Storm Force: A chilling Norfolk Broads crime thriller (British Detective Tanner Murder Mystery Series Book 7)

by David Blake

  ‘No probs, but before we do, Forrester wants us back in the office.’

  ‘What, seriously?’

  ‘That’s what Sally said.’

  ‘Did he tell her why?’

  ‘She said she didn’t know. Do you want me to phone him up to ask him?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he replied, glancing down at his watch, ‘but it better be important. Norwich is back the other way.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DISCOVERING THE REASON for the long tailback down Stalham Road to be a number of badly parked news media vans cluttering up the pavement outside Wroxham Police Station, Tanner was finally able to edge his way into its entrance to leave his car parked discreetly in the farthest corner.

  With Vicky’s ear glued to her phone, endeavouring to track down the owner of the Riverside Gentlemen’s Club, they entered the main office where Tanner hovered beside his desk, unable to decide if he should take a moment to check through his emails before heading over to see what Forrester had dragged him back for, or if he had time to make himself a coffee first. Reaching the conclusion that coffee was a definite priority, he turned on his heel to make a beeline for the kitchen, only to find DC Sally Beech trotting out the other way.

  ‘Oh, hi John!’ she exclaimed, a massive mug of steaming hot coffee cocooned by her smooth delicate hands. ‘Did you hear that my uncle wanted to see you?’

  ‘Vicky did mention something about it,’ he replied, glancing over her shoulder to see if she’d been kind enough to leave any coffee for him.

  ‘OK, I’ll leave you to it,’ she continued, batting her eyelids whilst nudging her way past.

  Relieved to see the carafe was still half-full, he forged his way inside, reaching up to grab a mug from the cupboard above the kettle, when young DC Townsend’s head appeared around the door.

  ‘Afternoon, sir. Did anyone tell you that DCI Forrester wanted to see you?’

  ‘One or two people,’ Tanner muttered, shaking his head.

  ‘OK, just so you know.’

  With the coffee poured and the milk added, he turned to make his way out, only to nearly walk straight into DI Cooper.

  Apologising, he took a half-step back.

  ‘My fault,’ Cooper replied, somewhat awkwardly. ‘Did you hear Forrester wanted to see you?’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Tanner muttered under his breath.

  Glancing up to see a look of wounded discontentment drawn out over Cooper’s face, he hastily put forward what he felt was a necessary apology. ‘Sorry, Cooper, it’s just that you’re the third person to tell me that since I walked in, and that was only about thirty seconds ago.’

  ‘Then I suppose it must be important,’ Cooper huffed, standing to one side to allow Tanner to pass.

  Stopping next to Forrester’s door, Tanner knocked briefly at it before nudging it open. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘Ah, there you are. I was about to send out a search party.’

  Tanner frowned with irritation. ‘I was out interviewing suspects. I thought you knew.’

  ‘I was under the impression you’d be bringing that woman in for questioning.’

  ‘Sorry, sir; which woman was that?’

  ‘The one I was talking to you about on the phone,’ Forrester continued, glancing around at his monitor. ‘Claire Metcalf.’

  ‘Er…I’m fairly sure you didn’t.’

  ‘Maybe not in so many words, but to be honest, I thought it should have been fairly obvious. I mean, she was the last person known to have seen him alive, we’ve already proved that she’d just had sex with him, she has a criminal record as long as my arm…’

  ‘…for prostitution,’ Tanner interjected, ‘not first degree murder.’

  ‘And…’ Forrester continued, ‘…we’ve just found out that she has a documented history of mental illness.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘But – nobody told me.’

  Forrester gave him an indifferent shrug. ‘She should have been brought in, whether you knew that or not.’

  ‘Had I known her state of mind before being sent over to talk to her, I would have, sir.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for that.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you; I’m simply stating my reasoning.’

  ‘OK, fair enough. You did speak to her, though?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘From her answers to my questions, I felt that she was unlikely to have been responsible for Sir Michael’s death.’

  ‘I suppose she told you she was innocent, so you believed her?’

  Tanner took up a defensive stance. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘So…what did she say?’

