by Adam Croft
A small ripple of noise ran through the room as the realisation of what this meant became apparent. Culverhouse and his team had been trying to pin crimes on McCann for years, but he had always proved to be a slippery customer. There was no doubt amongst the police — or the residents of Mildenheath in general — that McCann had devoted himself to a life of crime, but they had never been able to prove anything.
His name had surfaced time and time again in connection with various major crimes which had passed through their office. It had often got to the point where Jack would automatically assume that any difficult-to-solve case must automatically have McCann’s name on it, and he had often been proved wrong — much to his chagrin.
McCann had made no secret of having enjoyed watching Culverhouse and his team get slapped down on numerous occasions, keeping quietly confident as accusation after accusation was levelled at him before being batted away with ease.
The truth was McCann had fingers in lots of pies, many of them unsavoury. He was known locally as a businessman who specialised in rescuing struggling companies. He’d buy the owners out, relieve them of their business debts and keep them on as employees. That was the official line, anyway. The rumour — although never proven — was that he did this for one of two reasons. Either he had a use for the person whose loyalty he’d just bought, or he needed another avenue to launder the money from his less legal enterprises.
‘I want everything thrown at investigating Supreme Locks & Glazing and McCann himself,’ Culverhouse said.
‘He won’t actually run the company himself, though. He might be listed as the owner, but it’s not like he’s going to be going out with his jemmy and a can of WD-40, is it?’ Steve Wing said, chuckling to himself.
‘No, but it’s definite link, Steve,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘If his company fitted the door, they’d know about the security weaknesses. They’d know how to get in.’
‘Doesn’t it sound a bit tenuous, though?’ Frank Vine asked.
‘Big word for you, Frank,’ came Culverhouse’s terse reply.
‘Very funny. But think about it. Gary McCann’s got a stake in god knows how many businesses around here. His name’s bound to crop up at some point. It always does. And how many times have we spent man hours chasing leads to do with him, only to find out we’ve been barking up the wrong tree?’
Before Culverhouse could answer, Debbie Weston chipped in, seemingly buoyed by not being the only person to speak out against him.
‘It’s entirely up to you, sir, and I agree it’s something we need to look into, but I don’t think throwing everything at this particular lead’s going to do us any good.’
‘Right. And when you’re the senior investigating officer, you can decide what’s going to do us good. Until then, that’s my responsibility.’
‘Oh, come off it. You’re just pissed off that all your other leads have dried up. You’re grasping at straws, and this one fell into your lap because you’ve had a grudge against McCann for years.’
He looked at Debbie, unsure whether to be angered at her answering him back or impressed that she’d actually stood up for herself for once. Either way, she’d acted heavily out of character.
‘Alright. Let’s make this democratic, shall we? How about one of you comes up with a better idea? Why don’t you let me know about all the much stronger leads you’ve managed to generate? No? Nothing? Well in that case you’d better investigate the one lead we do have, hadn’t you? Because if we don’t — if this one gets away from us — that Andrews woman is going to have plenty of fucking reasons to move you lot up to Milton House, right under Malcolm Pope’s snotty nostrils. And believe you me, I will not be going with you.’
Culverhouse didn’t want a response, and he didn’t wait for one. Instead, he turned and left.
19
Jack’d had just about enough of this day. It was one of those where he knew nothing was going to go right for him, and he was already thinking about how to spend his evening. He knew exactly what he’d like to do, and he had a good feeling he might be successful in this regard, at least.
He paced down the corridor, listening as the phone rang, waiting for Chrissie to answer. There was a good chance she wouldn’t, especially if she was in a meeting, but Jack hated text messages. If she was tied up, she’d see the missed call and ring him back later.
Just as he was about to hang up the phone, it connected and Chrissie answered.
‘Reporting for detention, miss,’ he joked. The local-school-headteacher jokes were starting to run a bit thin, but Jack reckoned he had a few left in his arsenal yet.
‘As long as it’s not an after-school detention, I don’t mind,’ Chrissie said. ‘I’ve had it up to here today, and I don’t intend on staying a minute later than I need to.’
‘That is music to my ears. What does miss say to a cheeky bottle of vino behind the bike sheds?’
‘Looks like it’s going to rain, unfortunately.’
‘Never mind. Have to be at mine, then, won’t it?’
‘And do you have a warrant, Detective Chief Inspector?’
‘Do I need one?’
Chrissie chuckled. ‘I reserve the right to remain silent.’
‘That’s what the yanks say. Over here we warn you that it may be held against you.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
Jack smiled and felt a small flutter. It had been a while since he’d been able to have this sort of flirtatious conversation with anyone. His wife, Helen, hadn’t been a particularly flirty woman either. He always hesitated to refer to her as his wife. To all intents and purposes she was his ex-wife, but there had been no divorce proceedings — mainly due to Helen’s penchant for disappearing without trace for months and years at a time.
‘Just promise me one thing,’ he said to Chrissie.
‘Name it.’
‘None of that cheap French shit, alright?’
