Death in Distribution

by David W Robinson

  They reached the lower end of the yard, and from here Joe could make out the entrance to the workshop and its approach yard. Inside, now clearly visible despite the bright sunshine and darker interior, was the STAC bus in one of the repair bays.

  “Our vehicle will be ready by Monday, Dave?”

  “We’ll be speaking to your driver, but as I understand it, the parts have arrived. They only need fitting and polishing up to match the rest of the vehicle.”

  “There was no structural damage?”

  “Chassis and framework were checked, Joe, and they’re fine.”

  They turned to the right and, following the path round the car park, entered parking area H. There were many private cars in it, reflecting the number of drivers working.

  “On Easter Saturday, too.” Joe’s muttered comment was meant only for his ears. Aloud, he asked, “Why put the drivers so far away from the building and the exits?”

  “Ergonomics,” Amy replied. “Drivers work longer hours and irregular shifts. The Sort Centre runs a three-shift system. Transport runs only two. That means there’s more movement of traffic with the cars belonging to the warehouse crew, so it’s better to have them closer to the exit gate.”

  “I must say, you’re pretty well organised.”

  “It’s a massive operation, Joe. We have to think of everything.”

  Stood in the middle of the driver’s car park, Joe looked around.

  To the north and east, away from the building, was only the high perimeter wall. To the west the workshop yard had once more become invisible, but the building itself was prominent. To the south, however, all Joe could see were the rear of trailers and peeking just above them the top floor of the Sort Centre.

  He pointed at the few windows breaking up the line of the building. “Your office?”

  Kane nodded and pointed further along to four small, frosted-glass windows. “Third floor toilet and locker rooms.” His finger swept across the building, past his office to the western end and a single panoramic window. “The staircase. I told you. This area can be seen only from there and my office.”

  Closer to them and at ground level, Joe looked along the wire mesh fence which sealed off the yard from the car parks. Angle iron supports were set in concrete every five yards or so, and although it appeared intact, he could see where part of the mesh had been cut from a support.

  “Which is park fifteen?”

  Amy pointed it out the other side of the hole in the mesh, and the moment she did, Joe spotted the police crime scene tape attached to the nose of the rear trailer and back of the one in front.

  “So, Stan is making his way here, and he ends up there.” He pointed to the crime scene. “How? Why? You are sure his car was parked here?”

  “It still is,” Amy said, and moved across to a red Hyundai.

  Joe followed, and circled the car. Nothing in it to attract any attention. And from the rear of the car, the crime scene could not be seen. He moved to the front, and as he passed, he noticed a black holdall on the passenger seat.

  “His bag,” he said. “Now I’m beginning to understand.”

  From the opposite side of the car, Kane pointed to the steering wheel. “The keys are in the ignition, too.”

  “That settles it, then.” Joe hurried around the car and glanced again at park fifteen. “It’s obvious what went on.” He tutted. “If Burrows’ people had checked the car yesterday, they would have known, too.”

  “If his keys were in the car, they won’t have realised he owned one,” Amy pointed out. Her matter-of-fact tone switched quickly to puzzlement. Puzzlement. “What went on, Joe?”

  Rather than answer immediately, Joe searched through his pockets seeking a handkerchief or tissue and could not find one. With another irritated cluck, he asked, “Dave, can you get onto your mechanics and ask someone to bring me over a pair of those plastic gloves they use. The disposable ones.”

  Kane took out his phone. “No problem, but you’re not thinking of opening the car, are you?”

  “Yes. I want to check his bag.”

  “But the police—”

  Joe cut him off with a broad grin. “Don’t need to know, do they?”

  While Kane rang the workshop, Joe explained his deductions to Amy. Waving at the hole in the fence, he said, “Stan obviously made it to his car, threw his bag on the passenger seat, and put the keys in the ignition. So why did he then go back through the fence? There’s only one answer when you think about it. I still can’t see the crime scene from here, so it means someone appeared behind park fifteen and called him over.”

