Black Quarry Farm

by Iain Cameron

  Even though Tremain had sent her his picture, she was sceptical, suspecting it would be no different from some of the men she had met on Tinder. Despite displaying a photograph of a hunky, slim young guy with a mop of black hair, they often turned out to be chubby fifty-somethings with questionable hygiene habits and a bald pate. She wasn’t a criminal lawyer, but the principle still applied. If they lied about their age and appearance, what else were they lying about?

  The picture of Tremain appeared to be current. He looked to be early thirties, with short, brown, styled hair and a close-cropped beard and moustache. Unlike the men crowded around the bar who were dressed smart-casual, Tremain was smart-business. He wore a white shirt without a tie and a light, blue suit, the jacket lying on the chair in front of her.

  ‘Here you go, Kayleigh,’ he said a few minutes later. ‘One apple juice.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He sat down. The inside of the pub was rectangular in shape, the table where they were seated close to the wall at one end. He’d given her the soft seat, under the mirror giving her a good view of the activities of the bar’s patrons. He sat opposite.

  ‘Before we start, I would like to offer my condolences on the loss of your parents. In my work, I often meet the victims of violent crime and their families, and I know coming here tonight wasn’t easy for you.’

  From anyone else, the partners in her office, for example, it could sound contrived, something they were quoting from a website or had heard in a crime drama. From his mouth, it came out soft and unhurried, spoken with a Sussex accent and, despite his professional background, sounding sincere.

  ‘Thank you, I do appreciate it.’

  He pulled out a digital recorder and showed it to her. ‘Okay if I put this on?’

  ‘Yes. No problem.’

  ‘Are you receiving any counselling to help you come to terms with your loss?’

  ‘A little. The legal firm I work for, Ledbetter’s in Redhill, offered to give me as much time off as I need.’

  ‘Have you taken them up on it?’

  ‘I took a couple of days, but I’m better off in the office. If I stay at home, I mope around thinking too much about what happened.’

  ‘What about the services of a professional therapist?’

  ‘We have an in-house counsellor, one I’ve used in the past, and yes, I’m seeing her at the moment.’

  ‘Good. You’re a family lawyer?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Although I’ve done child custody, pre-nups, neighbour disputes, and a whole load of other stuff, I’m the go-to lawyer in our practice for divorce. Part of my role, as I see it, is to explore why couples want to get divorced in the first place. If I can stop them going through with it, I will. It might be bad for the firm’s finances, but it makes me feel good. It’s ironic that I’m good at it, as I’m not married and have no plans to change that.’

  ‘What were your parents like?’

  ‘I didn’t come here to give you a family profile; I want to talk to you about the police investigation.’

  Did it sound harsh? She didn’t mean it to, as he was being decent, but sometimes it just came out like that. She’d overheard one of the juniors in her office telling a colleague he believed Kayleigh had Australian ancestry. She’d thought he was being sarcastic, as she didn’t like going out in strong sunshine and didn’t like sport, but after hearing a couple of Australians having a heated discussion on a train, she understood what he’d meant.

  ‘Kayleigh, a story like this needs context. If I write the same stuff people have been reading all week, most people wouldn’t bother picking it up.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘The core of the article I will write following our discussion will focus on the police investigation, but when I talk about the victims, I don’t want to write about where your father and mother worked, for example, as it’s all been done before. I want to say something new.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So, tell me about them. Start with John.’

  ‘A loving father who played with me a lot when I was young, and as I grew up, had infinite patience for teaching me to spell and count. I was way ahead of my classmates when I started school. Part of the praise should also go to my nanny, Rebecca.’

  ‘You had a nanny? Was this because both of your parents were working?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your dad worked at Galen Electronics and your mum at the holiday airline, Jet Magic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did your dad ever talk to you about his work?’

  ‘He did, but let me dispel a myth, one that seems to be growing and festering like a fungus in almost every newspaper I see. He wasn’t a spy, and he didn’t work on secret projects which could have an impact on national security.’

