The Anglesey Murders Box Set

by Conrad Jones

  When he got to the farm, he was surprised at how well it looked compared to the last time he’d been there. The farmhouse had new windows and doors fitted to it. Will wouldn’t entertain double-glazing. He was from the generation who wore more clothes if it was cold, even inside the house. The gates to the fields were galvanised metal as opposed to the old wooden five-bar gates Will built and maintained by hand. There were two new barns, new equipment, and a new Land Rover in front of the farmhouse. He could see other polycarbonate sheds across the fields. The farmyard used to be a mud bath full of geese; now it was concrete and clean. If Will Pinter was still living there, he’d had a personality bypass. Alan parked up and walked to the door. He knocked on it and waited. A shadow loomed at the end of the hallway and grew as it approached the door.

  ‘Hello,’ the large man, who opened the door said. He looked irritated at the intrusion.

  Alan showed him his warrant card. ‘I’m detective inspector Williams. I’m looking to speak to Will Pinter.’

  ‘You’ll struggle with that,’ the man said. ‘My uncle Will has been in Fairways for three years. He had a stroke in twenty fifteen. It was a bad one. He doesn’t know what day it is anymore, doesn’t recognise us when we visit. What do you need to talk to him about?’

  ‘He’s listed as the director of a property letting company called Sundown and we need to talk to whoever runs it.’

  ‘I’ve lost count of the number of phone calls I’ve made to them. He’s nothing to do with it anymore. That’s the name he used when he was renting out the lodges to tourists but that was years ago. People send brochures for all kinds of stuff addressed to Uncle Will. Someone has nicked the name of the company and are using his identity. Probably avoiding paying tax. If you find out who it is, lock them up, will you.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. I didn’t get your name,’ Alan said. He thought the reason for using Sundown as a front was far more sinister than avoiding the taxman.

  ‘Gar,’ the man said.

  ‘Thanks for your time, Gar.’

  ‘No problem,’ Gar said, closing the door.

  Alan walked back to the BMW and checked his phone. The screen was clear. He climbed in and drove towards town, dialling Dafyd Thomas on the way.

  ‘Hello, Alan,’ Dafyd said. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m chasing shadows.’

  ‘Are you catching any?’

  ‘Do you remember a farmer called Will Pinter?’ Alan asked. ‘He farmed at Caer Rhos, at the bottom of the mountain in Llaingoch.’

  ‘Yes. I remember him, why?’

  ‘Something isn’t right at the Caernarvon Castle motel. I think it’s a front for money laundering and the company maintaining the place is listed as Sundown Property Management, owned by Will Pinter.’

  ‘He’ll be getting on now, won’t he?’

  ‘He’s in Fairways, has been for three years.’

  ‘And you think it’s connected to our UCs being killed?’

  ‘They were staying there. It’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be. Jarvis and McGowan were professionals, highly skilled operatives. Staying there may have been their downfall. They inadvertently walked into the hornet’s nest. We’ll keep digging until we find who’s behind it.’ He paused for thought. ‘I think you need to speak to Hunt about it. We might be treading on Operation Thor.’

  ‘I’ll fill him in when he calls. If they’d known about the Caernarvon Castle, they would have told us to leave it alone. Carry on as normal unless we hear otherwise,’ Dafyd said. ‘How’s the search at Penrhos going?’

  ‘The divers are searching and the coast guard are helping out. Officially he’s still missing, unofficially we’re looking for a body.’

  ‘You’re positive?’

  ‘Absolutely no doubt about it. There’s a lot of blood. Someone was dragged from the path into the sea. The evidence is clear.’

  ‘Another murder. It’s like living in Midsomer. What the hell is going on this week?’

  ‘There’s something in the water,’ Alan said. ‘Better to stay off the island for a while.’ Dafyd agreed. Alan thought about his next words carefully. ‘I want to move our investigation to Holyhead Station.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The impact of fifty detectives landing in town will rattle a few cages. I think it will create chatter that might help us. It will certainly help Operation Thor if people start to get nervous. I bet their audio surveillance will be interesting to listen to if we set up there.’

  ‘It would certainly put the cat among the pigeons. Logistically it makes sense.’