  “His killer?”

  Joe nodded. “Who else? That means it would have to be someone Stan knew, but I figure that’s been the case all along. It also means Stan was not expecting an attack, or if he was, he’d be confident of dealing with it.”

  Amy huffed. “Peter. Again.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Joe tried to put on a sympathetic face. “Amy, I know you find this hard to believe, and I do myself, but you have to accept that so far, the prime suspect is Peter.”

  Dropping his phone back into his pocket, Kane joined them in time to hear the declaration. “I don’t believe it either. So what do you expect to find in Stan’s car?”

  “The flask?” Joe sounded more hopeful than positive.

  With another delay in the offing, Joe wandered along park fifteen and spent a few moments looking down at the crime scene, but it told him nothing he did not know already. As he returned to the car park, his phone rang. It was an unrecognised number. He put the phone to his ear, announced himself and listened for a moment. Putting the phone away, he said to his two companions, “That was Sandra. Peter Cruikshank never left the building yesterday.”

  A mixture of relief and satisfaction crossed Amy’s face. “So it wasn’t him. I said it all along, didn’t I?”

  “It merely begs more questions, though,” Joe said. “The major problem now is how did the killer know that Stan was leaving the building on his way home? I take it everyone in Dispatch would know?”

  Amy nodded. “They were not told, but it would have been easy to put it all together.”

  “So do we need to look at your Dispatch staff?” Joe muttered.

  He had meant it to be taken as a serious consideration, but Amy replied anyway. “There would be one or two candidates.”

  Joe would have responded, but he spotted a young man dressed in a boiler suit, making his way across to the car park towards them. “We can talk about that later. Peter’s not completely out of it, but it’s looking very unlikely.” He nodded at the approaching individual. “Is this one of your mechanics, Dave?”

  “Apprentice,” Kane corrected.

  The lad arrived and handed over a pair of protective gloves, Kane took a moment to thank him and then lectured him briefly on the dangers of playing games in the workshop area, and the young man left again.

  “Sorry, Joe, but you have to keep ramming the message home.”

  “It’s time you got CCTV in the workshop yard,” Amy grumbled.

  Joe ignored them, pulled the tight-fitting gloves on, and with his fingertips, opened the car door. He checked the key first, and found that it was simply slotted into the ignition. It had not been turned on. He leaned across and unzipped the bag. Looking inside, he found the same mess Amy had turned up the previous day. Satisfied, he zipped the bag shut again and climbed out of the car, closing the door behind him.

  “That settles it for me. Stan’s flask is not in the bag.”

  “But we knew that, Joe.”

  “No you didn’t,” Joe corrected Kane. “You knew it wasn’t there when he was in your office with you, Peter and Amy. But Amy left him alone to clear out his locker. He could have hidden it in there and taken it out again before leaving the building. But whatever happened to it, it was not with Stan, and for my money, that means whoever killed him took it earlier in the day.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You demanded that I k
eep you up to date,” Joe said testily. “That’s just what I’m doing. Peter Cruikshank never left the building. Stan Crowther did, but he walked all the way round the yard to his car where he put the keys in the ignition and dropped his bag off, before coming back to park fifteen where he was murdered.”

  After a call from Joe, Burrows and his team had joined them on the car park. The forensic team went to work on Crowther’s car and he responded to Joe’s argument.

  “You’re giving me theory, Murray, not fact.”

  “There are facts, and the theory was built to fit around them. I repeat, Peter Cruikshank never left the building. So he did not kill Crowther.”

  “They could have fought inside,” Burrows argued. “We know that Cruikshank didn’t die immediately.”

  “We also know that he made his way from his office to security before he collapsed. And that was after only the single blow. You’re telling us that Crowther, who had been hit twice, managed to get from that same office, or at least the third floor, all the way through security, where he insisted on a search, then right the way to his car before deciding that he would walk up park fifteen and drop dead.”

