If Fear Wins (DI Bliss Book 3)

by Tony J. Forder

  ‘You want to open up and show us?’ Chandler asked this time.

  Still the man said nothing. He stood there shaking. He seemed petrified.

  What are you hiding? Bliss wondered. What are you afraid of? The contents themselves, or the contents being discovered? Maybe even both. Or perhaps it’s what your boss might do to you if it is.

  Bliss decided it didn’t matter. He had a bad feeling about this scrapyard and had reached a decision about his next move. The owner could wait. Right now there was something potentially more important to attend to. He pulled out his phone and jabbed a number. He got straight through to Bishop, and directed the DS to get a team down to Drake Salvage. A team including HazMat officers capable of dealing with caustic, toxic, poisonous liquids. Plus a custody van to cart away an extremely frightened employee for further questioning.

  When he was done, Bliss turned to his partner. ‘I have no idea what we’ll find inside that drum, but I do know Stu here is almost frigid with fear at what we are about to discover. That makes me think it can’t be good.’

  He turned to the young man once again. ‘And you… stay right where you are. If I have to chase after you around this shit hole I’ll ruin my shoes and my whistle and that will just make me bloody annoyed. And believe me that’s not how you want this to go.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ the man said.

  Bliss grinned. ‘Of course you didn’t, Stu.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ More urgently this time. There was a genuine pleading in the man’s watery eyes.

  ‘I believe you. But I reckon someone did. And you know who it was. What’s more, you’re going to tell me who that person or those persons are.’

  Stu blinked rapidly but said nothing. He looked down at his feet and remained standing that way. Bliss had Chandler keep an eye on him, even though he didn’t think the young man would actually make a break for it. Whilst his partner remained out in the yard, Bliss carried out a brief search inside the two caravans. Before entering the first, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, having stuffed a pair into his pocket before leaving the station. The inside of both caravans resembled the tip out in the yard itself. Bliss rifled through scraps of paper, scribbles on Post-It notes, notepads, invoices and assorted documents. He found nothing of interest, but would order a complete forensic search. They didn’t look like much, but he had the feeling the two units would prove to be gold mines in terms of decent evidence of criminal behaviour.

  On exiting the second caravan, Bliss nodded and smiled at Chandler who stood talking to a sullen and completely mute Stu. As he glanced around the site one more time, a thought occurred. He took a few strides away pretending to scour the yard’s hidden secrets. Out of earshot he pulled out his mobile and placed a call to Emily.

  ‘Good day?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice. But I think we’re making advances, so it could be about to look up. I wanted to ask you something. A loose thread, really. I can’t help but pull at the bloody things. Emily, what car did your husband drive?’

  ‘A Nissan. SUV. I think it’s called a Qashqai.’

  Bliss knew the make and model. ‘Colour?’

  ‘A golden brown I guess you’d say.’

  ‘You remember the plate?’

  Emily recited it to him. That was enough. With those few details he would be able to discover the VIN.

  ‘What’s all that for?’ Emily asked. ‘You have something stirring in that mind of yours?’

  Bliss decided to enforce the previous lies. Or lies by omission at the very least. ‘Only that if it was left abandoned somewhere obvious and then carted off for some reason, it might well be stuck away in one of our vehicle yards. I needed to know what to ask about.’

  ‘What a great idea. That’s why you’re the detective.’

  ‘Yeah. Listen, you okay for the rest of the day there on your own? I know I said it before, but please make yourself at home. Watch TV, play some music… well, that’s about it really, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Jimmy. I’m fine. I’ve done some washing. Thrown in some of yours as well–’

  ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Bliss said.

  ‘It was no bother. I was doing a load anyway. And after all you’ve done for me, it doesn’t amount to much, washing a few clothes.’

  Yeah, I’m a real Prince. I’ve discovered that your husband was murdered, that he was probably never really your husband, that he was a spy who may well have been using your marriage as part of his deep cover. And I’ve told you nothing. I’m a gem.

