What Falls Between the Cracks

by Robert Scragg

  May God forgive me.

  N.B.

  He grabbed a pad of paper from his desk and read the note a second time, jotting down a few thoughts as he went. Once he’d finished, he placed it back in the file and reached for the collection of photographs. There were six of them, all A4 size glossy prints, the sharpness of the colour slightly faded. The first few were taken from around ten feet away, and showed the body in situ. Nathan Barclay had sat down against the wall before he pulled the trigger. Porter found that curious. It wasn’t as if he would feel any pain by the time his head hit the floor had he stood, but it was hard to say what thoughts were going through someone’s mind when they’d got to that stage in the decision-making process. He’d also taken off his suit jacket, and folded it neatly by his side, positioning the note on top of it. Other pictures showed the scene from several angles, two of them showing close-ups of the entry and exit wounds.

  Barclay had a key ring with him that included a master key to this and several other warehouses nearby. He’d used this to let himself in, and there was no suggestion that anyone else had been there at the time. The investigating officers at the time had also included in their report a cursory line of enquiry into Barclay’s business and finances as a possible motive for his actions. According to their notes, Atlas Holdings was a haulage firm operating nationally through the UK. It had been started by Barclay’s father back in the forties, just after the end of World War Two. It had run into financial difficulties at the start of the eighties and had been bought by Locke & Winwood in April 1983.

  Porter stopped when he read about the sale. It didn’t say anything else about Locke & Winwood or what they did. He realised he’d forgotten to ask Mary Locke about whether her husband was involved in the business, and made a mental note to follow it up. Either way, it was intriguing that Natasha’s father sold his business the same month he committed suicide, and also around the same time she was last seen. A grouping of key events like that could be a coincidence, but there was a long way to go before he’d settle for that explanation.

  There was nothing at all in what he read that made him doubt the verdict of suicide, but the note was ambiguous enough to leave him with a list of questions. Was he referring to actual pain caused, or emotional distress?

  It has to stop here.

  What had to stop, and what had he actually done in the first place? Why had he singled out Natasha for a mention and not his son or ex-wife?

  God knows I tried.

  What had he tried? Did he mean he tried to stop himself doing whatever had happened to her, or was there something or someone else in play here? She had last been seen in the week leading up to his suicide, so if he was responsible for Natasha’s disappearance, why would he not give her stepmother and brother the peace they deserved and spell out her fate as part of his last words? If nothing else, Porter thought they were owed at least that.

  Gavin Locke kept his promise the following day, and the results that came back twenty-four hours later proved beyond any doubt that the hand did indeed belong to Natasha Barclay. Styles made a wisecrack about it only being a familial match and that there could be other siblings out there who had disappeared as well. Porter just shook his head and grimaced in mock disgust. He looked around and caught the eye of one of the junior officers across the room, beckoning him over. He gave him a hastily scribbled note with Natasha Barclay’s name and date of birth on, and sent him to check local hospitals to see how far back their records went.

  ‘I’ve been busy digging up some useful facts as well, though,’ said Styles. ‘You were right; there is a connection between Locke and Barclay. The company that bought Atlas Holdings lock, stock and barrel was owned by Alexander Locke, currently married to Mary Locke.’

  ‘What about Winwood?’ asked Porter. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He died back in the seventies, cancer of some sort. The company has been around for a while. Winwood set it up with Locke’s father and had no family, so Locke Senior ended up owning the whole thing. Locke Junior took over in the mid-seventies. Guess he kept Winwood’s name in out of respect or branding. They’re essentially an import-export business but do the whole lot themselves – the shipping, storage and distribution; they’re into everything from food and drink to electrical goods and clothes.’

  Porter nodded. Now he thought of it, the name was familiar for another reason aside from the connection to the case. Lorries bearing the Locke & Winwood logo could usually be spotted on motorways up and down the country.

  ‘Atlas ran up a tonne of debt and Locke stepped in and purchased it for the princely sum of a pound.’

