Black Quarry Farm

by Iain Cameron

  On another website, he investigated hair transplants, to change his thin mop of straggly straw-coloured hair into a thick shaggy pile that could be shaped into a style of his choosing. Looking at the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures, the treatments available here made a more significant impact on the model’s appearance than the ones displayed on the plastic surgeon’s website.

  Saunders knew plenty about fake passports, and it was better to source one created by a forger than one stolen from the pocket of a tourist in a crowd. If stolen, it could generate an alert on Border Force computers on its first outing, if faked, they used false names or the credentials of dead people taken from tombstones. If it already included a photograph, as most did, it wouldn’t be difficult to make his face look like the small, unclear picture hidden under a sheet of cellophane by employing a change of hair colour or style, or altering the length or shape of his beard.

  Saunders closed all open windows on his laptop and opened his Tor browser, software which would allow him to access the dark web. He’d been taught by the best, a hacker who’d turned his teenage tricks of conducting Denial of Service attacks on companies he despised into a lucrative business helping criminals. The guy now worked for a number of international criminal organisations, like the one Saunders had once worked for, teaching them how to sell their illegal wares around the world.

  Within half an hour and paying with his Bitcoin wallet, Saunders had secured a new British passport bearing the name, Luca Tardelli. He’d been assured by the seller, this was a ‘clean’ passport, one using the details of a child who had died forty-three years ago. This was close to his age and it bore a photograph of a man who could be said to resemble him.

  He didn’t want the photograph of a dead-ringer, as he needed to change his appearance to fool his pursuers. Instead, he selected someone with their features close to his, aspects that would be difficult to alter, his thin face, the close spacing of his eyes, the large ears. The move from fair to dark hair and the growth of a thick moustache would go some way to making him look different. However, for a closer match, he would need to sit in the sun for a spell, something he had been avoiding these last few weeks; Luca Tardelli had darker skin and looked more like a Serb or Romanian than the Brit he purported to be.

  At eleven-thirty he closed the laptop, satisfied at last to be making some progress towards ending his confinement. Along the road from this house was a hairdresser and he would ask them to change the colour of his hair. First, he needed to travel into town to pick up the passport, being sent to a private, rented mailbox. Until he had made the changes in his appearance, he couldn’t afford to undertake the journey more than once, so despite the seller assuring him the passport would be delivered in less than a week, he would allow a few more days after that before heading there.

  He climbed into bed, feeling better than he had done for weeks. Perhaps this new state of mind would provide a more restful night’s sleep. He read a book, one he’d found downstairs, for twenty minutes before turning off the light.

  He slept soundly for what felt like a couple of hours, then woke as he always did, and no matter what he tried, he couldn’t get back to sleep. He lay there for a time, trying to decide whether to stay there and read more of his book, or get up and make some tea. A noise broke the quiet of the night, a yelp that sounded like two foxes engaged in a fight, or a heavy foot stepping on a cat’s tail. A few minutes later, he heard something else, the sound of heavy rustling in the bushes at the rear of the garden.

  He knelt on the bed and lifted the curtain. No lights were ever visible in this part of Leatherhead after midnight, the parents all exhausted from dealing with the many small children he saw running around outside, or the old folks comatose after a mug of warm Horlicks. He was about to drop the curtain when he noticed movement in the same bushes, perhaps the rooting of an animal, but he couldn’t think of one which could make such an impact.

  His back garden butted on to those of his neighbours in the road parallel to his, with a climbable fence between them. Every house he’d ever looked at had at least one security flaw and, in the case of this one, this was it. Access to the back garden from the front of the house was barred by a tall lockable gate, and if anyone did manage to come into his garden they would need to have some local knowledge.

  Saunders felt brave, braver than he had done in the past, now that he had a plan and didn’t want it ruined. He crept out of bed and put on his ‘emergency clothes’, those left out every night, readily accessible in case he needed to make a quick getaway. He picked up the baseball bat at the side of his bed and headed downstairs.