  ‘You’re happy for me to write this?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Galen work on many military contracts and some, I’m sure, have implications for national security, but Daddy didn’t work on those. He told me everything he did, sometimes only me and not Mum, and I know for a fact they didn’t die because of his work. Feel free to print that.’

  ‘I will. What about your mum? What was she like?’

  She had to steel herself here, doing her best not to cry. Kayleigh had suffered a breakdown at the age of fifteen: the weight of expectation of teachers and parents, the hormonal imbalance of a teenage girl, the pestering from testosterone-fuelled boys, and the stress of trying to carve a place for herself in the world.

  Her mum worked in Human Resources and was skilled in this area, working daily with stewards and air hostesses, in the main young and outwardly confident people, but her parents were the last people she felt she could confide in. As a consequence, she and her mum had fought like cat and dog. It was only when her mother relented and engaged the services of an excellent psychologist, Freda Reinhardt, did the situation improve. From the age of nineteen, her mother had become her best friend.

  ‘She was striking, with a slim figure, high cheekbones, and a prominent nose. Not what most people would call conventionally pretty, but she always drew admiring glances from other men. She assumed I didn’t notice, but I did. I have to say I found it distasteful.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She was clever, a psychology degree from Durham University and a post-graduate diploma in Human Resource Management. I was always telling her she was wasted in the holiday business, she could move to a major PLC and make a name for herself.’

  ‘What was she like at home?’

  ‘Despite a demanding job, she always came home at a reasonable time in the evening and spent a lot of time with me. She taught me how to cook, sew, put on make-up, all those girly things.’

  ‘What happened at weekends? Were both your parents at home?’

  ‘More or less. Sometimes Mum had to do stuff on her laptop for a few hours, but most of the time they were both free. We’d have days out at the beach, walks at National Trust properties, and travel up to London to see shows and exhibitions.’

  ‘Thank you, Kayleigh, that’s been very helpful. Let’s talk about the police investigation, and the concerns you’ve expressed.’

  ‘It’s been over a week now since my parents were killed, and I still don’t think the police investigation is any further forward.’

  ‘In my experience, for what’s it’s worth, cases like this where there is no obvious motive or killer can take longer to solve than if it was, for example, a domestic murder.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The vast majority of murders, and I mean eighty to ninety per cent, involve people who know one another. It could be a neighbourly dispute, a woman or her partner having an affair, a man abusing his wife, any number of scenarios. The key thing is their relationship to the victim and, as a result, they are often caught within days. Much rarer are the serial killers, beloved by so many crime novelists, and rarer still, those one-off killings with no obvious motive. Your parents, I’m afraid to say, fall into this last c
ategory.’

  ‘Thank you for explaining it to me; it makes sense, but it doesn’t excuse the police for not knowing which way to go next. I can appreciate it must be difficult at the start to get a grip of such a case, but here we are, ten days down the line, and they don’t give me the impression they know which way to go next.’

  ‘What makes you say this?’

  ‘Two things. The press statements coming out from Sussex Police. They’re full of appeals to the public for more information, but light on where they believe the true killers are to be found.’

  ‘They might know, but we’re often the last to find out.’

  ‘I understand, so I went to see the detective in charge–’

  ‘Detective Inspector Angus Henderson?’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I work the crime beat for Sussex. I know him and many of his colleagues. What did he say?’

  ‘Let me tell you.’

  THIRTEEN

  Henderson headed out to the car and climbed inside. The previous night he’d returned home at a reasonable hour and, after his evening meal, set about sorting his apartment with gusto. At around eight-thirty, the doorbell sounded and in walked Sharon from upstairs holding a bottle of wine. He was about to tell her he wanted to spend the evening putting everything in its place, when she rolled up her sleeves and asked where she should start. With two people on the case they did the work in half the time, even with Sharon stopping every so often to ask where she should put something.

