by Hayden, Mark
He pulled up outside her house – her mother’s house. ‘Are you clear on what to do tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Go through DS Griffin’s entire arrest record and see if there are any patterns. I can’t wait.’
‘At least you’ll be warm. Is there a match this weekend?’
‘No chance. See you on Monday.’
She sprinted up the drive, and Tom set the satnav for Edgbaston. What should have been half an hour took him nearly ninety minutes, and instead of quietly texting the Chief, the man was waiting for him in the bar, already wearing evening dress.
‘Don’t apologise,’ said the Chief. ‘There’s already been ten people cry off tonight’s dinner. It’s the Mayor’s charity auction, and all those who do get here will blame me for not having more traffic patrols out. Or blame the Mayor for not gritting the roads. Drink?’
‘No thanks. I’m driving to London afterwards, and this won’t take long.’
Tom took out the letter to HR, and the Chief studied it carefully before signing. ‘It’s easy to tell you were a lawyer,’ was his only comment.
Tom took out his notebook. ‘Thanks for this, sir. I just want you tell me as much about that evening as you can.’
‘Follow me.’
They set off down some corridors which led from the old building into a new extension. The largest space was called the Warwickshire Room and doubled as ballroom and wedding venue: it was where the Mayor’s dinner was being held. Beyond that was a locked door into darkness. A wooden plaque named it the Lickey Hills Suite. From a pocket in his dinner jacket, the Chief produced a key and unlocked the door.
‘They lent me this so I could show you the exact disposition.’ He paused with his hand on the door. ‘We’d rented the rooms for the whole day. Evelyn arrived first and opened them up.’ He pushed the door open and switched on the lights. There was a lobby with four doors leading off it on one side and another at the end. He pointed to the two doors in the middle. ‘Those lead to the main room. At either side are what Niall and Malik would call breakout rooms, where small groups can brainstorm before feeding back. We were in and out of those rooms all day, as well as going to the rest of the hotel.’
Tom looked around the lobby. On a window ledge was a telephone. He went over and checked the extension number. It wasn’t the same as the one on the printout. ‘This isn’t it.’
‘I’m not surprised. Far too public. Have a look through the end.’
Beyond the lobby were male and female toilets. Hanging from the wall, almost unnoticed in the corner, was a second telephone. This was the one. He also noticed a fire door that gave on to the car park.
‘We were exhausted by the end,’ said the Chief. ‘Just after the general election, I had a telephone call from the junior minister saying that there would be major budget cuts next year. He said that wise police forces would get planning sooner rather than later. I asked him for a ballpark figure, and he said that twenty-five per cent over three years would be a good starting point.’ The Chief shook his head. ‘I’m surprised that your lot has been allowed to carry on as you are. I would have thought that some bean counter in the Home Office would have merged CIPPS with the IPCC.’
‘I think I’ve got the answer to that,’ said Tom. ‘Leonie told me that Ogden has done a deal. We’re going to charge you for our work from April.’
‘What? Was that her idea or his?’
‘If it works, it’ll be her idea. If it doesn’t, I suspect Ogden will carry the can.’
‘Sounds about right.’
‘If you don’t mind, sir, can you remember anything about that evening – who was where, what was going on?’
‘I’ve done nothing but rack my brains since this morning. As I said, we were exhausted. We had lunch in the restaurant, just to get a change of scene. I ordered sandwiches at about five o’clock and by half past seven I couldn’t think straight. Neither could anyone else. I set a deadline – we were finishing at eight o’clock, regardless of anything else. If I remember rightly, it was a few minutes before that when I threw in the towel.’
‘What happened next?’
‘My finance director had set the agenda and brought all the papers. She started to pack everything away. Evelyn gave her a hand. Everyone else turned on their mobile phones. I’d given strict orders for them all to be turned off except for mine, and in seconds it sounded like an amusement arcade in here – there was pinging and ringing and all sorts of farmyard noises.’
‘The call was made about ten minutes after that. Can you remember anyone disappearing?’
‘In ten minutes, we’d all disappeared. No one wanted to be hanging around. I asked Evelyn if she wanted me to lock up, but she said that we had to leave it open for the kitchen staff to clear up, but she did give me the key. I handed it in to reception and signed the bill. She helped the finance director carry stuff to the car park.’
It was dark outside, and the windows showed only reflections of the lobby. Tom put his face to the glass and peered out. The car park was extensive and not well-lit at this end.
‘Did you see anyone outside when you left – talking, perhaps.’
‘I left via the front door. One of the perks of the job is having my own driver. He collected me at ten past eight. You reckon that whoever it was came back in through the fire door?’
‘It’s the only logical explanation. They must have received a call or message at eight o’clock from a third party and been afraid of contacting Griffin directly. Otherwise they could have just sat in their car. The person I’m looking for must have spotted the phone by the toilets and left the fire door ajar. It was still a huge risk, but they were playing for high stakes.’
‘Are you done?’
‘Thank you sir. That’s a great start.’