  Attempting to be as quiet as possible, he opened the back door, stepped out, and pulled the door closed softly behind him. It was a warm night, the sky inky black with only a sliver of moon. Perfect conditions for burglars and sneak thieves with very little light to illuminate their criminal activities.

  He crept down the garden on the opposite side from the bush, trying to mitigate any noise of his approach. He saw movement behind the bush again as he sneaked towards it.

  ‘Who the fuck is in there?’ he growled as loud as he dared, not wishing to wake the whole neighbourhood. ‘Come out or I’ll bash your fucking head in.’

  Out of the darkness, a figure appeared and slammed into him, knocking him over. He sprawled in the damp grass; the baseball bat went flying out of his hand, and he smacked his head on the hard earth. Expecting one of the Shah brothers to be standing over him pointing an Uzi in his face, he tried to clear his head and sit up. When he focussed, the guy who’d knocked him over was legging-it over the dividing fence. Saunders noticed he was running with an awkward gait, as if he was disabled in some way, but realised he was in the process of hauling up his trousers.

  Finding this scene hard to understand, perhaps in part due to the bang on the head, he looked around for a clue. He soon found it. In the top floor of the house next to his, a woman was standing beside the window brushing her long hair. She was naked and uninhibited, perhaps because she was an exhibitionist, or believing at this hour of the morning no one would be daft enough to be outside watching her.

  He couldn’t believe the depravity of some people; lurking in the bushes past midnight just to see some thirty-something with her kit off. He walked back to his house, shaking his head in disbelief.

  TWENTY-ONE

  DI Henderson and DS Walters climbed the marbled stairs. At the top, he pushed open one side of the vast oak and stained-glass door, a formidable barrier to keep the riff-raff of London out of the exclusive Addison Club.

  ‘Detectives Henderson and Walters to see Simon Radcliffe. He is expecting us,’ Henderson said to the stylish and coiffured receptionist.

  A few minutes later they climbed the carpeted staircase to the first floor in the company of Simon Radcliffe.

  ‘After all the bother at the farm, I decided to stay at my club,’ Radcliffe said by way of explanation for their meeting here today.

  ‘Did the police presence at the farm make you nervous?’ Henderson asked.

  Radcliffe looked at him to see if he was being serious; he wasn’t.

  ‘No, I don’t consider the house I use at the farm to be my home, more a place for me to stay when I’m in the UK. When I worked at Zenith, I stayed in a company-owned flat in Chelsea. When I left the job,’ he said with a sigh, ‘alas, the flat went too.’

  Henderson could have pointed out that Radcliffe also received a house with his current position, as owner of Black Quarry Farm, but he didn’t want to spoil what sounded like an oft-told story.

  ‘Even then,’ Radcliffe said as they walked into the lounge, ‘with me spending seventy to eighty per cent of my time travelling, there was no point in owning anything.’

  The brass plate on the door read, ‘lounge’, but it was nothing like any lounge Henderson had ever been in. Perhaps something as large and opulent could be found in some of Scotland’s top hotels, the likes of Gleneagles or Cameron House, as this place look
ed similar. It was furnished with tartan-covered sofas and chairs, a bookcase along one wall, tables bearing silver coffee pots and china cups, and something not available in Scotland; huge sash windows with views over a Mayfair street.

  Radcliffe ordered coffee from the white-jacketed waiter, the time of the morning, or the forthcoming discussion with two detectives, curbing his desire for something stronger.

  ‘Is it a nice place to stay,’ Henderson asked, ‘or does it feel too much like a club and not enough like a hotel?’

  ‘To be honest, when I stay here it feels like a hotel, and when I come here for a meeting, or just for a meal, it feels like a club.’

  ‘Have you decided what to do about Brian Faulkner?’

  ‘Do you mean, do I have a dilemma about keeping him on or letting him go? No, I don’t have any choice but to fire him, despite him being the best worker I have at the farm.’

