by D C Vaughn
XXXIX
DCI Stone led the way to the front door of the house, a large Georgian styled property with extensive grounds. He reckoned that it had to be a five, maybe six–bedroom home, the kind that he would have loved to have provided for his own family.
Stone rang the doorbell, and it was answered by an attractive woman who had to be in her early forties but looked a decade younger.
‘Hi, can I help?’ she asked with an all–American smile as bright as the day was long.
‘DCI Stone, DS Russell, Exeter CID. Can we speak with your husband, please?’
Mrs Carters’s smile slipped away and she stepped back from the open door, allowing them into the house.
Stone and Russell followed her silently through the home, which was tastefully decorated, the walls covered in pictures of the couple’s son and daughter, now in their early teens. Stone could see pictures of the son on an American football team, their daughter leading a stage production of some kind. Americana was on show wher ever he looked, momentoes and memories of home.
Dylan Carter was reclining on a vast, white leather sofa, staring into the flames of a fire blazing before him, a tumbler in his hand filled with an amber liquor. He turned as he saw them enter the room and his face collapsed even further.
‘Geez, even here I can’t get away from you guys.’
Stone moved to stand before Carter, Russell at his side. ‘Would you mind answering a few questions for us, sir?’
Carter gestured to the armchairs with a lazy flip of one hand. Stone sat down, but Russell remained standing. Stone shot him an urgent look and the DS reluctantly sat down.
‘Your company, Neuray, ran a charity last year in Exeter for about six months, over the winter period,’ Stone said.
‘It’s not my company,’ Carter replied, ‘and I don’t work there anymore.’
‘None the less, if you could answer our questions it would be very helpful.’
Carter sighed. ‘Yes, we ran a charity.’
‘Whom did the charity benefit?’
‘Vagrants,’ Carter replied. ‘It was set up to help homeless people, part of a community initiative that Neuray was happy to get on board with. We fed and clothed folks for six months over the winter, the hardest time for them to survive.’
‘And the charity was wrapped up after that?’ Stone asked.
‘The charity remained, but the initiative itself was closed, yes.’
Stone nodded, making some notes. DS Russell seemed content to simply sit and glare in silence at Carter.
‘And during this period you helped roughly how many people?’
‘I have no idea, I merely signed off on the initiative and the budget.’
‘You don’t have records of any names?’
Carter peered at Stone. ‘No, we didn’t, and even if we had it’s likely the names would have been false. Homeless people are often hiding from debts of one kind or another.’
‘Does the name James Mintram mean anything to you?’
‘I don’t think so, no,’ Carter replied. ‘Who is he?’
Stone said nothing as he checked his notes. ‘Has Neuray run any other charity initiative such as this since, or before?’
Carter looked up and to the left. ‘Not that I can recall, no. Most of our work was done behind closed doors for obvious reasons.’
Stone nodded. He looked at Kieran Russell, decided to let him loose. The DS took up the questioning.
‘Do you have any contacts with Russian nationals in this country at this time?’
Carter raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Russians? No, I don’t think so. I mean, I know some who live and work in London, but I haven’t spoken with them in some time.’
‘Would you be willing to pass us their names and contact details so that we can verify that you have not been in contact with them?’
Carter leaned forward now. ‘No, I god damned will not. These are powerful people, respected people. I’m not going to drag them down into this investigation on a whim. For that matter, what exactly is it that you’re investigating here?’
‘A few hours ago, Ashton Kershaw was attacked in his car by two Russian men who beat him half to death. He’s currently recovering in a private ward in Exeter hospital.’
Carter stared at them in disbelief. ‘Beaten half to death? You’re kidding?’
‘We are not,’ Stone replied. ‘He’s lucky to be alive.’
‘My God,’ Carter uttered, set his drink down. ‘What the hell would Russians attack Ashton for?’
‘We were hoping that you could tell us,’ Kieran suggested.
Carter performed a rapid calculation. ‘Jesus, no. You think that I arranged to have him beaten after he fired me?’
‘Sir,’ Kieran went on, ‘are you willing to provide us with the right to analyse your mobile phone and your e–mail accounts to ascertain whether or not contact has been made with Russians in this country and this time?’
Carter’s face flushed red and he stood from his seat.
‘The hell I will! Do you have any idea what you’re asking? My contacts are the only thing ensuring I’ll get another job! If I bring them into this, they won’t touch me with a godamn barge pole ever again! I’d be finished!’
‘Murder investigations finish a lot of people,’ Kieran pointed out. ‘Motive, means, opportunity, Dylan. We’re seeing all three here and we’d like to get to the bottom of it.’
Carter struggled to find words. ‘I don’t believe this! No, I can’t stand the man, but I wouldn’t go and risk everything by having him beaten up by thugs! Besides, the people I know don’t move in the kind of circles that thugs do, they wouldn’t know how to find people to do such a thing.’
‘That’s for us to determine, sir,’ Kieran replied. ‘Right now, we have one man in hospital and one of our detectives is missing, while another has been a suspect in a homicide and appears to have been framed for the crime. We have two dead bodies, both pulled from the River Exe, one of whom appears to be a Russian. The one thing that links all of these events is Neuray itself, and you were the CEO for the entire time and for two years prior.’
