by Graham Ison
Thus, nine more lines of enquiry had been closed and we were no nearer to discovering Sharp’s killer.
By the time I’d finished messing about with trivia – but necessary trivia all the same – it was five o’clock. I decided that nothing was likely to happen that evening and that any further developments would probably be as a result of the National Crime Agency searching Madison Bailey’s make-up case on her return from Bogotá. And that was not going to happen until Sunday morning. All in all, I was thoroughly depressed and decided that an evening with Lydia would be the best antidote. I telephoned her.
‘Hello, stranger. What are you doing wasting time phoning me when you should be out catching murderers?’
‘I’ve decided to wait until they give themselves up, Lydia darling. If you can put up with me for an hour or two, I fancy a dip in your pool.’
‘I’d love to see you, Harry. It’s obvious that this nudist colony thing’s caught on if you want to come down here and tear all your clothes off.’ She laughed her deep, throaty laugh. ‘But it’s my food you’re interested in, isn’t it?’
‘And not only your food,’ I replied.
‘One thing at a time, ducky,’ she said, adopting a cockney accent. ‘How long’s it going to take you to get here?’
‘Depends on the traffic but, all being well, I should be with you in about an hour and a half.’
I left via the incident room, gave Colin Wilberforce Lydia’s address and told him that’s where I’d be for the rest of the evening.
‘We already have a note of Mrs Maxwell’s address on file, sir.’ I’m sure I detected an element of smugness in Wilberforce’s comment.
The traffic wasn’t too bad and I drove home to Surbiton where I left my car before taking a cab the rest of the way. I knew Lydia would produce a magnificent meal and it would be a travesty not to sample the wines that she always selects to go with her creations. The last thing I wanted was to give the Black Rats the satisfaction of arresting a CID officer who was over the limit. Apart from that, a conviction would almost certainly result in me losing my job.
The cab deposited me at Lydia’s house. After some time, she opened the door.
‘Sorry to keep you, Harry, darling, but you got here sooner than I expected.’ She was wearing a white thigh-length towelling robe and her hair was wet.
‘In the pool, were you?’ I asked, as I kissed her.
‘No, I was mowing the lawn. What did you think I was doing? Come on in and get your kit off.’
‘Blimey, you don’t mess about, do you?’
I stayed the night and had to make an early start the next morning. Lydia insisted on making breakfast for me at five o’clock. ‘Can you come again tonight, darling?’ she asked.
I was in the office by just after eight. As I’d anticipated there had been no developments during the night.
FIFTEEN
Lydia and I were in her swimming pool again on Saturday evening, as a preamble to dinner. At about half past six, I emerged to pour us both a glass of wine when my phone played its distinctive sound announcing a call from the incident room.
‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Lydia, as she climbed out of the pool to join me. ‘Not again.’ She had learned to identify that ring tone very soon after the start of our relationship.
‘Brock. What the hell is it this time?’ Unforgivably, I snapped at the caller.
‘It’s Gavin Creasey, sir.’
‘Sorry, Gavin.’
‘I’ve just had a call from a Peter Sullivan, a senior customs official of the NCA at Heathrow, sir,’ said Creasey. ‘He wanted your phone number but I told him we didn’t disclose officers’ phone numbers. So, he gave me his mobile number and asked if you would call him.’
‘Thanks, Gavin.’ I’d given Sullivan the incident room number, guarding the number of my mobile from anyone not needing to know it. I got enough calls on it as it was. Presumably Sullivan had called the Belgravia number believing I’d still be there on a Saturday evening. Not if I could help it.
‘Peter, it’s Harry Brock.’
‘Sorry to bother you on a Saturday evening, Harry,’ said Sullivan, ‘but I’ve been thinking about this matter of Madison Bailey’s make-up case and I thought that, after all, you might like to be at the airport when we searched it.’
‘Yes, I would, but as I said when we met, Peter, she knows me and if she spots me it might compromise your operation.’ I glanced at Lydia’s anxious face, shook my head and mouthed, ‘It’s OK.’
‘I understand that, Harry,’ continued Sullivan, ‘but I wasn’t suggesting that you took part. You could watch from our observation room, and if you got the result of the search straight away, it would be better than me phoning an hour or two later. Anyway, it’s better to see it actually unfold than to get a report. What d’you think?’
‘Could speed things up, I suppose, Peter. What time does her flight touch down?’
‘Estimating at zero-eight-thirty Zulu plus one.’
‘What the hell does all that gobbledegook mean, Peter?’
‘Half past nine local time, that is to say British Summer Time.’
‘Well, at least it’s a reasonably civilized hour. I’ll see you there, Peter.’
‘You haven’t got to go out, have you?’ asked Lydia, having failed to understand my earlier whispered message. There was an expression of mounting disappointment on her face. It had happened all too often in our short relationship.
‘Not this time, but I have to be at Heathrow by half-nine tomorrow morning. I’ll just ring the office and arrange for Dave to pick me up.’
‘Why don’t you stay the night?’ suggested Lydia. ‘Dave can pick you up from here.’
‘What a lovely idea,’ I said, clasping her in a tight hug.