  ‘All we’ll need is a new kettle. Everything else is there. It makes perfect sense to me. You know what Holyhead is like; it will be the talk of the town in every shop, pub, club, and bookies.’

  ‘Alan,’ Dafyd tried to get a word in.

  ‘It will also give the public some confidence that we’re reacting to the recent murders quickly and efficiently. People will be frightened in their own homes. We need to show a presence and I think it would benefit the public and the investigation.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ Dafyd said. ‘Only I can’t get a word in edgeways.’

  ‘Sorry. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.’

  ‘I can tell. It’s a good idea for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. When are you thinking of switching?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Bob Dewhurst and get him to shift some of the desks into the operations room. Anything else you need, let me know.’

  ‘Thanks, Dafyd,’ Alan said. ‘I’ve asked Kim to contact Mon Radio and set up an appeal to anyone who was at Penrhos after four o’clock. I know you’ve been on Mon FM a few times. Is there any chance you could pull some strings?’

  ‘Kim has already called me. I’ve made a few calls and they’re going to make an appeal every half an hour with the news and weather.’

  ‘Perfect. Thank you.’

  ‘No problem. Any progress on the Jarvis and McGowan investigation?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve recovered a quantity of staged buys from their van. They were very thorough at cataloguing who they bought from and where. Pamela is putting a list together. It will give us the name of every dealer they bought from while they were on the island. I think it will point us towards whoever fingered them as undercovers. It will certainly narrow it down.’

  ‘Good work. That’s a breakthrough. Are you heading back?’

  ‘I’m on my way. We’ve got an update briefing at eight.’

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  CHAPTER 33

  Kim turned onto an industrial park on the outskirts of Cemaes Bay. The satnav told her she’d reached her destination but she couldn’t see the building she was looking for. She checked the unit number and drove on. Most of the units were abandoned, used tyres and rusty oil drums spotted the empty car parks. A static caravan business was thriving on the biggest unit, like an oasis in a desert of decay. Caravans of all shapes and sizes were stacked three high. Next door, a mechanic was busy fixing motorbikes. He looked up and stared at her as she drove past. The last unit on the left was the one she was looking for. A ‘To Let’ sign was fixed above the roller shutters. She parked on the forecourt and climbed out, leaving the engine running. There was no one around to steal her car. She walked up to the reception and tried the door. It was locked and the lights were turned off. A poster in the window advertised industrial laundry services, washing, ironing, and delivery. She peered through the window and looked inside. The reception desk was unmanned. There was a diary and a pot of pens on it. She took out her mobile and dialled the number on the poster. It rang and switched to voicemail, instructing her to leave a name and number, which she did, leaving out the fact she was a police officer. She had a feeling it might put off the owners of the business from calling her back.

  Kim looked inside again but couldn’t see what was in the storage area beyond the office. The adjoining door was ajar but not enough for
her to see inside. She walked across the forecourt to the roller shutters and tried to peer between the slats but it was too dark inside to see anything. A noise came from around the corner. It was the sound of breaking glass. Kim walked towards it. The land adjacent to the unit was overgrown. The brambles were chest height. She stepped over a large tractor tyre and followed the noise. Another smash made her jump. It was coming from the rear of the building. She tiptoed to the corner and looked around, trying to step lightly. The source of the noise became clear immediately.

  ‘Hey!’ Kim shouted. The kids froze and looked at her. They had a milk crate full of bottles and they were systematically smashing them with bricks. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that here.’

  ‘Who says?’ one of the kids said.

  Kim showed her warrant card. ‘I do. Bugger off home.’

  The kids ran, weaving through the brambles with practised ease. She noticed a small window in the back wall and looked inside. It was a small kitchenette with a water heater on the wall above a sink. There were two mugs on the draining board. It looked clean and well maintained but told her nothing about what went on inside. Kim made her way around the unit to her car. She sighed as she climbed in and decided to go back to the motorcycle mechanic and ask him a few questions. He was tinkering with the seat of a Harley Davidson when she pulled up. She turned the engine off and climbed out.

  ‘Hello, officer,’ the mechanic said, as she approached.

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ Kim asked.

  ‘I’ve always been able to spot you lot a mile away,’ he said, laughing. His tattooed hands were black with oil. A hand-rolled cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, where his grey beard was stained brown with tar. ‘Before I started fixing bikes, I used to steal them. That’s a long time ago, though.’

