Buried Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  ‘Jesus,’ said Mariner. ‘Any idea when?’

  ‘Not until the PM, but rigor’s been and gone so I’d say he’s been there at least twenty-four hours. I’ve come to talk to Megan again so that we can try to establish more precisely his last known movements. As far as we know she was the last one to see him leave here on Monday afternoon but we’re hoping there might have been further sightings after that.’ Griffith walked over to the boot of the car and retrieved something from inside. ‘We’re doing a more thorough search of his room now, but we’ve already come across this.’ The evidence bag he held up for Mariner’s inspection contained a small business card: Joseph Hennessey, Private Investigator.

  ‘We’ve also found a small stash of dope. It’s not enough to worry us too much, but one of my officers thinks it might be the strong stuff: skunk. Not that I know the difference.’

  ‘Skunk is more powerful,’ Mariner said. ‘Usually the plants have been genetically modified. So Joe Hennessey definitely wasn’t here just for the wildlife,’ he concluded.

  ‘We still don’t know exactly what drew him here, though,’ said Griffith. ‘We found his wallet at the scene but no mobile. My guess would be that the killer took it, possibly because there were incriminating calls or texts on it.’

  ‘Like an arrangement to meet. Megan told me he went out quite suddenly.’

  ‘The big question is, who was Hennessey working for?’ said Griffith. Taking a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, he offered one to Mariner, who declined, then lit one up for himself.

  Mariner agreed. ‘If we can get to the bottom of that we can understand why he was killed.’

  ‘Either way this is shaping up like a professional job,’ said Griffith. ‘And that puts you in danger.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘The implication is that someone has been tracking you from the point of Anna Barham’s funeral, employing Hennessey to report back on your movements,’ said Griffith. ‘The two men killed first — Theo Ashton and Jeremy Bryce — were killed in error.’

  ‘So why kill Hennessey?’

  ‘Because you’re still alive. Hennessey’s intel wasn’t accurate enough. The killer, or more likely the man the killer is working for, has blamed Hennessey and punished him for that, or has decided that he knew too much to be allowed to live.’

  ‘There is another factor that might more easily explain Theo Ashton’s death,’ said Mariner. ‘I’ve been puzzling over Abbey Farm since I first got here. Given the size of the plot and the fact that Willow’s magic formula is still, according to him, in its experimental phase, I’ve never understood how it could possibly produce enough to sustain weekly market sales and a mail order business, and make the profit it does.’

  ‘Go on,’ Griffith encouraged.

  ‘I had Tony Knox take some of the veg to a lab for analysis.’ Mariner told Griffith about the test results. ‘That got me wondering about what it was I’d really seen on the farm the night after Theo Ashton was killed. I assumed I’d seen crates of produce being loaded into a transit. It made sense because the following day you told me about Willow’s request to get out a delivery.’

  ‘It adds up,’ said Griffith, puzzled.

  ‘Except I’m pretty sure there is no mail order operation,’ said Mariner. ‘I checked with Ron Symonds first of all, and he knew nothing about one.’

  ‘He might not know everything.’

  ‘But mail order these days is all done online,’ Mariner persisted. ‘If you look at the contact details for Abbey Farm on the side of the van, there’s no email or website address.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ asked Griffith.

  ‘That the whole organic veg thing is a scam,’ said Mariner. ‘Those crates that I saw being loaded into the transit were in fact being unloaded. They were the crates of vegetables we saw the next day in the new aluminium shed. Parsnips, like the ones Tony Knox got analysed. Remember the logo on those crates? It was Dutch. Willow made some crack about having “acquired” the crates illegally, but that was to cover the fact that the veg itself is imported. You should contact that company and find out what relationship they have with Nigel Weller, because I think they’re selling him cheap, non-organic vegetables in bulk, which he’s then been passing off as home-grown organic veg and making a tidy profit from them. There is no magic formula, or even fertilizer.’

  ‘The sly bastard,’ said Griffith. ‘I’ve never trusted that stuff.’