  Porter’s eyes widened. ‘A pound?’

  ‘I see you’ve still not had the echo fixed yet. Yes, a pound. Don’t forget, though, he took on all the debt that came with the company for that pound. You’re looking at just over a million quid. You can multiply that by three for today’s equivalent.’

  ‘Sounds like a pretty shitty deal to me,’ said Porter. ‘Why the hell would you do a thing like that?’

  ‘Depends on the reason for the debts, I suppose, but buying a haulage firm like that gave Locke a national reach. Don’t forget that the assets would be worth something as well, the warehouses and lorries Atlas owned.’

  ‘Fair point,’ agreed Porter. ‘Interesting coincidence. Saves asking Mary Locke about the connection. We’ll still need to talk to both of them again now we know it’s Natasha, though.’

  ‘There’s someone else we should speak to first,’ said Styles.

  ‘You found someone else who knows Natasha Barclay?’

  ‘Nope, but we need to speak to Simmons.’

  ‘What’s she got to do with the case?’ asked Porter, looking confused.

  ‘It’s not just about our case. It’s about how ours has overlapped with hers.’

  Eve Simmons was a bright young thing who had joined fresh from university. Porter had used her as a dogsbody on a few cases in the past, but she had recently been promoted and moved across to the drugs squad within the Criminal Investigation Department. She was partnered up with Mike Gibson, a twenty-year veteran, who Porter knew by reputation. She was in safe hands, and would learn a lot from Gibson if she paid attention.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said Porter, sounding mildly confused.

  ‘Turns out Mr Locke is allegedly quite an interesting man, and I’m talking about the husband here, not the son.’

  ‘Only allegedly?’

  ‘Hedging my bets there. It turns out that Simmons and the rest of her merry band of men have been working their way up the food chain tackling our nation’s drug problem. They haven’t made any major arrests yet, but they’ve got a source on the inside of a major operation right here in our fair nation’s capital. They can’t prove it just yet, but Simmons believes Locke & Winwood, with their fleet of trucks and minor empire of warehouses, is responsible for a healthy slice of the heroin and cocaine supply in the UK.’

  ‘How close are they to making a case?’

  ‘The guy they have on the inside is one they busted for dealing. They offered him a deal to switch sides. It turns out he’s a warehouse manager for a company called Claremont Storage. They’ve got a load of warehouses down by the river. Containers come off the ships and sit in one of those places till they get picked up and dropped off wherever they’re destined for. They’ve got all sorts in there – TVs, washing machines, clothes – you name it.’

  ‘So how does that tie in with Locke?’ said Porter, getting impatient.

  ‘Claremont Storage is owned by Locke & Winwood. The goods they store come off Locke & Winwood boats, and when they leave the warehouses, they’re in Atlas Holdings trucks; Atlas Holdings of course being owned by—’

  ‘Locke & Winwood,’ said Porter, finishing the sentence for him.

  Styles nodded and flashed him a grin. ‘Knew you’d get there eventually. There’s more to it than just that, though. She’s upstairs now if you want the gory details?’

  ‘Lead the w
ay,’ said Porter, feeling the slight but unmistakable stirring in the pit of his stomach that the day was about to get a lot more interesting.

  Porter felt a twinge of satisfaction listening to Simmons rattling off the details of her case. Six months before she moved over to the drugs squad, she had once confided in him about the pressure she felt of trying to succeed in a male-dominated profession, but none of that showed now. Her update was short and to the point, not garnishing the facts with anything irrelevant or extraneous. Styles had long since made occasional wisecracks about her hero-worship of Porter bordering on a crush, and that a lesser man would have taken advantage of it long before now. It wasn’t that Porter found her unattractive; she had a look of Audrey Hepburn about her. Even allowing for the fact that on the job she was all business, favouring dark trouser suits, white blouses, with dark brown hair scraped back from her face into a tight ponytail, she turned more than a few heads when she walked into a room. His stock response was the old locker-room cliché of ‘you don’t shit where you eat’; inwardly, the thought of being with someone again, letting someone behind the barriers that had held those kinds of emotion in check since Holly, was still alien to him. He forced his mind not to wander and focused on her words.