‘Are we talking about my wine or your aftershave, Detective Chief Inspector?’
‘Touché. I tell you what. You lay off the Blue Nun and I’ll go easy on the Lynx Africa. Deal?’
Chrissie laughed again. ‘And which one are we meant to be drinking?’
‘Close call. We’ll toss a coin.’
‘How does eight o’clock sound?’
‘Is that the earliest you can do?’ he asked, hoping he didn’t have to wait that long.
‘That all depends on whether you want me wearing my best face and having sourced the finest wine for sir.’
‘Let’s call it seven and we’ll pass on the face.’
Spotting Wendy approaching him in the corridor, Jack said his goodbyes and ended the call.
‘News?’ she asked.
‘No, it was Chrissie.’
Wendy nodded. ‘What did you say you’re going to do on her face?’
‘Long story. What’s up?’
‘Probably nothing, but just something that I spotted and which I thought might be worth mentioning. It’s silly, but I’d feel worse if I didn’t point it out.’
‘What is it now?’
‘The petrol station robberies and the incident at Fogg’s. There’s something else that links them. Someone who knew about the lack of security measures in all those locations.’
‘Who?’
Wendy swallowed. ‘I don’t think you’re going to like this.’
20
Jack let out a long breath as his jaw tightened. ‘You have no idea what a can of fucking worms that would open, Knight.’
‘Trust me, I do. But we can’t just ignore it. PC Curwood was on the Safer Communities scheme designed to push crime prevention. His role was to visit local business premises to give them security advice and help them prevent crime. I’ve checked the system and he personally visited each of the three petrol stations as well as Fogg’s jewellers.’
‘For Christ’s sake, he’s one of ours. If he was on that scheme he’ll have visited dozens of business premises in the area. Hundreds, probabl
y. Using that logic, you might as well arrest the postman as well.’
‘We’ve still got to look into it. I know it’s not convenient, but it’s entirely possible.’
‘Not convenient? Are you having a laugh? Do you have any idea what sort of process this kicks off? It’d mean getting Professional Standards involved, having every little thing we do scrutinised, putting us in the firing line and giving Penny fucking Andrews yet another reason to shut us down.’
‘With respect, if we’ve got a corrupt officer on the streets, there are bigger problems to worry about.’
‘I’m not sure some daft old bugger getting his shops done over because he keeps his life savings in a shoebox is more important than all of us losing our jobs.’
‘That’s not really for us to decide, though, is it? And anyway, it’s more than that now. Elsie Fogg died because of what happened. What’s to say they won’t do the same again? What if our lot actually manage to respond to a call on time, meet the robbers head on and one of ours gets hurt? Or worse.’
‘You’re still under the assumption that you’re right. Be very careful about that. We’ve got absolutely nothing linking PC Curwood to this, other than the fact he’s the poor bastard who had to go out and give them security advice. Which, I might add, is his job.’
Wendy shook her head. ‘There’s more than that. Ryan looked into the records from the Safer Communities visits. Just so we could find out where the weaknesses where, see if we could tie up and links to what happened. She asked me to explain something on the system she didn’t understand, and that’s when I noticed Theo Curwood’s name on each of the site visits. I had a closer look at the records. Despite the fact that we know the petrol stations didn’t have working CCTV and kept their week’s takings in a bucket underneath the counter, he didn’t note any major security concerns. Same goes for Fogg’s.’
Culverhouse gritted his teeth and sighed heavily. ‘Did you say anything to Ryan?’
‘No. I haven’t said anything to anyone. I don’t even know if I should be saying it to you. One of us needs to speak to Professional Standards.’
‘Forget that for now. We need to find out how many premises PC Curwood visited. We know these guys are violent, and they’ve already killed someone. They’re not going to be scared to try it again, so we need to narrow down the potential list of future targets. Christ knows how we’ll do that, but it’s got to be our main focus.’
‘Where would we even start? Even if we only look at the places he visited, there’s no way of knowing which ones have weak security. Especially if he’s told them all their setup is absolutely fine and that’s what it says on the paperwork. If we sent other officers in to do another review of them all it’d take weeks. Not to mention the cost.’
‘And potentially tipping PC Curwood off that something’s wrong.’
‘Exactly. There’s nothing we can do on that front. As much as I hate to say it, all we can do is sit back and wait for the next call.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘There has to be something. I’m not having blood on my hands.’
‘Like what? We could always ring around the other businesses he visited and mention the fact there’s been a spate of armed robberies and they might want to be extra vigilant.’
‘And when they tell you it’s alright because that nice police officer told them they’re safer than Fort Knox? Are you going to tell them a corrupt police officer lied to them in order to make sure they got done over, their businesses were ruined and their lives were put at risk?’
Wendy sighed and leant back against the wall. As much as she wanted to have an answer to that, she didn’t.
21
‘You know the procedure. It’s not my place to tell you, but you’re duty bound to contact Professional Standards,’ Wendy said.
‘You’re right. It’s not your place to tell me. I’ll have a word with this Curwood bloke myself. I can spot a bullshitter a mile off.’
