by Iain Cameron
‘Morning, Angus,’ Grafton Rawlings, the pathologist, said without looking up. ‘What we have here is two people dead, man and wife I’m told, and even your dog, if you had one, could tell you the cause of death.’
‘Aye, I agree,’ Henderson said looking at the mess of blood spray on both pillows and the duvet, and the floor littered with spent shell cases. ‘What time do you think it happened?’
‘Two thirty-seven in the morning.’
‘You’re not usually so precise in your estimations, Mr Rawlings, at least not until you’ve done the P-M.’
‘I can be in this instance as one of the bullets hit the male victim’s watch. It stopped at two thirty-seven.’
A few minutes later, Henderson moved away from the bed and surveyed the scene.
‘What do you think, Vicky?’ he asked DS Neal as they both looked around the room, looking for something to make sense of what lay at its centre. This vision of sudden death and violence contrasted sharply with the more sedate view outside of vines rustling in the light breeze, visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
‘Speaking to the housekeeper, they sound like an ordinary hard-working couple. If I didn’t know better, and going by the way they died, I would think they worked for the mob. They’ve run away with a bag full of dope or a bundle of money and the hitmen sent out to kill them have done what they came for.’
THREE
Henderson walked towards the whiteboard, eating the remains of a sausage roll and drinking a cup of coffee. Probably the best he could hope for this Sunday evening in place of a customary cooked dinner. This little ritual of a decent meal on a Sunday night started when he lived with Rachel. If he wanted it to continue, he would have to learn to cook it and also to be there to eat it.
He turned to face the murder team seated around the conference table. Some familiar faces were missing due to the holiday of DS Carol Walters, and DC Phil Bentley nursing a wound he’d received on active service. This made a change as more often it was due to something he’d picked up on the rugby field.
‘Evening everyone,’ Henderson said, wiping his hands on a napkin, a feeble gesture as the thin serviette was no match for the greasy sausage roll.
‘I’m assuming you’ve all heard about the shooting at Black Quarry Farm last night, or to be more accurate, early this morning. If you haven’t, I’ll give you a quick recap. John and Lara Beech, a middle-aged couple from Crawley, were killed with multiple bullet wounds each as they lay in their bed on the first night of a week-long holiday. Judging by the number of bullet wounds and spent shell cases, it suggests two gunmen.’
‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ DC Deepak Sunderam said. ‘If this was the work of professionals, like a mob hit team, wouldn’t they take the spent cases with them?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it too,’ Henderson said. ‘I can only suggest the gunmen must have considered the weapons untraceable, perhaps from a newly imported batch, or they had never been used in a crime before. Best guess is they came from some form of machine pistol, such as a MAC or Uzi. The shells are with ballistics and when they’re finished we’ll know for sure.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Now,’ Henderson continued, ‘I don’t need to tell you how we approach this, but let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. The reason for their deaths must lie with the victims. Something in their past, present, or future has brought this down on them. Our job is to find the reason, and I believe this will lead us to the shooters. Before I say any more, Vicky, why don’t you update us on your meeting with Kayleigh Beech.’
‘Right, guv. Kayleigh is the twenty-seven-year-old only child of John and Lara. She is a family solicitor specialising in divorce and works for a large firm of solicitors in Redhill. She is, as you would expect, devastated to learn of the death of her parents and kept repeating “why them, why them?”’
‘Poor girl.’
‘The main reason I suspect she said it,’ Neal said, ‘is she believes her parents to be ordinary, no different from anyone you would find in the street, or the place where they worked. Lara Beech, Kayleigh’s mother, sang soprano in a local choir, and her father was a stalwart in the local photographic club. They rarely went abroad, preferring to rent a cottage in the Lake District.’
‘They sound almost too ordinary,’ Henderson said, ‘as if it was a manufactured front.’
‘Could be,’ Neal said. ‘When I worked in Manchester, we prosecuted a guy for bigamy. He was married to two different women and maintained two quite distinct lives.’
‘Aye, you’ve all heard of foreign spies during the war giving away all manner of state secrets to the enemy, yet duping local people into believing they were the jolly butcher, or the nice man who delivered the milk.’
‘John and Lara had booked a week at Black Quarry Farm,’ Neal continued, ‘with the intention of doing a bit of hiking and learning about winemaking.’
‘It sounds like one of those activity holidays,’ DS Harry Wallop remarked.
‘The farm also offers classes on winemaking, helping out in the vineyard, and tasting the wines produced.’
‘My kind of holiday,’ DC Lisa Newman said.
‘It sounds too dangerous for me,’ DC Sally Graham countered.
‘Lara Beech,’ Neal continued, ‘worked as the Human Resources Manager for a holiday company at Gatwick.’
‘I don’t think we need to be looking there,’ Henderson said. ‘This doesn’t sound like the work of a disgruntled holidaymaker.’
‘We might get a bit more mileage out of her husband, John. He worked for Galen Electronics in Crawley. For those not aware, they’re an American-owned company; they do a lot of work for the military.’