‘I’m all wet,’ she said.
‘Big deal! So am I.’
I dislike airports and I particularly dislike the crowds of people who wander aimlessly around, arguing with airline officials, complaining about lost luggage and querying if they really did need a passport to go to the United States because unfortunately they’d left this vital document at home in Orpington. What’s more, these lost souls would buttonhole anyone who happened to be wearing a suit and was striding purposefully among them in the belief they’d found an official who could tell them what had happened to the flight from Papua New Guinea. In actual fact, the aforementioned ‘suit’ was probably trying to escape the madding crowd but regrettably, it’s unseemly to run. Herd instinct being what it is, the crowd would panic and start running too, but without knowing the reason.
I’d arrived at Heathrow at nine o’clock, having established beforehand that Madison Bailey’s flight was on time.
‘As we discussed the other day, Harry,’ explained Sullivan, once I’d located his airside office, ‘the intention is to have a blitz on the crews of three different airlines, including Miss Bailey’s, of course. It’s something we do from time to time, and it won’t look as though we’re taking a special interest in her if we pick three separate crews apparently at random.’ His personal radio buzzed and he was told that the Bogotá flight had touched down.
‘Come on through, Harry. You can watch from the search room,’ said Sullivan. ‘You can see out, but Bailey won’t be able see you. The window is one way.’
This was not the moment to tell Peter Sullivan that I was fully conversant with one-way windows.
All the crews had been asked to make formal declarations and most were allowed to pass through customs without further delay. The officers on Sullivan’s team had been carefully briefed and the crews of the selected airlines were subjected to a more thorough search. One or two pieces of luggage were opened and examined and, one by one, the female members of the cabin crew had their make-up cases examined. Several of these cases were removed to a back room ostensibly to be X-rayed, including the one taken from Madison Bailey.
But her case was not X-rayed because the officials had a good idea what they were looking for. And
they found it.
Peter Sullivan was called over by one of the searchers. ‘How about that, guv?’ The officer displayed a number of plastic-covered packages containing white powder that had been taken from a compartment at the bottom of the case.
‘How much does it weigh?’ asked Sullivan.
‘A kilo, give or take, and it’s pure cocaine.’
Sullivan nodded as he did some mental arithmetic. ‘Street value of about seventy grand, I reckon. But now comes the hard part. We need to know where it’s going.’ He walked over to an officer in civilian clothing. ‘Come over and have a look at your target, Grant.’ He led the officer across the room to the window. ‘That good-looking black girl in stewardess’s uniform is Madison Bailey and she’s your target.’
‘Very tasty,’ said Grant, the senior surveillance operative. ‘She’s a real stunner.’
‘Well, never mind that. Keep your mind on the job, because we need to know where she goes and who she’s meeting.’
‘I do know the drill,’ protested Grant. ‘I’ve been doing this job for quite a few years now.’
‘That’s what worries me,’ said Sullivan, who knew that spending too long in the same job sometimes leads to carelessness. ‘Just make sure you don’t lose her. And keep in touch all the time.’ There was no love lost between the customs element of the National Crime Agency and the men and women who undertook the tailing operations.
The NCA surveillance operative took out his personal radio and gave the members of his team, who were positioned in various parts of the airport, a full description of Madison Bailey.
Sullivan glanced at the search officer. ‘All set?’
‘Yes, guv. The originals were photographed in situ and the substitute packages have been put in their place. We’re good to go.’ Madison Bailey’s case now held the same number of packages, identical with the originals, but each containing an innocuous white powder of the same weight as the cocaine they replaced.
‘Right, return the cases to their owners, apologize for the delay and send them on their way rejoicing.’
I stood at the window and watched as the cases were handed back. It was particularly noticeable that Madison Bailey displayed no emotion whatsoever when she took her case from the customs official. Either she had been supremely confident of her own deceit or she didn’t know the cocaine was there, something that Sullivan told me happens from time to time. On the other hand, rather than being an unknowing ‘mule’, she may have been a consummate actress. But that requires a great deal of nerve.
The operation was under way, and with luck and professionalism on the part of the surveillance team, I might, at last, discover the identity of Robert Sharp’s murderer. There again, all that we might have turned up is a drug-smuggling operation involving Madison Bailey but having nothing whatever to do with the murder of Robert Sharp.
I left the airport and made my way directly to my office in Belgravia. Peter Sullivan had promised to keep me informed of the progress of the surveillance operation as it unfolded. It turned out to be a running commentary as the reports, monitored at Heathrow, were passed immediately to me by one of Sullivan’s men.
The first surprise was that Madison Bailey did not go home to the flat at Harlington that she shared with Jeanette Davis, but drove her distinctive white Mini convertible with its personalized number plate straight on to the M4.
Keeping strictly to the speed limit, she continued her journey for just over forty miles until she arrived at Chieveley Services at junction thirteen. She parked her car and, carrying her make-up case and a small overnight bag, went inside. Peter Sullivan had assured me that there were several women on the surveillance team and one of them had followed the target into the facilities area where Madison had shed her uniform, taken a shower and donned white linen slacks and a yellow crop top. She had undone the French roll she adopted when on duty so that her black hair now hung loose around her shoulders.
