SHADOW CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  His nephew’s eyes were shining with excitement. That’s the problem with big city living, Mickey thought. You never get to do simple things like this. He settled back in his small canvas chair. This was the life, even on a chilly January morning. He’d ensured that his young nephew was well wrapped up against the cold. He was down from Birmingham for a week’s convalescence after surgery, and it wouldn’t do for him to get chilled.

  His rod twitched, and he started reeling in. A grey mullet soon lay in the plastic bag beside them and it wasn’t long before Jamie was pulling in another, larger than the first.

  ‘Well done, Jamie. We’ve made a good start. Definitely fish and chips for tea tonight. Your Aunt Nikki cooks great chips, you’ll see.’

  The two anglers had caught several more fish by mid-morning, including a cod landed by young Jamie, but once the tide had turned, all fish activity seemed to cease.

  ‘We’ll give it another half hour, then we’ll pack up,’ Mickey said. ‘The fish’ll move out to deeper water with the tide.’

  Jamie was getting a little bored by now. ‘Can I use your binoculars, Uncle Mickey?’

  He scanned the horizon, then looked along the shoreline.

  ‘There’s something in a pool along there,’ he said, pointing at a spot a hundred yards or so to the west. ‘It’s big.’

  Mickey took the binoculars from his nephew and focussed on the spot he’d indicated. What was that, lying pale and glistening in the rock pool? He adjusted the focus and gave a jolt. He began to feel rather sick.

  * * *

  Sophie Allen brought her car to a stop at the end of the clifftop track and climbed out. She tied a scarf around her neck, pulled on a pair of gloves and, with Barry Marsh beside her, hurried across to the vehicles clustered in the small turning area at the end of the track.

  Two uniformed officers were standing at the top of the rocky slope, and they straightened up as the detectives approached.

  ‘Bit chilly up here,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Not so much down below, ma’am,’ said a young WPC. ‘They’re down on a shelf that faces south east. It’s out of the wind. We’ve got the body under a rough awning to protect it.’

  ‘You know what I’m going to ask you, don’t you? Is it her? Andrea Ford?’

  ‘I’m pretty certain it is. But she’s been in the water so . . . Down there, ma’am.’ The constable pointed to a little-used path leading over the crest in front of her. ‘It’s a man and his young nephew who spotted the body. The lad’s about twelve. They were here fishing. They’re sheltering behind those rocks down there. We asked if they wanted to wait in a car but the man said he’d rather be in the fresh air. They’re okay. They had a flask of hot chocolate with them, and they’re both well wrapped up, so I expect they’ve kept warm enough. The boy’s on a convalescent break, he had surgery last week to remove a cyst. I’ll come down with you. I only came up here because I heard you were on your way.’

  On reaching the rock shelf, Sophie had a quick word with the two anglers sheltering in the lee of the cliff with another officer, who was nibbling one of their biscuits. She and Barry then hurried across to the rock pool area, where a white nylon awning swayed in the breeze. Another two uniformed constables were standing guard. Sophie and Barry bent forward and went inside. The body lay face down in the pool, her blonde hair a tangled soggy mess. The clothes were just as Osman had described them: a black leather jacket, claret skinny-fit trousers, one leg now stained and torn, and black ankle boots. There were no obvious signs of severe physical injuries, so it didn’t look as though she’d fallen or been pushed from the clifftop. Her face had undergone the usual water-induced changes, but as far as they could see, this was Andrea.

  ‘She may not have been in the water for more than a few hours, ma’am,’ Barry said. ‘I’ve been based on the coast for years, so I’ve seen a fair number of drowning victims. I never met Andrea, so I can’t really say for sure, but the skin deterioration is not that great. An expert will tell you more, but my guess is that she wasn’t in the sea more than half a day. Could be a lot less. So how did she get there?’