  ‘That in itself is fraudulent, but what if Theo Ashton was about to expose what was going on?’

  ‘It would bring Willow’s business and credibility crashing down around him and may well be enough to provide a motive for murder.’

  ‘And if Willow thinks that both Hennessey and I saw something, then Hennessy’s murder is self-evident,’ said Mariner.

  ‘And Jeremy Bryce’s?

  ‘That could, as we first thought, be a case of mistaken identity; him instead of me,’ Mariner pointed out. ‘I have been sniffing around the farm. Mainly innocently, as it turns out, but Willow isn’t to know that.’

  ‘Joe Hennessey could have been directly involved,’ said Bryce. ‘Seems as though he was pretty versatile. He was a photographer of sorts; he syndicated photos to the national press. If he had media connections then he might have been helping Theo Ashton to put together a story.’

  ‘It would explain the pictures of the farm on his laptop,’ Mariner agreed. ‘Where was he based?’

  ‘Looks like north London somewhere, which doesn’t really help us yet.’ Griffith had smoked his cigarette down and stubbed it out on the wall beside him before flicking the dog end into the gutter. ‘Either way, it’s about time we went and had another chat with Mr Weller.’

  Much as he’d have liked to be, Mariner realized that he wasn’t included in that ‘we.’ ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do . . .’ he said instead.

  ‘Sure. Just talking to people, keeping your eyes peeled, would be good. If there’s anything you find out before we do, I’d be grateful.’ In the circumstances it was the most that Griffith could realistically offer.

  As he was walking away, Griffith’s phone rang and he pulled it out to answer it. The call stopped him in his tracks. ‘What? Are you sure about that?’ Mariner heard him say. Turning back, he caught Mariner’s eye, though he continued talking into his phone. ‘I’ll need confirmation, and if it is true, then there needs to be a search of all places west of here. The CCTV will need to be looked at again too.’ Griffith paused, frowning, as he listened to the speaker at the other end. ‘Well, if that’s the case we’ve got somewhere to start. See if you can get hold of the footage there too.’ Ending the call, he pocketed his phone and walked back towards Mariner. ‘The search of this holiday cottage has turned up an empty prescription medication bottle. It belonged to Glenn McGinley.’

  ‘Christ, are they sure?’ But as he said it Mariner knew it wasn’t the kind of thing that anyone could mistake. ‘So they’ve been wrong all along in thinking he escaped to Ireland.’

  ‘He must have set up that car as a decoy,’ Griffith said. ‘I’ve just been told too that a member of the public phoned in a sighting of him at Aberystwyth station last Friday. They saw a man fitting McGinley’s description who looked in a bad way. But because Caernarfon police were certain that he’d already boarded the ferry by then, it wasn’t taken seriously. Even with what you’ve just told me about Abbey Farm I don’t think we can entirely rule out McGinley any longer.’

  Mariner didn’t contradict him. He was having exactly the same thought. Suddenly it turned everything on its head again. ‘One of my constables, Millie Khatoon, has been convinced all along that McGinley was headed down here,’ he told Griffith. ‘I don’t know what it might be, and I certainly don’t have any recollection of Glenn McGinley, but Tony Knox told me that Millie has been working on trying to identify some connection between McGinley and me.’

  ‘It would be good to find out if there is one,’ said Griffit
h. He seemed to be considering something. ‘I’ll get one of my men to drive you in to the town. We’ll see if we can set up a conference call.’

  * * *

  Tony Knox arrived in CID that morning to find a uniformed PC waiting for him. ‘I understand you’ve been looking for a Hugo Westerby?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She handed Knox a slip of paper with a number written on it. ‘That’s the ward he’s on at present, but you’ll need to be quick.’

  ‘They’re getting ready to ship him out?’