  By ten-thirty, the flat looked lived-in for the first time since Henderson had moved there. Pictures were up on the walls, electrical items were sited beside power outlets, all the packing boxes had been flattened and piled up ready for the removers to take away, and curtains were fitted to all the windows not equipped with wooden blinds.

  They’d sat down in the lounge and opened the wine, clinking glasses companionably on a job well done. Her recent divorce was the elephant in the room and clearly the subject uppermost in her mind and they’d spent the next couple of hours discussing it. Partway through he was thinking of suggesting she should engage the services of an expert who could give her better advice than he, but when they said goodbye some time after midnight, she told him their chat had been very therapeutic. She also said her animosity towards men was on the wane, but it hadn’t disappeared quite yet.

  He drove to the office the next morning, buoyed by having his home in some sort of order at last. No longer did he have to search through a dozen boxes to find a spare plug or the charger for his razor, making mornings less fraught and leaving him to concentrate on the Beech case.

  Ten minutes after walking into Malling House, he joined the murder team members, those who had made it into the office, in a corner of the Detectives’ Room for a briefing. This was a chance to discover what had been completed the previous day, and to hand out new priorities for the day ahead.

  Despite the absence of any police vehicles outside the house at Black Quarry Farm, indicating their examination of the murder scene was now complete, they were still interviewing those who worked there, and he had extended the interview programme to include the farms on either side. This wasn’t to alarm the neighbours by suggesting the killers had made a mistake, but to check again if they’d seen or heard any vehicles early on the Sunday morning. Not likely as both properties were located at least a quarter of a mile distant.

  ‘At present, the house is being redecorated,’ Vicky Neal said, ‘in anticipation of it being rented out once again.’

  ‘Even though the killers didn’t do much damage?’ Henderson asked.

  ‘I think it’s just to freshen the place up, give it a different feel.’

  ‘Fair enough. I know Radcliffe gave the issue of renting it out a lot of thought. For sure, in time, people will forget what happened there, but while it’s still fresh in our minds, it feels to me like a hard sell.’

  ‘I think so too,’ Carol Walters said. ‘As much as I like wine and wouldn’t mind spending time at a vineyard, staying in the same house where two people were murdered would give me the creeps.’

  ‘How are the staff interviews progressing?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re about seventy-five per cent complete,’ Walters said. ‘We’ve done the restaurant staff, wine-making team, and now we’re working our way through the people in the shop.’

  ‘Keep at it. Somebody might remember someone acting suspiciously a day or even weeks before. What about this latest revelation supplied by Daya Gupta, Lara having an affair with a neighbour?’

  ‘We don’t know who; and the Beeches lived on a long road,’ Sally Graham said.

  ‘I’m scheduled to see her sister tomorrow,’ Neal said. ‘I’ll ask her, perhaps she’ll know.’

  ‘If she doesn’t, it might mean banging on doors in the neighbourhood.’

  A groan sounded.

  ‘Although,’ Henderson said, ‘if they’ve been conducting their liaison in secret, it’s unlikely their neighbours would have a clue.’

  ‘It doesn’t quite hang together as a motive though, does it?’ the now returned DC Phil Bentley said. ‘Why would he kill the woman he likes or is in love with? It would make more sense if he murdered her husband.’

  ‘I admit it’s a long shot, but it’s the only chink we’ve found in the Beeches formidable model citizen armour. Who knows, it could lead to something else.’

  ‘I bloody hope so,’ someone said.

  ‘Vicky, how’s the review of previous and future house tenants coming along?’

  ‘Still to be completed. The analysts are busy at the moment putting through all the interviews done with staff at the vineyard. Fifty-three full and part-time staff work there.’

  ‘We’re lucky the murder didn’t happen at picking time, or we’d be talking about double that number.’

  ‘The vineyard is a bigger operation than it looks.’

