by Adam Croft
‘Right. And how far can the van be traced on ANPR?’
The Automatic Number Plate Recognition system automatically registered which vehicles passed which cameras, and enabled the police to quickly trace a vehicle’s route.
‘Last sighting is on the A2, just south of Rochester.’
‘Christ. That’s miles away. Why on earth would a van from Scotland come three hundred miles out of its way to drop two dead bodies off, then do another seventy-odd miles into Kent?’
‘Maybe it was a convenient stop-off on the way. Only thing is, there are no sightings of the van on CCTV before that, and nothing on ANPR for that index number south of the border at all. The van was up in Paisley at ten o’clock yesterday morning, and there wasn’t a single ANPR hit until we see it heading south from Middlebrook in the early hours of this morning. It can’t have been driven 300 miles from Scotland without hitting a single camera. It’s not possible.’
‘No. Something’s not right. Those plates will have been cloned or stolen. Find out if any Peugeot Expert vans have been reported stolen in the local area recently. And keep on top of our friends north of the border. I want to hear back the second they’ve spoken to this Peter Bellamy bloke. Anyone heard anything back from pathology yet?’
Culverhouse looked around at the shaking heads.
‘Right. There’s probably not a whole lot we can do until then. Ryan, keep expanding the search on the local CCTV. Keeping spreading out the radius until we’ve got something else to focus on. That van can’t have just landed in Middlebrook on its own. We need to find out how it got there.’
Culverhouse left the room, and headed off to make himself a cup of coffee. He just hoped for his job’s sake that Martin Cummings wouldn’t walk past while he had a mug of hot liquid in his hand.
10
PC Adam Norman of Dumfries and Galloway Police cursed the town centre traffic as he sat at yet another red light, still a good few minutes away from the address in Summerhill he’d been given. He’d been thinking for a while about jacking the job in, but there were some aspects of it which appealed to him. One of them was sitting next to him in the passenger seat.
His colleague, PC Chloe Atkinson, was something of a closed book. She tended to keep her thoughts and opinions to herself, which made it a lot harder for Adam to know where he stood.
They’d been out for drinks a couple of times, Adam having wanted to ask her out on a proper date but instead settling for the easy option of suggesting a couple of after-work drinks at a pub in Maxwelltown. They’d been great evenings, but he’d come away from them realising that he knew even less about Chloe than he had before. She’d been keen to find out all about Adam — his love of vintage cars, his family and friends. But whenever he’d asked her anything back, he’d only got vague answers before another question was fired his way.
Some people didn’t like talking about themselves. He accepted that. But he just wished he could read a little into Chloe’s mind and gauge whether or not he should take the plunge and try and move things on to the next level. He didn’t want to fuck it up, though, by suggesting something a little more romantic and ending up looking like a tit if she rejected him. That’d certainly help make his decision on whether it was worth remaining in the police, though, so it wouldn’t be all bad.
‘Traffic’s always a nightmare here,’ he said.
‘Aye.’
If it was an emergency, he’d be able to flick the siren on, part the traffic and be in Summerhill within seconds, but unfortunately there was no emergency here. They’d just have to wait.
Adam always wondered how much information they were given on cases like this. Was it just the bare bones — enough to help them do their job without giving too much away? All he knew was that he needed to trace the movements and whereabouts of a Peugeot Expert van in the south east of England the day before and in the early hours of that morning. Mildenheath was a good five and a half hours’ drive away from here, so Peter Bellamy would be pretty tired when they came knocking.
It would be usual protocol for officers from England to come up and speak to the suspect, but special dispensation had been given for Dumfries and Galloway to pay Bellamy a visit. The chat should only take a couple of minutes, so the operational costs of sending officers from Mildenheath would have been prohibitive.
When they finally reached the address they’d been given, they parked the car at the end of the driveway, the pair noting that there was a Peugeot Expert van parked up on the gravel, with the same index number as the vehicle they’d been asked to trace.
They walked up to the front door and knocked, waiting for a response. After a minute or so, the door opened and a man in a polo shirt and shorts answered.
‘Hello sir. We’re looking to speak to Peter Bellamy. Is that you?’
‘Aye, that’s me. Something the matter?’
‘Are you the owner of this van, sir?’
‘Aye.’
‘Mind if I step in and ask you a couple of questions, sir?’ Adam asked, the unspoken words being that Chloe would stay outside and call their colleagues in Mildenheath to relay that they’d located the vehicle.
She pulled out her mobile phone and dialled the number on the paperwork, and waited for DCI Jack Culverhouse to answer.
‘It’s PC Chloe Atkinson from Dumfries and Galloway here,’ she said. ‘I’m at the address provided for Mr Peter Bellamy, and can confirm we’ve found the vehicle on his driveway.’
She listened as Culverhouse filled her in on the details they had so far.
‘Hubcap? Let me just… No, they all seem fine. Doesn’t look to me like any of them are new, either. The dirt is pretty consistent across all four.’
She jotted some notes in her notebook as Culverhouse told her what information they were looking for at this stage in time. When the conversation was finished, she went into the house to join PC Norman and Mr Bellamy.