  ‘He’s been charged with receiving and selling stolen mobile phones and released on bail,’ Henderson said. ‘His lawyer has told him to expect a custodial sentence.’

  ‘I’ve heard, but I couldn’t keep him on after what he’s done, it’s inexcusable. In fact, I would go as far as to say he’s been downright reckless. Not only has he thrown away a good job, he’s lost his house into the bargain.’

  ‘He told me you weren’t paying him enough, and he sold the phones to supplement his income.’

  Radcliffe laughed, not so much in mirth, more in sarcasm.

  ‘He said that? The stupid pillock. There’s a certain class of employee, Inspector, we had them in power station projects and large construction sites too. It doesn’t matter what you do for them, they can always find something to show their displeasure. Faulkner was staying in a cottage at the farm, rent-free, with most of his food and wine thrown in. He knew this was the reason why I didn’t pay him top dollar.’

  The coffee arrived and the waiter served it with aplomb, holding the pot high and giving the coffee a thick froth on top. If Henderson tried this at home he would either splash it all over the table, or burn his hand. No, it was better leaving things like this to the professionals.

  When Nigel departed, Henderson picked up his cup and helped himself to a petit four, which looked similar to the French Fancies he often saw in Sainsbury’s.

  ‘Mr Radcliffe, in the course of the investigation into the murder of John and Lara Beech, we have discovered four people with serious criminal records have stayed at the house in Black Quarry Farm in the last couple of months; three of them for no payment. Would you like to comment?’

  Henderson looked closely at Radcliffe’s face, but the question didn’t alarm the former industrialist as much as it would some other people.

  ‘I can tell you something about three of them, if we’re talking about the same people, but not four.’

  ‘Tell us about the people you know. I’m referring to Joe Richardson, John Neville, and Derek Stevenson.’

  From his view over the cup of very fine coffee, the DI could see Simon Radcliffe’s mask slipping to reveal a shifty operator underneath. The businessman took his time answering, perhaps weighing up the importance of his responses.

  ‘When I took over the helm at Zenith it was a basket case. The previous CEO, Teddy Cunningham, was a good man, but for the last few years of his tenure he suffered from bowel cancer and kept it secret. Whether due to his imminent demise, or the effect of the chemo, I don’t know which, he took his eye off the ball.

  ‘In a business like this, when you’re shut out of a project, that’s it for the next twenty or thirty years, and the kudos you get in the industry for building a dam or a power station works in reverse. Your name becomes mud. I knew if I didn’t do something to turn this sinking ship around, we were toast.’

  In the absence of the waiter, Henderson refilled his own cup, wondering where Radcliffe was going with this.

  ‘I reviewed all outstanding tenders and cut prices to ensure we won a large proportion of the jobs we were bidding for. When we did and our men started work, I did whatever it took to ensure the project was delivered on time, on budget, and made us money. I’m proud to say I saved the company from bankruptcy, and this has been its ethos ever since.’

  Henderson pulled out several pieces of paper, photocopies of newspaper articles, from the folio he was carrying. ‘Tell us what happened at the Kingali dam in Malawi.’

  ‘It’s all been in the papers. The workers went on strike over pay and conditions, a rate set by the government, I might add, and they sent in troops to break it up. In the resulting chaos, seven workers were killed. It’s regrettable, but the government was in hock to various international development funds, and desperate for the work to continue.’

  ‘Ignoring reports which were biased towards the Malawi government,’ Henderson said, ‘including your company’s press release, more impartial journalists were saying Zenith engineered the strike to break the power of the union, and armed white civilians were seen working in tandem with the troops. Derek Stevenson, or to give him his full title, Colour-Sergeant Derek Stevenson, is ex-army and runs a dodgy security outfit called Heathfield, and it was their men who were deployed.’

  Radcliffe laughed, but it sounded hollow. ‘I think Derek would be annoyed if you called him dodgy.’

  ‘Save your irritation for journalists, Mr Radcliffe. You and I both know Stevenson and his buddies have convictions as long as your arm. If a dirty job needs doing, Stevenson’s your man.’

