Hail and Farewell (The Lakeland Murders)

by J. J. Salkeld

  ‘All right, Jenny, thanks. Let me just check that I’ve got this straight. This phone was found by Keith at a fly-tipping site near Maryport yesterday morning, and we have these images of the phone in situ. When examined by our SOCO team at this station today a set of unidentified prints was found, as well as three that have been identified as Matt Hayton’s. Furthermore, until it was turned on again by our techs this phone was only active briefly, on the evening of last Tuesday, when it made three calls, and received two, both from another pay-as-you-go that has also since dropped off the network. That’s a pattern that is suspicious, and is usually associated with devices being used in a criminal context. And the phone that we now have was in the area of central Workington for the whole time that it was turned on originally.’

  ‘Yes, Andy, that’s it.’ said Jenny.

  ‘OK, then. First of all, well done, Keith. I’m really impressed by the effort you went to in order to secure evidence, and to record the scene. That’s just excellent police work, and a lesson to me, that’s for sure. Two immediate action points occur. First, let’s get that fly-tipped load inspected properly. Keith, has it been uplifted yet?’

  ‘No, boss. I just called the council.’

  ‘Right, get Sandy or some of her cronies out their soonest, and see what they can find. And circulate those haulage company logs as well please. Let’s all have a look at them.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Ian, it’s almost time for another chat with Matt Hayton.’

  ‘You want him brought in?’

  ‘Go and find him, and ask him to attend for an interview under caution in the morning.’

  ‘He’ll bring a brief if I do that, boss.’

  ‘I know. That’s what I want. Let’s make sure that George Hayton is aware of what’s happened, and the cock-up that his nephew has made.’

  ‘You are one sneaky old DCI, Andy Hall.’

  ‘Thanks, Ian. That’s the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me. It really is.’

  ‘So what do you think?’ Hall asked Jane, when they were alone. ‘Does Keith turning up that phone change anything?’

  ‘Does it make it less likely that he’s on George Hayton’s payroll you mean? Yes, I’d say it does. What possible advantage could they hope to gain by incriminating one of their own like that? After all, Keith knew as well as anyone that we weren’t getting anywhere in trying to connect Hayton’s crew with the burglary and assault on Alex Baker. But this could just be the break we need. I always try to be cautious when it comes to second-guessing the decisions and thought processes of working criminals, because they can be almost whimsically random sometimes. But in this case I just can’t see what they could possibly have to gain by giving us this phone. Granted, this won’t be enough for us to charge Matt Hayton with anything, but it does allow us to keep looking, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does. So do you want to talk about the elephant in the room, or not?’

  ‘You mean Bill Iredale? I thought we’d thrashed that one out pretty comprehensively with Val Gorham this morning. The man hardly had a stellar career, did he? So apart from possibly giving Hayton the odd bit of tactical help it’s hard to see what use he could have been. Not really.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t dirty though, does it?’

  ‘No, and that’s why I’ve agreed with Val’s proposal. We order up background on Bill Iredale, have a look at it, and then we have an informal chat.’

  ‘And how informal it is depends on what the background throws up?’

  ‘Exactly. I was surprised that Val was willing to take such a pragmatic view, but it’s the sensible one. She isn’t committing us to a particular course of action, or anything that we couldn’t row back from, if we wanted to.’

  ‘And Keith doesn’t have to know?’

  ‘Absolutely not, no. It’s far too soon to even consider that. This stays strictly between us, so get the background done by HQ please, and don’t let anyone here see it. And I mean no-one except me, you and Ian.’

  ‘You’re worried about Smith and Hodgson?’

  ‘Possibly, but not only them, Jane. If we assume that Bill Iredale was Hayton’s man then presumably they recruited someone else before he retired. And how long has been out of the job? Five years, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just over.’

  ‘So there are plenty of candidates, aren’t there? And let’s remember that Jack Moffett is our source, and he’s provided no evidence to back up his claims.’

  ‘But why would he lie?’

  Hall laughed. ‘He’s criminal, Jane. It’s just what they do.’

  Keith Iredale took the precaution of buying a box of cream buns and four coffees on the way to the fly-tipping site.

  ‘Where will you bloody want us next?’ said Sandy, when she was sipping her coffee and surveying the scene. ‘The fucking sewage farm?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sandy. Can I help?’

  ‘Of course not. You’re not qualified, are you?’

  ‘Have you found anything useful?’

  ‘Other than an old front door that I might put in the van for myself, no, nothing. But we’re searching methodically, looking for anything that doesn’t look like builder’s rubble and general rubbish. We’re about three quarters of the way there, I’d say.’

  ‘So it looks as if that phone might just have been tossed into the truck? When it was loaded and parked up somewhere, maybe?’

  ‘I’d say that’s favourite, if we don’t find owt else, that is.’

  ‘And there’s nothing to indicate where the rest of stuff comes from?’

  ‘No, not so far. They’ve been careful, like you said, and sorted the stuff first. My guess is that they go through the stuff somewhere, and anything that can be identified goes to a legitimate destination. I’m a bit surprised actually, because you do usually find something if you look hard enough.’

  ‘So you’ve looked at fly-tipping before?’