  ‘That she was his escort for the evening, and that she’d handcuffed him to the bed to have sex with him, after which she removed them, got dressed and left.’

  Forrester was left staring at him with his mouth hanging open. ‘And it was on that basis you made the executive decision that she was innocent?’

  Tanner shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘Not just that, sir, no.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Tanner. Sometimes I wonder if you left that brain of yours at the bottom of the North Sea. You are still capable of doing this job, I hope? If not, please tell me, and I’ll be happy enough to hand the reins over to Cooper.’

  ‘I suppose that depends if you want to find out who killed Sir Michael, or if you simply want to give Cooper the chance to start lining his pockets again.’

  Forrester paused for breath. ‘I think you’re going to have to shake off this idea of yours that Cooper is some sort of corrupt policeman, Tanner.’

  ‘At some point no doubt I will, but unlike Professional Standards, it’s going to take me a little more than a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Any chance we could stay on subject?’

  ‘You’re the one who brought up Cooper.’

  ‘And you’re the one who believed some psychotic prostitute, just because she had a nice pair of tits!’

  The room fell into a stunned silence, with Tanner left reeling by what he’d heard his DCI blurt out, whilst Forrester looked equally appalled.

  Breaking the embarrassed silence, Tanner raised a hand to clear his throat. ‘To be honest, sir, I can’t say I noticed.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ the DCI muttered, glancing sheepishly out through the partition window to see if anyone out in the main office had overheard him. ‘You get my point.’

  ‘I can assure you that my judgement was in no way clouded by the fact that she was an attractive young woman. It was based purely on her reactions to the questions being asked, and what I felt at the time was a distinct lack of motive for her having murdered the victim, certainly in the manner by which he met his untimely end. I admit that had I known about her psychological history, I would have brought her in, but I still wouldn’t have thought she was the party responsible.’

  Forrester took a moment to study his face. ‘Did she know anything about the other woman – Amber Vale, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What do you mean, not exactly?’

  ‘The two are one and the same.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tanner, I’m not with you.’

  ‘Amber Vale is her stage name.’

  ‘Oh, right. I see. Well, at least that clears that one up.’

  ‘But it was the person we nearly drove into whilst on our way to see the second of Sir Michael’s friends, a Mr Toby Wallace, that I believe to be of far greater interest.’

  ‘And who was that?’

  ‘The owner of a local strip club. We saw a car registered in his name coming out of Wallace’s drive as we arrived.’

  ‘The connection being?’

  ‘The strip club he owns is where Claire Metcalf, AKA Amber Vale, works.’

  Forrester leaned back in his chair.

  ‘On top of that, neither Toby Wallace, nor the guy driving the car, seemed willing to admit that they knew ea
ch other, which was odd, being that one was driving out of the other’s property.’

  ‘May I assume you were able to speak to this Toby Wallace character?’

  ‘We were.’

  ‘Anything of interest?’

  ‘Only that Iain Sanders had already phoned him up to warn him that we were on our way, so ensuring their alibis were identical; that and the fact that he must know the guy we saw leaving his property.’

  ‘Do we know the strip club owner’s name?’

  ‘Terrance McMillan. He’s a London-based businessman and property developer.’

  ‘And the strip club?’

  ‘The Riverside. Apparently, it’s part of a national chain.’

  ‘OK, then I suppose you’d better have a word with him.’

  ‘Funny that, but that’s exactly what Vicky and I were going to do before we were ordered back.’

  Forrester suddenly sat up in his chair, staring at his watch. ‘Christ, I almost forgot. I’ve organised a press conference. It’s supposed to start in ten minutes.’

  Tanner stared over at him with a confused curious expression. ‘You’re holding a press conference?’

  ‘Er, no; you are.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You are the SIO for this investigation, are you not?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can be. If I was, I’m fairly sure someone would have asked my opinion before making the decision to hold a press conference. Failing that, I’d have at least been given a little more notice than ten bloody minutes before it was about to start.’

  ‘The decision was made by Superintendent Whitaker.’

  ‘Oh, I see. So he’s the SIO now, is he?’

  ‘No, Tanner, but he is in charge of the Norfolk Constabulary, the organisation for which you work.’

