Night of Fire: (DI Angus Henderson Book 6)

by Iain Cameron

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Mr Quinlan told us Marc dealt with all the large customers and was responsible for presenting the company’s products to prospective clients.’

  If Walters sounded blunt, it was her intention. Many of the salesmen she’d come across were windbags, and if they weren’t careful they could spend half an hour with this guy and leave the building with nothing more than a ream of facts and figures taken from a company sales brochure.

  ‘He started working here a couple of years before me and became old man Quinlan’s, sorry, Mr Quinlan’s blue-eyed boy, but,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s all in the past now, isn’t it? Mr Quinlan gave me Marc’s accounts and Kelly out there will handle mine.’

  ‘I understood this was temporary arrangement until someone else had been recruited.’

  ‘It is,’ he said shifting in his seat, ‘but I’m confident Mr Quinlan will confirm me in the lead position and a new man or woman will take over my old accounts.’

  With much of the wind sufficiently knocked out of his sails, Walters decided to move on to the reason for their visit today.

  ‘Can you tell me your whereabouts on the night of Monday 24th October?’

  He reached into a pocket and pulled out his phone, woke it up and tapped the screen a few times. ‘Let me see. My last call was to Wilson’s, a small chain of convenience stores in Eastbourne. After leaving there, I drove back to Brighton and got there around seven. I try to go into the office at least once a week, but not at that time of night, so I went straight home.’

  ‘Where’s home?’

  ‘Wellbeck Avenue in Hove. Near Wish Park.’

  Walters knew the area. Full of large semi and detached houses with gardens, garages and lofts.

  ‘Are you married or single?’

  ‘It’s too big a house for a single guy,’ he said with a self-satisfied smile. ‘No, I live there with my partner Katy and son, Daniel.’

  ‘We will need to talk to your partner.’

  ‘You will? Of course you will. No problem.’

  ‘How has it been in the office following Marc’s death?’

  ‘It hit the sales group the hardest, as not only did Marc work here, we operate as a team, much more than in the rest of the business.’

  They left the meeting room and Josh Gardner a few minutes later and walked downstairs. ‘You didn’t say much,’ she said to Seb as she pushed open the doors leading to the car park. ‘Too busy looking at the biscuits probably.’

  ‘I don’t get a chance to say much with you there, Sarge. No disrespect but–’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Walters stopped and turned.

  The voice came from a young woman leaning against a wall, smoking. She put out the cigarette and walked towards them. ‘Are you the detectives investigating Marc Emerson’s killing?’

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Walters said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Cindy Summer, I work upstairs in Accounts.’

  If Josh Gardner looked like a salesman, Cindy Summer didn’t look like Walters’s idea of an accountant. She was young, late twenties, diminutive in stature, with rod-straight black hair, a thin pale face and large staring eyes, looking more like an actor in a fantasy play than totting up columns of numbers.

  ‘Have you found out who did it?’

  ‘Not yet. Why are you interested, were you close to Marc?’

  ‘Yeah, we all were; everybody liked him. Everybody’s in shock and we’re annoyed that Quinlan and his cronies in the management team don’t show more respect.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s like he’s forgotten. They’re carrying on as if it never happened. The king is dead, long live the king. Do you have any suspects?’

  Walters gave her the usual line about ongoing enquiries

  ‘I suggest you take a good look at my boss, Christine Sutherland, and Josh Gardner.’

  Walters was startled by the woman’s fervour, not only the words and the rapid-fire way she said them, but her intensive stare, which she found unnerving.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Christine Sutherland had a three-month affair with Marc, but after they split, she wouldn’t leave him alone. She went round to his house at all hours and badgered him to take her back whenever he came into the office. She wouldn’t stop talking about him; still doesn’t.’

  ‘What about Josh Gardner?’

  ‘He’s a rat. He hated Marc. Always wanted to get shot of him. Now he’s gone, he’s trying to slip into his shoes. Didn’t you notice? He styles his hair the way Marc did and he dresses the same, and if you don’t think that’s creepy, he’s now driving Marc’s old car.’