  ‘I fucking have. Don’t bloody remind me. About two years ago some knob-end dumped a load of medical waste on a footpath about half a mile from the Chief’s house. Turned out he used to walk his dog along there. You can imagine the rest.’

  ‘It became top priority.’

  ‘Aye, and fortunately we did help build a case against the wanker who was behind it. A right charmer he was, if I remember rightly. Seeing him sent down made wading through the soiled sheets almost worthwhile, like. But I’m not hopeful this time, I’m sorry to say. So it may well be back over to you again. But haven’t you got some trucking firm in the frame?’

  ‘Aye, and they also have a connection with the phone we found.’

  ‘There we are then. Case closed. Let’s give this up and all go down the pub.’

  ‘It’s not quite that easy, I’m afraid. We’ve also got the relevant vehicle logs and tachographs, and I can’t see any irregularities at all.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything though, does it? There are ways round all that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Let me see. Old trucks don’t need them, and there are other exemptions as well. Maybe they’re using another vehicle. Not the ones they’ve given you the data for, like. Have you checked all of their vehicles?’

  ‘No, and maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. The key thing was getting the phone. We’ve got prints off it, so we know that Matt Hayton had been handling it. That’s the main thing, and it ties him to the burglary that we’re linking to Chris Brown’s death.’

  ‘There we are then. You could look a bit happier about it though, lad. I hear Andy Hall burnished your buttons in public, and told everyone what a very clever young copper you are.’

  Iredale looked embarrassed, and Sandy Smith smiled. She just liked the lad. She couldn’t help herself.

  ‘You’re right, I suppose’ he said, ‘but I wanted to nick someone for this lot. And the rest, come to that. It’s just so disrespectful, somehow. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I do. That’s the thing about cri
minals though, isn’t it? They just don’t give a shit.’

  When Sandy and her team had gone Iredale watched the council digger load the last of the rubbish into a lorry. He felt a bit better when it was done. He looked at his watch, and saw that his shift had been over for half an hour. So he drove back to the station, and signed his car keys back in. He was at the bike shed, just tightening the velcro on his cycling shoes, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was DI Smith.

  ‘Well done, son. I hear you’re the bloody blue-eyed boy.’

  ‘It probably won’t last, boss.’

  ‘Rubbish, lad. I wouldn’t be surprised if Andy Hall doesn’t find something for you at HQ, or maybe down at south division.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to move. Not out of the west division, like.’

  ‘Where’s your ambition, Keith? I sometimes think that you’re just like your old man, I really do.’

  Iredale nodded. He’d heard that said before, and he didn’t mind one bit.

  ‘That wouldn’t be such a bad thing though, would it, boss?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just meant; never mind. Anyway, I mustn’t keep you, Keith.’

  But DI Smith didn’t turn away. He just stood there.

  ‘Was there anything else, boss?’

  ‘No, no. I was just thinking about George Hayton, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, aye? What about him, like?’

  ‘Just that it would be ironic if he finally got his collar felt by a bloody offcomer, after all these years we’ve been after him.’

  Iredale shrugged noncommittally.

  ‘Closing in, are you lad? He’s the real target now, isn’t he? DCI bloody high-and-mighty Hall isn’t really interested in some poor kid who drowned in Cloffocks Beck, now is he? He’s looking to link it to George Hayton, and bring his whole bloody empire crashing down. Now that would be a proper result, like, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, boss’ said Iredale, bending down to check his shoe again. He hated it when one felt loose in its cleat as he rode.

  ‘Just the oily rag then, are you, lad? And Andy Hall is the engine driver, dodgy knee and all?’

  Wednesday, 30th April

  Andy Hall had been awake for hours. He tried to get back to his sleep, but couldn’t. His knee hurt, and he needed the loo and a painkiller, in that order. Jane didn’t wake up when he levered himself out of bed, nor when we returned, in instalments, to a horizontal position. He knew that there was no need to keep going through it all again in his head. Because there were still active lines of enquiry and he knew that he should be patient. Trust in the investigative method, keep an open mind, and always pursue each line of enquiry right to the end. He told himself all that, twice, but he still couldn’t get back to sleep. He had a bad feeling, nagging away like his knee, and he just couldn’t quite shake it off.

  The causes of his unease weren’t hard to identify, when he gave up on sleep and turned his attention to them. It wasn’t uncommon for an investigation into one serious offence to connect with other crimes, because career criminals invariably commit lots of offences, many of them only loosely connected. And when organised crime was involved then that likelihood just increased. But this case was turning into an evidential ring doughnut: with all of the material at the edges, and a big hole in the middle. Hall smiled, briefly, at the image and tried to remember it so he could tell Jane later. Because the fact remained that, despite all the team’s work, there was very little possibility of achieving a conviction for the Brown killing. As things stood Hall doubted that there’d ever be any certainty that foul play was even involved.

  And then there was accountancy, the curse of double-entry bookkeeping. Because this investigation could also be seen as a ledger, and at the moment he knew that there was far too much red ink to be seen on the page. Under normal circumstances he’d expect to have been closed down already, and the case put on 28-day review, but the possibility of connecting a range of other offences to the Brown death was all that keeping Val Gorham onside. And it was that train of thought that brought Hall to the nub of the issue, the thing that was really keeping him awake. Because an old hand like Matt Hayton wouldn’t slip up when he was questioned about that phone, it just couldn’t happen, and then where would they be?

