Burning Ambition (DCS Palmer and the Serial Murder Squad Book 7) Read online

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents in it

  are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or act relating to any

  persons, living or dead, locations or

  events involving them, is entirely alleged

  or coincidental.

  Published by BSA Publishing 2018 who

  assert the right that no part of this

  publication may be reproduced, stored in

  a retrieval system or transmitted by any

  means without the prior permission of the

  publishers.

  Copyright @ B.L.Faulkner 2018 who

  Asserts the moral right to be identified as

  the author of this work

  ISBN 978-1-9997640-8-1

  Proof read/editing by Zeldos

  BOOKS IN THE DCS PALMER SERIES

  BOOK 1. FUTURE RICHES

  BOOK 2. THE FELT TIP MURDERS

  BOOK 3. A KILLER IS CALLING

  BOOK 4. POETIC JUSTICE

  BOOK 5. LOOT

  BOOK 6. I’M WITH THE BAND

  All available as individual or double ‘case’ e-books and paperbacks.

  THE PALMER CASES BACKGROUND

  Justin Palmer started off on the beat as a London policeman in the late 1970s and is now Detective Chief Superintendent Palmer running the Metropolitan Police Force’s Serial Murder Squad from New Scotland Yard.

  Not one to pull punches, or give a hoot for political correctness if it hinders his inquiries, Palmer has gone as far as he will go in the Met and he knows it. Master of the one-line put-down and a slave to his sciatica, he can be as nasty or as nice as he likes.

  The early 2000s was a time of re-awakening for Palmer as the Information Technology revolution turned forensic science, communication and information gathering skills upside down. Realising the value of this revolution to crime solving, Palmer co-opted Detective Sergeant Gheeta Singh onto his team. DS Singh has a degree in IT and was given the go ahead to update Palmer’s department with all the computer hard- and software she wanted, most of which she wrote herself and some of which are, shall we say, of a grey area when it comes to privacy laws, data protection and accessing certain restricted databases.

  Together with their small team of favourite officers that Palmer co-opts from other departments as needed, and one civilian computer clerk called Claire they take on the serial killers of the UK.

  On the personal front Palmer has been married to his ‘princess’, or Mrs P. as she is known to everybody, for nearly thirty years. The romance blossomed after the young Detective Constable Palmer arrested most of her family, who were a bunch of South London petty criminals, in the 1960’s. They have three children and eight grandchildren, a nice house in the London suburb of Dulwich, and a faithful ‘springer’ dog called Daisy.

  Gheeta Singh lives alone in a fourth floor Barbican apartment, her parents having arrived on these shores as a refugee family fleeing from Idi Amin’s Uganda. Since then her father and brothers have built up a very successful computer parts supply company, in which it was assumed Gheeta would take an active role on graduating from university. She had other ideas on this, as well as the arranged marriage that her mother and aunts still try to coerce her into. Gheeta has two loves, police work and technology, and thanks to Palmer she has her dream job.

  The old copper’s nose and gut feelings of Palmer, combined with the modern IT skills of DS Singh makes them an unlikely but successful team. All their cases involve multiple killings, twisting and turning through red herrings and hidden clues, and keeping the reader in suspense until the very end.

  BURNING AMBITION

  CHAPTER 1

  On the 13th July 1955 Ruth Ellis was the last person to be sentenced to death and hanged in the UK. If Robin Hartley-Lansdown had had his way, she wouldn’t have been.

  The Honourable Justice Hartley-Lansdown took a deep breath, looked up from his case notes and peered down on the crowded but silent Court Number One at Southwark Crown Court over which he presided. His mood was as foul as the weather outside, where dark clouds hung from the sky threatening to unload their wet content at any moment.

  ‘Take them from here to a place of execution, where they shall be hanged by the neck until dead.’ That was what he’d like to say, but of course he could not.

