by Ian Andrew
Kara frowned, “He fell off a boat?”
“So everyone thought. Your old colleagues in the RAF launched an immediate air and sea search but it was near dusk when he was reported missing so there wasn’t much chance. Then on the Monday the police found the suicide note in his house in Ipswich. The reference to the money being gone and the children being disappointed raised obvious concerns. Swift had been one of the custodians of the charity account and sure enough it was empty. Nobody else involved had even checked and other than a few bank officials being reprimanded over shoddy audit practices, there was nothing anyone could do. The money was gone and so was Swift. The thinking was that he had been aiming to pay it back at some point, but the final total was reached quicker than expected. The loss would have been discovered as soon as the parents went to draw down the funds. With no time left, Swift took the decision to kill himself rather than be found out.”
“Why didn’t this make the news?”
“It was the General Election the following Thursday,” Franklyn said with a shrug, “The media had bigger things to pursue than some provincial celebrity committing suicide.”
“How did the police rule out that he hadn’t done a runner, instead of drowning?”
“As he was boarding the boat, a passer-by had taken a, umm,” Franklyn hesitated.
“Taken a?” Kara prompted.
“A photo of Swift and himself, as a memento of meeting him. I know there’s a name for it.”
Kara laughed, “A selfie, Franklyn, had he taken a selfie?”
“Yes. Quite. A selfie,” he said the word self-consciously.
“So this convenient photo puts Swift on the boat, what else did the police turn up?” Kara asked.
“The witness testified that Swift and this chap Amberley were on the boat when it left. The boat had a full communications suite and a GPS trace available, a result of the navigation equipment on board, so they knew where it had been. According to the printout, it had gone into a well-known fishing area, then circled around looking for Swift, then eventually came back into harbour. They had the time of the first distress call from Swift’s friend back to harbour and when the boat returned it was met by local police. All rather neatly packaged.”
Kara drained the last of her coffee, “Do you want a fill up for your tea?”
“No, I’m fine thank you.”
Kara caught the eye of the waitress and ordered another latte, but in a takeaway cup.
“Okay, so we have a dead minor celeb and a chunk of missing money. He spent it on a drug or booze or gambling debt if we believe his note and then dived off a boat. Why am I here Franklyn?”
“Because it’s all too neat for me to be sure he’s dead. If he paid off a debt for drugs or illegal gambling or whatever, then he was paying it off presumably to prevent being killed, or at least beaten to a pulp. Yet he pays the debt off then commits suicide? It doesn’t sit quite right.”
“Perhaps not, but guilt and remorse and who knows what could have been rattling around in his head. But that’s not quite what I meant.”
Franklyn’s brow creased, “I’m sorry, what did you mean?”
“I meant why am I here now? This money went missing in May, the man died, or didn’t, in May. It’s sad that he stole all the money, but it was six months ago and it’s hardly the type of case that I thought would have concerned you.”
“The children all succumbed to their disease,” Franklyn said, his voice neutral of emotion.
“Well, yes, I assumed that,” Kara said, her own voice reflecting Franklyn’s. “But that still doesn’t explain it.”
“All four passed away before further funds could be raised. The eldest was the granddaughter of a former,” Kara noticed he paused fractionally, “colleague of mine, but I only found out recently. I’m a grandfather too Kara. I don’t know what losing a grandchild feels like and I don’t want to know, but I can imagine. So, yes you’re correct, this isn’t necessarily the sort of case we had discussed. In fact the reason you’re here is personal. I’d like to know if this Swift chap is really dead. I want to know if the money is really gone. It won’t bring any of the children back, but it might allow for some closure. For the families.” Franklyn folded his hands together on top of the table and held Kara in his gaze.
She found herself looking down at the old man’s hands. He had long, slender fingers that matched similarly long, slender facial features. The liver spots on the backs of his hands betrayed his age much more than the rest of him. He was trim in his waistcoat, and although his hair had receded, his face was not severely lined or creviced. Each time Kara had met him, he had worn a three-piece suit with a fresh white shirt. This time his tie was a plain dark blue, on the previous meeting a maroon and on the first occasion she thought he had worn a regimental pattern, but hadn’t been certain. Now she considered it was more likely than not.
“You said you heard about this recently. Would I be right in thinking you found out ten days ago?” she asked, trusting her instincts and playing a hunch that Franklyn had heard about the events at a Remembrance Day reunion.
Franklyn nodded. As Kara silently considered her options he sat still, almost reverential and patiently awaited her decision.
“I’ll have to-,” she didn’t finish her sentence as there was a small ‘Tic’ sound in her ear.
“Kara, if you’re going to say you need to ask me, don’t worry. I think we should take it,” Tien’s voice sounded softly in her ear.
“I’m sorry Kara, what were you saying?” Franklyn asked.
“Nothing. It’s okay. We’ll take the case. Can I assume this is all the information on file,” she said patting the document folder.
“Yes,” Franklyn nodded, “The police had little to go on and processed it by the book. They classified it as a high-risk missing persons, searched Swift’s house, cars and work area but found nothing of consequence. The details of the friend who owned the boat are in the file, but it all came up clean. They kept it active for three months and then dropped it down to a low-level missing persons file.”