Wendy tried not to let the frustration show on her face. Jack Culverhouse had always been old-school, but there had been many occasions on which he’d sailed far too close to the wind. It wasn’t that he was a rule breaker as a matter of habit, but if those rules got in the way of his intended course of action he had a tendency to bend them ever so slightly.
She’d never been entirely sure how he’d managed to get away with it for so long. There was only so much leeway he could get by simply pointing out that he got results. Lots of police officers got results. But the Chief Constable, Charles Hawes, was cut from much the same cloth as Jack. The only difference with Hawes was that he had been able to keep his actions and opinions in check for long enough to ride the wave of diplomacy to the top. With Hawes now considering retirement, Wendy wondered how long Jack would have left without his guardian angel in charge of Mildenheath Police.
The pressure was on, though. There had been plenty of agitation from the previous Police & Crime Commissioner, Martin Cummings, to close down Mildenheath CID and have it subsumed into county police headquarters at Milton House. Although Cummings was now gone, his replacement, Penny Andrews, seemed even more determined to make her mark with a major reorganisation plan.
Wendy knew that Jack would be gone the second that happened, and the job wouldn’t be the same again. Even though she’d always been a stickler for correct procedure, she couldn’t deny that working at Mildenheath with its own quirky ways and means had given her a new outlook on the job — and on life. She had to admit she’d miss it if it went.
But there were some pretty clear places that lines were drawn, and police corruption was one of them.
‘This will get out,’ Wendy told him. ‘It’ll be uncovered at some point, and they’ll find out that you knew and covered it up.’
‘And what? I’ll get to retire early. What a travesty.’
‘Without a pension, and probably with a criminal record in its place.’
Jack seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I’m not having it. This sort of thing was stamped out years ago. Believe me. I was there. It was all over the place. Every second officer was on the take in one way or another. But not now. No-one’s stupid enough to do that now. The background checks are crazy, for a start.’
‘Anyone can have their head turned. Especially by money. What if he’s been offered a cut of whatever they make from these raids? Think about it. Not only would having Curwood onside mean they’re able to gain access to premises with crap security, but they’ve also got him able to report back about the investigation. He can feed back to them what’s going on, what we know, what we don’t. And all for a cut of the spoils.’
‘And what if that’s horseshit?’ Jack replied. ‘What if he’s just crap at his job? What if he was sick and tired of having to go into all these shops and petrol stations, asking the same bloody questions, checking all their locks and security setup? What if he just did the bare minimum and told the owners everything was fine so he could get home and put his feet up in front of Coronation Street?’
‘That’s for Professional Standards to decide. It’s their job to investigate and come to their own conclusions.’
Jack shook his head. ‘And subject the guy to that sort of treatment? They’ll bug his phone, break into his emails, follow him around. And for what? We don’t know he’s done anything wrong. He’s a police officer, for fuck’s sake. Doesn’t that count for anything anymore?’
‘Everyone needs to be treated equally,’ Wendy replied. ‘Besides, what’s the worst that can happen? Like you say, he could be subjected to undercover surveillance. They might have a look at his texts. So what?’
‘Would you like someone snooping through your texts?’
‘No, but I’ve got nothing to hide. I wouldn’t like it, but it’s better than the alternative — that we do nothing, and we’re wrong. Then more businesses get broken into. More people have their livelihoods ransacked and ruined. And what if someone else loses their life in the process? Elsie Fogg might not be the last. Ca
n you live with that on your conscience?’
Jack looked at her. She could see his jaw clenching and unclenching as he ground his teeth. With a hand on one hip, he rubbed his chin with the other hand, rasping it against his stubble.
‘I’m going to get another coffee,’ he said. ‘You coming?’
22
Jack had spent much of the afternoon thinking about the evening. He’d planned to have Chrissie over to his place for a bottle of wine and a bite to eat, but he’d changed his mind. He needed a change of scenery to take his mind off the events of the day, so he’d texted her and asked if she’d like to go out instead. Thankfully, she agreed, so he called Alessandro’s and booked a table for two.
Mildenheath wasn’t exactly blessed with fine restaurants, and Alessandro’s was about as good as it got, which was fine. It was certainly a lot better than any of the burger joints or pub-grub chains that had sprung up across the town over the past couple of decades. There were more upmarket options in the surrounding towns and villages, of course, but tonight needed to be simple and relaxing. No worrying about who was going to drive or trying to order a cab home at the end of the night.
Alessandro’s was probably the most romantic of Mildenheath’s restaurants, too. Situated downstairs in what used to be a basement underneath — bizarrely enough — an entirely unrelated Italian eatery, it was full of the rustic charm of old Italy and had been a staple of Mildenheath’s high street for more than forty years.
The evening had gone exactly to plan, and the pair were relaxing admirably — not something either of them found easy to do under normal circumstances.
‘I’ve got to ask,’ he said, when the conversation fell quiet for a moment or two. ‘That thing about Miss Thompson and the caretaker…’