  There was an air of apprehension in the courtroom, and Hartley-Lansdown liked that. The theatrics of the British judicial system resonated with him; he liked to be the centre of attention, and he liked the power that was invested in him as a Crown Court Judge. Hartley-Lansdown was one of the elite class of Britain; he knew it, and he loved it. What he mistakenly thought was respect shown towards him by others in the legal profession because of his high position was more often than not just the observance of the ridiculous judicial protocol left over from the feudal middle ages, that had never been updated to reflect the modern world: the robes and insignia, the wig, the standing and the bowing when he entered the court, and the required deference that was expected of the ushers and the defence and prosecuting lawyers. Hartley-Lansdown, and every other judge in the United Kingdom, was perfectly capable of doing the job in a suit and tie, or even jeans and a tee-shirt, but the elite had to maintain their power base in society somehow; in Hartley-Lansdown’s case it had been through inherited family wealth, private education, Eton, Cambridge, and a fast-track legal career through his father’s Law Chambers at Lincoln’s Inn. Hartley-Lansdown had not only been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had a whole drawer of them in there.

  Privately he despised the criminal element that was presented before him daily for judgement and sentencing. He realised that ninety percent of them would have his beloved Bentley coupe into a dodgy breaker’s yard at the slightest opportunity, file the indentifying numbers off and then ship it out to the Middle East in a container within a week if they could get their thieving hands on it. The age-old social boundaries of ‘them and us’ still existed for Hartley-Lansdown and his circle of friends, and he had no intention of letting that boundary be broken on his watch.

  It was a trio of ‘them’ that stood in the dock before him now. All three had been found guilty by a jury of their peers of a rather vicious assault on staff at a suburban London Post Office, as the security company delivered money to top up the ATM machine. A good flogging and many years of hard labour breaking rocks on a desolate moor would have been Hartley-Lansdown’s preferred sentence if he were able to give it, but he wasn’t. He looked at the three defendants, feeling a surge of mental power in his body. He nodded to the Clerk of the Court, who returned it, and then addressed the defendants.

  ‘The accused shall rise before the Judge.’

  The three of them stood, as did the three security officers they were handcuffed to. Hartley-Lansdown cleared his throat.

  ‘The three of you have been found guilty of a most vicious and prolonged physical attack on people going about their normal daily business; an attack that has resulted in severe trauma and mental anxiety being forced upon them, probably for a considerable number of years, if not their entire lives. None of you has shown any remorse for this act, and your criminal records show all of you have committed past crimes of a similar nature in the pursuit of financial gain. I have read both the medical and psychiatric reports that your defence counsel asked to be produced, no doubt in a vain hope that one or the other might show a flaw in your mental state on which to hang the blame for your actions; but both reports state that you are all in full control of your actions, and ful
ly aware of what the consequences on other people could be.’

  He paused for a moment and then shifted his gaze from one to the other as he read out the sentences.

  ‘Peter Shore, this Court sentences you to fourteen years in Her Majesty’s Prison. Alli Kalhoud, this Court sentences you to fourteen years in Her Majesty’s Prison. Robert Kershaw, this Court sentences you to fourteen years in Her Majesty’s Prison. In all three sentences, parole will not be granted before a term of ten years has been served. Take them away.’

  As the three were escorted out of sight down the dock steps to the waiting prison transport, a few stifled sobs and murmurs could be heard from the public gallery. Relatives of career criminals rarely made a big fuss in court or shouted abuse at the judge; they knew it would make no difference to the sentence and might even put them on a charge if it was too obscene.

  The clerk addressed the court once the dock was clear.

  ‘All rise.’

  Justice Hartley-Lansdown left by the door behind his throne that led into his dressing chamber, where the clerk and usher helped disrobe him and hang his garments of office in a large Victorian wardrobe, to be brushed and made ready for tomorrow. Another day of justice done, and another three bodies for the Governor of Brixton Prison to squeeze into his already overcrowded cells.