‘After Vicky and me talked to Kayleigh,’ DC Sally Graham said, ‘I looked Galen up on the web. In the UK they do all sorts of work for the MOD. They developed equipment for the new Queen Elizabeth-class of aircraft carriers, for example.’
‘John was an electro-mechanical engineer in the Maritime Mission Systems business unit,’ Neal said. ‘Perhaps he was involved in something high profile?’
‘Maybe,’ Henderson said. ‘Do we know how senior he was?’
‘No, but I’ll call Kayleigh and ask.’
‘Don’t bother, Vicky. I want you and Sally to go to Galen and speak to John’s boss. Find out what he did, but also determine where he sat in the pecking order. If he was a lowly engineer he’d know very little of commercial value, but if he was a senior guy, going to many MOD meetings, he would know plenty. I would imagine foreign powers such as the Russians or Chinese would be very interested to get their hands on some of that knowledge.’
‘Are you moving away from thinking it’s a gang or mob hit, boss?’ Wallop asked.
‘I don’t think it’s anything at the moment, Harry, because we don’t know. As I said earlier, we need to delve deep into John and Lara’s lives, and perhaps Kayleigh’s as well, to find some reason for bringing this…disaster down on them. Nothing I’ve heard so far provides a satisfactory explanation as to why it happened.’
**
It was late in the evening when Henderson returned to his office. He’d allocated duties to the various members of the murder team, started the Murder Book, and attended the press conference. There, he and his boss, Chief Inspector Lisa Edwards, had answered all manner of questions from a large media contingent. He’d told them the key to solving this case lay in the lives of the victims. John and Lara Beech had been targeted for a reason, and it was his job to find it.
He knew he couldn’t stop them speculating, conducting their own research and coming up with their own take on the story. They would examine the lives of Lara and John, looking for flaws, cranks in the family, abusive neighbours, anything to give them a lead over their rivals. In previous cases, they discovered the husband of a dead woman had once managed a scout troop and carried out systematic abuse of his charges, and in another, involving the suicide of man, his wife had a sideline in sel
ling stolen clothes. He was convinced they wouldn’t do so in this one. Without yet having the benefit of carrying out all the research on the Beech family, Henderson had seen nothing to suggest there were any skeletons in their cupboards.
If Henderson wasn’t responsible for catching the perpetrators, he would find some of the activities of the press, the redtops in particular, funny. However, sensational and poorly-researched reporting had a habit of altering perceptions, and before long the public could be working against the police investigation instead of helping it. Sensational reporting would also generate a number of oddball calls, wasting police time as they tried to separate the rubbish from the genuine article.
At nine-forty-five Henderson decided to tidy up and go home; there was little more he could achieve today, until much more work had been completed. Before leaving, he took out his pad and jotted down the priorities for the following day. The first day of any new murder inquiry often generated a huge number of questions, some of which would become submerged in the deluge of information that arrived over subsequent weeks. He’d found it a good habit to take a note of those questions at an early stage, and check now and again to see if they had been answered or were still relevant.
He closed the door of his office a few minutes later, and headed towards the double doors at the end of the corridor. He descended the stairs and spotted Lisa Edwards standing at the bottom looking for something in her handbag.
‘Can’t find your car key?’ Henderson said as he approached.
‘Oh, hello Angus. I didn’t hear you coming. Yes, I’m always losing it. Not the fault of the key, but I carry so much junk in my bag.’
Henderson laughed. ‘And they say men should use man-bags?’
‘If you do, don’t bring it in here, or you’ll become a laughing stock. You know what they’re all like. Ah, here it is,’ she said, fishing out a key attached to a BMW fob.
They walked out to the car park together. ‘That was some press conference today,’ Edwards said. ‘It was like they wouldn’t stop baiting us until we’d admitted John Beech was some sort of international criminal.’
‘Ach, it’s hard with so little information to go on, and when what we’ve seen doesn’t correlate with the facts.’
‘It must be something John Beech was involved in, don’t you think? These big defence contractors like British Aerospace and Lockheed Martin are working on technologies such as stealth ships and planes, advanced drones, and robotic fighting machines. I would imagine a company like Galen is at the stage before, designing the electronic circuitry and developing new ways of doing things to improve what goes into those products. It must have a commercial value and, if large enough, be worth killing for.’
Henderson smiled. ‘Is this the sort of stuff you and Robert talk about over dinner?’
‘God no, I wouldn’t allow it. It’s just some information I’ve picked up from him and some of his colleagues.’
The new man in Lisa Edward’s life, after her husband had walked out on her two days after Christmas, was Robert Lister, a journalist at The Daily Telegraph. He worked on the financial pages and knew a lot about a variety of companies.
‘I might need to have a word with him if this investigation becomes too technical.’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle, Angus, but if you do, just let me know.’
She pressed the button on the key fob, the lights of her car flashed and the interior cabin illuminated. ‘Right, this is me. See you tomorrow, Angus. Have a good evening, what’s left of it.’
‘Aye, and the same to yourself. Goodnight.’
Henderson’s car was at the back of the car park, as it had been for all of the previous week. It was Sunday, and the car park was less busy than normal, due to the absence of a large number of civilians who worked at Malling House, but he still wasn’t tempted to park it closer. Over the winter he had put on some additional weight, and this was his attempt to add some exercise into his morning and evening routine.