  ‘So the guy we’ve flipped to work for us has done time already for possession. The problem he had this time was that he was greedy, and cut the coke with all sorts of weird and wonderful extras. Unfortunately for him, not all of his customers reacted too well to his new product. A twenty-year-old student from UCL ended up in the emergency ward and never woke up.’

  Porter shook his head softly as he listened and felt his cheeks flush with anger. It was bad enough that men like that peddled the stuff in the first place, but to put their customers’ lives in even more jeopardy than they already were was a level of selfishness that never failed to get a rise from him.

  ‘I take it we can prove he sold to the student?’ asked Styles.

  ‘Luckily for us, neither of them had spotted the CCTV camera in the club they were in, so yep, we’ve got him bang to rights,’ said Simmons, nodding. ‘He’s got a healthy fear of his employers, but the only option we gave, other than locking him up for manslaughter, was to work for us.’ She saw the look in Porter’s eyes at the idea of the student’s death going unpunished.

  ‘He’ll still go away for what he did,’ she said quickly. ‘We need to cut the head off the snake, though. Dealers like him are ten a penny. He’s given us some names and we’re going to wire him up when he goes to pick up his next delivery.’

  ‘So he’s giving us Locke?’ asked Porter.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Locke owns the lot, but Owen Carter – that’s our inside man – has only met him once and doesn’t deal with him direct.’

  ‘But we know Locke is involved?’

  ‘Jury’s out. We don’t know for sure, but we strongly suspect.’

  Porter had been perched on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, but sighed and sat back at her last comment. She sensed she was losing his interest.

  ‘We’ve got good grounds for the suspicion,’ she added. ‘Locke and his old man both have a chequered past. Locke did eighteen months for GBH when he was twenty, and his old man has form for smuggling goods into the country. Admittedly, his vice was cigarettes and alcohol back in the sixties, rather than Class A drugs, but still, they’re far from being whiter than white, and they know how to shift products below the radar.’

  Porter and Styles glanced at each other, their interests once again piqued. Simmons grabbed a sheet of paper from the printer by her desk and scribbled a name in the middle.

  ‘Carter picks up his monthly quota from a guy called Andrew Patchett. Patchett works for Claremont as well and runs the teams of security guards that patrol all their sites.’ She jabbed at his name on the page as she spoke.

  ‘There’re a dozen sites in total and Carter says Patchett controls distribution to a man in each of them – coke and heroin,’ she said, drawing twelve lines downwards from Patchett, with little boxes at the end of each. ‘And Patchett answers to James Bolton, who just happens to be head of security for Locke & Winwood.’

  ‘And let me guess,’ said Porter as she added Bolton’s name above Patchett’s, ‘Bolton answers to Locke.’

  ‘Got it in one,’ she said, flashing a triumphant smile at both of them, although Porter felt her gaze linger on him a split second longer than it seemed to on Styles.

  You’re imagining things, he thought. This is all just down to Styles and his constant piss-take.

  ‘Have we got anything linking Locke directly to either the product or those selling it, apart from the fact he owns the company, obviously?’ asked Porter. He suddenly felt warm and hoped to God he hadn’t betrayed his thoughts by blushing or popping out a stray bead of perspiration on his forehead.

  ‘Not directly,’ said Simmons. ‘He’s insulated himself with these layers.’ She pointed at the sequence of names and scribbles that now resembled a pyramid. ‘But Carter overheard Patchett and Bolton talking one time. He only caught the last part of the conversation, but Bolton was telling Patchett that Locke just wanted the problem fixing, and that the last thing Patchett would want is to have to explain himself to Locke personally. We don’t know what the problem was, but they both clammed up when they saw Carter, so we don’t see Locke being an innocent bystander here.’

