Dead Lock

by Damien Boyd

  ‘They’ll be here round the clock from now on.’ Dixon turned towards the door. ‘We’ll show ourselves out.’

  ‘What was all that about?’ Jane had waited until Dixon switched the engine on. ‘They’re getting on fine without Family Liaison.’

  ‘I want them there for our benefit, not theirs.’ He did a three point turn in the lane outside Old School House and raced back towards the main road. ‘Jeremy’s gone to work.’

  ‘Work? With his daughter kidnapped?’

  ‘Adele knows – she bloody well knows who’s got Hatty. I’m sure of it. They’ve been in touch somehow and that must be why Jeremy’s gone to work.’

  ‘Nothing’s shown up on the phone tap or the email, so how are they communicating?’

  ‘We’ll find out. In the meantime, we get a warrant and then turn up at the bank when he’s gone home. I want to see what he’s been up to.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘Parkway North Business Park is a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?’ said Jane, looking at the map on her phone. ‘It’s probably quicker to go along the M4 and M32.’

  ‘I hate office parks,’ muttered Dixon.

  ‘We know.’ Jane rolled her eyes.

  ‘What did Lucy say when you rang her?’

  ‘She’s gone over to Catcott again, would you believe it?’ Jane shook her head. ‘I rang Cole and he’s going to keep an eye on her. It’s a sod of a long way for Jeremy to come every day, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s maybe fifty minutes if he goes round the motorway, and he won’t be doing it every day. He’s business development director, so he’ll be out and about seeing customers.’

  ‘Clients.’

  ‘Bollocks. Banks have customers.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Dixon reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out his phone. ‘Get that for me, will you.’ He said, passing it to Jane sitting in the passenger seat. ‘It’s an 01278 number so it’s probably Jeremy telling me he’s at home.’

  Jane put the phone to her ear. ‘Detective Sergeant Winter.’ . . . ‘He’s driving, Mr Renner.’ . . . ‘Yes, I know he wants to speak to you so I’ll get him to call you back.’ . . . ‘Thank you for calling.’

  ‘He sounded nervous,’ said Jane, ringing off.

  ‘He’ll know that I know. Adele will have told him by now.’

  ‘You think you do.’

  Dixon shook his head. ‘I know, and she knows that I know. And if that bloody tea had taken another few minutes, she’d have told me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who’s got Hatty. She knows. Not the “where”, maybe, but the “who” and “why” she knows all right.’

  ‘And she can’t tell us?’

  ‘Not without risking her child’s life.’

  ‘But won’t they think she’s told us if we go wading in—’

  ‘We won’t. We’re just making routine enquiries, no arrests.’

  ‘Yet,’ muttered Jane.

  ‘They all look the bloody same,’ said Dixon, turning into Parkway North Business Park twenty minutes later. ‘What number is it?’

  ‘It’s called Park House.’

  ‘Are you taking the Mickey?’

  ‘Just look for a Svenskabanken sign.’ Jane sighed.

  ‘Park House, Parkway North Business Park. You’re not going to forget that in a hurry, are you?’

  ‘Down there,’ said Jane, pointing to a side turning. ‘It’s at the end.’

  ‘What do you do for lunch in these bloody places?’ muttered Dixon.

  ‘The same as we do,’ replied Jane.

  ‘Go to the pub.’

  ‘Tesco’s is over there.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Dixon stopped across the entrance and wrenched on the handbrake; a rather grand glass revolving door set in an atrium of sandstone and yet more glass, the rest of the building red brick. ‘Svenskabanken AB’ in bright red lettering above the door.

  ‘Are you going to leave it here?’

  ‘Why not? There are no yellow lines and the place is deserted.’

  The revolving door was locked so Dixon banged on the window next to it. A man perched on the edge of the reception desk folded up his newspaper and walked across to the door, a bunch of keys jangling in his hand.

  ‘Are you the manager, Sir?’ said Dixon, his warrant card in his hand as he emerged from the revolving glass.