  He got up, turned on his laptop, and checked his email. The initial analysis of Bill Iredale’s finances had been completed, and he read the one-page summary first. There was nothing to indicate that Iredale had any suspicious assets or sources of income, and none of the behavioural checks - like regularity of ATM usage - indicated anything remotely unusual. The raw data was attached, and Hall spent half an hour looking through it. Perhaps it was his own academic background, but he always enjoyed thinking about people as economic agents, and trying to deduce, or maybe intuit, aspects of character from their financial behaviour.

  When Jane woke up he closed his laptop and boiled the kettle in the hotel room. It took an age.

  ‘I’ve had a look through the stuff on Bill Iredale.’

  ‘Isn’t that my job?’

  ‘I’d appreciate a second opinion later, but it’s all looking clean.’

  ‘Too clean?’

  ‘You know how it is, Jane, and why these exercises are rarely of any value, especially if you’re looking at an insider, someone who knows the system, like a copper. Because either he’s clean, or he’s bent and he’s clever. It’s absolutely impossible to tell which it might be. And the other thing to remember is that he’s been retired for years, so it’s hard to see why he’d still be on Hayton’s payroll now. So I had a look and can’t see anything that might relate to assets bought years ago. There’s no sign of a Spanish villa, nothing like that.’

  ‘But you still think we should talk to him?’

  ‘Absolutely. Like I say, this doesn’t prove anything, either way.’

  ‘You were just playing it by the book?’

  ‘Exactly. And with Val Gorham peering over my bloody shoulder that’s the way it has to be. It’s a box ticked, and that’s all. But I’ll be interested to see how he reacts when we do talk to him.’

  ‘You want me to set that up?’

  ‘Yes, please, for later on today. But not at the station, and not at his home.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘How about that nice little cafe in Allonby? We went there last summer with the girls, you remember?’

  ‘I do. That kite you’d bought blew away, didn’t it?’

  ‘There’s a reason that the whole bloody place is over-run with wind farms, Jane.’

  ‘All right. I’ll set it up. What do you want me to say to him?’

  ‘As little as possible. If he asks tell him its deep background on George Hayton.’

  Keith Iredale was already at work when Ian Mann arrived. They’d got in the habit of having a brew together, early doors, and whoever arrived last did the honours. So Mann made straight for the kitchen.

  ‘What are you on with, lad?’ he said, putting a mug down on Iredale’s desk.

  ‘The logs from those tipper trucks. I don’t reckon they were used, Ian, or if they were they’ve hidden the traces well.’

  ‘That’s a shame. It would be bloody fantastic if we could tie that whole load back to Hayton, and not just the phone.’

  ‘There is another possibility. Sandy mentioned that old trucks don’t need tachographs, and she’s right, they don’t. So I had a look online and Hayton has a collection of old vehicles with local connections. And guess what? There’s a tipper truck from the ‘70s. As far as I can tell it’s on the road.’

  ‘Nice one, Keith. That’s good work. Don’t be surprised if you get another pat on the back from the boss. So where do they keep this old lorry then?’

  ‘At the place we were before. They’ve got a big shed for them, apparently.’ Iredale grinned. ‘So it looks like I’ll need to get out there again, Ian. Unless you want to come with me, like?’

  Mann laughed. ‘Aye, I’ll come. You might
need protecting.’

  ‘More likely it’s the other way round. When do you want to go?’

  ‘Wait until after Matt Hayton’s been brought in. I don’t expect we’ll get anything out of him, like, but you never know, do you?’

  Matt Hayton was chatting to his lawyer when Hall and Jane walked into the interview room, and other than glancing up for a second he didn’t acknowledge them. It was, Hall thought, just another day at the office for all of them. He leant his crutch against the side of the table and sat down slowly. Jane wrote down the lawyer’s name on her pad, set the recorder running, and made all the usual introductions.

  ‘Let’s start with last Tuesday. What were you doing that day, and evening?’ asked Hall.

  ‘It’s a long time ago, is that. I don’t remember. Just another day in paradise, I expect.’

  ‘I need you try a bit harder. Do you have an electronic diary, anything like that?’

  Hayton laughed. ‘What, so I don’t miss a board meeting? Or my flight to the Maldives, maybe? No, of course I don’t, marrer.’

  ‘It was the day of the second Uppies and Downies game of the year. Is that any help?’

  ‘Oh, aye. I do remember, as it happens. I went to the game.’

  ‘Were you there at the start?’

  ‘No. I probably turned up at about seven. They hadn’t got far, mind. The game was still on the Cloffocks, like it usually is.’

  ‘And did you stay until the end?’

  ‘Aye, I did. Nearly hailed the ball and all. I probably could have, if I’d wanted to.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I went home.’

  ‘On foot? By car, taxi, what?’

  ‘I got a lift I think. Aye, that’s right, I did.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Just one of the lads. I don’t remember which one, like.’