  ‘So what’s your next move?’ asked Styles.

  ‘We’ve got eyes on all four but the plan is to work our way up one step at a time. Carter has agreed to wear a wire next time he collects from Patchett and will try to get close enough if he sees him and Bolton getting cosy again. Hopefully that gives us one or both of them, then we move on to Locke.’

  ‘Do we think Locke is definitely the top dog?’ asked Porter. ‘What if he’s just another link in a bigger chain?’

  ‘If we’re lucky and we get him, he’ll give up his overseas suppliers and we can pass that on to locals, whatever country there’re in, but as far as the UK goes, we’re pretty sure there’s nobody above him in the food chain. He owns the lot, and it’s a privately held company so he answers to no one.’

  ‘How much product do we think he’s shifting?’ asked Styles.

  ‘Our best guess is street value anywhere between eighty and a hundred million a year,’ said Simmons.

  ‘He keeps a hell of a low profile for a man heading up a national operation with numbers like that,’ said Styles, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

  Simmons shrugged. ‘That’s why we’d never heard of him until recently. He’s very careful. He doesn’t live beyond his means as a successful businessman and trusts very few people. Bolton is one.’ She tapped his name on the page and scribbled another down next to it. ‘Oliver Davies was another. He was head of operations for Locke & Winwood, whatever that meant. As far as we can tell he’s the only other man who ever had that kind of access to Locke.’

  ‘Had?’ asked Porter.

  ‘Carter told us he heard that Bolton and Davies grew up together, and threw in with Locke around the same time. Bolton’s around the same age your missing girl would have been now. Fifty-four, we think.’

  Past tense again, thought Porter. Was he the only one willing to maintain even the slimmest of hopes that she might still be alive?

  ‘They both did minor spells inside for assault when they were younger,’ Simmons continued, ‘but cleaned up their acts after that. With Bolton, it sounds horrible to say it but if it hadn’t been for the student dying we might never have had enough to start building a case. If even half the stories about him are true, then he’s not the kind of guy you want to get on the wrong side of. Trouble is that people who end up there tend to have a run of bad luck. Falling down stairs, tripping into traffic, that kind of thing.’

  ‘If he’s that bad a man, it could be him that’s in charge. He could just be using Locke’s premises to store the goods. As head of security he’ll have access to all areas. What’s to say he’s n
ot doing all this right under Locke’s nose?’

  Simmons nodded. ‘We haven’t ruled that out yet, but after what Carter overheard, we’re still leaning towards Locke.’

  ‘What about Davies?’ Styles asked.

  ‘Davies died back in 1983. He was found in his car, length of wire wrapped round his neck. No arrest made. Best guess is a run-in with a rival operation.’

  There was that year cropping up again, but Porter dismissed it for now. He was struggling to make the connection. Simmons had a solid case, at least for Carter and Patchett, but even if Locke was the shadowy figure they suspected, and it was a big if, Porter couldn’t join up the dots to link him to Natasha Barclay. No matter how bad a man he was, it didn’t change the fact that her father had killed himself, or that he’d left a note that was vague enough to make Porter wonder if he had a hand in his daughter’s disappearance.

  ‘So I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with us?’ said Styles. Porter found it a bit disconcerting how he did that sometimes, pre-empting his thoughts.

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ said Porter, smiling.

  ‘So, that mountain of debt Locke took on when he bought Barclay out? It turns out that Locke could well have been the cause of it in the first place.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Styles handed Porter a folder. ‘It’s all in here but I’ll give you the highlights. The debt was racked up in 1981. Atlas borrowed big when they were getting ready to expand. They bought new trucks, new warehouses, hired new staff, all to handle a new contract they had won. Turns out one of Barclay’s guys, a guy called Arnold Bembenek, had paid a few people off to make sure they won it, and the contract was declared void. Bembenek denied it and said he’d been set up, but they had a paper trail to prove it so they were left with the bill for all the new equipment and infrastructure but no contract.’