The Chief said nothing as he turned out the lights and locked the door. Ahead of them, other guests were gathering for the Mayor’s banquet. He handed the key to Tom and wished him a safe journey before going to study the seating plan.
Outside, it had stopped snowing, but the clearing sky threatened a serious frost. Tom paused briefly to look at the hotel from the rear. It would have been easy to get to that fire door without anyone noticing a thing.
Life in prison was a lot like school in many ways, Mina had discovered. There were gangs, and then there was everyone else. Mina didn’t like gangs, but if you weren’t in one you ran the risk of being picked on, and that was very bad news. Almost as bad as being picked on was befriending one of the existing victims: your turn would come next.
At least she had a single cell, and for twelve hours a day she was locked up with nothing but her books for company: she hadn’t been inside long enough to qualify for a radio. Things had improved when she was transferred away from London because she was identified as having the potential to work in the call centre.
‘A call centre? You mean selling insurance or something?’
The welfare officer gave a smile. ‘Not quite. That would be wrong in so many ways. No, it gives advice. You train on welfare, benefits and things like that and women from other prisons ring you up for help. It’s a good job.’
And so she had begun to work through the self-study manuals, and she was now in training. Some of the women envied her, especially the ones on outside duty in this weather, but most of them started to pick her brains during association time, and she realised that she would probably be safe for now.
She was just taking her seat for a couple of hours’ work when a prison officer came up with a slip of paper. ‘Lawyer’s visit this afternoon,’ he said.
‘I think that must be a mistake.’
He showed her the slip. Dominic McEwan was coming out to see her. Unless his secretary had got out the wrong file, of course, in which case he would turn up somewhere else, and they would refuse him access. ‘Thank you.’
She put on her headphones and took her first call. A woman wanted to know if her mother could get child benefit to look after her boyfriend’s son by
another woman, who had just been arrested. She got a lot of calls like that.
Only a little after the time on the slip, she was taken from the association area, searched her and shown into the consultation room where Dominic McEwan was waiting.
‘Mrs Finch … how are you?’
She gave a perfunctory response and got straight down to business. ‘Why are you here? I have no appeal and I’m not going to sell my house until next year.’
He shuffled the papers and pushed them to one side. ‘I’ve had a proposition.’
This was alarming. McEwan had a number of clients who sailed very close to the wind. She hoped desperately that one of them hadn’t been in touch with him about her past. She nodded for him to continue.
‘I know this sounds strange, but I’ve had a tip-off that we might be able to use in your favour.’
‘Who from?’
‘Anonymous, I’m afraid, but they know what they’re talking about. This person has some information which the police might be interested in. They want to give the information to you so that you can give it to the police in return for a reduction in sentence and a transfer to a fully open prison. From there, you can get some dental treatment in the community.’
Mina held on to the table to stop herself swaying. This sounded very dangerous, and far too good to be true.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes. Please go on. What’s this all about?’
He passed her a sealed white envelope with no name or address on it. Mina looked around the room. It was strictly against the law for the prison to eavesdrop, but she knew from talking to her fellow inmates that it happened quite often. It was usually audio only, though, so she carefully unsealed the letter and scanned the contents.
It was printed, blunt, factual, and contained only one clue as to the author: a tiny drawing of a little fish at the bottom with an X after it. Conrad? What on earth was he up to? How did he get hold of this information?
‘I take it you don’t want to know what’s in here,’ she said, pointing to the paper.
‘Not until you’re ready to give me a legal instruction.’
She looked at her solicitor. ‘I might have some information that might interest the City of London Police about the location of the printing works. Who should I contact?’
‘Destroy that,’ he said, pointing to the message. ‘Don’t even think of leaving this room with it in your possession.’
She ripped off the top half of the paper with the printing on and put it in her mouth. She couldn’t chew very hard, but she masticated gently for a few seconds and placed the wad in the envelope before folding it up and leaving it on the table. McEwan didn’t notice that she slipped the bottom fragment into her sleeve.
‘I’ll give the CPS a call and start the ball rolling,’ he said. ‘Out of interest, why did you mention the City Police?’
‘Oh, it has to be them. Trust me.’
Dominic McEwan was a man who trusted no one. She thought that if he took off his shirt, the words Plausible Deniability would be tattooed over the place where his heart should be. In fact, taking off his shirt was quite an attractive idea. He was the first halfway decent man she had seen in months.
It had taken Clarke two days to figure out that Will Offlea was not keeping his secrets at home. All the ledgers appeared to relate to the legitimate business of Fylde On-Track Ltd. This was the company that rented out pitches to bookmakers on race days and which was part-owned by Offlea himself. From the ledgers, Clarke had no way of knowing which was legitimate business and which was the laundered money. In the end, it was the first thing he had seen in Offlea’s cottage that gave the answer.
Offlea had put all the ledgers on the dining room table before doing a bunk to France and he had placed a Post-it note carefully on the top. The note had two cryptic numbers written on it which Clarke took for a bank account. He put it carefully to one side and looked in the books. The first night and the next morning, he looked at the yellow note again, and the longer number looked more familiar: finally, it had come to him last night. It was a ten digit grid reference. The real books were somewhere else. In the rather sparse bookcase, there was a selection of maps which pointed him to a small farm. He called the owner.