  Outside at the rear of the court buildings, Peter Shore, Alli Kalhoud and Robert Kershaw left the building, bowing their heads against the rain that was beginning to fall as they were ushered into their separate barred cubicles inside a waiting prison van. The doors were slammed and bolted, and their relevant sentencing paperwork handed over from the officer of HM Court Security to the officer of HM Prison Security, who climbed into the van’s cab as the driver started the engine. They waited as the heavy steel security gates slid open to let them pass into the small security compound, where they waited again until the gates behind them closed with a metallic thud. The roller shutter security door to the outside world in front of them jerked its way upwards, and then they were given the green light to leave the court premises and make their way to Brixton Prison to deposit the prisoners on their first day of fourteen years’ detention.

  CHAPTER 2

  The plain squad car, its blues flashing and reflecting off the Thames’ rippling surface through the falling darkness of the night, pulled up outside the old disused Victorian dock side warehouse on the quayside in Greenwich.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Palmer got out, wincing slightly as his sciatica pricked his right thigh. Bending into the stiff wind, he held his battered trilby firmly in place on his head and stood looking up at the five storeys of dark brickwork towering above him as his second in command, Detective Sergeant Singh, came around from the other side of the car to join him, her iPad at the ready. Palmer smiled to himself as he buttoned up his thick overcoat; he didn’t think he could recall a time that DS Singh hadn’t had her iPad clutched firmly beside her. It wasn’t so long ago that a DS would have had a pencil and notebook! Times changed fast these days.

  The call had come on his mobile just as he had returned from taking his dog, Daisy the Springer for her late-night walk through Dulwich, and was about to follow Mrs P. upstairs to bed. The information was scant, but the news that three bodies were involved was enough to click his brain into gear and to ask for a car to pick him up, and for Control to call DS Singh and tell her to be ready to be picked up from her Barbican apartment on his way through; a bit of a lengthy detour, but with the victims already dead there wasn’t any great hurry.

  ‘Bit of a wind round here,’ he remarked, turning up his collar.

  ‘Comes off the river, guv. Nice in the summer though,’ DS Singh replied as they skirted around a fire engine being packed up by its crew getting ready to leave. They walked towards a Judas door in the corner of the huge double metal doors of the warehouse, that once would have seen empty lorries enter and then leave laden with all kinds of imported goods from the far-flung corners of the world.

  Once through the Judas door they found themselves inside what was now just a massive shell of a building; all the floors and internal walls were gone. Long thick steel joists kept the exterior walls from caving in and standing upright, the joists themselves supported by huge concrete pillars every five metres. Around the bottom of the walls was the scattered evidence of rough sleepers having used the place for shelter, and the tell-tale pieces of silver paper amongst it showed addicts had also found privacy inside these walls. But that wasn’t of any concern to DCS Palmer and his Serial Murder Squad. What was of concern was the blackened shell of a burnt-out prison van in the middle of the concrete floor resting on its wheel rims, the tyres having been cremated. The area around the van was protected by ‘crime scene keep out’ blue and white striped tape stretched between poles, giving the van a good twenty metre berth all round. A line of white protection suited SOCA officers were doing a knee search of the floor, and ‘snappers’ – police photographers – were taking pictures of the inside through the open back doors. The smell of burnt rubber hung pungently in the air.

  A uniformed inspector alerted to their arrival came over and greeted them with a stern look on his face. He introduced himself.

  ‘Inspector Rayson, Greenwich East Division, sir.’

  They shook hands, and Palmer introduced DS Singh.

  ‘What have we got here then, Inspector? I understand that there are three bodies involved.’

  ‘Correct, and all in the back of that van. We assume they are the three prisoners that were being transported inside it – seems like somebody didn’t want them to get back to their cells. Not a pretty sight. The bodies are still inside the cages until Forensics are finished, and then the Pathology boys can take them away.’

  Palmer winced.

  ‘Christ! That’s not a very nice scene to imagine. Do we have any information on who they were?’

