Free Bad Blood by Mark Sennen Page B

and somebody snapped a pic with their phone. We’ve got the index.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜Registered owner is a Stuart Chaffe. Turns out he has form. Major. Went down for assaulting a police officer after being stopped on the motorway during a drugs bust. The assault was a knifing. Sliced the officer open and pulled the man’s guts out with his bare hands. Chaffe spent five years in Broadmoor before being moved to an ordinary prison to complete his sentence. He was only released last year after an eighteen-year stretch inside.’
    â€˜Sounds like he could be old enough to be our mystery man, the one who impersonated Mr Evershed. Do we have an address?’
    â€˜Southway, ma’am. Kinnaird Crescent. Since he’s only just out of the nick he’ll have a probation officer. Shall I try to make contact and get some sort of lowdown before we head out there?’
    Savage thought back to an incident a couple of years ago. In a similar situation she’d gone by the book and had a quiet word with somebody on the offender management side of things. When she’d turned up at the suspect’s house – a youth wanted for attacking a mum-to-be with a hammer – the door had been opened by a local solicitor, the lad already briefed to keep his mouth shut.
    â€˜No,’ Savage said. ‘Better if our visit comes as a complete surprise to Mr Chaffe, don’t you think?’
    Kinnaird Crescent lay on the northern edge of the city in the maze of Drives, Closes, Walks and Gardens which made up the district of Southway. Stuart Chaffe lived in a block of flats on the north side of the crescent, one of a number of five-storey blocks dotted every fifty metres or so. The road traversed a slope and the flats had been built on the lower side, meaning the ground floor – which consisted of garages – and the first floor lay below street level. Each block had a concrete bridge which led across to the entrance door. Net curtains adorned the lower windows of the flats, hiding away whatever grimness lay within. Depressing, Savage thought, as Enders drove along the crescent, past block after block of identical buildings.
    Halfway along they came to the correct block. They parked up and strolled across the strange little bridge to the glass-fronted lobby area, where a list of names ran down a column of bell-pushes to the right of the locked door. ‘Chaffe’ had been scribbled in pencil alongside the number ‘324’. Three presses of the bell later, the third with Enders keeping his finger held down for a good thirty seconds, and a lanky figure shuffled down into the foyer from a stairwell to the right. Stuart Chaffe wore ill-fitting jeans and a denim jacket, his wrists and ankles protruding from the sleeves and the bottom of the trousers, as if he was a kid growing too fast for his parents to keep him in clothes. In his early forties, he appeared older, with greying hair and bloodshot eyes, his skin bearing an unhealthy pallor, as if he had returned from a long sea voyage where fruit and vegetables were in short supply. He gazed through the glass before leaning against the wall next to a bare noticeboard.
    â€˜If you are from the good Lord Jehovah you can fuck off.’ Chaffe rubbed his eyes and yawned.
    â€˜I have heard my boss called many things, Mr Chaffe,’ Savage said, ‘but God isn’t one of them.’
    â€˜Pigs then? These days only pigs and religious folk dress like you two twats.’
    â€˜Let us in, Stuart,’ Enders said, pressing his warrant card up to the glass. ‘We want a word. Or two.’
    â€˜I was right then. All that time inside and I’ve still got a good sense of smell for crap.’ Chaffe made no move to open the door, instead he straightened and gestured around the hall. ‘Talk away. No one around to hear, just a few deaf old coots. The rest are out at work.’
    â€˜And you, Stuart?’ Savage said. ‘Have