Black Quarry Farm

by Iain Cameron

  ‘I think that question will need to hang in the air unanswered, as this looks like our man.’

  A tall, thin man wearing a brown tweed suit was walking in their direction. He had thinning grey hair and gold-rimmed glasses, and looked to Neal like her idea of a university professor. She had met several in the course of an investigation into the death of an academic at Manchester University.

  The man headed straight for the reception desk, and following a nod from the security guard, walked towards them.

  ‘Detectives Neal and Graham, I believe?’ Phillips said, stooping over to look at them. Close-up he looked even taller, six-four or six-five. Now standing, Neal’s five-foot-seven only came up to his chest.

  After introductions, he led them through the security door, repeating the security guard’s mantra of the penalty for not wearing a security badge.

  If the people behind the desks they were walking past were designing new military equipment, crucial for the nation’s defence, it was lost on her. It looked like any other big office she had ever been inside: a big open area with screen dividers, lots of people sitting behind giant flat computer screens, closed glass offices at one end of the room, and people standing around in the corridors chatting.

  They walked upstairs and were led into a conference room. By conference room standards, it was up there among the best, and put the grubby one they used at Malling House to shame. It wasn’t only the light wood table and comfortable-looking chairs, but the clean, panoramic windows giving an uninterrupted view over the Crawley skyline. After taking a good look, they all sat down.

  ‘You may think our elaborate security is to protect the military secrets we have here,’ Phillips said, ‘but on a more mundane level, we also have been targeted by various protest groups. To the best of my knowledge, in the last two months alone, they’ve made five attempts to get into this building.’

  ‘We’ve seen a similar situation with several other military contractors,’ Graham said. ‘There’s a big military contractor to the east of Brighton and for the last six months they’ve had protestors outside their gates almost every day.’

  Phillips nodded. ‘I know.’ He spoke with a northern accent, Yorkshire, Neal would guess, but tempered, she suspected, by many years in the south.

  ‘I’m just waiting for Julia Robinson to join us. I’m John’s department head, but Julia worked with him on a day-to-day basis.’

  As if on cue, the door opened and a young woman entered. She had shoulder-length mousy brown hair, a plain but not unattractive face, and was wearing an unflattering shapeless blue dress.

  They shook hands and she sat down beside Phillips.

  ‘I’m assuming you both know,’ Neal said, ‘about the deaths of John Beech and his wife, Lara, at Black Quarry Farm?’

  ‘Yes,’ Phillips said, ‘one of your officers was kind enough to call us, but our analysts who monitor all manner of communications picked the story up as well. It came as a big shock, as you can imagine. He will be sorely missed.’

  ‘I’m sure he will. What was John’s role within the company?’

  ‘He is, or was, should I say, a senior engineer. He managed a team of six, including Julia.’

  ‘Our token female engineer,’ Julia said.

  ‘No, not token, Julia, you are a valuable member of the team. Unfortunately, not many women pursue a career in engineering, and fewer still want to work in a business like this.’

  Julia rolled her eyes as if she’d heard this little homily many times before.

  ‘You were saying about John, Doctor Phillips?’

  ‘Yes, John had been with us for just under ten years and was one of our most experienced maritime engineers.’

  ‘Is this a manual job, for example, repairing and maintaining machines, or was he more office-based?’

  ‘It’s very much in the office, creating designs, planning and scheduling their manufacture and liaising with the production team on the final product.’

  ‘What sorts of things was he working on?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything about them.’

  Neal had been expecting this and had been racking her brain, thinking how she could get around it.

  ‘Okay, perhaps you could tell me the sorts of things he used to work on? I assume once these things have been deployed by your customers, they’re not secrets anymore.’

  Phillips sighed. ‘Yes, and sometimes with a project we’ve been working on for years, our competitors get it into the market before we do. We’re paranoid about leaks, of course. We have rooms for top-level meetings where you cannot receive a phone signal or an Internet connection but even so, the Chinese or the Russians still find out about it.’

  ‘I assume we do the same to them?’

  ‘I’m sure we do.’

  ‘So, as I was saying, what sorts of things has John worked on in the past?’

  ‘Let me see, he designed some of the circuits for the new radar system fitted to the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, and again for the thermal imaging capability of the periscope carried by Vanguard-class submarines.’

  ‘Before those developments were fitted to ships and submarines, could the knowledge that John Beech had, be of value to someone else?’

  ‘If you’re thinking could it be sold or stolen by a competitor, I think it unlikely.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘First of all, these developments are contracted to us by a government agency, in the UK the Ministry of Defence, for example. If a competitor had somehow got hold of some of our designs and tried to sell them to the MOD, they would refuse to buy them, as they would know where they came from. Also, as we are talking about John, they wouldn’t have enough to develop a working model. John only worked on a small, but vital part of the system for both projects, you see. He didn’t have access to it all. Few people do.’

  ‘What about a foreign power?’

  ‘It depends on which foreign power. Any country with submarines of a standard similar to the Vanguard, the Americans, and Chinese, for example, already posses much the same capability. In many respects, Vanguard was our attempt to catch up with them.’