Kara hesitated as the waitress came back to the table with her takeaway coffee. Once they were alone again she said, “Which in effect means no one is looking at it.”
“Exactly,” Franklyn confirmed. “Basically they might take it out and dust it off every so often but it will probably stay as it is for seven years. Then the coroner will review it, assess it for what it appears and declare Swift legally dead.”
“Okay. Well, we’ll take it from here. I’ll be in touch,” she said, pushing back her chair and standing.
Franklyn stood too, “Thank you Kara.”
As she reached into her jeans pocket for money, he said, “It’s okay, I’ll look after the bill. I do appreciate you taking this on.”
“It’s fine Franklyn, no need to thank me yet.” Kara put the folder under her arm and picked up her coffee. Halfway to the door she stopped and looked back, “The grandfather of the eldest child, who was he?”
Franklyn, still standing at the table, seemed to be considering how much he was willing to share. Eventually he said, “My Company Sergeant Major.”
Kara nodded and left the café.
Chapter 4
Woodbridge, Suffolk.
It had taken Tien less than half an hour to track down Francis Matthew Amberley. He was the owner of the Heather-Anne, a twenty-two foot fishing boat that was the last place anyone had seen Derek Swift.
According to the police file, Amberley and Swift had been friends since high school and had regularly fished together. Amberley was the deputy-manager of his local marina, a title, which as far as Tien could work out from the interview transcripts, meant he looked after all the maintenance issues. His social media presence was non-existent, but she had built up a profile of him from Franklyn’s file, a biography on the marina’s website, a few media reports about the company and the local Suffolk newspaper reports about the Swift case.
“So, what you’re sayi
ng is, he’s a local boy who has stayed local. Likes fishing, works with boats, plays with boats, is that it?” Kara asked.
“Pretty much,” Tien nodded. “His interviews with the police paint a fairly bland picture. He lives in a modest terrace house that used to be his parents and is now his. He’s single, keeps himself to himself. Likes pub quizzes at his local and that’s about it.”
“You’ve just described every serial killer on the planet,” Kara quipped. “Quiet bloke, kept himself to himself, liked gardening, always digging up his patio he was,” she said in an affected west-country accent.
Tien laughed, “It sounds like that doesn’t it. Seems our Mr Amberley is just a quiet chap.”
“How does he afford a fishing boat?”
“I looked it up, you can get a boat like his for less than twenty grand, second-hand. So not much more than a car, which he doesn’t own by the way. He lives within walking distance of the marina and just around the corner from the railway station, should he need to go further afield. The boat is parked in the marina too, so I imagine he gets that as a perk of the job.”
“I think that’s docked, or moored, or berthed, not parked,” Kara said with a grin.
“Yeah, it’s all wavy navy stuff, so no matter. How do you want to do this?”
“He’s our only lead. We have nothing except he was out on the boat with Swift and therefore the last person to see Swift alive. From what I read here,” Kara said, flicking through the police interviews, “he gave nothing to the cops other than he went below into the galley and when he came back up, his friend was gone. Simple story and he didn’t waver from it.”
“Maybe he didn’t waver because it’s true,” Tien said.
“Maybe, but all we can do is go talk to him.”
ɸ
It was always their preferred method to know the ground environment before setting up a meeting. In their previous lives they could have spent weeks getting familiar with the territory, planning contingencies, ensuring their options for extraction were well considered. But Suffolk was not southern Iraq, nor Helmand Province, nor any of the other less than permissive environments they had operated in.
To balance the reduced threat they had reduced assets. When they’d been with the Field Intelligence Tactical Team, they could rely on deployed teams of a dozen or more, and when they ran short, as Kara had in Iraq in 2006, they could borrow from the nearest Intelligence Corps billet. Now, in the constraints of a civilian operation, they were limited. People they might call on to help had lives to lead. They couldn’t just drop everything, like they often had whilst in the Service.
Kara and Tien’s first choice of protection was always Dan and Eugene O’Neill. The brothers were ex-paratroopers and had worked on security details with both women during their time in the military and extensively afterwards. But Dan and Eugene were currently attending their eldest sister’s wedding in Perth, Australia, so they weren’t an option.
Toby and Jacob had filled in for the O’Neills on a number of occasions, like with the Franklyn meet, and Kara and Tien had always been impressed, but Toby’s wife Sally was due into hospital early the next morning to have an impacted wisdom tooth extracted, so Toby was looking after his three young kids. That meant for a short-notice, potentially overnight trip to Suffolk, only the younger Jacob was available.
There were others that Kara and Tien could call on but the job was low-risk and they decided it wasn’t worth the extra logistics or the delay to get them in place. So it was that Jacob, Tien and Kara drove the couple of hours north and east and now sat in the converted barn accommodation of a Suffolk pub called the Beech Tree Inn. Given it was November, they had the place to themselves.
Kara finished briefing Jacob on the case.
“I remember him from when I was growing up,” Jacob said, looking at a couple of photos of Derek Swift.
“How come?” Tien asked.