  ‘That doesn’t give him the right to tell me how to do my job, though, does it.’

  ‘Er, I think it does, Tanner.’

  ‘Then you’d better show me that written in a manual somewhere, because as far as I know, I’m the one who has overall responsibility for this investigation, not Superintendent bloody Whitaker. And in my personal opinion, holding a press conference at this moment in time is the last thing we should be doing.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell him that yourself, hadn’t you.’

  Tanner pulled his shoulders back to look Forrester straight in the eye. ‘Alright – hand me the phone and I will.’

  ‘Look, Tanner; just do the bloody press conference, will you?’

  ‘And say what? Sir Michael Blackwell is dead, and all we know so far is that it wasn’t the butler – for a change – but only because he didn’t have one.’

  ‘For a start, it will give us the chance to lay out the facts of the investigation whilst correcting what the housekeeper told them all; that the girl he was with didn’t kill him.’

  ‘We don’t know that she didn’t.’

  ‘That’s not what you told me five minutes ago.’

  ‘I said that I thought she was unlikely to have been responsible. That’s not the same thing at all.’

  ‘Are you going to do the press conference, or not?’

  Tanner gave Forrester one last defiant glare before letting out a heavy sigh of forced capitulation. ‘Fine! But I’m not going out there on my own.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve told Cooper to join you.’

  ‘Oh, great. That’s just what I needed.’

  ‘And I’ll be there as well.’

  ‘Even better.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘HOW’D IT GO?’ asked Vicky, watching Tanner approach from reception, a look of tired despondency hanging from his face.

  ‘Assuming you mean the press conference,’ he replied, reaching her desk, ‘about as well as can be expected. Still, at least it’s done. Any luck locating that strip club owner?’

  ‘He’s normally there between three in the afternoon and about one in the morning. Otherwise he should be at the hotel he’s staying at.’

  Tanner took a moment to glance down at his watch. ‘Then I suppose we’d better get ourselves over there before Forrester sends me out to pick up Superintendent Whitaker’s uniform from the dry cleaner’s.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Tanner replied, spinning back to fetch his coat, only to see Forrester bounding his way towards him, an unusually cheerful expression stretched out over his face.

  ‘I thought that went rather well,’ the DCI called out, capturing Tanner’s attention with a cheerful smile.

  ‘Which bit?’ Tanner queried in response; his tone drenched in condescending sarcasm.

  ‘Yes, well. I suppose they’re never exactly easy. Anyway, at least they’ve got the facts now.’

  Tanner gave his shoulders an ambivalent shrug. ‘Perhaps, but it won’t stop them from writing whatever comes into their tiny little minds between now and when they get back to their desks.’

  ‘I didn’t think they brought their desks with them!’ Forrester exclaimed, grinning demonically at first Tanner, then Vicky, as if expecting them to burst into uncontrollable fits of hysterics.

  With Tanner’s face remaining a mask of stoic indifference, and Vicky barely managing a smile, Forrester cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, so…what are your plans now?’

  ‘Well, I was going to head back to my boat to put my feet up, being that it’s already gone five o’clock, but unfortunately, we still need to drive all the way over to Norwich to interview the owner of the Riverside Gentleman’s Club.’

  ‘Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’

  Tanner raised a surprised eyebrow. ‘Well, it could…’ he replied, realising Forrester must have been feeling a rare sense of guilt for having prevented them from making the trip earlier.

  ‘It’s up to you, of course,’ Forrester continued, spinning around to head back to his office.

  ‘It is?’ Tanner muttered, under his breath.

  Just before reaching his door, Forrester stopped to turn his head back. ‘Whilst I remember, I had someone from the Broad’s Authority on the phone earlier. They said there’s a storm on its way. Quite a big one, apparently. It should hit the coast tonight.’

  Tanner kicked himself for having managed to completely forget all about it.

  ‘Not sure what we’re supposed to do about it,’ Forrester continued. ‘More something for the Broads Rangers to worry about, but I suppose it’s good to be forewarned. No doubt we’ll be roped in to help clean up the mess afterwards. Anyway, I thought I’d better let you know, being what you live onboard, and everything.’