He started the car and headed towards his new flat. It was a good job he hadn’t moved somewhere else in Sussex, as he simply pointed the car towards Kemptown without giving it too much thought. The road was quiet and it didn’t take long to drive from Lewes to Brighton. It was a party town, and despite celebrations taking place every day of the week, students had their main blow-out on Thursday, the locals and visitors went wild on Friday and Saturday, and by the end of the weekend, all but the hardiest were exhausted.
He drove through the security gates of his building and parked the car. He had noticed, as he waited for the gates to open, that the lights in the apartment of the neighbour he met earlier in the day were on, and the curtains open. She was standing at the window and he waved. She waved back, but he hoped she wouldn’t come to his door. He liked having approachable neighbours, and one as attractive as Sharon Conner did much to cheer him up, but with a new flat requiring sorting and an investigation needing his full attention, he didn’t feel much like socialising.
He opened the front door and walked inside. The mess was still there, but it didn’t annoy him. In some respects, he’d have to get used to it because there wouldn’t be much spare time in the forthcoming weeks. He did a little more unpacking, trying to sort out the stuff he would need in the morning. He pulled a case towards him and realised what was inside. He unpacked it, leaving the bottle of Glenmorangie to one side. When he’d finished, he took a glass from the cupboard and poured a good measure.
He walked into the living room. The previous owners had fitted wooden blinds to all the windows, and while his neighbours clearly didn’t mind anyone peering in, evidenced by the number of apartments on the opposite side of the street which he could look into, he did, and closed them. He sat on the settee cradling his glass. The sight before him of unopened packing cases, boxes cluttering most flat surfaces, and nothing personal on the walls, melted away as the bedroom at Black Quarry Farm came into his head.
If the shooting had taken place in a tower block in London or Manchester, the motive would scream drugs and he would know without thinking how to mobilise his resources. On a farm, in a vineyard, in the middle of the Sussex countryside, it didn’t begin to make any sense.
He hoped the interviews with the people who knew John and Lara Beech best would throw up something. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t know where to go next.
FOUR
DS Neal signed the visitors’ book at Galen Electronics and stood back, waiting for DC Sally Graham to do the same. The building was gigantic, dominating one side of the Manor Royal industrial estate. She didn’t know how many people were employed there, but imagined if they closed and moved the operation to the likes of Romania or Slovakia, Crawley would be decimated.
The guy behind the security desk, exuding the air of a former military man, handed them two lanyards with passes attached. ‘You must wear these at all times,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, staff in the building are instructed to call the Security Office and you will be escorted off the premises.’
‘Is this because we’re from the police?’ DS Neal asked, her tone teasing.
‘Eh, no,’ he said, sounding flustered for the first time. ‘I’m sorry if I made it sound that way. All visitors, including staff, I might add, are treated in the same manner. This is a secure facility, as we work on many sensitive military projects. If you were going into some of the more secure areas within this installation, which you are not, I would have to remove any phones or radios you may be carrying.’
I’d like to see you try, Neal said to herself.
‘Please take a seat. Doctor Phillips will be with you in a few moments.’
John Beech had worked at Galen Electronics as an engineer, doing what, they didn’t know, and with luck would find out today. This much they’d learned from the couple’s tearful daughter, Kayleigh. She hadn’t taken the news well, and had to be comforted by a neighbour in the block of flats where she lived, close to Three Bridges Station.
In fact,
she lived less than a mile from the Beech family house in Milton Mount. She had flown the nest, but not too far in case she needed to come back in a hurry. Some would see this as a feeble attempt at independence, but Neal knew a number of twenty-somethings who still lived at home and, according to some newspapers, a sizeable number of thirty-somethings were doing the same.
‘Pretty swish this,’ Sally Graham beside her said.
Neal looked around at the potted bay trees, the use of a granite-looking finish on the walls, and the soothing mood lighting. ‘Yeah, it makes a change from grubby factories with flickering fluorescent lights and big scratches on the doors.’
They were sitting in a bright, open area, one black leather settee facing another with a large coffee table in the middle. On it lay a selection of today’s newspapers and some magazines, mainly about electronics. They could have helped themselves to coffee from a Klix machine on a nearby table, but knowing Neal’s luck, she would take one sip and a moment later their interviewee would appear.
‘This is a pretty important meeting, don’t you think?’ Graham said. ‘I mean, the motive for killing the Beeches has got to be here.’
‘Yeah, unless of course Lara is a big-time drug importer, or a madam for a chain of Sussex whorehouses.’
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s never to take people at face value. People lie to us all the time, but the big surprise to me is that they also hide things from their families and friends.’
‘If you’ve been nicking a shedload of money from your employer, you’re not likely to shout about it to your colleagues or family, are you?’
‘I suppose not, but it also goes down to a more mundane level: guys not admitting to their wives about their homosexuality, or cross-dressing preferences, and wives not telling their husbands they’re addicted to barbiturates. Have we lost the power to communicate, or did we never have it in the first place?’