  She gave the briefest shake of the head. ‘Only on a mortuary trolley. A bunch of girls on a night out fell over him in an alleyway off Broad Street a couple of nights ago. He’s had the living crap beaten out of him by someone; he’s got a fractured skull and cerebral haemorrhaging among other things. If you’re planning to talk to him I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’

  Knox went straight to the ward at City Hospital where Hugo was being intensively cared for. One of Knox’s counterparts from Handsworth CID, Sue Jericho, was also there for the same purpose — to talk to Westerby as soon as he regained consciousness. ‘Bit of a mystery really why he was attacked,’ she said. ‘It could have been robbery, though the state he was in it’s hard to imagine he was carrying anything of much value, or that muggers would have been in any way attracted to him.’

  ‘You might be looking at something drugs-related,’ said Knox. ‘He was a user and it’s possible he’d got himself into trouble with someone further up the food chain.’

  ‘That would explain why they weren’t interested in the phone in his pocket,’ she said. ‘We managed to use that to trace the next of kin.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Knox asked. He nodded towards the room where Hugo lay, bandaged and wired up to several complex looking machines, watched over by a young woman.

  ‘His sister, Annabel,’ said Jericho. ‘The mother is around somewhere too. Gone off to make a phone call I think. They’ve travelled up from Gloucestershire. The mother admits that Hugo’s dabbled in drugs in the past, but insists that he’d cleaned up his act, had got a respectable job working in a bar, and was back on the straight and narrow. Some of it might be true — he had a security ID in his pocket — but the physical state of him tells a different story.’

  ‘Have you been in touch with his flatmate?’

  ‘Didn’t know there was one,’ said Jericho.

  ‘Giles Ridley-Coburn,’ Knox said. He recited the details while she wrote them down. ‘I think he’ll give you a more realistic picture. He may even know something about what happened here, and if he doesn’t, at the very least he’ll be wondering where Hugo’s got to. Either way I think you’ll find out that our friend Hugo was well and truly back on the hard stuff. I’m pretty sure I caught him at it.’ Describing the encounter at Mariner’s house, Knox peered in through the window again. ‘Hard to tell under all that machinery, but I’m pretty sure that it was him.’

  ‘I won’t break it to his mum or sister just yet,’ she said.

  Knox was inclined to agree. ‘No point in making it any worse for them.’ He turned to his colleague. ‘When he does come round though, can you let me know? I’d like to talk to him.’

  In the meantime, Knox did step in to take a closer look at Hugo Westerby. The young woman looked up as he entered and he raised his warrant card to identify himself. For a couple of minutes Knox stood silently watching, before Annabel said: ‘This is my fault.’ Her voice came out as little more than a whisper. ‘He called me and told me he was in trouble. He wanted money; a lot of it.’

  ‘Did he say what he wanted it for?’ Knox asked, carefully.

  ‘He owed it to someone. I know Mum thinks Hugo’s clean, but that’s because he was. He had treatment and had kicked loose from it. Then he came to Birmingham and got a job working in a bar.’ Across the hospital bed, she caught Knox’s expression. ‘I know, not the ideal place for a recovering junkie to work, but the job offers weren’t exactly flooding in. To begin with it was fine; Huey was doing well, making a lot of money on tips and things. But it didn’t take him long to find out that the staff had a sideline in distributing what they called “optional extras.” He was invited to join in, except he decided to set up his own informal distribution network.’

  ‘Selling what?’ asked Knox.

  ‘Weed mainly, I think, but the strong stuff.’

  ‘Skunk?’

  ‘Yes. It was all done very discreetly and only for certain customers. Then they started trusting Huey with the stash. I don’t know where it was kept, but he had access to it. And Huey, being Huey, saw an opportunity.’

  ‘To start his own business,’ Knox guessed.

  ‘That’s about it, yes. It was so stupid. He took a large chunk to sell himself and planned to use the profit to buy cheaper stuff and replace what he’d taken.’

  ‘That sounds like a dangerous game.’

  ‘He got found out almost straight away, the idiot. They came after him, wrecked his place. He managed to avoid them at first but clearly they caught up with him.’

  ‘Have you any idea who these people were?’

  ‘I’m not sure that Huey even knew exactly.’