‘Alright?’ she said, mainly to Adam.
‘Aye. Mr Bellamy was just telling me his van hasn’t left the driveway in three days.’
‘No work,’ Bellamy said, as if he felt compelled to give an excuse.
‘What do you do?’ Chloe asked.
‘Painter and decorator. I do a bit of other stuff too, depending on what people need. Sort of general handyman, really.’
Chloe nodded. She’d had enough trouble trying to get tradesmen to even turn up to quote for jobs, so it was remarkable that Bellamy claimed to have no work.
‘Is there anyone who can corroborate that?’
Bellamy exhaled heavily. ‘My wife. She’s been going on at me constantly about finding work. She fuckin’ knows that van hasnae moved, that’s for sure.’
‘A white Peugeot Expert with your registration number was flagged up on multiple ANPR cameras between Middlebrook and Rochester in the early hours of this morning. Can you explain that?’
‘Not wi’out Uri fuckin’ Geller, no.’
‘So you’re saying you weren’t driving it?’
‘No-one was driving it, love. It hasnae moved from that exact spot for days.’
Chloe and Adam exchanged a look. They both knew what the other was thinking. Neither of them was a stranger to the fact that vehicles’ number plates were often cloned, but they couldn’t afford to be too careful.
‘Would you consent to us taking your vehicle away for analysis?’ Adam asked. ‘That way we can pretty quickly eliminate you from our inquiries.’
‘No I bloody would not,’ Bellamy barked. ‘How the hell do you expect me to get work if you’ve got my van?’
Chloe bit her tongue, and allowed Adam to continue.
‘It really would be in your best interests, sir.’
‘Best interests my arse. I’ve seen the TV programmes. If you want to find out where I was, get my mobile network to tell you. You’ll see I’ve been sat here for the past three days watching Jeremy fucking Kyle on a loop.’
‘With respect, sir, that’ll only tell us where your mobile
phone was. It won’t tell us where you were.’
‘Oh aye, I just nipped down to Kent for a wee drive and didnae bother take my phone. What you got going on up here, eh?’ Bellamy said, jabbing his forefinger into the side of his own head.
‘So you’re not willing to let us check your van?’ Adam asked, trying to indicate to Bellamy that this was very much his last chance to co-operate.
Bellamy looked him straight in the eyes, himself keen to get the message across that this conversation was over. ‘N, O. No.’
Adam sighed. ‘In that case, Peter Bellamy, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything other than to identify yourself by way of name, address, date of birth, place of birth and nationality and you have the right to see a solicitor. Do you understand?’
Bellamy looked at him and sneered.
‘Go fuck yourself.’
11
Shortly after receiving the latest phone call from Scotland, Culverhouse updated the team.
‘Peter Bellamy is currently under arrest at Dumfries Police Station. He wouldn’t cooperate with the officers who went to visit him, so he’s been held under arrest while they seize the vehicle and question him. I wouldn’t hold out much hope, though. Word from the officers on the scene is that they don’t think he did it in a month of Sundays, but he’s just an awkward bastard who’s decided to make more trouble for himself than he needed to.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ Frank Vine said. It was extraordinary how many people made life difficult for themselves by not cooperating with the police.
‘We’re fully expecting forensics to come back with no positive matches, and for the vehicle’s licence plates to have been cloned, so we shouldn’t rest on our laurels. Likelihood is that the actual van’s plates were switched again shortly after the last ANPR sighting. Ryan, you’ll need to get Kent Police on board and have them look through all CCTV footage within a few miles of the last ANPR sighting. We’re looking for any white Peugeot Expert vans, potentially with a missing hubcap.’
‘Already on it, sir. There was one spotted near the Dartford Crossing just over an hour after the last ANPR hit on the initial index number. Again, the new index comes back as a white Peugeot Expert, but registered in Cardiff. I think we’re going to end up running into the same dead end we did in Dumfries. Something interesting, though. This second sighting, the van has no hubcaps at all. There’s footage of both sides of the vehicle, and it’s on steels.’
‘Any picture of the driver at all?’
‘No, sir. We can see there’s a driver and a passenger, both wearing a dark beanie hat and a high — possibly turned up — collar, but there’s no way we’re going to get any identification from it.’
‘Trying to mask their appearances, then. Looks like they could be our men. Could we see anything of them on the footage from the motorway junction near Middlebrook?’
Ryan shook her head. ‘No. No chance. The footage is too poor. You can barely make out that there’s anyone driving at all.’
‘Right. Good work. Keep going and see if we can get any other CCTV footage of the van on these new plates. Do we have any ANPR hits for it?’
‘Working on that, sir. Just waiting for the results to come back.’
‘Good. Latest I have is that there’s no record of either of our victims’ DNA or fingerprints. They’re unknown to us. Steve, get a call in to Serbia to see if the police there have any men missing. Wendy, Frank, get in touch with the local Serbian community, if there is one, and see if we can identify who these men are.’