  ‘Chucked off a boat, maybe? And left to struggle in freezing January seawater. I wonder if the currents brought her in, and she’s been among these rocks for a day or more.’ Sophie straightened up. ‘It’s what we always thought, Barry. She’s probably been dead since soon after she vanished. Poor woman. We’ll need to wait for Benny to get to work for more information. If she was lucky, they drugged her first, so she wasn’t aware of what was happening.’

  ‘You don’t think it could have been suicide?’

  ‘Not Andrea Ford, no,’ Sophie said firmly. ‘Believe me, she had a pretty strong sense of self-preservation. And why was her car torched? We’ll consider suicide as an option because we have to, we wouldn’t be doing our job properly otherwise, but the chances are low, simply because of what happened to Quigley at the weekend. He’s her information source. He’s found murdered, and two days later she goes missing, and ends up dead here. No, I think we need to do another big push in the town, looking for witnesses to what happened on Monday night when she left that wine bar. Someone must have seen her walk to the car park, surely?’

  She looked around at the grey sea, now flecked with white in the strengthening breeze. Two cormorants scudded low across the wave tops and disappeared from view around the next headland.

  ‘What a place to die, out here in the freezing water. Whatever she was up to, she didn’t deserve this. I’ll have them, Barry. Everyone involved. I’ll have the lot of them.’

  * * *

  ‘What are your thoughts, Benny?’ Sophie asked. She and Barry had been watching from a distance while the senior pathologist examined Andrea Ford’s body. He got to his feet and indicated to his junior that the corpse was ready to be moved.

  ‘She drowned, as far as I can tell. I’ll be examining her lungs back in the theatre, which will tell me more of course, but that’s what it looks like. Though you’ll be interested to know that she has a few bruises around her face and arms. They’re from a couple of hours before death, judging from the stage they’ve reached.’

  ‘Can you make a guess as to how long she’s been in the water?’

  Benny frowned. ‘It’s a bit tricky because if she’s been in this pool a while, she’ll have been exposed to water and air in turn as the tide’s been in and out. But it’s pretty clear that it’s been a day at least, possibly longer. I should be in a position to get you a more accurate idea after the PM. It is her, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s our Andrea lying there. What you’ve said ties in with her being killed on Monday night. Maybe knocked about a bit, brought out in a boat and chucked overboard.’

  ‘You need to have a closer look at this.’ Very gently, Benny lifted Andrea’s right hand. Sophie and Barry bent forward to look.

  ‘There’s something wrong with her little finger,’ Barry said. ‘It looks misshapen.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s been broken. I don’t mean snapped. It looks as though it’s been crushed by a rock or hammer. It’s a mess, but of course any blood has been washed away by the water.’

  Sophie began to feel nauseous. ‘Is there any way it could have been caused accidentally?’

  ‘That was my first thought — until I saw this.’ Benny reached across the body and raised the other hand. The little finger was damaged in exactly the same way.

  ‘So someone crushed those fingers prior to her death? Can you tell if that’s the sequence?’ Sophie said.

  ‘I can’t be totally sure until I do the full PM, but that’s the way it looks.’

  ‘That poor, bloody woman,’ Sophie said. ‘What a way for her life to end. This should never have happened. Somehow she was allowed to get herself into this position. She probably never fully realised just how vulnerable she was.’

  Benny saw the resolve in her eyes. ‘You’re taking this personally, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not in the way you mean. I didn’t kno
w her. But she was a cop, Benny. She was one of us. We have a rule when this happens. No mercy. Total effort, with no let-up until we find the killers. The whole system swings into action, from the chief constable to the copper on the beat. I may be the SIO but I’ll get all the backing and resources I need. And everyone above me, from the Home Secretary down, will be watching.’

  ‘I don’t envy you.’

  She answered quietly. ‘No, that part’s fine. They’ll all be very supportive. The people you’ve got to feel sorry for are the ones who should have been looking out for her and keeping her safe. If they’d been doing their jobs properly she’d have never got herself into such a dangerous situation. I haven’t told you this, by the way. Forget it instantly. It’s for police ears only.’

  The three of them left the tent. Benny made his way towards the cliff path after the rest of his team. Sophie and Barry walked towards the two people waiting in the lee of the rocks.

