Encouraged to declare themselves ‘unfit for work’ to massage the unemployment figures, local people see bankers fiddling the rules, causing chaos to the country and throughout the world. They cannot miss politicians preaching parsimony while they fiddle expenses, for vital things like moats and second home plasma televisions. Both sets of the elite did wrong, escaping without punishment.
If they could get away with such things, then why not us, Ister folk asked? It always had its ‘wrong ‘uns’ but now, with little to no hope for their future, many youngsters turned to or were lured into crime, drugs, violence. The police had to clean up the putrid human mess that politicians and bankers created. It was why Bess raised the question of my leaving the force. I had done my share at solving the insoluble, she said, enough is enough. Rich criminals got away with it; the poor did not.
The dockland area with its cranes, Victorian warehouses and endless jetties looms to my left, harsh lights showing shadowy boats with containers swinging in the air as I pass. The solitary light at the top of the tall dock tower, once vital for opening lock gates, and now irrelevant with the coming of electricity, fades in the darkness.
The ACC rings and approves our plan for the dead man’s case.
***
I negotiate the main street, heavily adorned with graffiti, a plethora of bars, fast food shops, Cash Converters, pawn and charity shops, bookies galore, Poundland, a sports shop showing countless tracksuits and trainers on offer. All flash dolefully past. Even the ubiquitous national coffee chains do not enter here. I once patrolled this road and know that behind the seedy front facade lie other rougher streets, offering brothels, gambling dens, ladies and boys of the night. As I stop at traffic lights, waving away the beggars who approach my window, I pass a former green and tree shrouded park now a frozen pond of mud. Shadows are already gathering at this ready haven for people on Crack, who cannot sleep and do not eat the better to pursue drugs and drink. Wandering this pinched area even in the cold are begging, thieving, self-harming walking skeletons. Oddly, perhaps appropriately, the ultra-modern criminal courts overshadow the park.
A few cars are about as I pass on to the south of the town. I can only glimpse the seaside pier jutting into the waves, the string of lamp posts along the slush covered promenade, only imagine the summer aromas of stale fish and chips and curry in plastic trays, the pinging of beer cans, blown erratically by the biting wind. Beyond the lights is the blackness of sand and sea where holiday making families will frolic again in a few months with their buckets, spades and candy floss. Where I taught Grace how to bury Daddy in the sand, only to then emerge monster like to chase her and Bess into the sea to wash off the clinging particles.
Hail turns to light snow as I enter bleak darkness when the town peters out. Here narrow lanes cut across treacherous marshland, troughs of water and sucking mud for twenty miles in all directions from the middle. The perfect place to lose a body. Several cold case murder victims, some even dismembered or headless, have plopped up from this Ancaster Fen over the years. Twisting, roller coasting on bumpy single track roads, I spin the car, turn inland to a fenced enclave of two houses, one a modern mansion, the other slightly smaller behind.
The gates are open, the security man says there is nobody home but reluctantly waves me though as Harry looms in a car behind with three of his squad, followed by three patrol cars with blue lights flashing, a police van with a half dozen uniforms, a forensics team, Whittle and Fenwick with Parsons in her car at the rear.
The warrants are executed on both houses, with only cleaning staff present. Over the next few hours the seven-bedroom mansion reveals nothing even as Simon Hildred’s lawyer arrives to view the paperwork, watch proceedings and confirm his client is in the Caribbean at present with his family. In the smaller residence, the man of the house, younger brother Clive makes an entrance, chiding Harry for bothering two brothers who are just businessmen seeking to look after their families.
Then Clive sits silent in a sumptuously deep white leather sofa, solidly muscular still at thirty, dark of hair and brow, enjoying his eye catching split-level lounge. He smokes a cigar; half fills a cut-glass tumbler from an ornate decanter and sips quietly, while staring out at the deep shadows of the wind lashed sea a mile away. His confidence is serene and seems genuine, with nary a twitch of eyebrow or look.
This all changes in a second when he is confronted an hour later with the evidence brought in by Jai Li. The knife was wrapped in a towel, hidden behind a brick in his cellar, both items covered in blood. The debonair man is instantly on his feet, hurtling expletives at everyone as he hurls glass and cigar across the room in disgust.
Three PCs hold him firm in cuffs as he splutters endlessly, ‘It’s a plant, we do not do knives,’ ‘you bastards are fitting me up. I wouldn’t be that stupid.’
Sadly, for him, his lawyer has been with the cellar search team throughout their explorations there. Nothing has been planted. Harry’s squad take Clive to Ister’s police headquarters for questioning, even as he quietens to a wary snarling animal at bay, warning his lawyer to ‘sort this shit out and quick.’ The search continues.
Parsons is to sit in on the questioning, Fenwick to stay with the search team. I drive away, with Whittle as my passenger, drained by this mad monkey world I inhabit, longing to sleep forever and never wake lest I can embrace a world empty of worry and fear.