  **

  Henderson walked into the aptly coined ‘Brew Room’ and made himself a mug of coffee. It was often a foolish thing to do, coming here in the middle of reviewing a pile of interview notes and background research, as he often got waylaid. This time, he made it back to his office without being side-tracked and carried on where he left off.

  The office he occupied was an improvement over the one at Sussex House; he now had a window, although with an uninspiring view over the roofs of other buildings, and the dimensions were larger. In comparison, it felt airier and a better place to work, it was just a shame the demands of the job didn’t allow him to sit in there more often.

  The team were in the process of researching the background of the three people now identified at the top of their suspects list: Guy Barton, Jeff Pickering, and one he’d added, Kevin McLaren the man who discovered the body.

  In the case of Guy Barton, several questions remained. The obvious one, whether he knew about Marc Emerson’s on-going affair with his wife, was there on the sheet in front of him. Did Guy believe they were no longer seeing one another, or did he know it had been going on until the day Marc died? The distinction mattered. In the first situation, a short-lived affair, many could forgive and forget, but the second, a full-blown relationship, would be much harder to forgive and impossible to forget.

  This made Guy Barton his lead suspect. An affair of this nature could force the most mild-mannered individual into taking action, especially if some trigger had been pulled, for example, Lily packing her bags or asking for a divorce. Guy Barton did not come across as a mild-mannered individual; what would it take for him to snap?

  He picked up Barton’s alibi, a transcript taken from Harry Wallop’s notebook: At about five past ten, Guy went for a couple of beers with Tony Stevens and Tom Davidson. ‘When I say a couple of beers it was only two and then I came straight home.’ Guy looked over at his wife who nodded her agreement.

  His alibi had been followed up and the men he was with, Tony Stevens and Tom Davidson, corroborated the story, and the times quoted when he left the pub and returned home dovetailed into one another. With such a good alibi, he couldn’t be the murderer, or could he? Both individuals, Tony and Tom, were close friends of Guy, Tony in particular might have been a member of Guy’s fan club, according to Deepak Sunderam who had spoken to him.

  The other corroborator was, of course, his wife. If neither of them were involved in killing Marc, she had no incentive to lie, but would she if Guy offered to take her back with no strings attached? Henderson also couldn’t get over the antagonism evident between Guy and his wife when Harry Wallop interviewed them. It might have been due to Marc and Lily’s affair, or the death of Marc, but Henderson believed the disparity between the two of them played a part.

  Guy had left school with few qualifications, and after helping out in his dad’s shop, started working for Brighton Council as a clerk. Lily, on the other hand, read English Literature at Durham University and began her career at a large publishing house in London. She joined Russell-Taylor, one of the ‘Big Five’ and quickly made her way up the ranks to divisional Managing Director. It perhaps didn’t sound too grand a role to a layman like himself, but as Sally Graham pointed out, she’d spotted a similar position at a smaller publishing house being advertised in a magazine with
a six-figure salary.

  He knew many couples stayed happily married despite one being smarter or higher paid than the other, but the Bartons didn’t appear to be happy. Perhaps the dissatisfaction was Guy’s, his inability to match his wife’s earning power, or instead it was Lily’s, imagining a new life with Marc but unable to leave Guy or make the leap. Henderson didn’t know, but he couldn’t ignore it.

  He moved Barton to one side and picked up the profile of Jeff Pickering. On paper, an honest, hard-working plumber who walked away from a business that rewarded managers better than tradesmen to strike out on his own. In reality, their research revealed him to be a small-time crook and bully, sacked from his two previous employers for stealing copper, and earning jail time twice, once for the re-set of stolen electrical gear, and again for the assault of a boy of eighteen.

  If anything, his alibi looked flakier than Barton’s. Yet another man who spent his evenings in the pub, but unlike Barton who stopped drinking at two pints, most nights he stayed in the pub until closing time and drank a skinful. Pickering’s corroborators, two guys he classed as friends, were themselves drunks with no idea if the obnoxious plumber slipped out for an hour to murder Marc, nor could they say with any certainty if he even came into the pub that night. At best, their recollection sounded hazy, their mastery over the dates and times involved worse than useless. As a result, Pickering still appeared on Henderson’s list.