  ‘Time to have our chat with the anglers,’ Sophie said. ‘They’ll remember today for a long time to come.’

  ‘I think we all will,’ Barry said. ‘Unfortunately.’

  Chapter 17: Data Analysis

  Thursday Afternoon

  ‘Am I glad to see you, Rae. Our team just isn’t the same without your input.’

  Sophie, Barry, Rae and Matt Silver were sitting around a table in a small conference room, the door firmly shut. Rae glowed — grateful for her boss’s kind words, but also because she’d been worried about her future. She’d been concerned about what might happen at the VCU following Sophie’s promotion, but there was little change as yet.

  She lifted a folder out of her bag and spread the contents across the desk. ‘It took us two days, but we’ve done as much as we could. Ameera helped me isolate the base data, and then I just got on with it. I’ve spotted some discrepancies. None of them are particularly meaningful in isolation but, taken together, a different pattern shows up. It’ll take me about half an hour to explain. Is that okay, ma’am?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We made a chart showing every time Andrea accessed any data, every log she completed, every document she wrote. At first glance, nothing seems to connect, does it? It’s just columns of isolated figures. But then we thought we’d correlate the different sets of data, and a few surprising things came out.’

  Rae pointed to a set of graphs. ‘Every Wednesday afternoon her mileage claim was pretty well the same, and it continued like this for months. The other days showed the usual variations. Her mobile phone usage was pretty random, as you might expect, but not on a Wednesday. Then, there were very few calls, with one particular mobile number cropping up frequently. And look at this. Very little document activity or database access on a Wednesday afternoon.’

  She turned another page. ‘What we have here is an analysis of her contribution to investigations involving the whole team. Pretty standard in the main, but check this item. When it came to CID work on gambling, nightclubs and the like — the type of stuff that used to be called vice — her contribution was minimal. She was clearly involved, because the log records her as being part of the teams, but her input was zero.’

  ‘Was she trying to spike those investigations?’ Matt Silver asked.

  Rae frowned. ‘It’s hard to say, sir, from the data. She might have had negative feelings about the work, so she didn’t feel like making a contribution.’

  She turned another page. ‘This shows a rough breakdown of her use of the PNC for general background information. At first glance it looks pretty standard, but if you look closer it shows a high level of access to records of suspects involved in racist activity and ultra-nationalism — far right groups and the like. And that doesn’t match up to what she was officially working on.’

  ‘But we know she was working on her own a lot. Not quite undercover, but given a free rein,’ Sophie said. ‘Wouldn’t that explain it?’

  ‘But in that case, ma’am, wouldn’t someone know? If it was official, I mean. Who was she reporting to? And anyway, to me it didn’t look systematic. It looked more like general browsing, just out of interest, not like when we use the PNC during an investigation. Her other uses of the PNC were much more targeted.’

  ‘When was this browsing?’ Barry asked. ‘Was there a pattern to it?’

  Rae smiled at him. ‘That’s just it. When it happened, it was always on a Wednesday morning.’

  Rae stopped speaking. The stunned silence seemed to last for a long time.

  ‘And there was me complaining that we didn’t have any meaningful leads,’ Sophie said. ‘Does this point to what I think it does? That Andrea wasn’t just a bit lazy and disorganised, but might have been up to no good? Matt, am I wrong here?’

  Silver shook his head. ‘That’s the obvious interpretation. There could be others but, in the end, data like this doesn’t lie.’

  ‘What was the mobile number she was calling on a Wednesday?’ Barry asked. ‘We ought to follow it up right now.’

  ‘Be cautious, Barry. Find out about it but don’t make a call until we’re ready. This stuff is just for the four of us. We don’t know how much some of the others knew about what she was up to. I just pray it was only her, but we have to tread carefully until we know for sure. We certainly need to get to the bottom of what she was up to on Wednesdays, but we should proceed very cautiously until we know what we’re dealing with.’