Crossing back through Ister’s southern seaside area, I can see the white tips of the waves hitting the beach and an image of sunshine blurs my sight. Of Grace’s face so alive, small hands reaching into the pools of water as I hold her from falling and we watch tiny crabs scurry and bury themselves away. My little one beseeching the nearby Bess, ‘Come see, Mummy, come see.’
70
The story of the murdered man dominates the local radio news show but without any mention of the follow-up raids. The police make no comment beyond Lucinda asking for ‘the public’s help in identifying the victim of this heinous crime,’ giving a detailed description of the man and confirming that operations are on-going.
Jai Li calls to say that bloody fingerprints on knife and towel are Clive Hildred’s, and DNA tests are in process. Harry rings to say he has organized the rounding up of the Hildred’s three trusted henchmen, and Steven Rankin’s estate has been raided. He is absent, the house silent, empty and sold.
I am not surprised as he goes on, “To a local surgeon, money in wielding the scalpel,” Harry rasps over the radio, “must have paid millions – eight bedrooms and lots of land.”
As we pull into Merian’s police station car park, even the windscreen wipers seem to work more tenderly after their escape from the urban jungle. On the radio an Ister woman condemns police inactivity for allowing such crimes as murder in her area, for allowing drugs ‘to turn our children into whores, thieves, junkies with nothing and nobody helping.’
Whittle has not said a word, busily sifting through paperwork throughout our twenty-mile journey, using her phone as a torch. She scuttles off to her desk, tasked with all the records and paper work for the murder, the Hildred searches, the drone arrests and various incidents dealt with over the Ancaster Christmas Market. She goes immediately to begin her tasks. Lucky girl.
***
I sit by the mound of files on Gadd’s desk behind which he lurks. He has much to report. He has obtained refills for the propane gas fires which are again sputtering merrily away to make the squad room almost warm though we all still have our overcoats on.
First is the printed list of calls from Pippa Langstaffe’s landlines at her Ancaster cottage and London house, and her mobile phone for the past three months. Quickly skimming them all, my mother’s phone number is there twice on the Ancaster cottage phone. Gadd takes me through the calls from all the sources and the reasons. She speaks regularly with Polly Verity and her brother in North America, calls the local taxi company to book her final ride, books meals at various restaurants during her stay. All are ordinary, save five
. The intriguing calls she makes are to Albion House, D’Eynscourte Hall, Professor Michael Bartlett’s Cambridge college, her lawyer and regular twenty minute calls to a Shanghai number in China.
Gadd explains the English calls are all to the general numbers and there is no way of proving who she actually talked to at Albion and D’Eynscourte but each one was for over ten minutes. He has left a decision on follow up approaches on them all to me. The Chinese number is the main switchboard of D’Eynscourte Bank’s shiny black thirty floor monolith headquarters in Shanghai, with two thousand extensions, that I drove past regularly during my month there. I will question the Hakluyts on their return in the New Year, and leave Val and Bartlett till then also so as to give no warning to any of them.
Second, at Fenwick’s suggestion Gadd has revisited the farm theft files.
“I hope that is ok Sir, second pair of eyes?”
Ideas from many voices are always welcome. I am not a believer in top down control and direction of thought like Odling and Creel. Pinning up a map of our police area, Gadd marks the main thefts and their dates in red.
His face is red, voice clogged with cold, “Sorry, got it from my kids, but there is pattern here as Tom says – three weeks or so apart, always know the place to hit for good items, no CCTV of same lorry or van driving away, nothing turning up with known fences, and a dozen people present or aware of what is worth stealing at every farm. No smoking gun clue.”
I try not to show my impatience at his rehashing what we already know, but may not succeed as Gadd hurries on nervously, “But I wondered about coming at it from the other way. Where does the stolen gear – tractors, quad bikes, plough, stock, high-end computerized equipment – go to if we cannot spot it being transported?”
I brighten as he rushes on, Ancaster accent creeping in, “Even with few traffic and CCTV cameras on them roads round Merian and the owd rural areas. Reight impossible for such big vehicles as will be used for stealing farm equipment and animals not to be seen at nite. Especially or in the following few days so I thought ….”
He beams as he finishes, “They are stealing the stuff and then laying up somewhere local, perhaps with the items in a container in a barn or even open to view, not sure how they will deal with animals. Then days or weeks later a lorry comes in, collects it when the heat is off. Like a normal load, off it goes to the farm that has ordered it or to Ister or Felixstowe or Hull and so abroad. Who would notice or know?”
Our Super Recogniser wants to begin poring over the material for a week or more after every robbery to see if he is right. Action approved with praise.
Gadd then has interesting if bad news on other fronts as his third report. One of his special jobs for me alone was to check with the main newspaper in Cambridge as to whether they still had photographs taken the week my mother met my father. Gadd’s eyes are large as he reports that they still have hard copies going back a century, but a fire two months ago destroyed photographs and newspaper clippings for the decade that interests me.
“No suspicious circumstances Sir, according to the local council and Cambridge PC who investigated when I talked to them. The room where the public can do their own research and the written record of people using it that week also went up in smoke.”