  Neal couldn’t yet judge if Phillips was underplaying John Beech’s role in the company, or whether he was as unimportant as the man suggested. She tried a different tack.

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘Julia,’ Phillips said, ‘perhaps you’d like to say something?’

  ‘Yes, I would. I’ve known John for about five years and worked closely with him for the last two. I’ve always found him a decent man, conscientious, always willing to help, and he didn’t take himself too seriously. I don’t know much about his private life, as he kept that pretty much to himself, but I’ve met his wife and daughter and I do know he loved them both very much.’

  She stopped to wipe away a tear.

  ‘This couple,’ Neal said, ‘were callously murdered while they slept. Can you think of any reason why someone would do this?’

  ‘I can see your logic in talking to us,’ Phillips said. ‘John could have been working on something top-secret, and his refusal to hand over the information, or his excessive demands for money, might have got him killed. I assure you, he had access to no such thing. I can think of perhaps twenty or thirty people in my business unit alone that Chinese or Russian spies would target before John. I’m sorry to say, Detective Sergeant, if you’re looking for the motive as to why John and his wife were murdered, you won’t find it here.’

  FIVE

  He was jerked awake by a soft but firm pull on his shoulder. ‘The captain has switched on the Fasten Seat belts sign, sir,’ the steward said. ‘We are preparing to land.’

  ‘What?’ Simon Radcliffe looked up at the smiling, well-groomed face, his mind still woozy.

  The steward pointed towards his lap. ‘Seat belt?’

  ‘Ah, right. Thank you.’

  When the synapses in his brain finally connected, he snapped the two pieces of th
e belt together and sat back. He was thankful to be travelling Business, if not he would have come face-to-face with some stern old boot wearing too much makeup and exhibiting a withering frown. Radcliffe wasn’t gay but more in touch with his feminine side than most, perhaps an odd affectation for the former CEO of a large international company.

  The plane taxied and parked. Unlike most people, he did not pull out his phone and switch it on as soon as allowed. Anyone who wanted to make contact could wait a further twenty or thirty minutes, the time it would take him to get out of the airport and retrieve his car. He had no desire to meet the great British public, Border Force, or Customs officials with his phone ringing or the thing glued to his ear.

  He’d slept from almost the moment the plane took off from Malaga to the time it came in to land at Gatwick, and it had cleared his head. He and his new wife, Astrid, had dined the previous night with his Italian neighbours, a couple who owned the villa next to his. His friend spoke good English, Astrid spoke German, Spanish and improving English, while he was fluent in French and Spanish. They settled on English.

  It had been a boozy, late night as the ebullient Italians, she a former fashion designer and he a bond salesman, appeared to be on a mission to drink themselves into an early grave. It was only when he looked at his phone as he and Astrid returned to their villa, and he saw three texts and two voicemails from Mel, his housekeeper at Black Quarry Farm, that he realised what had taken place. The messages were garbled, the gist of the latest being an apology for all the others, as she’d been too upset to speak clearly and then had been talking to the police.

  Five years ago, Radcliffe had taken a step back from running Zenith Energy Systems, an international supplier of high-voltage energy systems. It had always been his ambition to make wine, not any old quaffing plonk, but championship-winning wine. If working in a world-class business had taught him one thing, it was that he didn’t like coming second. He had viewed properties in France and Italy, but decided the UK’s burgeoning wine industry would be the right place for him.

  The ten-million-pound investment for two hundred acres of vineyard, a state-of-the-art winery, and an Australian-style tasting room would have been worth it if only to get one over the French. In business, they were the worst for quoting arcane regulations, rejecting valid project proposals and favouring their own industries.

  One of the benefits of flying Business Class, including sitting in a bigger seat and being attended to by more pleasant cabin staff, was being allowed to disembark from the aircraft before everyone else. He said goodbye to James and smiled at the woman heading the queue from the Economy section. Her mouth dropped in recognition while at the same time elbowing her husband in the ribs. She would be saying, ‘There’s that guy off the telly. What’s his name?’ In the past, he’d been mistaken for Jeremy Paxman, Stephen Fry, and to add insult to injury, as he wasn’t nearly as old, John Humphrys.

  Radcliffe had been interviewed on television, radio, and in newspapers many times while in charge of ZES, but now retired, he was making more television appearances than ever before. He’d even been tipped to take over as host on a number of shows such as The Apprentice and Mastermind. He was interested, of course, but it would take something special for him to give up his goal. He still had a fire burning inside to make an even better wine, and he loved his sojourns to France and Spain, and discovering all the things he didn’t know about his new wife.

  He started the car, a top-of-the-range Jaguar, a bit of a climbdown from the chauffeur-driven Rolls he used to use to travel from the flat in Chelsea to the company’s head office in Victoria. He sat there listening to the purring of the V12 as his phone powered up. After keying in the password, he waited for it to pair with the car’s telephone system. He called Mel as soon as he drove out of the airport car park.

  ‘Hello Simon, how are you? Good flight?’