From there she went to Costa, where she had a latte and a Danish pastry before returning to her car. The watchers reported that she was now wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses and suggested that this was an attempt to mislead the surveillance team. Although not mentioning my view to the NCA team, I thought this was an absurd observation to have made. Assuming that Madison Bailey was under the impression that she had been cleared by customs at the airport without arousing suspicion, she was continuing to drive a car registered in her name. It was surely quite natural for an attractive woman like her to want to shake off her uniformed image, apart from which the sun was shining and dark glasses were essential to safe driving. There was no reason why she should have embarked upon evasive tactics.
Leaving the service area, Madison drove back on to the M4 until she reached junction twenty, when she took the slip road to join the M5 towards Bristol. The surveillance team now speculated that Bristol was going to be her destination. But neither their intelligence sources nor ours indicated that she had any connection with that city and, as if to prove it, at junction thirty-one she swung on to the A30 towards Bodmin.
She made another stop at Cornwall Services and spent thirty-seven minutes purchasing and consuming a salad at the Cornish Kitchen before continuing her journey. But her final destination could still only be guessed at.
Madison Bailey’s mystery drive continued until, 300 miles from Heathrow, she turned on to the B3306 road.
‘It looks as though she’s going to Penzance, Harry,’ said Sullivan, calling personally for the first time since the operation began. ‘Does she have any connections there that you know of?’
‘It doesn’t ring any bells, Peter. At a guess, if that’s her destination, I’d say she was meeting the person who’ll take the drugs off her hands there.’
‘That was my conclusion, too. As usual, it’s turned out to be a waiting game.’ But then came a surprise. ‘Hang on, Harry. I’ve got another message coming through.’ There was a pause and then Sullivan came back on the line. ‘She’s just driven into Land’s End airport, Harry.’
‘There’s only one place she can go from there,’ I said. ‘St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly.’
‘Yes,’ said Sullivan, ‘I’ve just been told that. One of my blokes here knows Scilly well. He reckons it opens up quite a few possibilities apparently. If she’s meeting someone it could be on St Mary’s or any one of the other inhabited islands: Tresco, St Martin’s, Bryher and St Agnes. Added to that there are scores of uninhabited islands, and there’s nothing to stop someone camping on one of them without worrying about being spotted from the air provided they camouflage themselves. But I’m told that would mean hiring a local boat and the Scillonian boat owners want to keep on the right side of the law, so I doubt our target would chance it.’
‘Have you thought that the meet, if there is to be one, might take place on a yacht moored off St Mary’s?’ I asked.
‘We’re arranging to cover that possibility, Harry. A customs vessel, Her Majesty’s Cutter Guardian, is in the area and will be directed to Scilly if that turns out to be necessary. The surveillance team has promised to get some of their people over there as soon as possible. In addition to the fixed-wing aircraft service, there’s now a helicopter service in place. To be quite honest though, we’ve been caught on the hop.’
‘Will your cutter get there in time, Peter?’
Sullivan laughed. ‘It rather depends where he is when we call him, but the skipper can get twenty-six knots out of the vessel’s two Caterpillar engines.’ He paused. ‘So I’m told.’
It was another twenty minutes before Peter Sullivan rang again. ‘The surveillance team have managed to get a couple of their people on the next helicopter after the one the target’s on. Meanwhile, we’ve been in touch with the police on St Mary’s and asked them to keep a lookout for Madison when she alights from the chopper. It’s only a matter of twenty minutes between flights, so nothing can go wrong.’
‘Keep in touch, Peter, and thanks for the update.’ I ended the call and
wondered how many times I’d heard the phrase ‘nothing can go wrong’, only to find that an anonymous police gremlin had struck again and, to use a familiar police term for disaster, the wheels had come off.
I rang Commander Cleaver at home, knowing that he never minded being disturbed about something important. In fact, he would be annoyed if he was not told something important whatever day it was or whatever time it was.
‘What’s the problem, Harry? You sound like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.’
‘It’s been a long day, guv’nor, and it’s not over yet. I know you said you didn’t want a blow-by-blow account of my enquiry, but I thought I should bring you up to date on this one. We seem to have reached a critical point.’ And I went on to tell him that Madison Bailey was now in the Isles of Scilly. We assumed, I said, that she believed she was still in possession of seventy thousand pounds’ worth of cocaine, and that we were waiting to see what happened next in the hope that her contact was also the man who’d murdered Robert Sharp.
‘Sounds hopeful, Harry,’ said Cleaver. ‘I think you should get over there as soon as possible and I’d be inclined to take Kate Ebdon with you as there’s a woman involved, but that’s your decision, of course. You’re running the show.’
‘I’ll do that, sir, and thank you.’
‘Let me pull a few strings to see if I can get someone to take you over there, Harry. Like our people or the Royal Navy.’
I telephoned Kate’s home number and told her to stand by for a move, thinking how different Cleaver was from his predecessor, who could never come to terms with the possibility that a detective chief inspector was capable of making a decision without first receiving his advice.