‘I think someone I know might have left something with you for safekeeping,’ he said.
‘What makes you think that?’ said a man with a strong local accent.
‘He left me a note with your location written on it.’
‘Bring the note with you tomorrow. And a month’s rent.’
The phone was put down at the other end, and Clarke wondered whether it was a two-part test – find the note and figure out the amount. He went back to the books and found it buried in the outgoings as Ribblegate Farm – milk supplies. Quite what a bookmaker wanted with £1,500 worth of milk each month was a very good question.
The Fylde peninsula had escaped the worst of the weather so far. The snow was coming in from the North Sea, dumping on the Pennines and leaving the west coast cold but dry. Even so, Clarke was glad he’d bought the Defender as he bumped up the track towards a small farm about four miles north of the racecourse. He had been to many farms in his time, but when he arrived in the yard, he reckoned that this was one of the most precarious.
The farmhouse was designed for Victorian communal living. Three of the downstairs windows illuminated the kitchen, and the fourth would be the utility room. There was no extension to offer the residents a modern living room or any other breathing space, but at least the windows themselves were double-glazed. That could make a big difference in the winter.
The same could not be said of the agricultural buildings. They were mostly corrugated iron, except for the two stone sheds further up the track. Repairs had been made to the rusting ironwork with cladding, plastic and in one place, sheets of asbestos. He jumped out of the Land Rover and felt his leg twinge in the cold.
He knocked on the back door and went in. A woman of about thirty was seated at the kitchen table with a small baby which she was encouraging on to her breast. At least it was warm in here. He closed the door behind him, but stood on the mat, reluctant to tread mud any further into the house.
‘Sorry to bother you. I rang last night, and a gentleman invited me over to have a look at something.’
She looked mystified. Her hair had been dyed blond and the brown roots were growing out noticeably. They were probably about as old as the baby. ‘Are you the locum vet?’ she asked.
‘No. I’m in business. Could it have been your father I spoke to?’
‘Father-in-law. He’s in the cowshed.’
‘Thanks.’ He was about to make small talk and ask the baby’s name, but its mother had already returned to feeding it. In a remarkable display of dexterity, she started to send a text message with her left hand whilst holding the baby with her right. Turning to go, he saw artwork from an older child pinned haphazardly to the cupboards.
He closed the door carefully behind him and crossed the yard. One of the doors was wide open, and he went in to find a small herd of Holstein cross dairy cows standing on wet straw and huddling together where possible against the wind. One of the beasts had been separated into a pen, and two men were looking at her udder.
He walked over and called a greeting before getting too close: he didn’t want to startle the men or the cow. The two humans stood up and turned around. It looked as if the father’s genes had been passed straight to his son without any interference from a woman: other than time, nothing separated their appearances.
Clarke held out his hand. ‘How do you do? My name’s Conrad Clarke.’
The farmer shook hands reluctantly and adjusted his cap before speaking. ‘Have you brought the note and the money?’
‘Yes. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘That’s ‘cos I didn’t give it to you. I don’t really want to know yours either.’
‘Come on, man. This is the twenty-first century, and you’ve got a dairy h
erd in here. I could find out everything about you in five minutes if I rang the Ministry. And if they hadn’t misfiled your paperwork.’
That produced a small chuckle. The quickest way to a farmer’s confidence is to slag off the Ministry. ‘Reckon you would, at that. It’s Kirkham. I’m Joseph, and this is my son, Joe.’
‘That’s not my real name,’ said the younger version. ‘I were christened David but everyone calls me Joe ‘cos they reckon I look like me dad.’
Of course they did. Clarke was beginning to like it round here. ‘What’s wrong with the cow?’
‘Are you a vet? You look like you might be one,’ said Joseph. ‘Otherwise, why bother asking?’
‘I’m just trying to prove that I’m different to my predecessor. I bet he never asked about the herd.’
‘No, he bloody well didn’t. He once drove straight into a ewe and blamed me for it. She was carrying triplets, and he killed her straight out.’
‘Tell him the rest,’ said Joe.
‘Some other time,’ said his father. ‘If you really want to know, the cow’s in perfect health. We’re even thinking of showing her next year. Now, let’s get you sorted.’
Joseph led him up the yard towards the stone sheds. The building faced away from the farm, and when they got to the front, Clarke saw that one of the structures had a metal roller door fitted over it. The other one was open to the elements. Inside the open shed, miscellaneous farm equipment and parts surrounded an empty space in the middle.
Joseph pointed to the shutter. ‘They’re both yours, of course, but that’s the one you’ll want the note for. See? There’s a combination lock on it.’
Clarke took out the Post-it note and bent down as best he could to enter the code.
‘Are you alright? Your leg looks a bit stiff.’
‘War wound. It aches terribly in the cold.’
‘Really? You’re a soldier?’
‘No. Royal Air Force. I used to fly helicopters until one crashed and I got my leg half blown off.’