  ‘I’m a lot better than you sound Mel, but then I’ve been many miles away while you’ve been here in the thick of it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s been terrible, Simon. Not only the deaths of poor John and Lara, but the police presence and all the journalists. It’s a circus. I spend half my time telling them to move their cars as they’re blocking deliveries.’

  ‘Is everything closed?’

  ‘Yes, Jane shut everything down Sunday and today, as a mark of respect, like you suggested. It’ll all be back to normal tomorrow.’

  He would have liked to ask her about the vineyard tours, and if anyone had cancelled due to the murder, but Mel didn’t concern herself with the business side of things. He would talk to Jane later. He knew buying and developing a vineyard would be a substantial investment, but it couldn’t be a long-term drain on his finances. He wanted it to be profit-making by the end of the following year, and he wasn’t sure if a murder would help or hinder, he would just have to wait and see.

  ‘I wanted to come back yesterday, but I couldn’t get a flight.’

  ‘Gone are the days when you jetted around in a private plane.’

  ‘Those were the days, but alas, it belonged to the company.’

  He chatted to Mel for a few more minutes, trying to sound comforting as she still sounded fragile. He couldn’t depend on her useless husband giving her any help, as the only therapy he knew anything about involved plonking his arse on the nearest bar stool.

  **

  An hour after leaving Gatwick Airport, Simon Radcliffe turned into Black Quarry Farm. He could see now what Mel meant by a circus. He imagined most of the vehicles he could see belonged to the police, as the media had filed their big story and the increased level of turmoil in the Middle East seemed to be occupying the attentions of editors and journalists now.

  He parked at the lodge, a barn conversion only used by him and his close family. It was far enough away from the house for him not to be bothered by the activities of the tenants, or at the moment, the police, but while he couldn’t see what was going on, he could hear it.

  He showered and changed, and at one-thirty led DI Henderson and DC Lisa Newman into the kitchen. He would have preferred to sit in the lounge, as he couldn’t pretend the kitchen was his domain, but he’d just made a sandwich for lunch and had a rule never to eat in the lounge.

  Henderson was tall, about the same height as himself, six foot two, of slim build, and about fifteen years younger than he was. With light brown hair and a face not scarred by a knife or acne, nor the affectation favoured by many young men: several days’ growth of stubble, some would call him handsome. The accent was undeniably Scottish.

  His companion looked a lot more interesting. Aged around mid-twenties, she had shoulder-length dark hair, a serious but attractive face with even, white teeth. She had what he considered a womanly body, curves in all the right places and what looked like nice legs beneath a black skirt.

  ‘Have you just come back from Spain today, sir?’ Henderson asked.

  ‘Yes, I have. Flew into Gatwick this morning. Took the first flight I could get.’

  ‘Many thanks for seeing us so quickly.’

  ‘It’s the least I could do in the circumstances.’

  ‘When we interviewed Melissa Holland, she could only tell us about the letting of the house. We were hoping today you could give us some more information about the other activities going on here.’

  ‘No problem. I bought this place about eight years ago when it was a failing cereal farm. I could see by the direction the fields faced and the quality of the soil it would be great for growing grapes. I then brought in some people to conduct the appropriate tests, and my assumptions were confirmed. I’ve invested about ten million pounds, planting vines, building the visitors’ centre, converting the barn you are in now, and remodelling the main house.’

  ‘Did you always intend renting out the house?’

  ‘I don’t live in the UK all the time, as you probably gathered. I spend about six or seven months of the year in Spain. I don’t need a four-bedroom house lying empty while I’m away. This pl
ace is adequate for me and my wife, and any time my grown-up children honour us with a visit.’

  ‘So, what goes on here, in the vineyard?’

  ‘First and foremost, it’s a winery, one of the best in England, as a matter of fact. We’ve won gold medals over foreign winemakers, we’re stocked in Fortnum & Mason and Waitrose, and even the French have been forced to concede we make an excellent sparkling wine. The British public have a strong interest in wine, so we have a visitors’ centre and give talks to the likes of wine clubs. We conduct tours of the vineyard and, for the select few, we allow them into the fermenting hall where they can see our maestro winemaker at work.’

  ‘It’s an impressive operation. Is it profitable?’

  ‘It’s modelled on many of the wineries I visited in Australia and California. I’m trying to give people an unforgettable experience, not simply lead them into some draughty room with a floor stinking of spilled wine. Does it make a profit? The wine doesn’t as yet, since it received the largest investment, but the tours do, and so does the house. Overall, I’m on track to make the whole of Black Quarry Farm profitable by the end of next year.’

  ‘Good to hear.’ Henderson said. ‘Did you know John and Lara Beech?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, to be honest. I don’t have much to do with the letting of the house, I leave it to Mel, and in any case, the Beeches were here while I was in Spain. She handles all the bookings, welcomes the visitors, and organises any maintenance and cleaning after they leave.’

  ‘Is the house let all year round?’

  ‘It operates on a basis better than many holiday homes, which are typically let for something like a fourteen-week period between May and September. We often have people here for the same period, but with the addition of October to see the picking of the grapes, and again in November and early December to see the vines being pruned. It’s not all-year-round, but I think we’re up about the twenty-five-week mark.’