  ‘I can see you’ve done your homework, Inspector.’ He paused. ‘I admit Derek and some of his colleagues were there in Malawi, but no way did they shoot anyone. It was all down to trigger-happy government troops.’

  Realising Radcliffe wasn’t going to budge from quoting the company line, Henderson decided to move on.

  ‘Let’s talk about Joe Richardson who, unlike Stevenson, I suspect has never been out of England.’

  ‘He can’t, can he, with all the drug convictions he’s accumulated? He did much the same thing for me, but here in the UK. Protesters were hampering the demolition of a former coal-fired station between Leeds and York, due to its 1930s art-deco design, and he provided security.’

  Henderson looked again through his papers and selected a couple of photocopies of Daily Express front pages. ‘One headline reads, ‘Strong-arm Tactics Used on Protesters’, ‘Thugs Break-up Power Station Protest’ according to another.’

  ‘Yes, I admit this one resulted in a lot of bad publicity for the company.’ He smiled. ‘Would you believe, the subject was raised at board level, in Parliament, and it was brought up again when I was summoned to the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee to talk about something else.’

  ‘What about John Neville, are we talking about more of the same?’

  ‘Yes, his role was to supplement Derek and Joe’s group when the need arose.’

  ‘Why do you associate with these characters, Mr Radcliffe?’ Henderson asked, but felt he already knew the answer.

  ‘It may surprise you to hear me say this, Inspector, but I like them, every single one of them. To you, they might be criminals, but to me they have character, energy, zest, vision, you name it, things you don’t find in ordinary people.’

  ‘He’s a queer one, right enough,’ Walters said as the detectives walked outside, into the sunshine of a London afternoon. ‘He appears on telly as this affable, smart, business type, and all the time he’s associating with dangerous criminals. For most people it would mark the end of their TV career, but he seems to thrive on it.’

  ‘When I first heard about those guys staying at the farm, I dug deeper into Radcliffe’s background. He looks and sounds like a soft, public schoolboy who’s been sucking on a silver spoon all his life, don’t you think?’

  ‘It oozes out of his well-scented pores.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. He went to a tough comprehensive in East London, the same school, would you believe, as Derek Stevenson. They’re old mates.’

  ‘So, through him, h
e might have met Neville and Richardson?’

  ‘It’s not such a big leap, is it? The surprise, I think, isn’t him using dodgy characters to further his business aims, but how a boy who didn’t do well at school and left with a smattering of so-so GCSEs, is in the running as the new host of Mastermind.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Henderson walked into the Detectives’ Room. He felt a strange sensation for a Monday morning, both energised and knackered at the same time. Over the weekend, he’d seen Claire twice. The previous night, they’d gone to a bar in Kemptown. They ended up back at his place with a Chinese takeaway, Claire’s fine house overlooking Hove Park otherwise occupied hosting a film night for the not-yet-introduced Daisy and her friends.

  The reason he felt knackered was they had made love twice, once in the kitchen, the smell of fried rice and sweet and sour sauce filling the air, and later on in his more fragrant bedroom. He hoped Claire felt better than he did this morning, as she was scheduled to insert a new heart valve into the chest of a forty-two-year-old woman at ten.

  Claire was a fascinating woman. Not only highly intelligent with incredible focus and skill, as evidenced by the work she did, but now he was getting to know her, witty and well-read too. It would be a joy to peruse her large CD and book collection in the library which she had created when the house was remodelled, but the Daisy hurdle was one he had to overcome first.

  Claire hadn’t been out with many men since breaking up with Daisy’s father, but those who did appear from time to time got short-shrift from the feisty teenager. According to Claire, no one could replace Eric, as they were very close. If the relationship with Claire continued as Henderson hoped, although he wasn’t taking anything for granted given the problems his job often created with partners, he would make it clear he wasn’t there to take over from Daisy’s father. He was an add-on rather than a bolt-on replacement.