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not that one. Obviously that might not mean he doesn’t live in the area as he could be renting a room, or flat, where council tax is included in the rent. I’ve already checked the local electoral roll and he’s not there either. Nationally, of course, there are thousands of Kingslands. I then abandoned that line of enquiry and went to the nick where I looked him up in Records – if you remember this mobster uses at least three aliases.’
    â€˜I hope James didn’t spot you.’
    â€˜It wouldn’t have mattered as I also needed to check up on something for my official project that I can’t access on a home computer. I didn’t see him, nor Campbell. Anyway, as I already knew – had made a note of, in fact – in the past Kingsland has also called himself Craig Brown, Shane Lockyer and Nick Hamsworth, the latter of which is thought
might
be the one on his birth certificate. Digging a little deeper I discovered that the first of those was definitely a stolen identity created using personal items taken during a burglary in Hounslow. That came out when he was convicted of handling stolen property: computers, TVs, jewellery and other stuff, the hauls of various burglaries. He served three years so has almost certainly dropped that alias.
    â€˜The second, Shane Lockyer, was the name he used years previously to that, when he first started on a life of crime in his late teens. Lockyer was his mother’s maiden name. When he came out of prison, where he had served five years for his first serious offences, committing several robberies with violence together with other members of a gang calling themselves, believe it or not, The Raptors, he used the third name, Hamsworth.’
    â€˜Super chap, to use his mother’s name to drag through the mud,’ I murmured.
    â€˜She’s probably proud of him, having done time herself for drugs dealing and forcing girls into prostitution.’
    â€˜OK, delete that last remark. So he might have gone back to using Hamsworth then if Kingsland got a bit hot.’
    â€˜Or another one he’s dreamed up.’
    â€˜D’you have the addresses of the flats in Ealing and Manchester?’ I enquired.
    â€˜I do. And of the tenement flat in Glasgow.’ Thoughtfully, Patrick added, ‘Hamsworth’s proud of this Raptors thing, isn’t he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have assumed that nickname. There’s every chance he’ll resurrect them at some stage – in his mind, his past glories.’
    The rest of the week went by, during which Patrick applied himself to what he was really supposed to be doing at HQ. While he was thus engaged and knowing I had little chance of success, but also that these things have to be thoroughly investigated, I checked locally on the name Hamsworth. I discovered that there were not very many of them: an elderly married couple living in Radstock, a teacher at a prestigious private boys’ school on the outskirts of Bath, two spinster sisters sharing a cottage in Priston, a retired police sergeant and his wife who had an apartment in Midsomer Norton, and a family butcher’s business in that same town, the proprietors of which might be related to them. This was just a guess as the name originates in the north-east and is not common in the West Country.
    No, as I had thought, this man must either be using another name or was not trying to establish for himself an outwardly respectable identity in the locality and was, as Patrick put it over the phone one evening, ‘hiding away somewhere in a rat hole’. I felt investigating that possibility fell to him.
    In between the more important writing sessions I turned my attention to the missing, presumed dead, husband of Sulyn Li Grant, the man who had called himself either Bob or Bill Hudson, and sometimes Bob Downton. Accessing police records for the London area I discovered with no surprise whatsoever that as Bob Downton he had a