  ‘Okay. Look I have no idea what time I’ll be home. Depends on whether we catch a break in the next few hours. Expect me when you see me.’

  After ending the call, Bliss took a walk around the plot, playing a hunch. He was disappointed with himself in the way he was dealing with Emily’s situation. It was tempting to try and convince himself that it was all for her own good, but Bliss was not about to hide behind that. He wanted answers to this investigation, he wanted to solve it. A tortured and torched young RAF officer deserved that much.

  The site was extensive, with a boundary wall made from breeze blocks, on top of which ran razor wire. The crushing machine was at the far end, and the ridges of tyre treads in damp soil suggested it had been busy recently. As Bliss rounded a slight bend in the muddy track, skirting a stack of tumble dryers standing eight feet high, his gaze came to rest on a vehicle perched precariously on top of a huge six vehicle stack. It had been broken up for parts, with little more than the shell remaining, but beneath the recent liberal coating of dirt and dust was clearly a relatively fresh paint job which suggested the vehicle was not old and had not been there long. It also looked to be a golden brown Nissan Qashqai. No plates – that would have been too obvious.

  Bliss took a breath. Beside the stack was a small crane, with what looked like both a hooked and magnetic clamp at the end hanging close to the ground. Of the half a dozen cars, four had been crushed. Not flat, but enough that they would never be used again. The vehicle beneath the Nissan was an Austin Metro, and Bliss could not remember the last time he had seen one of those around. The Qashqai was too new, too out of place. It did not belong.

  This was Simon Curtis’s car. Whoever had shoved the MI6 agent off that bridge had then seen to it that Curtis’s SUV was driven back here, where the stripping and destruction process began. With a bit of good fortune, the vehicle identity number had not yet been removed. Bliss would have it checked out, but he was certain. They were in the right place.

  Turning it over and over in his mind, Bliss figured Lewis Drake had either murdered or ordered the murder of the man known as Simon Curtis. The undercover agent had got too close and slipped up in some way that had betrayed him. Or perhaps he had been betrayed by another. Bliss wondered if Curtis’s connection into the gang had been Duncan Livingston. One of many imponderables, and one Bliss thought he might never get an answer to.

  As he made his way back to Chandler and Stu who stood towards the centre of the yard, Bliss heard the sound of several engines moving closer along the narrow road leading towards the yard. They were shifting, despite the rutted and uneven surface. When Chandler looked up at his approach, Bliss nodded. Her eyes widened questioningly, and he nodded again. This time Chandler smiled. She now knew what he knew.

  That their search for answers was almost over.

  39

  All the pieces were there. The task Bliss faced was finding a way of slotting them together so that they made sense and would lead the investigation to a successful conclusion. The team had been summoned back in for what Bliss had described as a brainstorming session. He was their leader, the man who made all of the final decisions, but their eyes, ears, experience, and intelligence were invaluable. Getting to the bottom of this complex investigation would take all of their combined wisdom and knowhow. By the time everyone had settled, Bliss stood by a clean whiteboard, black marker poised in hand.

  ‘This
is what I believe,’ he said, starting to write in block capitals. ‘Flying Officer Duncan Livingston was a good and solid worker bee until an accident some four thousand miles away in Saudi Arabia kick-started the chain of events that ultimately led to his death.’

  Bliss paused for a moment as the door to the major incident room opened and MI5 agent Munday stepped inside. The man from Thames House remained at the far end of the room, folded his arms and casually leaned back against the wall. Bliss caught his eye and gave a nod before continuing. He was getting used to having his briefings gate-crashed.

  ‘A scam involving RAF officers both here at Wittering and out in the Middle East, plus a crew of gangsters here in the city and down in Essex, was going along just nicely, bringing stolen artefacts and a variety of treasures into the country and having them sold on. A lucrative arrangement for everyone involved, I’m sure. Then came the accident in Saudi, which resulted in a Wittering RAF officer being transferred out there to replace a critical member of the team who died as a result of that accident. That left a vacancy here. I believe that, after what I imagine was a great deal of persuasion, the vacancy was filled by Duncan Livingston.’