Whittle, who has clearly been half listening, pulls up a chair and sits beside us as Gadd goes on, voice flat, “The librarian was very apologetic about it all, no digital record that far back so I asked her about photographers who might have gone around the pubs then, freelancers. She said she would check, I thought that was the end of it but two hours later she rang, gave me two names.”
Either Gadd cannot evaluate progress or is deliberately keeping things low key as he continues, “One died ten years ago and his widow threw all his negatives out, can you believe, negatives?”
I wave him on and his voice croaky with cold is finally excited, “The other guy has retired, kept his negatives in a shed, and ….”
He pauses for dramatic effect, which Whittle ruins by saying, “It burnt down or they were stolen.”
Gadd’s face is resigned, “Yes, burnt down two weeks ago, local PC put it down to vandals.”
Whittle’s face brightens as she stares from one to the other of us, “Got to all be linked Sir, Tony - Merian Standard, the school, the dead woman’s two houses – all photographs or data taken or destroyed from all those years ago, now this?”
Her look asks what the Cambridge angle is.
I demur softly “Just a theory,” but do not explain how I wanted a look at the picture Pippa showed my mother, causing her so much upset. The photo, taken by a local freelancer, that my mother insists she never kept a copy of because it harked back to the beginning of her sister Penny’s troubles.
I do not mention my feeling that the attempted burglary on my mother’s house is also linked. It has to be. I do not like top down control, but where my mother is concerned, that is the way of it for now.
***
Whittle returns to the drudge of paperwork, Gadd is feverishly talking on the phone as I wander the squad room, deep in aimless thoughts. As Gadd joins me in my office, Whittle shoehorns herself in too despite his face having lost its optimistic sheen.
“Good news Sir, Ms Langstaffe does have the top Platinum service for documents, images and video material at the American data protection company.
“Bad news, they will not release it to us, even though the woman is dead, without proof of decease and approval by the estate executor once probate is processed.”
So, who would be the executor? Polly Verity or the lawyer involved might know.
He carries on, “Or a court order from a UK court presented to a US court and like Apple with the F.B.I. I think they would fight any such to the last.”
Whittle stirs, “You were excited about some things though Tony, were having a right chat with someone.”
Gadd looks shamefaced, “I have talked to this lady in California a few times now, very helpful until that sticking point – discussed our kids, being divorced, you know.”
I do and am rising to go as he goes on, “She did give me a little background though, broke her own rules.”
Whittle and I wait while Gadd studies notes that appear to have been written in a dog-eared notebook by a drunken spider who has strayed into a bottle of ink and then rampaged across the pages. The result of one geek chatting with another I imagine, but well done DC Gadd for trying.
He begins, “Account was opened five years ago, is used a great deal, and constantly updated at extra cost to adopt their latest top security measures as they invent and apply them. Last entry was the day she died.”
He looks up, “Likely be the photos outside Albion House Sir? My friend hinted it was images.”
My look urges him on, “For entry ourselves without the court or executor approval, it is three step verification. Step one, we need Ms Langstaffe’s password, which is complex my friend Lily-Anne says, impossible to guess as probably inventively generated at some length by something like LastPass. Two, several security questions – maiden name of mother, favourite pet’s name etc. - Phillipa Langstaffe will have set herself. Step three, her security provider generates a one-off twelve-digit code that is sent through to her mobile.”
Whittle’s voice is wistful, “And we cannot find the mobile.”
Gadd finishes, “I do not think she uses that phone for the verification as she has had no calls to her mobile number from this data protection company, despite using them regularly.”
“She has another phone somewhere,” I murmur, “unless her burglars found it, or it was taken from her body?”
Would the ACC countenance the cost of pursuing this through the courts? No. How long will probate take even if the executor, presumably her brother, is willing to give us entry to this data? As Gadd says, good and bad news.
Tuesday
71
Cold steel bites bayonet-like into my neck.
A voice of brief menace, “Be still.
Or.”
I do as I am bid, can do nothing else. This is sleepy Ancaster County, where killings do not happen but will that save me? In the early hours, the world is starless, black as tar and this isolated field is blind.
“Speak quickly bud. Why are you following me, watching us?”
He presses the revolver barrel brutally upward into the skin of my throat, knowing I will visualise the fatal damage a single bullet will do up through my brain. With no one to see, hear or care, surrounded by thick high hedges and tall trees as we are.
I thought I had been so careful. Following him from the big house hours earlier, blending into tree and bush. Even as he crossed fields and lanes, doubled back, hid, waited and watched for any followers and then went on. I observed as the woman appeared in the lighted doorway to welcome him to the remote converted barn, some five miles south of Merian.
Yet he had known, had slipped out somehow hours later without me seeing, had known where I was watching from, and worked round and come upon me. No birds flew up, no animals stirred, no snap of branch or twig gave warning of this weightless ghost. Even as I peered through hedge and tree trunks at where they were together for four hours.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 44