‘Do my best,’ Steve replied, not looking hopeful. He could see from the looks on his colleagues’ faces that they weren’t feeling optimistic, either.
12
By the end of the day, Wendy’s head was pounding. Any new investigation was a whirlwind of trying to get organised, ensuring everything was done properly and waiting on information to come in from others.
Concentration levels were always at their highest in the first day or two of a new investigation, as this is where mistakes tended to be made. It was when the evidence would be freshest, when they were most likely to catch their man and when the most dramatic twists and turns would occur.
In this particular case, it seemed to be that they were playing the waiting game. With two victims who couldn’t be identified, a ghost van which seemed to keep changing its identity and location and very little else to go on, it was the sort of investigation that was likely to keep Wendy awake at night.
The more straightforward cases were different. Those could be neatly packaged into a logical order of events, but occasionally there were ones which really started to play with her mind.
She leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. All she wanted to do was sleep, but she’d arranged to have a night in with Xav.
‘So, how was your day?’ he asked, pouring her a small glass of red wine.
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Ah. One of those?’
‘Starting to look like it. At first glance it’s a simple hurried body dump, but the more we go into it the more we realise we’re probably looking for serious organised criminals.’
‘You think they were disturbed in the act?’ Xav asks.
‘That’s the logical conclusion, but CCTV says otherwise. It was half one in the morning down a quiet country lane. There was nothing to disturb them.’
‘Maybe they wanted the bodies to be found, then. A message to someone else, perhaps. Makes sense if you’re looking at organised criminals.’
‘A message to who, though? No-one can identify the victims and we’ve managed to keep it away from the papers.’
‘Well, it’s just an idea. This is why I’m not in CID.’
Wendy shuffled sideways and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘No, I think you’d make a good detective. I’m just saying it’s a bit of a weird case. It’ll all come out in the wash. It’s just a matter of time, unfortunately.’
‘Culverhouse being leant on from above?’
‘Dunno. I can only presume so. He hasn’t said anything, but I can only imagine it’s the same old shit.’
‘Listen, can we talk?’ Xav asked.
‘We are talking, aren’t we?’
Xav shot her a look. ‘About us, I mean.’
‘Ah. One of those talks.’
‘No, no. Nothing bad. At least I hope it isn’t bad. I was going to ask you what you thought about me staying here more often. Maybe making things a bit more official.’
‘Official? How?’
‘Well, I dunno really. I can take an ad out in the paper, if you like. Maybe put it on the front page of the intranet when I get to work.’
Wendy laughed and punch Xav in the forearm playfully. ‘Don’t be a dick.’
‘I know. I just meant that I like spending time with you, and I think things are going pretty well, so maybe we might like to do more of it. I dunno. Just an idea.’
Wendy smiled. ‘They are going well. I just… I’ve got a lot going on. You know how it is. It’s not me rejecting you — far from it — I just need a bit of time to get my head straight.’
‘How long, though? I mean, you can’t just keep everything at arm’s length.’
Wendy looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I mean at some point you have to make a conscious decision.’
‘Decision?’
‘No, I don’t mean like that. I’m not asking you to choose. I’m just saying that sooner or later you have to put your head above the parapet and go for what you want. You can’t just expect everything to resolve itself.’
Wendy sighed. ‘I don’t expect everything to resolve itself. I just… I’ve had a lot going on lately.’
‘Yeah, and if you wallow things will only get worse. You need to take control of your own life. Stop taking a back seat. Decide what you want for yourself, and go out there and get it.’
She took a mouthful of wine and closed her eyes.
‘It’s not alway
s that easy, though, is it? If it was just a case of wanting something and automatically getting it, we’d all be driving Ferraris and living in St Lucia.’
Xav let out a small chuckle — his laugh was the first thing Wendy had been attracted to when she first met him.
‘Point taken, and for most people you’d be right. Most of us don’t have the power to make things happen for ourselves. But you’re different. You’re probably the strongest woman I know. Everything you’ve wanted, you’ve managed to achieve. And the things you haven’t achieved yet… Well, they’re all within your grasp. All you need to do is put your hands out and grab them.’
Wendy could see a lot of sense in what he was saying. She wanted to be with him. She wanted stability. She wanted to progress in her career, too. But at the same time she could feel something holding her back. She didn’t know if it was the same thing holding her back in both her professional and her private life, but it was there nonetheless. She felt as if she was attached to a bungee cord, simultaneously hurtling towards one point whilst feeling the tension increasing with every metre she travelled, until finally the cord stretched taut and she went hurtling back towards her starting point.
It had been a familiar story in her life, and one she was keen not to repeat. She just needed to find a way to break the cycle. Perhaps Xav was the one to do that, she thought. Maybe becoming an inspector and getting her teeth into a new role — one with responsibility — would help her through the fug. She didn’t know, but she knew she needed to do something.
‘I know,’ she said, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘You’re right.’
13
Milan looked over at Zoran as he slept in the corner of their tiny room. He didn’t know how his friend could sleep. By now, it was becoming clear to Milan what they were here for. This hadn’t been the work or lifestyle they’d been expecting.