  Ignoring most of Joe’s argument, Burrows said, “That could be the very reason he was walking up park fifteen. He was fading fast and he went for help.”

  Joe tossed this over in his head, and found that it had a ring of possibility about it. But he was not about to say so to Burrows. “You still haven’t told us how he managed to get all this way before he finally dropped.”

  “I’ll know more about that when I get the post mortem results.”

  “Then speculate.”

  “I don’t like—”

  “All right, I will. My guess is that both men died as a result of either skull fracture or cervical spine fracture. Death needn’t be instantaneous, but would leave both disoriented, just as we noticed with Peter. Stan had been struck twice. His death might not have been instantaneous either, but the second blow probably delivered while he was floored by the first, would have knocked him out. He wouldn’t have come round. He died while he was unconscious. We know that he was lucid enough to demand a search when he passed through the security scanner. That means he was killed where he was found. We know that Peter never left the building, and that being the case there is no way he and Stan did this to each other. You’re looking for someone else, as I predicted all along.”

  “We’ll have to see, won’t we?” With that, Burrows marched off to join his team.

  “He’s determined to pin it on Peter and Stan, isn’t he?” Amy asked.

  Joe shrugged. “No, I don’t think so. He probably just doesn’t like his thunder being stolen. He may have already decided that I’m right, but he’s not gonna say so.”

  They stood watching in silence as the forensic people worked systematically on the car and the bag, taking items, cataloguing them and bagging them up.

  Joe leaned against the wire mesh fence and basked in the glorious afternoon sunshine. He wondered idly where Sheila and Brenda were, and whether it was time to cut out and rejoin them. He decided that they would probably be shopping and since he disliked shopping, he was better off where he was.

  “What do we do now, Joe?”

  Kane’s query brought Joe from his reverie. “What? Oh, sorry. Yeah. I reckon we need to think about that flask.”

  “And what will that prove? Other than Stan was drunk, which we already know.”

  “Yeah, and that’s what doesn’t make much sense. Y’see, if Stan added booze to his own flask I can see him hiding it from you lot, but I don’t know why since it was his claim that it had been doctored. He would have been happy to have you analyse it. On the other hand, if Peter really had doctored the flask, I can understand him hiding it, too. But how did he get hold of it? Why did Stan not take it with him when he left the building? Where the hell is it? There are just too many unanswered questions about this missing flask. They may mean something, they may not, but we won’t know until we find it.”

  Kane waved an arm at the vast site. “Do you know how many skips, compactors and general refuse bins we have, Joe? We passed at least three on the way from reception. If Stan really did throw it away, it could be in any of them.”

  “Or Peter, come to that,” Amy said. “He could have got it earlier in the day, couldn’t he? You know. When Stan first got back. There was a long time between Stan turning up at the main gate, and the four of us meeting in your office, Dave.”

  “Now you’re sounding like Burrows,” Joe said with a grin directed at the chief inspector, who was now listening on his mobile phone.

  “When I say Peter, I mean it could apply to just about anyone,” Amy corrected herself.

  “Anyone who wanted to get Stan into trouble,” Joe said, “and by all accounts that’s most of Blackpool.”

  He fell silent as Burrows terminated his call and strode across to them.

  “All right, Murray, you win. Both men suffered severe trauma to the cervical spine. The second blow probably killed Crowther. Cruikshank would have been dazed and probably partly paralysed, and as we know, he made it to reception. It means that Crowther died where he was found, and since Cruikshank never left the building – according to you – he cannot have killed Crowther and vice versa.”

  Reminding himself that two men had died, Joe suppressed a feeling of satisfaction at the news, but went on to correct Burrows on a minor point. “It’s not according to me. It’s Sandra, the head of security. She checked the CCTV footage for the relevant time and she says Cruikshank never stepped out of the building.”

  “How did you get to see that?” Burrows demanded. “She insisted we get a warrant.”