  ‘Alan Price, yes.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Dixon, Sir. It’s good of you to turn out on a Saturday.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that I had a choice.’

  ‘You didn’t, Sir. I was being polite.’ Dixon smiled. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Winter.’

  Price locked the door behind Jane.

  ‘What’s this all about then?’ asked Price.

  ‘We’re investigating the disappearance of Hatty Renner, Sir. She’s Jeremy Renner’s daughter.’

  ‘I’ve seen it on the TV.’

  ‘And the murder of Jeffrey Savage. He was found in Chew Valley Reservoir.’

  ‘They’re connected?’

  ‘They are. And this is a search warrant.’ Dixon handed the document to Price. ‘Mr Renner came in to the office this morning, Sir. I’m assuming you can check that?’

  ‘I can. He’ll have used his code for the staff entrance at the back of the building.’

  ‘Good. We need to know what he did when he was here. I need copies of any and all emails he sent and received, details of any phone calls he made, files he looked at, any memos or letters he dictated. Everything.’

  ‘That’s all—’

  ‘Confidential?’ Dixon raised his eyebrows.

  Price nodded.

  ‘Of course it is, Sir. That’s why I got the search warrant. And I would remind you that a ten year old girl is missing and a man dead.’

  ‘This has got nothing to do with Jeremy, surely?’

  ‘You mean apart from the girl being his daughter?’

  Price was looking at the search warrant, but his eyes were focused elsewhere. Buying time rather than reading it: Dixon knew the signs.

  ‘I’ll need my IT guy to access the stuff on the computers and the phone system.’

  ‘Presumably he’s just a phone call away, Sir?’

  Price nodded.

  ‘You ring him, Sir – impress upon him the urgency – and then we’ll do what we can until he gets here.’

  Price used the phone on the reception desk but spoke quietly; his voice was muffled and only raised once throughout the call: ‘bloody search warrant’. Anyway, it seemed to do the trick.

  ‘He’s on his way,’ said Price.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Good. Can we see Mr Renner’s office while we wait?’

  ‘Er, yes, follow me.’

  Price opened the double doors at the top of the stairs to reveal glass cubicles around a central open plan area, much the same as Express Park. The idea of promotion to an office job sent shivers down Dixon’s spine.

  ‘This one’s Jeremy’s.’

  First door on the left; it was open. Jane sat down behind the desk while Dixon looked at the photographs on the wall; various certificates, a picture of Adele with Hatty, both of them smiling at the camera. Several pictures of a small yacht, on a trailer and then again on Durleigh Reservoir.

  ‘What does business development director involve?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Developing business,’ replied Price. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not meant to sound flippant, but that’s his job: finding new clients, new business. Jeremy’s mainly on the corporate side. He’s got company clients in Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. That’s his patch. He’s only here once or twice a week. The rest of the time he’s out and about or working from home. Sometimes he’s down at the Plymouth office too.’

  ‘Is the network secure?’ asked Jane.

  ‘He connects via the internet to a secure server, yes,’ replied Price. ‘Adam can explain it when he gets
here.’

  ‘What about everybody else?’ asked Dixon, gesturing to the offices further along the first floor.

  ‘Business development this end and that’s the enforcement team down the far end. Things don’t always go to plan, sadly.’

  Jane was holding the pad of paper that had been on Renner’s desk up to the light, turning it this way and that. Then she took an evidence bag out of her handbag, dropped the pad in and sealed it.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Price, answering his phone. ‘Upstairs in Jeremy’s office.’ Then he rang off. ‘Adam’s here.’

  Dixon nodded.

  Adam still had his cycling helmet on when he burst through the double doors at the top of the stairs. ‘I came as quick as I could.’

  ‘We need access to Jeremy’s computer,’ said Price.

  ‘I thought you would so I brought the master password list from my office. May I?’ he asked, gesturing to the chair Jane was sitting on.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What do you need?’ he asked, logging on.

  ‘Emails, sent and received. Anything he typed, documents he worked on, copies of any voice files he dictated. Web history,’ replied Dixon. ‘Basically, anything he did when he was here this morning.’