  ‘So our dead airman was bent, after all,’ Hunt said. The DC had a habit of getting right to the point. As much as the bluntness irritated Bliss at times, he also admired Hunt for it. In some ways it reminded him of his own approach at the same stage in his career.

  ‘He didn’t start out that way,’ Bliss said. ‘But yes, eventually I think he was drawn in. Whether this was because the money was too good to ignore, or the crew put pressure on him in other ways, we may never know. But at some point shortly afterwards something went badly wrong. I think either our airman pulled out and the crew decided they could not risk him doing so whilst remaining silent, or he threatened to expose them. I can’t be sure which, but either way they decided to kill him. Rather than have him disappear or be found murdered in an ordinary way, which would have exposed Livingston to enormous scrutiny, the crew decided to fake a terrorist attack so that the focus fell upon that rather than the victim himself and any other possible reason for his murder.’

  ‘That’s a bit extreme, wouldn’t you say?’ Short said.

  ‘Yes and no, Sergeant. Once the decision to top him was made, I imagine it then came down to how best to do it, to get away with it, and at the same time leave themselves unexposed. This arrangement was not something they wanted to walk away from. Having him go missing and therefore AWOL would have brought down the full weight of the RAF investigative team as well as us, the focus sharply on Livingston and his lifestyle. That would have been a huge risk. Same goes for killing him and dumping his body out in the open – too much unwanted attention on the man himself. So they came up with a plan to draw that attention away from the individual and instead place the spotlight on how and why he was killed. You could dismiss it as extreme, but it’s clever and to a certain degree it very nearly worked. Only they weren’t quite good enough.’

  ‘Not for you, boss. You sussed them.’

  This drew some laughter and cries of ‘ arse licker’ and ‘brown nose’ aimed in Short’s direction.

  ‘Do we have evidence of all this, boss?’ Ansari asked, a frown troubling her forehead.

  Bliss shook his head. ‘No. In terms of building a case, it’s as leaky as a colander. There are an awful lot of holes to fill regards this theory, but to my mind this is the way things went down. Given the individual pieces we have, I think this is the most logical way to fit them together. I also suspect the murdered airman’s immediate superior could be involved. At the very least, he is a more likely candidate than Livingston’s closest friends. I think today will go a long way to filling those holes I just mentioned, because I also believe we have completed the centre of the broader picture, in that we have discovered the crew who buy and sell the artefacts here in Peterborough. I hope to gain the evidence we need from them in respect of the RAF personnel. I know I’m right. I just know it. But we also have to prove it, and that’s going to need some more work. Any further questions?’

  ‘I have one,’ Munday said, levering himself away from the wall at the back. ‘Given the fact that I currently have teams carrying out close monitoring and full-time surveillance on potential terrorist targets, are you yet able to tell me unequivocally that the murder of the airman was not a terrorist attack?’

  ‘If you’re asking me whether I have evidence to confirm that, then as you will have just heard me say, the answer is no. All I have at the moment is what logic insists to me must be the truth. I look at it and for me it’s the only way the pieces can slot in and still present us with a perfect picture. Broadly speaking. In terms of hard facts, I have to admit that I have virtually nothing. The word of a gangster’s wife that a trade in artefacts from outside the country is taking place in this city. Suspicious comings and goings at a salvage yard reported by an informant. My own intuition that the RAF base at Wittering is the conduit for the stolen artefacts. The unresolved murder of our young airman. So no, not a scrap of actual evidence.’

  ‘Yet you’re confident enough in the theory to stand up there and inform your team that this is how things are?’

  ‘I am. Tenuous links, I admit, but links all the same. My aim here is to show my team those individual connections and for us all to somehow tie them together.’

  ‘And what about our friends down at Vauxhall Cross, Inspector?’

  Bliss fixed the man with a heavy frown. ‘What do you mean by that, Agent Munday? What do the SIS have to do with any of this?’