  ‘Later this afternoon,’ Henderson said, ‘Carol and I will be interviewing Andy Gilchrist, the man who allegedly harassed and threatened John Beech.’

  ‘We’ll be back at the farm,’ Neal said, ‘talking to the shop staff.’

  ‘Don’t forget the analysis of previous and future house renters. Get on to it as soon as you can.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘That’s it for now,’ Henderson said, ‘see you all at six.’

  **

  In a semi-detached house near Tilgate Park in Crawley, Henderson and DS Walters took a seat in the living room. It wasn’t a big house, but in the time Andy Gilchrist had been away making tea, a succession of children had dashed in to pick up forgotten socks, a misplaced iPad, and some money left out to pay for a dancing class.

  The question Henderson had been asking himself as he walked towards the scruffy semi-detached was why a well-paid CAD/CAM designer didn’t own something a little more salubrious. The answer became apparent when he saw the children. First, a couple of older kids, from, he guessed, a previous marriage, then a toddler and a baby with his new wife. It was possible, with the older children looking not a bit like one another, this was second or even third time around, but Henderson wasn’t curious enough to ask.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ Gilchrist said, coming into the room carrying a tray. ‘I can’t tell if they do it just to wind me and the wife up, or if they don’t think full stop, but they leave stuff everywhere, and now with the new baby…’

  He sounded tired just saying the words. Dealing with a baby at the age of twenty or thirty wasn’t a big deal for most people, as they were used to late nights and could get by on less sleep. Having to do it later in life, mid-forties in Gilchrist’s case, when he’d have imagined he’d left all the nappies, sick-infused clothes and three o’clock feeds behind, would cause major disruption.

  The man they had come to see worked as a circuit designer at Galen Electronics. This conjured up the image of a geeky guy with glasses and the fingers of a classical pianist. Gilchrist was a heavy-set bloke, slim from the waist down, but
on top, muscled arms and a barrel chest. He wasn’t bad looking, in a rough sort of way, but if Henderson didn’t know what he did for a living, he would assume he was a lumberjack or road worker.

  ‘Mr Gilchrist,’ Henderson said, ‘we’re from the team investigating the murder of John and Lara Beech.’

  ‘Bloody shame, it was.’

  ‘Indeed. What do you do at Galen?’

  ‘The process starts with the guys in product development. They receive a spec from the MOD or some other military agency asking for the design of something new, or the modification of an existing piece of equipment. Okay so far?’

  Henderson nodded.

  ‘If it’s something like a retractable aerial on a warship, the mechanical boys would deal with it, so we wouldn’t get involved. If it’s something more complicated, like a new feature to be added to a sonar array, for example, they would come and ask our team to design a circuit to do whatever they wanted it to do.’

  He spoke with intelligence and eloquence, sounding like the smart, electronics engineer his job description said he was, in stark contrast to his rugged exterior.

  ‘Which means,’ Henderson said, ‘you have to liaise closely with the design engineers, like John Beech?’

  ‘Spot on. If it’s something big, or complicated, we could be talking to them every day for months. Sometimes on the phone, other times in meetings.’

  ‘Is most of this work top-secret?’

  He shrugged. ‘Some of it is, but there are pricks in the office who treat everything as if the nation’s security depended on it. They’ve been watching too many spy movies if you ask me.’

  Henderson probed further and received much the same response as he had when talking to Daya Gupta, John Beech’s boss. Yes, some things they’d worked on could be useful to competitors and foreign powers. However, they were often working on the same things as their competitors and the ‘secret’ element didn’t remain secret for long.

  ‘You see,’ Gilchrist went on to explain, ‘we’re different from a government department or a university research facility. The work they do is pure research, attempting to push the envelope by using existing technologies in new ways, or trying to develop novel processes. In these places, secrecy is paramount as often the development can take decades. We, on the other hand, have a specific goal in mind. As soon as it’s developed and installed on a ship, submarine, or plane, the whole world knows about it.’