by Peter Boland
Savage blew out through his teeth. “Any of these explanations are feasible. We need more hard facts if we’re going to get to the bottom of this. We could be going off at crazy tangents.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We don’t leave Southampton until we find the truth.”
Chapter 13
On the drive back into Southampton, Tannaz flipped open her laptop, and inserted the memory cards they’d taken from the goth couple with the cameras.
Savage chanced a quick glance at her screen. It was filled with hundreds of shots of trees. “Is that all that’s on there?” asked Savage.
“Yep,” replied Tannaz. “Just trees. Loads of them. Oh, plus a few shots of that dumb girl taken by her dumb boyfriend of her sitting on different branches. I suppose they were going to upload them to Goths Up Trees.”
“What’s Goths Up Trees?”
“A website where goths post pictures of themselves up trees,” Tannaz said dryly.
“Really, that’s a thing?”
“Yep, if you want to see goths up trees, that’s the number one site to go to.”
He shook his head and smiled. “There’s something for everyone on the Internet.”
When they got back to the city, Savage booked them into one of those budget hotel chains. It was a modern tower block near Southampton airport that resembled a pile of rabbit hutches piled one on top of the other—the embodiment of the stack-them-high-sell-them-cheap business philosophy. Corporate and soulless, it was clean and cheap and quiet. Apart from the odd plane landing and taking off, the rooms were so well soundproofed, the roar of the engines barely made it through the triple glazing.
It was dark outside. They sat in Tannaz’s room. Her laptop was on the bed, and she lay on her front, fingers furiously drumming away on the keypad. “So what are we looking for?”
“Okay, so this Simon Wellington and his vile empire seem to be suspect number one. That doesn’t mean he did it. Could have been someone else or someone working for him, or could be someone completely unrelated to all this. First things first, we follow the logic and find out all we can about him. One of two things will happen. We’ll either find something on him and pursue it until we’ve got him bang to rights or we won’t find anything, which means we can rule him out and move on, find who really did this.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
“Simon Wellington’s behind this.”
“Mine too.”
Tannaz pulled up a picture of Wellington on her laptop from his property company website. He had a face like a Toby jug—rosy cheeks, achingly wide smile and wavy, white, ice-cream hair, like the stuff that comes out of Mr Whippy machines. Bloated with success, the result of too many business lunches.
“He looks like he’s about to sing show tunes to a room full of pensioners,” said Savage.
“I know, right?” Tannaz replied. “Not exactly the Kingpin.”
Savage knew not to go by looks. Most of the war criminals in Serbia had looked very similar, like kindly old uncles who did part-time work as Father Christmas during the holidays. In reality they had done despicable things to their fellow countrymen and women.
Tannaz scoured the Internet for anything else on Wellington by getting into online places where she really wasn’t welcome. “Okay,” she said. “Simon Wellington, born in Ireland, came over here in the nineteen seventies. Son of a plasterer. Nothing like his father. Wanted to be on the stage, as an actor. Never made it. Wife died of a heart attack when their one and only son, Ben, was about fourteen. Business-wise, he owns over four and a half thousand properties, covering Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton and Reading, and a few in London.”
“Jeez,” said Savage. “The guy must be a millionaire, billionaire probably.”
“I’ll keep digging.”
Savage opted for a more traditional route and got on the phone. He didn’t know anyone in Southampton, but he knew plenty of people in London where Wellington had a number of properties; nowhere near the number he had on the south coast, but enough to need construction work now and again. And Savage knew plenty of people in London construction. One thing he knew for certain about anyone in the building industry, wherever they were, they all liked to talk. Most tradespeople could talk for England. In fact, you couldn’t shut them up. On the rare occasions Savage had needed to get someone in to do work in his flat that he couldn’t handle himself (usually servicing the boiler because he didn’t have the right certification) he found his ear being chewed off by a plumber who felt the need to discuss everything from politics to the England football team manager. He didn’t mind, that was just the way these people were. However, it did mean that Wellington’s reputation would have spread far and wide, through a network of chit-chatting carpenters, bricklayers and labourers. The downside of this was he’d have to separate what was fact from fiction. There’d be enough cock-and-bull stories to fill several books.