  He picked up the final person on his list, Kevin McLaren. When interviewed, the DI and DS Walters came away with the impression McLaren took a greater interest in the police investigation than would be expected from someone who’d discovered the body of his friend. It could be considered evidence of guilt, the perpetrator trying to find out if the police were any closer in identifying him, but Henderson didn’t think so. McLaren displayed no sign of nerves or remorse, quite the reverse in fact, a man confident and very sure of himself.

  According to his LinkedIn entry he was a self-employed computer programmer. He’d attended Hurstpierpoint College in Sussex where he gained 3 ‘A’ Levels and studied Chemical Engineering at Surrey University.

  Henderson began to write down questions about Kevin McLaren which he believed remained unanswered, but his chain of thought was interrupted when his phone rang.

  ‘Henderson.’

  ‘Hello, gov.’

  ‘Hello Carol. How was Quinlan Foods? Did Seb get any more freebies?’

  ‘Of course, he can smell free food a mile away, but we found out something more interesting.’

  ‘What? You saw how chicken pies are made and you’ve turned vegan?’

  ‘Me? Never, I love bacon butties too much to do that. Put it this way, I think we’ve got two more names to add to our suspects list, and from what we heard today, we should move them to the top.’

  SEVENTEEN

  His hands flashed over the keyboard, a skill crafted over many years. Most of Kevin McLaren’s clients had large and complicated websites, old legacy systems with miles and miles of code, and they frequently demanded new applications with plenty of bells and whistles. He didn’t mind; the more code he wrote, the more money he made.

  He set the program running and sat back, looking at the results while swigging a bottle of beer. He made it a rule never to drink while coding as a careless error could take weeks to locate and fix, but with the majority of the grunt work completed, tonight’s task had been about adding some flash finishing touches.

  Satisfied that the colour and tone of the screens looked right and the links worked, he uploaded it to his private server and sent his client an email inviting him to have a play with his revamped website. He pushed his seat away from the desk, put his feet up, closed his eyes and slowly sipped the beer, his way of shutting off one job in his mind, ready to start work on something else.

  A few minutes later, he pulled the seat towards the desk and lifted up a nondescript blue file. In it, various press clippings, photographs and notes made by him about his murdered friend, Marc Emerson. He didn’t go so far as to identify the culprit, but he reckoned he had gone further than the police as he could do something they couldn’t: hack into computers.

  He’d done this to the computers of each of his three suspects: Guy Barton, Josh Gardner and Jeff Pickering. While there, he’d looked at emails, Word documents, and for those computers that synchronised with their phone, text messages too. He quickly concluded that Jeff Pickering was barely literate and the only thing he used a computer for was to look at porn and send lewd messages to the woman he was seeing. He couldn’t remember if he’d kicked Pickering in the balls when he’d bashed him about in the Dorset bar toilet, as it would have put the kibosh on his philandering for a spell; if not, he would do so next time.

  Next on his list and a better bet than Pickering, Guy Barton. Marc made the mistake of screwing his missus, and who could blame him? McLaren thought her gorgeous, smart and well-paid, three great qualities in his book, but he believed it had cost Marc his life. If he could prove Barton killed his friend, he would make sure it would cost Barton his life too.

  He turned to his computer and loaded a program called SkyBlu, and within minutes it activated on Guy Barton’s laptop. The program, originally developed for the US Military, could interrogate a laptop and switch on the camera and microphone without the owner realising. He’d used it several times in the past without result, other than to enjoy a good look at Lily’s ample boobs when she leaned over to look at something on the screen, and one joyous time when she walked into the kitchen naked.