Carter slapped one hand to his head as he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening.
‘I get that the buck stops with me, detective, but this is beyond anything I would have had any control over! I’m living in a different country, I don’t know anybody who could do these things and right now I’ve lost my job, my income and possibly my future. Now you’re accusing me of accessory to murder?’
Kieran said nothing. DCI Stone spoke instead.
‘We’re going to need the names of those contacts, Dylan, whether you like it or not. And we’re going to need to speak to any Neuray employees who worked on the charity initiative.’
Carter laughed bitterly.
‘You’ll have to speak to Ashton about that, he’s the only one with records to everything that Neuray has done over the past twenty yea…’
Dylan Carter fell suddenly silent. DCI Stone peered up at him.
‘Sir, I will ask you one more time, have you had any contact at all with Russians in this country in the past few weeks?’
Carter, off–balance with something he appeared to have remembered, shook his head. ‘No.’
Stone retrieved from his pocket a slip of paper, a record from a mobile phone service company that he handed to Carter.
‘This is a phone record, a call log. We’re tracking a number belonging to a man whom we believe responsible for an assault and possibly a murder in the city. This number has been associated with that individual. Look at the call log, and tell me if you recognise any of the numbers there?’
Carter scanned down the page, and as he reached the bottom so he flinched.
‘That’s my number.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Kieran Russell replied. ‘You spoke with that individual today, didn’t you?’
Dylan Carter’s hand flew to his head again, his eyes wild as he replied.
‘I, I
don’t remember. I got a call, from someone with a Russian accent, asking about development opportunities or something. I don’t know how they got my number. I told them to book an appointment with my secretary and then I hung up!’
DCI Stone’s eyes narrowed.
‘Perhaps, but you can understand why we’re here and why we’re asking you these questions? Russian bodies pulled from the River Exe, you’re fired from your role and right after that the replacement CEO is savagely beaten by a Russian who spoke to you on your mobile phone barely an hour before?’
Carter’s wife spoke softly from nearby where she had been listening to the whole exchange. ‘Dylan? What’s this all about?’
Dylan looked at his wife, helplessness written all over his face. ‘I don’t understand how this could all have happened so fast? The board removes me as CEO and suddenly I’m facing all of this? Jesus, you couldn’t make it up. I damned well hope Ashton’s got the stones to take the company back, because when this shit storm hits him he’ll…’
‘What?’
‘Ashton,’ Carter murmured, and then his eyes fixed on Stone. ‘The son of a bitch. He wanted control of his company back. He’s wanted me out ever since he retired! He could have arranged this whole damned charade!’
DCI Stone frowned. ‘Sir, he’s in hospital. Right now, I’m afraid to say that we have sufficient evidence that I am arresting you for suspicion of being an accessory to an act of aggravated assault. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
‘This is insane,’ Carter snapped. ‘Those are not sufficient grounds for arrest, and you know it!’
‘If you would come with us,’ Kieran insisted, his bulk blocking Carter from any escape route and an uncompromising expression on his face.
Carter, bewildered, looked at his wife. ‘Honey, would you please call my lawyer?’
***
XL
‘You didn’t come back.’
Rebecca sat alongside Sam in the darkness of a dark blue Nissan as he drove it along a narrow back lane outside Exeter. Behind them, still wrapped in her sleeping bag, Sophie sat in silence and was no doubt revolving through her mind the horrors of what Sam had explained to her in the abandoned house.
‘I couldn’t,’ Sam replied. ‘The police were right behind me. I had to leave, but as long as the chip was out of your head, I was fine with that. With you safe in police custody and Dylan Carter unable to track you, he’d turn to looking for me.’
Rebecca thought about that for a moment. ‘And then you ended up in that house, looking for Sophie?’
‘I was right behind you,’ Sam replied, and in the glow of the instruments she saw him smiling. ‘I wasn’t looking for any one person, just working my way through any homeless bolt hole that I knew about. I’d just got there myself when I saw you creeping through the fence with Jenny. Gave me a warm little glow in my stomach to see you already on the case and ahead of me.’
‘Jeez, I’m gonna puke,’ Jenny murmured from the back seat. ‘Why don’t you two get a room?’
Rebecca smiled to herself but said nothing.
‘How many are there of us?’ Sophie asked from the back seat.
Sam answered, speaking slowly.
‘No more than ten, in total. Neuray was never going to be able to test their product on humans officially because of the obvious legal ramifications, and the regular Armed Forces would also be unlikely to expose their staff to anything as controversial as Neuray’s program, for fear of any backlash. Nobody expects anything to remain secret for long anymore. When the Russians got involved, after the MOD turned down the technology, and wanted the chips tested, the only option was to implant people who would have nobody to watch over them, nobody would miss and who could not complain about their symptoms without being labelled as drunk, on drugs or off their heads.’
Sophie shrugged. ‘Fair point. What now?’
Sam kept his eyes on the road as he drove .
