, but he has too much form for us to give him the benefit of the doubt.’

‘What about the knife? Is he violent?’

‘Nah, the blade was a rusty old lock-knife wrapped in cloth at the bottom of the bag. He probably uses it to cut things when he’s on a job. But it was enough to raise a warrant so we could search his flat. That’s when we found all of the stuff he’d nicked, under the bed …’ She paused. ‘Look, Wallace isn’t some gentleman thief from one of those old black and white movies. He isn’t going to put his hand up and say, “It’s a fair cop, guv’nor.” But he’s not violent. I don’t know him that well, but, from what I can see, he has the usual crappy background – broken home, persistent truancy, parents out of their depth – but as far as we can tell, he’s mostly steered clear of drugs and street crime. He basically ekes out a living fencing stolen property; either his own or stuff he’s been given.’

‘We know that for at least one of his jobs, he had an accomplice. This person left footprints and blood, neither of which are in the system. Any ideas?’

‘Hmmm. Let me think …’ The noise at the other end of the line suggested that she was tapping her teeth with a pen.

‘He does have a few acquaintances that he hangs around with, but they’re pretty well known and all in the database. I know that he has a half-brother. I’m pretty sure that he isn’t in the system.’

Warren felt his pulse rise slightly. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘Not much, I’ve never met him properly. Tyler’s his name, if I recall correctly. I think he stays with him occasionally. I saw him briefly a couple of years ago when I went around to arrest Aaron. He came in the kitchen, took one look at us all and disappeared out the back again. I did a PNC search on him but nothing came up.’

‘Can you describe him?’

She paused for a moment.

‘Mixed race, quite a big lad. I’d say about ten years older than Aaron.’

Ten years older would have made him about eighteen around the time of the sexual assault.

‘Big enough to have size eleven feet?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

* * *

PC McGinty agreed to meet Karen Hardwick and Tony Sutton and go and visit Wallace, armed with a search warrant.

‘Bloody hell, McGinty, what are you after now? I haven’t done anything?’ Aaron Wallace was a scruffy, scrawny man who looked significantly younger than his twenty-nine years. The man’s left eyebrow sported an impressive number of studs, and what Hardwick initially took to be a tattoo beneath the same eye turned out on closer inspection to be an almost perfect crucifix-shaped birthmark.

Despite it being after noon, Wallace’s messy blond hair and reddened eyes suggested that he’d been asleep when they’d rang the doorbell.

McGinty introduced Hardwick and Sutton, who passed over a copy of the search warrant.

Wallace sighed. ‘Shit.’

‘Any help you give us at this stage will be noted,’ said McGinty, an indirect reminder that he was still on bail from his September arrest.

Wallace pointed wordlessly towards the half-open bedroom door, before wandering back into the lounge and retrieving his tobacco and papers.

Within thirty minutes, several pieces of jewellery, a collection of laptops, tablets and mobile phones and a half-full Cancer Research collecting tin were all sealed in plastic evidence bags in the boot of Fiona McGinty’s patrol car.

‘I can’t believe he’d get caught with so much when he’s already on bail awaiting trial. You’d think he’d keep his nose clean,’ Karen Hardwick muttered to Tony Sutton.

‘It’s not unusual. He knows he’s going down, so what he’s doing now is stealing as much stuff as possible to raise a little nest egg ready for when he comes out, or to tide any family over when he’s inside. He’ll ask for it to be taken into consideration in court; it’ll add a bit of time to his sentence, but it means he can’t be done for it again at a later date.’