  ‘We got the Court inventory sent through with all their personal details.’

  Rayson held out a sheaf of papers which DS Singh took.

  ‘Mind you, we can’t confirm the bodies are those of the three prisoners listed until we get DNA matches. They’re burnt so badly that a visual identification against their mugshots isn’t any good.’

  He gave Palmer a false smile.

  ‘So over to your team, sir, and good luck. Not a very pleasant crime as you can appreciate.’

  Palmer took a deep breath.

  ‘Indeed not. Well, as it’s on your turf my Sergeant will keep you in the loop. I suppose that for a start we can assume that whoever did it knew this warehouse was here, so they could very well be locals and already on your radar.’

  ‘Bit heavy duty for our local faces, sir. We’ve a couple of armed robbery types, but mostly petty thieves round here; murder is a bit out of their league. Have fun, and call if I can help.’

  Rayson gave a salute, nodded to DS Singh and walked away. Palmer gave Singh a questioning look.

  ‘Now I’d have thought that if all he has to fill his days with are petty thieves and an armed robbery once in a blue moon, he’d leap at the chance to get involved in something like this.’

  ‘No, guv.’

  ‘No?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘He’s not that sort of copper, guv. He likes his desk and the easy life, with the big pension at the end of it. He’ll probably end up a Deputy Commissioner or higher.’

  ‘Tut tut, Sergeant, you are beginning to sound a bit like me. I sense a hint of sarcasm.’

  An individual completely covered head-to-toe in a white paper protection suit had made his way over to them and was within earshot of the last remark.

  ‘Heaven forbid. One sarcastic old bugger on the force is enough, Sergeant.’

  Reg Frome was head of Criminal Forensics and ran the elite Murder Team of SOCA officers. He and Palmer were once both new recruits at the Hendon College in their first months on the force, and had worked together on several cases since as they both moved up the ranks. A rotund, j
olly-looking individual, he lowered his face mask and beamed a welcome towards Palmer.

  ‘Justin my old friend, how are you?’

  He removed his plastic gloves and they shook hands.

  ‘I’m fine, Reg. What have we got here then?’

  Frome ignored him and nodded towards DS Singh.

  ‘Sergeant Singh, always a pleasure to see you, my dear. I see you haven’t managed to get away from this irascible old devil yet then?’

  Gheeta smiled. She liked Reg Frome; he’d worked with Palmer’s team many times in the past, and she thought of him as a rather soft old uncle.

  ‘I’m very well, Mr Frome. This looks like a nasty one, lots of SOCA activity…’

  ‘It is a nasty one, Sergeant. Hang on, we’ll get you both kitted out and then you can take a look.’

  He went off and quickly returned with two pairs of slip-on shoe protectors and two lower face masks.

  ‘Here, put these on and follow me.’

  When Palmer and Singh were correctly dressed, Frome lifted the crime scene tape and let them through to follow him round to the back of the van.

  ‘It’s a pretty awful mess in there, Justin,’ he said, turning to DS Singh. ‘Definitely not the kind of thing a young lady wants to see.’

  Gheeta smiled at him.

  ‘Very considerate of you Mr Frome, but I’ve seen a few pretty awful things so I’ll probably be okay.’

  They moved forward and peered inside. The three barred prisoner cubicles were open, the metal bars scorched black as was the rest of the interior. Inside each cubicle was the burnt body of a prisoner, the charred remains barely distinguishable as human. The flesh had been burnt off the bones, some of which had partly disintegrated in the heat leaving a hardly discernible skeletal shape, with dark flakes of burnt flesh clinging on in places. The skulls were black, the eye and nose sockets empty, and small cracks were visible in the bone where the heat had expanded the brain tissue until the softest part of the skull gave way and let it bubble out. Forensic officers were working carefully through each cubicle, photographing and evidence-bagging any loose material before the bodies could be taken away for their post mortems.