‘Dylan Carter will need every person he’s implanted to be either killed or have their chip extracted, to remove evidence of what he and Neuray have been up to. The Ministry of Defence will resist any public inquiry investigation into Neuray for reasons of national security, so the only way we’re going to bring this to an end is to expose Carter’s role in it all.’
‘Does he even have one?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Surely he’s sent other people to do his dirty work for him?’
‘The Russians,’ Sam nodded. ‘He’s got a lot of loose ends to tie up. He can’t do that on his own, so he’s got to get other people to do it for him.’
It didn’t take long for Rebecca to figure out who those people would be. ‘The same guys we saw in the abutment?’
‘Gotta be,’ Sam agreed, ‘and they’ll be able to get rid of a small number of homeless people without making even a blip on the police radar. They’re victims with no real connection to families, to each other, who move about the country from place to place, no fixed abode, no bank details, no nothing. They vanish, nobody knows about it or cares.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Sophie uttered.
‘Just the way it is,’ Sam replied to her. ‘You’re the perfect victims, and if this guy gets to you first then you’ll all be dead within days and they’ll disappear back to Moscow like they never even existed. I don’t know how Carter did it but he’s got the police to believe he’s a victim of Russian espionage, that he’s lost his job because of it, been a victim in all of this. I want that to change.’
Rebecca looked across at Sam, and she began to wonder how she could possibly have doubted him at all.
‘We need to let DCI Stone’s team know,’ she said. ‘This is all evidence that they can use to track down these at–risk people and bring them into custody where they can’t be harmed.’
‘It could take days to round them up,’ Sam said. ‘The Russians must know that the noose is tightening, so I don’t think we’re going to find these people conveniently floating around in rivers. They’ll want to cover his tracks well, leave no trace of their role in this.’
‘Then how do we catch them?’ Sophie asked.
Sam glanced over his shoulder and offered her a faint smile.
‘That’s where you two come in. This is what I want you to do.’
*
Ashton Kershaw sat in bed within a private ward of the hospital, his cell phone beside him as he awaited the call. His face ached from where Artyom had beaten him to within what felt like an inch of his life but it had been necessary evil: anything less might have raised suspicions.
The doctors, whom he paid, had confirmed that he suffered a broken nose, a fractured eye socket, considerable swelling and also three cracked ribs. At his age, he was lucky to be alive. Had the blow to his side been a little lower he might well have suffered a ruptured spleen or similar and died in agony before he was found. It was only the greatest good fortune that Detective Marchant had been on her way to Neuray at the time, otherwise nobody would have thought to check his car until much later in the evening.
The mobile phone by his side buzzed softly, and he checked the screen before answering.
‘What news?’
The voice that came back was thick with rage.
‘They’re onto everything,’ it growled. ‘I don’t know how many of them I can take out before I…’
‘All of them!’ Ashton almost shouted, and then struggled to recover his breath as his body was wracked with coughs that sent spasms of pain coursing across his broken ribs. ‘They cannot be left.’
‘They can’t be found either,’ came the reply, equally angry but coldly efficient. ‘Your little gadget doesn’t make it any easier to find people who are asleep or wandering streets we don’t recognise. And I’m pretty sure Sam Lincoln has approached at least some of the subjects.’
Ashton’s heart froze in place in his chest. If
Sam had identified the targets, figured out who Neuray had been testing the technology on, and could get one of them to sit down in front of the police, then he and Neuray were already doomed.
‘Find them, that’s what I paid you for!’
The response came back as cold as the night was dark.
‘If I can’t find them all then you can forget the rest of the payment. I won’t get caught up in tise mess you’ve created. If that flight isn’t waiting at Farnborough, it’ll be you we’re coming for next.’
‘We had a deal!’ Ashton raged, holding his chest as he coughed again.
‘That’s right, we had a deal.’
Ashton fought with all of his might to control the coughing. ‘I know who you are,’ he growled.
There was a long pause on the line.
‘And I know who you are and all of your family, Ashton. Tread carefully…’
The line went dead in his ear. Ashton gripped it until his fingers hurt, rage building within him, and he was about to hurl the mobile phone across the room when he saw two police detectives approaching the door outside in the company of a nurse. Ashton snatched the phone from his ear and slid it under the sheets as the door opened and the nurse popped her head through.
‘Mister Kershaw, there are two police detectives to see you. I can tell them to leave if you wish?’
Ashton knew that the detectives could hear him as he replied. ‘No, no, it’s all right, please send them in.’
The two men walked into the room. One was short, stocky, his hair shaved close to his scalp, the other taller, rangier and younger, with thick brown hair. They closed the door behind them and approached Ashton’s bedside.
‘DCI Stone, DCI Russell,’ Stone introduced himself and the younger man. ‘How are you holding up, Mr Kershaw?’
Ashton cradled his chest but smiled as he replied. ‘I’ll get by, the pain in the ribs is the worst, but you can’t make my ugly old face much worse with a beating these days.’
Stone smiled briefly, as though the effort was too great.
‘We have some questions for you sir, if you can take the time for us?’