  ‘Only that according to you we have an incident of international mystery and intrigue, criminal acts and murder, all of which somehow involve our very own Royal Air Force. Internal strife and mayhem is my bailiwick, that which extends beyond our borders, theirs.. I wonder whether it would be worth having a chat with MI6. Or, perhaps you already have, Inspector.’

  Bliss looked into Munday’s eyes. In that moment he knew the man from MI5 was sitting on far more information than he was willing to reveal in front of this particular audience. He wondered if the man knew about Simon Curtis and Bliss’s relationship to the dead agent’s wife. There was one way of finding that out.

  ‘How about you and I discuss that in more detail when I’m done here?’ Bliss suggested. He took Munday’s nod for acquiescence.

  About to address the team once more, Bliss’s mobile rang. He checked the display. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I need to take this. It could be the break we’re looking for.’

  Bliss took a few short steps across the room, turning his back on the sea of faces. On the other end of the line was the head of the HazMat unit, Sergeant Liam O’Neill.

  ‘You were right to be wary of this container,’ O’Neill said without preamble. ‘It held sulphuric acid. Well, just about held it, if the truth be known. It would not have remained so much longer. Unfortunately, the acid is not all we found inside. There was also a thick stew of human remains. The majority of it was completely liquefied, but a few fragments remained in the slurry. Enough to tell us a body was dissolved in the drum within the past week.’

  Bliss hung his head. His worst fears were realised. It had been the first thing that popped into his mind when he saw the drum and the leaking fluid. He had seen this method of human disposal before. The question now was, whose body had been destroyed?

  ‘Did you find anything else?’ he asked. ‘Anything that might identify the victim.’

  ‘Possibly. We certainly found an object. Can’t be sure it came from the victim, but given the drum was empty otherwise, it’s a safe bet.’

  ‘Okay, that’s positive. What was it?’

  ‘A small silver earring. Looks to me like an eagle. Definitely a bird of some sort.’

  Bliss ran a thumb over his scar. The description of the item was somehow familiar to him. He just could not think of it in context. There was nothing about it anywhere in Duncan Livingston’s case file, but Bliss was certain that he had heard mention
of this earring somewhere over the past week or so. Or at least, had read about it on some document or another.

  ‘Just the one?’ he asked. ‘Not the pair?’

  ‘That’s right, Inspector. No sign of the other one.’

  Bliss frowned. A single silver earring in the shape of an eagle. Surely it had to have a matching partner to form the pair, he thought. And that’s when it came to him. The memory slotted into place. He ran through the permutations rapidly and knew right away what had to happen next.

  ‘Please get that earring to me as quickly as possible,’ Bliss said, adding the weight of urgency to his voice. ‘If I have to I’ll send someone over to collect it.’

  ‘Of course. It’s in evidence, but you can sign for it.’

  ‘Hold on to it. I’m on it right now.’

  Bliss cut the connection and turned, pointed at Carmichael. ‘Constable, I need you to head over to Drake Salvage to collect an item of evidence from Sergeant O’Neill’s team. Do it now, and do it quickly. Bring it to me.’

  Bliss then leaned over a computer terminal, brought up a specific database and tapped in a few keys. When he straightened he jabbed a finger this time at DC Ansari. He instructed her to go immediately to the evidence room to sign out a specific item from an on-going investigation. Bliss reeled off both the case number and the evidence log details extracted from the computer.

  ‘Boss?’ Chandler said from the front row. She appeared bemused, and she was not alone.

  Bliss mentally shaped the response before speaking. He ran a hand down his cheek. ‘The drum over at Drake Salvage inspected by the HazMat team turned up a liquefied body. No victim ID as yet. However, in addition to the remains they also found a silver earring in the shape of an eagle. I remembered reading about the very same item only recently, and then the penny dropped. A week ago when we first looked at missing persons there were two picked out by DS Bishop. Our RAF officer was one, and there was also a report on an unidentified female who left clothes by the bank of the river Nene. Along with the clothes was the same sort of silver earring. My bet is it’s the matching one.’