A Case Gone Cold. Paul Gitsham

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.’