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Warren’s sympathy for his predecessor was close to non-existent; however, he had been a much-loved boss and people like Pete Kent had known him for years. Warren would have to be careful not to be too dismissive of their feelings.
“What can I do for you anyhow, Chief?”
Although all officers in CID could use HOLMES 2, the service-wide computer database that was used to store records and reports on major incidents, Warren had a feeling he’d need specialist help.
“I need details on a cold case from the eighties. Will they be available electronically?”
DS Kent looked at him warily. “They might be. The original HOLMES went live in 1986 for major incidents, but it’s a bit patchy. It hasn’t got half the functionality of HOLMES 2 and some forces still did a lot of their record keeping manually, scanning them in after the fact. The cross-referencing can be pretty poor. What do you need?”
“I need the records for a joint Hertfordshire – West Midlands Police operation concluded in 1988. I don’t have an operation name, but it resulted in the conviction of a Vinny Delmarno. If you could get me his records as well, that would be great.” Warren glanced at the clock above Kent’s head; the man’s shift finished in half an hour. “Actually, get Gary on it when he returns from his break.”
“I’ll do it, Chief. I’m not in a rush. Gary’s finishing himself in a few hours then he and Karen are off on that dirty get-away they think nobody knows about. I’ll only end up reinventing the wheel if he starts the job and then hands it over.”
Warren thanked the man and turned to head back to his office, before another idea struck him. “Could you also get onto Revenue and Customs and check the tax and National Insurance returns for Reggie Williamson during the same time period? I’d like to know what he was doing and who he was working for back then.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the older man promised, “but it may take a while. HMRC deal with most requests during office hours.”
“Well do what you can. I’ll be in my office. Print it out when you’re done.”
One last thought occurred to him, he glanced over at Grayson’s office before leaning in to Kent. “Do me a favour and keep this between us for the time being.”
Kent glanced over at Grayson’s office and smirked slightly, as Warren had known he would. “Of course.”
* * *
Tony Sutton was a lot politer than Detective Superintendent Grayson. Nevertheless he made it quite clear how reckless he thought his DCI had been; and was similarly disapproving of Warren’s tacit agreement to help clear Sheehy’s name as a reward for more information.
Warren had wrestled with the revelations that Sheehy had made all the way back to CID. He’d been standing in front of Grayson, absorbing the man’s anger before he’d eventually decided that he wasn’t ready to share everything Sheehy had revealed to him or broach the subject of his father’s death with the man.
The wound that Sheehy had so brutally reopened on Middlesbury Common was gaping wide and Warren was confused and bewildered; however, his instincts were telling him that he couldn’t trust the man until he knew more.
To somebody of Warren’s age, those events in the mid eighties seemed a lifetime ago, but he was uncomfortably aware that officers such as Gavin Sheehy and John Grayson had started their careers back then and were still in the force today, working in positions of influence and responsibility.
Sheehy’s account had almost made it sound as if he and MacNamara had planned the whole stitch-up single-handedly, but even back in the eighties the police didn’t work that way. The two officers would have been part of a much larger team and it was almost inconceivable that they worked alone or were even the masterminds of the subterfuge. Until Warren read the report on the case, he wasn’t sharing the contents of the manila folder, sandwiched between his stab vest and shirt, with anybody.
“Is that all we’ve got?”
The pile of printouts was surprisingly small for such a major incident.
“For the moment. West Mids were charged with entering the paperwork into HOLMES, but they prioritised the key documents.” Kent looked apologetic. “I’m still tracking down everything as it’s been filed a bit sloppily. I guess once they’d secured his conviction they expected him to die in prison and so they didn’t bust a gut scanning everything in. These are the records for Vinny Delmarno. I’ll get the rest to you when I’ve collected it all together.”
“Well I’m sure that if it’s in there you’ll find it, Pete. Thanks.”
The documents had been divided into two piles and joined together with oversize paperclips. The first was the record for Vincent (Vinny) Delmarno. Warren recognised the formatting from the Police National Computer. The second was other associated paperwork, such as reports from the National Probation Service.
Like all prisoners released from a life sentence, Delmarno had to serve out the rest of his sentence “on licence”. According to the NPS, he lived with his wife on the easternmost fringes of Middlesbury, reporting to his probation officer fortnightly. The latest account was dated the beginning of the month and reported that he was meeting the terms of his parole satisfactorily.
A biography of Delmarno had attached photographs showing him after his arrest and more recently on release. Warren stared at them. Was this the man who had killed his father? He felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Over two decades in prison had changed the man almost beyond recognition.
According to his date of birth, Delmarno had been just shy of thirty-five years old when he’d been convicted, a little younger than Warren was now, but his hair was already snow white. His face was swollen and darkened, a symptom of his end-stage-renal failure.
By contrast, the photograph taken upon release showed a fit-looking man in his late fifties. Although lined and hardened, the face had lost its swelling and the skin tone had returned to the natural, olive complexion that spoke of his Italian heritage. His hair, though white, was as full as the day he went in.
The one feature that had not changed was his eyes. Warren had seen thousands of mugshots over the years, but rarely had he seen such hatred staring out of a photograph at him.
The biographical details were terse and factual, but Warren found himself filling in the missing details with his own knowledge both from his upbringing in Coventry and the time he served with the police.
Delmarno had been born in July 1953, the son of an Italian father and an Irish Catholic mother who’d met in Coventry shortly after the war. Both parents died whilst he was in prison. Schooled at one of the city’s three Roman Catholic secondary schools—not the one he’d been to, Warren was strangely relieved to see, even though they would have attended twenty years apart—he’d been expelled at age fifteen for fighting. After a few minor skirmishes with the law as a youth, he apparently avoided arrest until 1988.
The list of crimes of which he was suspected filled three pages. Drug dealing, living off immoral earnings, assault and attempted murder. In almost all cases, charges either weren’t filed or were dropped.
As Sheehy had explained, it was the shooting of Frankie Cruise in 1984 that was his undoing and the search warrant obtained after the handgun was “found” at the scene of a drugs bust in Coventry had led to his trial on a dozen further charges, including two counts of conspiracy to murder, money laundering and possession with intent to supply. As in the past, he was cleared of many of the charges when witnesses failed to attend or his lawyers successfully had them thrown out on a technicality. Nevertheless he received life with a minimum sentence of twenty-two years and eight months for the murder of Frankie Cruise.
He was released on 6 September 2010.
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