  ‘How long have you been trading here?’

  ‘Fifteen years. I had a place in Benllech for ten years but the rent kept going up. This place is empty, as you can see. The council don’t charge us any business rates as an incentive to stay trading here. I saw you nosing around the laundry. What’s the interest with that place?’

  ‘I need to speak to the owners,’ Kerry said. ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘Nope. I’ve seen a woman coming and going in a little red van. I don’t think they have much business yet. It’s early days, I suppose.’

  ‘How long have they been there?’

  ‘A couple of months.’

  ‘This might seem like an odd question but have you actually seen any laundry, you know, being delivered?’

  ‘There were a few deliveries when they first moved in. I saw machines being fitted and bales of linen and towels being delivered.’

  ‘Washing machines?’

  ‘I’m not an expert but it looked like a big washing machine and a drier, industrial stuff. But there hasn’t been much activity there since.’

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ Kim said. ‘Much appreciated.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Kerry drove to Caernarfon, frustrated but not surprised. She was none the wiser as to whether the laundry was in fact a commercial laundry or part of an elaborate money laundering operation. Laundering the cash was a simple theory, which would have gone unnoticed had it not been for the murder of the motel guests. Proving it was a front for something more sinister, was not as simple as it seemed. The owners were hiding behind legitimate looking facades and they needed to dig deeper to find out who they were.

  She reached the station and walked into the briefing with fifteen minutes to spare.

  ‘We’re all here, so let’s crack on,’ Alan said, bringing the room to attention. ‘What’s the latest from Penrhos?’

  ‘Still no body, guv. The coast guard and divers have stopped searching until sun-up tomorrow. CSI have identified a size-ten boot print on the mudflats and another near the tree. They’re saying it’s a generic sole used by a variety of manufacturers. Tracking it is virtually impossible. If we get something to match it to, we can use it,’ one of the team said. ‘They also confirmed the blood is Brian Hindley’s—it matches DNA samples taken from Mr Hindley’s home.’

  ‘Okay. Have any witnesses come forward?’

  ‘Four people so far, all there after four o’clock but none of them saw anything untoward. Two of them remember a woman walking a chocolate Labrador in the woods. We’ve got another three to follow up on.’

  ‘Okay good work. Simon, what have you and Kerry been up to?’

  ‘We’ve got a very unwilling workmate coming in tomorrow morning with his solicitor. We went back to the Jaguar plant and spoke to his workmates. There was an incident six years ago which resulted in two men being sent down for possession with intent. Kelvin Adams, his colleague Glen Price, and his boss Barry Trent were all interviewed in connection with conspiracy. We spoke to a sergeant at the local nick who remembers it happening. He’s going to locate the interview notes if he can and let us have them. They might help. We can’t tell if it has anything to do with the Adam’s murder until we get Price to open up. He’s acting very squirrely.’

  ‘Possession with intent,’ Alan said, thinking. ‘Mrs Adams didn’t mention that. Alice. Speak to Pamela Stone. Ask her to retest Kelvin Adam’s vehicle, specifically for cocaine.’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘Retest the body too,’ he added.

  ‘Guv?’ Alice looked confused.

  ‘How do people carry drugs on their person?’ Alan said.

  ‘Internally,’ Alice said.

  ‘Exactly right. Adams was found naked and we recovered his clothes from a toilet block. He may have been removing drugs from his backside. We might be way off but now we have a link to drugs we have to test everything again.’

  ‘Do you think he was a courier?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I don’t think anything for sure but it’s possible. He made the journey every month regardless of the weather. It may have been a delivery run.’

  ‘Are we linking the murders, guv?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Not yet, but we can keep an open mind. We have no motive for Adam’s murder except that he bumped into a random killer. What’s more likely?’

  ‘We’ve got the initial findings back for McGowan and Jarvis,’ Kim said. ‘The cause of death was drowning. Their shoulders were dislocated, indicating that they were hung from something, arms above their head. They both suffered broken bones and multiple stab wounds—their feet were badly burned, probably with a blowtorch.’