Savage hung up on his last call, scribbling down a few words on the room’s complimentary notepaper.
Tannaz sat up on the end of the bed. “Got anything?”
“Nothing that will help but I do have some good background on who we’re dealing with. Better than nothing.”
Savage shuffled through his notes like a newsreader and cleared his throat. “So Wellington has properties in London, and some of the guys I know have done work for him. And they’ve given me some good intel. Apparently, his rags-to-riches story started in the height of the eighties’ property boom. He scraped enough money together to buy a cheap, ratty old B&B in Shirley, Southampton. You have to realise that property prices were out of control in the eighties. People were snapping up anything to develop so they could flip it and make a packet.”
“And that’s what he did?”
“Nope. Did the complete opposite. He bought the B&B and left it pretty much as it was. Decided to rent, not sell.”
“Why did he do that?”
Savage fingered through his notes. “I’m coming to that. He took a massive gamble. Huge risk. Not only did he decide to rent it, he rented to the most undesirable people on the planet.”
“Who?”
“The unemployed and the homeless. Most landlords want to rent to young, smart, responsible professionals. People who will look after their property and keep it nice. Wellington rented his to people that nobody else wanted. That was his masterstroke. His gamble paid off. Housing development is expensive. You have to buy the property then you have to spend a packet on doing it up before you can sell it. That eats into your profit margins. Same goes for the rental market; if you don’t make the place nice nobody will want it. However, if you rent it to people who have no other choice, the homeless and the unemployed, who just need a roof over their heads, it doesn’t matter.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Exactly. So with the first property under his belt, the rent cheques flowed in, paid directly by the local council because every tenant gets housing benefit. He bought another property. Filled that one up with the same kind of people. Then did it again and again and again. It’s the perfect money-making scheme. There’re more homeless and unemployed people than there is social housing. Waiting lists are endless. Councils don’t have enough property to go round. So he stepped in and filled the gap. Bought up houses that nobody would buy, in areas where no one wanted to live and filled them with people that nobody likes, and the tax payer foots the bill, sending the rent money straight into his pocket. And when the recession hit in the early nineties, loads of property developers went bust. He was immune, in fact demand grew.”
“Any of your contacts mention the ‘weird stuff’ he was into?”
“No, none at all. They all know he’s got a reputation. Whatever that reputation is, he seems to have it all sewn up. No one talks about it because they’re all frightened of him, especially his tenants.�
� Savage paced up and down the small bedroom. Eventually he turned and faced Tannaz. “One thing we do know. We’re dealing with one hell of a smart guy, who lords it over thousands of vulnerable people.”
“That’s not a good combination,” Tannaz added. She did an image search of Wellington. Only two hits came back. One was a ‘grip and grin’ from the local paper years ago—him shaking hands with the head of a children’s hospice, handing over a giant cheque for a new wing. The other picture was a tiny fuzzy black-and-white photograph of a young Wellington, dressed in a dinner jacket and bow tie with a dove on his arm. Half cropped out of the shot was an attractive older woman standing next to him, dressed like a Las Vegas showgirl—his assistant. He looked about nineteen, she looked in her mid-twenties.
“Click on that image,” Savage asked. An archive page from the Southampton Magic Circle opened up with a large, more blurred, version of the black-and-white photograph. Next to it was an annotation that simply read: ‘Simon Wellington. Award for Most Promising Young Magician, 1973’.
“Who’d have thought it?” said Savage. “Scary Simon Wellington having a sideline as second-rate David Copperfield. Desperate to be on stage, I guess.”
“Magician, property magnate, gangster,” Tannaz remarked. “Not four words you usually hear together.”