  ‘And the name of the club?’

  ‘Sorry, I only know it’s some place in the middle of Birmingham. Huey didn’t tell me.’

  Leaving Annabel to return to her brother’s bedside, Knox went out to Sue Jericho. ‘What happened to Hugo Westerby’s possessions?’

  ‘There wasn’t much. Just the phone, security pass and some other worthless crap.’

  ‘That security pass. Do you remember which bar it was?’

  ‘Yes, it was RedZone, on Broad Street. Good club, I go there sometimes . . .’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Knox.

  Outside the hospital Knox checked his mobile and found a message from DCI Sharp asking him to return to Granville Lane as soon as possible, but no later than two p.m. He managed to make it with eight minutes to spare.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Knox went up to CID to tell Sharp about what he’d learned. ‘I think we can discount Goran Zjalic,’ he said. ‘This is just some dispute between Hugo Westerby and whoever these guys are. I think we’ll find that the prints at Tom’s house match those at Katarina’s flat. Any Albanian connection is purely coincidental.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Sharp, surprisingly. ‘And from what I’ve heard about these killings in Wales, we’re looking at an assailant who feels comfortable in the outdoors,’ pointed out Sharp. ‘There’s every reason to think that McGinley is at home in that kind of environment.’

  ‘McGinley?’ Knox thought he must have misheard.

  ‘Yes — you haven’t heard, have you? McGinley didn’t make his escape to Ireland after all. He’s in mid-Wales, and there’s strong evidence to suggest that he’s been in the vicinity of Caranwy in the last few days. I needed you back here because we’ve scheduled a conference call with DI Griffith and Tom for two p.m. We need to share our information.’ Getting up, Sharp went to the door. ‘Have you talked to Millie since you got back?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Well, I know you think she’s been going off on one, but she has turned up something interesting. I’ll get her in here now.’

  Millie seemed reluctant to come in and Knox regretted having been so dismissive before. She asked after Mariner and he updated her. It was the appointed time for the conference call so they went into the meeting room where the big screen showed Ryan Griffith and Mariner. They all exchanged greetings.

  ‘And congratulations, Millie,’ Mariner added.

  She blushed in response. ‘Sorry, boss, there never seemed a good time . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said Mariner. ‘Just make sure you take care of yourself. You on light duties?’

  ‘I will be soon, sir.’

  ‘DCI Sharp said you’ve come up with something,’ said Griffith.

  ‘I looked up Glenn McGinley’s history,’ said Millie. ‘I st
arted on the premise that DI Mariner and he had crossed paths, but there was no obvious overlap from the DI’s arrest record and McGinley’s convictions. So then I spoke to DI Glenda Scott on Merseyside. Turns out that McGinley spent quite a lot of time sounding off to an old guy undergoing medical treatment at the same time he was. The old guy didn’t take much notice at the time, but of course he then sees in the news that McGinley was more than just talk. He says McGinley was hell bent on what he perceived as revenge. Some of it was for himself, but some of it was also what he called “a favour” for someone else, so I started looking at who he might have spent time with when he was inside. Again, nothing really stood out until I remembered the riots we had two years ago at Birmingham Prison. Because of them, some prisoners had to be temporarily moved and McGinley ended up at Long Lartin for a month. And guess who was also residing there at the time?’

  ‘Goran Zjalic?’ offered Knox.

  ‘No, Frank Crosby.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Mariner.

  ‘No, really, Frank Crosby,’ Millie insisted.

  ‘Crosby.’ Knox had only met the man once and at that time he hadn’t been their suspect, but he knew that he and Mariner had considerable history.

  ‘But if this is true, how would McGinley, or for that matter, this Crosby, know where DI Mariner is?’ asked Griffith.

  ‘Crosby’s got plenty of contacts,’ Mariner said. ‘And he knew Anna Barham’s brother, Eddie. He could easily have put McGinley up to all this and provided the backup. But what I don’t get is why? I didn’t realize things had got that personal.’