  Joe grinned. “I used my natural charm on her. You should try it sometime.”

  “Bog off. Mind, I do think it’s time I was looking at this CCTV stuff. This case is now a full-blown double murder investigation.”

  ***

  Joe’s guess on the whereabouts of Sheila and Brenda was slightly off the mark. They had been shopping, but by two o’clock, after a walk round the crowded and narrow aisles of Bonny Street Market, they were in the Waterloo Inn, just off the promenade near Central Pier, where they had met up with George Robson, Owen Frickley, Les Tanner and Sylvia Goodson, and Alec and Julia Staines.

  “Where’s Joe?” George asked. “Still out there, playing Miss Marple?”

  “As far as we know, yes,” Sheila replied. “And we could have done with him today.”

  “How come?”

  Brenda waved at their bags of purchases. “Pack mule.”

  George laughed. “I always knew he was good for more than steak and kidney pies.”

  Brenda glanced at the door where Vaughan and two taller, stockier men had just entered. “Joe’s usually good at sorting out problems, too.” She indicated the property man with a slow nod of the head. “Problems like him.”

  George looked them over and sneered. “Easy peasy. You don’t need to worry while I’m here, Brenda.”

  “The day I have to rely on you, George Robson, is the day I hand in me cards.” She rounded on Vaughan. “Can’t you take a hint?”

  He indicated the men either side of him. “Meet Mr Appleby and his associate, Mr McNeill. They are here, Mrs Jump, to ensure I don’t take another unexpected shower. Where’s Murray?”

  “He’s not here,” Sheila replied. “Now why don’t you leave us alone, Mr Vaughan?”

  “Did I not just say I wanted to speak to the butcher, not the block?”

  “Go away,” Brenda ordered, “and take your tame gorillas with you. You’re not impressing anyone.”

  “I will go when I have seen Murray, and not until. Now kindly step out of my way.”

  He made to move her aside with his arm, but George stepped between them.

  “Keep your hands to yourself, pal.”

  Vaughan looked down his nose at George. “Mind your own business, you fat idiot.”

  “Watch it—”

  Th
ere was a dangerous edge to George’s voice, cut off when Vaughan interrupted and began stressing his words with repeated pokes in the chest. “I told you to mind your own business, you moron. Or don’t you understand plain English? Do I have to ask my colleagues to teach you what that means?”

  George’s face coloured. He drew back his fist.

  “George, no,” Brenda cried.

  George’s fist flew forward.

  ***

  “I still don’t understand why Stan’s thermos is so important,” Amy said.

  They were seated in the deserted drivers’ rest room, alongside Dispatch.

  “Not all our drivers work weekends,” Kane had explained, “and those who are working don’t spend time in here. They have work out there.” He waved at the walls to indicate the outside world.

  Kane had moved to the drinks machine, and Joe had sunk into depressed thoughts. Although pleased that his early deductions had been accepted, he was no nearer identifying a suspect, let alone solving the case. Amy’s question stirred his thoughts, but those same mental gymnastics produced only more of the same questions.

  Accepting a cup of coffee from Kane, he sipped and grimaced at the bitter taste. “Worse than The Lazy Luncheonette.” Putting the cup down, he cleared his throat, he finally answered Amy’s question. “The events are linked. Or do we imagine that it’s all coincidence?”

  “But I don’t see how they’re linked.”

  “We’ve demonstrated that Stan was murdered by an as yet unknown, third party. That third party must also have spiked his flask. Let’s not worry about the how or when for the moment. Let’s just accept that he did. Was he trying to get Stan fired or hoping he would end up so drunk that he would injure, even kill himself on the road? Let’s imagine that had happened. What would the police have done? Gone through the truck, found the flask, tested it, and then pointed the finger straight at Stan. Drunk driving. But it didn’t happen. Instead, Stan managed to get his rig back here with only a few minor scrapes and that put the killer in a difficult position. That flask was evidence. Stan was a witness, even if he was blathered.”