  He quickly scanned Barton’s emails and texts but found nothing from an accomplice congratulating him on another successful mission and no quips on social media about the loss of his worst enemy. He activated the camera and microphone. Even if Guy started using the computer, he wouldn’t be aware of the camera or microphone’s activation as nothing would light up to warn him. If Guy was more savvy with computers than McLaren believed, it wouldn’t help as the program didn’t leave any trace of its nefarious activities.

  He could hear and see Guy and Lily talking in the kitchen, the laptop open on the kitchen table. It often took him a minute or two to become orientated, especially if people walked in and out of shot. Tonight, the Bartons were clearing up after a meal, Lily loading the dishwasher while Guy stood talking to her. McLaren pushed his seat back, picked up his beer and turned up the volume.

  ‘Why are you going out again?’ she said, as she slammed the dishwasher door closed creating a cacophony of high-pitched sound. ‘It’s been every night this week. I thought we’d sit in and watch a movie tonight. Is there something you should be telling me?’ She paused, hands on hips. ‘Are you seeing someone else?’

  ‘You’re one to talk.’

  ‘How dare you.’

  ‘You’re right, I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Why are you going out? Can’t you see in the current situation it looks suspicious?’

  ‘I know, but I can’t help it. I promise, this is the last time I’ll go out without you, ok? Saturday’s Bonfire Night, right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘After then, when the fireworks and the parades are finished, I swear everything will be back to normal.’

  ‘What do you mean, after the parades are finished? Are you planning something? Are you doing something with that degenerate, Ajay Singh?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with Ajay?’

  ‘If you’re not being so secretive about another woman then it has to be Ajay. You know I don’t like him.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m going to see him?’

  ‘Somebody told me they saw you together. You’re not denying it, are you?’

  ‘I knock around with him now and again, if that’s what you mean. It’s not a crime is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t a crime, but he’ll lead you into it. He’s been in bother all his life. You don’t need to hang around with the likes of him.’

  Guy walked away and said something li
ke ‘what the fuck do you care?’ before disappearing from view. Seconds later, McLaren heard the front door slam.

  What did Barton mean when he said it would come to a halt after Bonfire Night? It was clear, Lily didn’t know, but he had some idea. A few days back, McLaren met a girl in a pub and being a true gentleman, offered to walk her home. On the way back to his place, he passed Stewards Inn Lane, a narrow road running parallel to the High Street, and spotted a figure entering a building. It had only been a glimpse, but enough to know it was Guy Barton. A sighting like this wouldn’t ordinarily raise an eyebrow, but Barton was on his suspects list.

  His first thoughts were of an affair, contrary to the reassurances given to his wife a few moments before, but those were soon dashed when McLaren moved closer. He realised Barton wasn’t going into a house, but an empty building, owned and used at one time by the Weald Bonfire Society as a storage facility. A few years back, a leak from a burst pipe ruined five thousand pounds worth of fireworks and the society stopped using it. McLaren knew they still owned it, as he was the Society’s treasurer.

  Lily stood looking out of the window at the darkened garden for a minute or more before sitting down at the kitchen table. Facing the laptop, she buried her head in her hands and started to cry. McLaren didn’t mind seeing Lily happy or angry but he hated seeing her sad. He shut down the spy program and put his computer into ‘Sleep’ mode.

  He dashed into the hall, grabbed his jacket and ran out of the house, slamming the door behind him. He reached Stewards Inn Lane a few minutes later but could see no sign of Barton. This didn’t come as a surprise as Barton would take the car as he hated walking anywhere, and by the time he found a place to park, it would take him another five or ten minutes to get here. McLaren took up the same position as he did the previous night, in the darkened doorway of a garage, with a good view over the storage room’s entrance.

  At times like this he wished he smoked or drank more than he did as he felt restless; a pack of cigarettes or a few cans of beer would while away the time. Private investigators, as portrayed in movies and books, just had to be dumb if they could stand and watch a house or a car for hours on end. To have such patience, their minds had to be empty, as his head buzzed like the inside of a wasps’ nest: the search for Marc’s killer, the activities of the police and how to get closer to the woman he desperately loved, Lily Barton.