Tannaz went back to her keyboard, hitting the buttons, sifting through page after page of Google at breakneck speed. Eventually she said: “Doesn’t seem like he does the magic stuff anymore. No mention of it anywhere, just lots of stuff about him raising money for charity. Funny for someone who’s clearly a bit of a performer, there being only three shots of him. Seems to have become a bit of a recluse.”
“That receptionist said he’s retired. Maybe that’s why, although the junior drug dealer seemed to think he was still pulling the strings in the background.”
Tannaz looked up from her screen. “We should check out his son. Could be him behind all this. Not Wellington.”
“Definitely. Let’s find out all we can about his elusive father first, before we move onto the son. Have you got anything else?”
“Well, I checked him for a criminal record. Nothing. Guy’s never even had a parking ticket. So then I hacked into the company’s business bank account.”
“Anything?”
Tannaz shrugged. “No. Nothing. Well there was this one thing, but it’s nothing.”
“Doesn’t matter. Show me.”
The screen showed the online bank account of Simon Wellington Properties. Columns of payments going in and out with the corresponding details of the transaction.
“What am I looking at?” asked Savage.
“This one here.” Tannaz pointed to a payment made to a blacksmith called Nortoft & Sons in North Wales for five and a half thousand pounds. “It’s not much. The only thing I’ve found that’s out of place. Why the hell would they need a blacksmith—for shoeing horses?”
Savage looked at Tannaz. “You’re so urban, Tannaz. Blacksmiths don’t just make horseshoes, they make anything out of metal—gates, fencing, balustrades for staircases, balconies.”
“Oh, okay. Now I feel really dumb.”
“No, don’t. This is interesting. For two reasons. Why go to a blacksmith at all? Why not go to a metal fabricator? It would be far cheaper, and why go all the way to North Wales for it?”
“What’s the difference between a blacksmith and a metal fabricator?”
“You’d go to a blacksmith for something more bespoke, say a one-off item. Like a sculptural pair of gates, I dunno, like a famous musician wanting a gate made from musical notes. Metal fabrication is more straightforward, utilitarian. Boxes and fences, security grilles for shop fronts, that sort of thing.”
“So he wanted something sculptural to put on one of his properties? That sounds unlikely.”
“No, my guess is he got something made for his house and put it through the business to save money. Maybe gates with top hats and rabbits jumping out of them. A magical theme. Maybe this place in Wales specialises in it. See if they have a website.”
Tannaz Googled the name and up popped the website for Nortoft & Sons.
“Now that is weird,” said Tannaz.
Nortoft & Sons specialised in the manufacture of metal props for film and TV. The landing page of the website was covered in a grid of nasty, painful objects, ranging from swords, flails and axes to helmets and suits of armour.
“Well, you know what they say, ‘you can’t buy taste’. Maybe Wellington bought himself a load of suits of armour to put around his mansion. Plus a few cannons out the front of his driveway.”
“With the money he’s earning, he could buy the real thing.”
“That’s true. A man who’s worth that much wouldn’t buy fakes. I wonder what he ordered then.”
“I’m going to find out.” Tannaz grabbed her phone and punched in the contact number in the corner of the screen.
Chapter 14
Before anyone at Nortoft & Sons had a chance to answer, Tannaz turned to Savage and asked, “What was that nasty receptionist called, the one you spoke to when we were in Dave’s room?”
“Vicky.”
Tannaz put the call on speaker phone so Savage could hear. It rang three times before someone answered.
“Hello.” A woman with a thick Welsh accent spoke at the other end of the line. “Nortoft & Sons.”
“Oh, hi, this is Vicky from Simon Wellington Properties in Southampton.” Tannaz spoke in a sing-song accent, as if she were the kind of girl who read gossip magazines and watched Magic Mike films back to back, preferably with her girlfriends and several bottles of Prosecco.
“Oh, yes,” said the woman on the phone.