“He had a talk show. It was a local round-up of the week. My Dad used to watch it. Who knew he’d turn out to be a thieving toerag… Swift I mean, not my Dad.”
Tien giggled, “Well, obviously.” She flipped open the laptop and brought up overhead satellite imagery of the town. The barn accommodation was less than three hundred yards from the house she zoomed in on.
“This is Francis Amberley’s end of terrace. There’s no practical way we can get an eyes-on recce of the place. His back garden is a postage stamp and the front door opens onto the street,” Tien said, pointing out the features as she spoke.
“Are those football pitches on the other side of his garden wall?” Jacob asked.
“Hockey I think,” Tien said. “They’re the sports fields for this private school,” she continued to manipulate the image so that it scanned out, “located in the same grounds as this church,” she said, as the image revealed an expansive school building surrounded by manicured lawns and sitting next to a late-14th century church with a solid, square tower reaching over one-hundred feet into the air. The whole scene encapsulated biscuit-tin images of little England.
“Bit posher than my old Alma Mater,” Jacob said with an appreciative low whistle.
“Yeah? Where was that?” Tien asked.
“Hylands Comprehensive, Chelmsford.”
“Umm, yeah,” Tien said with an over-exaggerated nod of her head. “I’d say this one’s a bit more exclusive. Given the wide open playing fields and the lawn fairway right up to the main building it’s definitely lovely, but of no use to us for mounting observations from.”
“Can’t we just go knock on his door?” Jacob asked.
“I’d prefer not to,” Kara said. “I’d like it if the location was more neutral. Especially if we can’t get a look inside the house first. It hands all the advantage to him, makes it difficult to get a tell on him and we don’t know what he’s got access to in there.”
“What about the marina where he works?” Jacob offered.
“Same deal as the house really,” Kara said.
“That leaves the pub it says he goes to,” Tien said.
“Yes, that’s an option,” Kara nodded, “Do we know where it is?”
“No, but there can’t be that many places within walking distance from his-” Tien cut herself off.
“What’s the matter?” Jacob asked.
Tien turned the laptop around to show a Google map of the town. “I was going to say there can’t be too many pubs within walking distance of his house, but it turns out there are ten.”
“Good old Woodbridge,” Jacob said. “It’s a wonder anyone can walk anywhere.”
“How many host quizzes?” Kara asked.
“Already ahead of you,” said Tien, her fingers dancing over the laptop keyboard. “Three. One of which is this pub we’re staying at, the others are the Angel, about a mile north of here on the main street and the Old Seafarer, which is practically right outside the marina’s main entrance.”
“Don’t suppose any have their quizzes tonight?” Kara mused.
“Nope. Seems to be Fridays or Saturdays from their websites.”
Kara reached back into the document file she had received from Franklyn and leafed through the cuttings, “Do we have a picture of Amberley?”
“Not in there, but I have a casual headshot of him from the marina website,” Tien answered.
“Well,” Kara stood and glanced at her watch, “I make it 16:00 now, what says we go for a bit of a pub crawl?”
ɸ
They didn’t have to crawl very far. Kara didn’t even have to show the picture, she merely had to mention Amberley’s name to the landlady of the pub they were staying at. Mrs Spore, who insisted on being called Daphne, ‘with no Y dear’ and who reminded Kara of a somewhat worse-for-wear, brunette-from-a-bottle version of Barbara Windsor, told them all they needed. And much more besides.
“Oh yes dear, I know little Franny Amberley very well. Now why do you want to know about him?”
“Oh it was one of our friends that said there was a real star
of a quiz team up here,” Kara lied effortlessly. “When she knew we were coming to Woodbridge she recommended we go have a try. We’re keen on pub quizzes.” Kara said, pointing over at Jacob and Tien. “We always enter at our local and this friend said she’d never come across a team as good as the one in this town. Said their star player was this chap Amberley. So do they come in here?”
“No dear, he doesn’t come in here for his quizzing, or even for a quick drink, more’s the pity. His Dad did, lovely man he was, big Franny. May the Lord keep him,” Daphne halted her sing-song Suffolk lilt of an accent, which had the tiniest trace of a Cockney edge to it, just long enough to bless herself.
Kara noticed she used her left hand for the sign of the cross and was fairly sure, from having seen Tien do it many times, that Daphne had got it back to front. She also noticed the woman didn’t seem to take a breath before she started talking again.
“He used to come in here every night dear. But then again he worked just a walk down the road at the plant nursery. Oh he had such a way with those plants, you never saw the like. He could charm a daisy out of the ground and as for tr-”
“Sorry Daphne,” Kara interrupted as gently as she could. “Is this little Franny we’re still talking about?”
“Oh no dear, that’s his Dad, big Franny. No,” and she let out a considerable laugh for a woman who couldn’t have been more than five foot tall, “Oh no, not little Franny. That boy would curl a daisy by looking at it. Oh no. He never took to his Dad’s work. Big Franny used to say, when he came in here and sat at that stool,” she indicated the stool that Jacob was sitting on, tucked into the corner of the bar counter. Jacob involuntarily stood up and Daphne ploughed on, “That stool there, he would sit there and tell me that little Franny wouldn’t know a daffodil from a dandelion.”