  ‘And phone calls made and received,’ said Jane.

  ‘I can get that, but I’ll need to log on again as administrator.’ Adam dropped his cycle helmet on his rucksack beside the desk. ‘How do you want the emails?’

  ‘Printed,’ said Dixon.

  Adam slid across to the sideboard on the swivel chair and switched on the printer.

  ‘He logged on at four minutes past nine and off again at ten fifty-seven, which corresponds with the door entry records.’

  ‘Can you print—?’

  Adam pointed to the printer behind Dixon, which began churning out paper. ‘The emails are on their way too.’

  ‘What about recent documents?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘Four. I’m just sending them to print now.’

  Dixon glanced at Jane, who was standing behind Adam watching the screen. She nodded.

  ‘No voice files. Web history’s just BBC News and the Western Daily Press – articles about his daughter, by the looks of things. Let me just check the calls.’

  Dixon picked up the emails and flicked through them. Then the four documents: two memos, a loan agreement and a confidentiality agreement. The door entry records showed only Renner, Price and Adam had clocked in that day, which was not surprising for a bank on a Saturday perhaps.

  Adam shook his head. ‘No calls, made or received from this extension. None at all.’

  ‘What about the others?’ asked Dixon. ‘I’d use somebody else’s phone, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You have a suspicious mind, Inspector,’ said Price.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No, none.’ Adam leaned back in the swivel chair. ‘The only call was made from reception to my mobile about half an hour ago.’

  Jane glanced at Dixon and nodded.

  ‘Is that it then, Inspector?’ asked Price. ‘He wasn’t here long, as you can see.’

  ‘If we give him two minutes each for the emails sent and received, that’s forty-four minutes. Say, twenty for the documents and another twenty on the internet, and he was here for two hours, what was he doing for the other thirty-six minutes, I wonder?’

  ‘On his own,’ said Jane. ‘We know that because no one else signed in.’

  ‘He could have let them in?’ Dixon looked at Price.

  ‘Yes, he could. He doesn’t have keys to the front door, but there’s the back.’

  ‘Any CCTV?’

  Adam stood up. ‘It’s in my office.’

  A room with no windows. Dixon grimaced. It made a glass cubicle on the open plan floor look positively desirable, even if it was just inside the back door.

  ‘It’s motion activated, so it only kicks in—’

  ‘We know,’ said Dixon.

  Adam scrolled through the footage, which showed only Renner arriving and then leaving two hours later, followed by Price and himself arriving.

  Dixon was sucking his teeth. ‘Well, thank you for your help. It goes without saying that the execution of this warrant is highly confidential. This is an ongoing investigation and no one is to hear about this. Is that clear?’

  ‘Certainly, Inspector,’ replied Price. ‘Isn’t it, Adam?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  They stood on the pavement listening to Price locking the revolving door behind them and then walked across to Dixon’s Land Rover.

  ‘It must be in here then,’ said Dixon, handing Jane an envelope containing the pile of emails and documents.

  ‘Or here,’ she said, holding up the evidence bag. ‘There’s a handwritten note. You can see the imprint on the pad.’

  ‘We’ll stop off at Portishead on the way back and drop it off with Scientific.’

  ‘What’ve we got then?’

  Jane was sitting in the passenger seat of Dixon’s Land Rover as he sped south on the M5. ‘Nothing in the emails. It’s all just crap.’

  ‘What sort of crap?’

  ‘Office stuff,’ replied Jane. ‘And he’s emailed some loan application forms to a couple of people. The rest is notes to his secretary telling her what to say to people who’ve rung in.’ Jane sighed. ‘Mainly that he’ll call them back as soon as he can.’

  ‘Mainly?’

  ‘She’s to tell Barry Davenport of Metcalfe Electrical that he’s not to worry. He’ll sort it out when he’s back in the office. Whatever that means.’

  ‘We need to find out.’

  ‘Simon Gregson from Markhams South West Limited has rung six times, apparently.’