  Matt Silver stood up. ‘I’m off to see the chief constable. I have no idea what she’s going to make of it, but she has to be told in case we’re heading into security services territory without realising it.’ He paused. ‘That was really solid work, Detective Constable. It needs to be kept totally under wraps. You’ve given us a lead into something that we didn’t even know existed. Even now, we don’t know exactly what it is. But it explains something, I think. Why she might have been killed when things started to go wrong.’

  ‘We may have to bring in Lydia Pillay, Matt. I’m wondering if it was her leaning on Andrea for information about the prison smuggling that set all this off. I’ll give her a bell to see if she’s made any more progress on it. Maybe our two investigations are converging. And, Rae, what the DCS has said is absolutely right. When I sent you up to HQ with Ameera, I had no idea that you’d turn up anything like this. I’m speechless. Well, almost.’ Sophie grinned. ‘Where did you get the idea from?’

  Rae smiled. ‘It was Craig, my boyfriend. He was telling me about his brother, who seems to be a maths genius and works in data analytics. Apparently, he told Craig that you can come up with all kinds of correlations if you use the right queries. I just thought I’d give it a go.’

  ‘Does Ameera know what you’ve done with the data?’

  Rae shook her head. ‘She wasn’t with me when I did the analysis. But she might guess.’

  ‘Okay,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with her after I’ve seen the chief. She ought to be told how sensitive this material is. Sophie, you need to work out where we go from here, and how we take the investigation in a new direction without making it too obvious to the Weymouth team. Rae, you’ve done a great job here. Well done.’ He hurried out of the room.

  Sophie winked at her young assistant. ‘A bottle of bubbly for you when this is all over. So, this is what we do in the short term. Barry and I will pay another visit to Bruce Pitman. Surely he must have known about some of this? Rae, I’ve got some of the local uniforms out looking for the boat that might have taken Andrea to her death. Could you check up on whether they’ve traced it yet? When they do, you’ll have to pay a visit to wherever it’s kept. Maybe it’ll still be there. If not, we’ll need to know when it was last seen and start a search for it. Get the details of how often it was out on the water. Barry, once we’ve seen Pitman, we’ll need to check on how Lydia’s been getting on and bring her up to speed. It would be better if she came across here. Can you arrange it before we leave?’

  * * *

  Chrissie, Bruce Pitman’s wife, was in the front g
arden in her wellingtons, tidying one of the flower beds. Secateurs in hand, she looked up at their approach.

  ‘Bringers of bad news, I suppose,’ she said. ‘He’s devastated, you know. I’ve never seen him so withdrawn. Her disappearance has really shaken him.’

  ‘Her body’s been found, Chrissie,’ Sophie said. ‘Is it alright if I call you Chrissie? In a way, I’m glad we can speak to you first. Bruce seems to find it hard to cope with me in charge. Whenever I speak to him, he comes across kind of resentful, but confused as well. He can’t seem to step out of the role he’s constructed for himself. Is there some way I can avoid having to pull rank on him? I don’t enjoy being confrontational with fellow officers, and I know what a good guy he is underneath.’

  ‘Is he?’ Chrissie said. ‘I don’t know what to think any more. I could probably forgive and forget if it had been a simple brief fling with someone nice. But her? She was so . . . so obvious. So shallow. I mean, what was he thinking getting involved with her to that extent? I bloody hate her, to be honest. We met at various functions, and I never liked her then. I warned him what she was like. Now look at the state he’s in. We’re in, both of us.’ She sighed. ‘At least I’ve still got my work to occupy me. I’m on duty this weekend, which is why I’ve got today off. Isn’t there anything you can give him to do? He’s driving himself mad in there.’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘It’s out of my hands. She was blackmailing him, according to what he told us. Now she’s turned up dead. He has to stay suspended until we’re sure he wasn’t involved. Even then, we have to find out more about her behaviour, and that’s why we’re here now. I don’t enjoy this, Chrissie, no matter what you or he thinks. There’ll be a separate inquiry by a professional standards team, and they’ll be a lot nastier than me.’