  ‘Jarvis and McGowan were staying at the Caernarfon Castle, which those of you who worked at Holyhead will remember fondly as the pub at the back of the station,’ Alan said. ‘It’s been converted into a motel. They were the only two guests yet the other rooms were serviced daily. There’re no televisions and no Internet. At first glance, it looks like a genuine motel but it’s nothing more than a façade. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Money laundering?’ Alice asked.

  ‘We think so. The company who owns it are registered in Guernsey and the management company here is listed as Sundown, run by a man who has been in a nursing home for three years. He can’t speak let alone run a business.’

  ‘And I checked out the laundry company who services the motel and it doesn’t appear to be a functioning commercial laundry. One of the local traders on the estate said a woman turns up occasionally in a red van. We need the registration of the van and we need to speak to her. I’ll look into getting the utility bills for the unit to see if they’re using electric and water at the rate a legitimate laundry would.’

  ‘Pamela Stone recovered some staged buys in the UCs’ van and they were very thorough in cataloguing who they bought from. Shortly, we’ll have a list of everyone they bought drugs from while they’ve been on the island. I want every single one of them brought in and rattled. We need to know who they work for, how long they have worked for them and what they remember about McGowan and Jarvis being in Holyhead.’ A murmur of excitement rippled through the room. ‘Very importantly, we’re going
to relocate the investigation to Holyhead nick so we can round up the dealers with ease, bring them in, lock them up, and sit on them until they give us something. Word will spread around town very quickly and people will start talking. When they do, we’ll be listening. If whoever killed the Matrix officers is in town, we’ll flush them out. In the meantime, I’m going to ask Dafyd to go public on the drug find. We want them to know we’re coming. They’ll panic and make mistakes. I want you to squeeze as much information out of them as you can.’

  ‘When are we starting in Holyhead, guv?’

  ‘Tomorrow. We’ll meet at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and share out the names on Pamela’s lists. It will be a busy day so go home and get some rest.’

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  He stood and watched his mother sleeping. Her breathing irritated him. No, it was more than irritation, it was anger. Her breathing angered him. He wondered how long it would continue. In and out, in and out. The air rasped in her throat. A muscle in her cheek twitched, making her mouth turn up at the corner. He wondered what dreams she had. She never spoke of her dreams, never had—and she’d never asked him about his, not even as a child. It was probably better that she hadn’t. If she had known the truth of what went through his mind, she might have smothered him in his bed as a child. The darkness inside him had always been there and had grown with him, festering and poisoning his soul.

  He remembered the first time he felt the urge to kill. It was on the breakwater when he was just twelve-years old. His friend Callum was fishing with an orange handline while he watched the yachts bobbing in the marina. They were sitting on the edge, their legs dangling. There was a fifteen-feet drop from the lower level of the breakwater into the marina which was flat and calm. On the other side, it was a much longer drop into the sea, which was rough that day. Occasionally, a wave crashed over the top and they had to keep moving to avoid being soaked. Wave dodging was all part of the adventure. Callum was sticking bacon onto his hook to attract the crabs and conger eels and he remembered wanting to hit him with a rock. He wanted to hit him over the head with a rock and push him into the water to watch him drown. There was nowhere to climb out, even if you could and he yearned to watch him tire and sink beneath the surface. He remembered the desire like it was yesterday; it was almost erotic. Callum had no idea what he was doing when he wandered off to find a rock suitable for the job, nor did he realise that catching an eel had saved his life. A second later and the rock would have cracked his skull but he hooked it at just the right time. He pulled the eel from the marina and it wriggled and squirmed desperate to be free of the hook. It was a big eel, as thick as the boy’s wrists at least and its jaws snapped open and closed, razor-sharp teeth exposed. Callum landed it but the eel wriggled towards him, almost biting his bare legs. He dropped the handline and ran as fast as his legs would carry him and ran straight into a wave. Callum was saturated and stood with water dripping from his chin. The eel wriggled over the edge and dropped into the water, diving deep to freedom and the boys laughed so hard, he thought he would pee in his pants. When the laughter subsided, the urge to kill his friend had gone and he tossed the rock into the harbour. It was the strangest feeling. The anticipation he’d felt as he approached with the rock in his hand, had felt like nothing he’d felt before. It was an awakening within him and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it would return. He wanted it to return and when it did, he welcomed it like an old friend.