  ‘What’s the message for him?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’ Jane frowned. ‘He says to ignore him.’

  ‘And there’s another here that might be interesting. “Malcolm Clarke has to give a personal guarantee for the mortgage.”’ Jane was reading from the email. ‘“Tell him that, with regret, it simply can’t be done without.”’

  ‘What’s the email address?’

  ‘Malcolm dot Clarke at Hawkridge Cycles.’

  ‘We can google it later,’ said Dixon. ‘What about the documents?’

  ‘Two memos.’ Jane glanced down the pages, speed reading. ‘More crap. The loan’s for Hawkridge Cycles Limited and there’s a confidentiality agreement. That last one’s blank.’

  ‘How long did SOCO say it would take to get a copy of the handwritten note off the pad?’

  ‘Later on today.’

  ‘Let’s start with Hawkridge Cycles then. If it’s a bike shop it’ll be open on a Saturday.

  Jane took out her phone and opened a web browser. ‘They’re in Weston,’ she said. ‘On that new retail park on the way in.’

  Dixon managed to avoid the three small children cycling up and down the car park on shiny new bicycles, closely watched by their parents and a shop assistant, and parked outside the front entrance of Hawkridge Cycles.

  ‘We should get some bikes,’ Jane said. ‘It’d be nice.’

  Dixon sighed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The only place I’d want to cycle is the pub,’ muttered Dixon.

  ‘But that’s only fifty yards from the cottage.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He opened the driver’s door and climbed out of the Land Rover. ‘Let’s go and see what Mr Clarke has got to say for himself.’

  The staff were easily identifiable in their matching green polo shirts. ‘I’m looking for Mr Clarke,’ said Dixon, picking on the tall one staring blankly at a computer screen behind the counter.

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  ‘If I had one, I would.’ He leaned over and held his warrant card in front of the screen.

  The shop assistant looked up. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Are you Mr Clarke?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll, er . . . just go and get him.’

  ‘Thank you.’
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  He watched the shop assistant hovering behind another man in a green polo shirt showing off an expensive looking racing bike to a man with thighs the size of tree trunks. The shop assistant soon summoned up the courage to tap the second man on the shoulder. A frown, a glare, then Clarke, presumably, came weaving his way towards them through the bikes on display.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is there somewhere private we could talk, Mr Clarke?’

  ‘Is it about that stolen bike?’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Clarke frowned. ‘Follow me.’

  They ducked under more bikes hanging from the ceiling and into a small office at the back of the shop. Clarke closed the door behind them, kicking a box out of the way to do so.

  ‘We’re investigating the disappearance of Jeremy Renner’s daughter, Hatty, Mr Clarke. We’re just making routine enquiries with his customers at the bank.’

  ‘I heard about that,’ said Clarke, sitting down.

  ‘I gather you are dealing with Mr Renner at the moment?’ asked Dixon.

  ‘I’m trying to negotiate a commercial mortgage through my company.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘So I can buy the freehold of this place and take a lease on a new unit in Bath.’

  ‘Is there some problem with the mortgage?’

  ‘Not really. The bank are insisting on a personal guarantee from me. I don’t mind that, but my signature needs to be witnessed by a solicitor and I can’t seem to find one who’ll do it without charging me a huge fee.’ Clarke sighed. ‘Apparently, it’s not just a case of witnessing my signature. They have to advise me on the bloody thing and confirm that advice in writing before we even sign it. Three hundred quid plus VAT, they want.’

  ‘So, you rang the bank?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to speak to Mr Renner. I was just hoping someone might tell me I needn’t bother with the personal guarantee. After all, the freehold of this place will more than cover the borrowing, let alone the stock.’

  ‘And that’s the only issue outstanding with the bank?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from that, they’ve been great.’ Clarke smiled. ‘Will you be seeing Mr Renner?’

  Dixon nodded.

  ‘Tell him, I hope it works out and she comes home safe.’

  ‘I will, Sir.’

  Dixon slammed the door of the Land Rover and switched on the engine.