“How are you today?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Good.” Tannaz stretched out her vowels nearly to breaking point. “We’ve just had a new accounting system, and we’re having a few teething problems, lost some details, so I’m just phoning around to make sure we’ve paid our suppliers.”
Smart, thought Savage. People were always interested in getting paid.
“Oh, okay,” said the woman. “Let me just open the right programme.” The click of buttons filtered through the phone’s speaker. “Right, go ahead.”
“It’s for five and a half thousand pounds from Simon Wellington Properties.”
“Bear with me,” the woman replied. “Ah, yes. Here it is. Our records say it’s all been paid.”
“Ah, wonderful. That’s such a relief. So sorry to bother you.”
“That’s quite alright, love.”
“Just one other thing. We’ve lost our record of what the payment was for. I don’t suppose you could…”
“No problem at all. Yes, here it is. You ordered two bespoke animal cages.”
Tannaz and Savage exchanged puzzled looks.
“Animal cages?” Tannaz couldn’t hide the shock in her voice, her pantomime act disappearing momentarily.
“With ornate steel work,” the woman continued. “First cage was small one, a metre and a half by a metre and a half. The other one, a real whopper. Nine metres by nine metres by three metres high—both cages had sides that bolted together so they could be dismantled.”
Savage hurriedly scribbled the words ‘for magic?’ on a piece of notepaper and flashed it in front of Tannaz’s eyes.
“These cages, did they have any trapdoors or hidden mechanisms, you know, for magic shows?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. We’re not allowed to do that kind of thing. Magicians have specialist contractors for that. They like to keep everything secret,” she chuckled. “Ours is more props for TV and film. We did some lovely stuff for Game of Thrones, do you remember that episode…”
Tannaz quickly cut short her little anecdote. “Thing is, we’ve got no idea why they were ordered.”
&
nbsp; “Yes, I suppose it’s a bit odd. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything for a property company before. The only thing I can think of is maybe an aviary for the big one, to keep birds in, maybe for a retirement home.”
“That makes sense,” said Tannaz.
“But the small one, I couldn’t hazard a guess.”
“That’s okay, you’ve been more than helpful. Could I just ask one more tiny thing? Sorry. Otherwise I’ll get it in the neck from my boss. What was the delivery address for the two items?”
“Certainly. It’s right here: number twenty-seven Sutton Road, Shirley, Southampton.”
“Thank you so much. You’ve been amazing.”
“Quite alright, love.” The woman hung up.
Savage and Tannaz looked at each other.
“Shirley, Southampton,” said Savage. “That’s where Wellington bought his first property.”
Tannaz shut her laptop. “This is getting weirder by the minute. Why the hell would a scumbag landlord order two animal cages?”
“Let’s find out. Tomorrow morning we’re heading over to twenty-seven Sutton Road.”
The drive at rush hour across Southampton was nearly as bad as London. Tannaz didn’t seem bothered. She had her laptop open and was using the time to find out more about Simon Wellington. Savage drummed on the steering wheel, eager to get to Shirley and find out whether this new lead would get them any closer to finding out what had happened to Dave and Luke. The satnav sent them down Shirley High Street, a clogged-up thoroughfare lined with a myriad of shopfronts, ranging from coffee chains, charity shops and budget fashion stores, to car dealers, tyre fitters and pawn brokers. Every so often, Savage’s little VW van passed an empty shop or a boarded-up window, he presumed, like many retail centres, the impact of online shopping had taken its toll.
About half way down the high street, they took a right and followed a road populated with tightly packed terraced houses with front doors that spilt straight onto the narrow pavement. The road was on a bus route and Savage had been stuck behind a single decker that kept stopping to disgorge people. Finally, after another right turn, they left the bus and were into a housing estate—by no means as bad as Thornhill, but no oil painting either. Modest semi-detached homes lined up before them complete with the ubiquitous satellite dishes clinging to their walls and block-paved driveways. The grass verges lining the edges of the road had been churned up by cars parking on them, their tyres gouging deep furrows in the dirt.
