Brass in Pocket

by Stephen Puleston

  ‘Uniform from Cardiff in reception. Says he has to see you in person,’ she emphasised the last word, before putting the phone down.

  The taller of the two uniformed officers stopped talking to the receptionist when he saw Caren.

  ‘Sergeant Waits?’ The Valleys accent sounded unfamiliar.

  ‘Are these the documents from Inspector Marco?’ Caren looked down at the boxes on the reception floor.

  ‘Sure are. We’re supposed to make sure it gets to you and nobody else. That’s what he said. There’s another five in the car.’

  It took both officers and Caren fifteen minutes to carry all the boxes to Drake’s room. Then she sat down, feeling sweaty and uncomfortable, tugging at her blouse in a vain attempt to cool down.

  She pulled out the list of the files and read the details. She heard a noise in the Incident Room and through the glass in the door saw a shape cross the room. She knew Winder and Howick had left and the cleaners didn’t arrive until the early hours. Who could be in the office? Perhaps it was Price or somebody from public relations. She got up from the desk and opened the door slowly.

  Moxon turned to look at her.

  He curled up the edges of his mouth.

  Her throat froze, the muscles tightened around her vocal chord.

  She watched as he turned to look at the board.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  She moved two steps towards him and sat down on the edge of a desk, gathering her confidence. She cleared her throat and swallowed, hoping, praying that he wouldn’t sense her discomfort. Act normal, she thought.

  ‘Good. James Harrod has been arrested as well as Stevie Dixon.’

  ‘So I heard. Have they coughed?’

  ‘We’re doing a second interview tomorrow.’

  Moxon lifted his eyebrows. ‘Really?’

  Act normal. What was normal? It was late in the day and a non-operational officer was alone with her in the Incident Room. Then she remembered the files in Drake’s office. She had left the door open; they were in clear view.

  ‘Did you want to see DI Drake?’ She swallowed again.

  ‘Yes … We go back a long time …’

  Caren said nothing.

  ‘Do you think Harrod did it?’

  ‘He had motive. Been inside as well.’ A fragment of gossip might answer the question.

  Moxon scanned the activity on the board. Caren frantically thought of how she was going to handle the situation.

  ‘Where is Ian?’ Moxon paced slowly in front of the board, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘He’s due back any time,’ she said, turning her wrist in an exaggerated gesture to look at her watch.

  Slowly he moved towards the end of the board and then walked towards the door. As he pulled the door open, he turned to Caren.

  ‘Give Ian my warmest regards.’

  Caren let out a long breath and felt a bead of sweat running down her neck.

  Drake sat opposite Caren and listened as she told him about Moxon, his face darkening.

  ‘He knows,’ Caren said.

  ‘No, he was fishing. Probably heard about the boxes from Cardiff.’

  ‘He sounded tense. And he said Give Ian my warmest regards.’

  There were unfinished sandwiches and empty crisp packets on the desk.

  ‘We’ll have to work through the files tonight,’ he said eventually, nodding at the boxes on the floor.

  ‘Super was after you earlier. Something about a meeting.’

  Caren put a bottle of Coke to her lips and gulped.

  Drake nodded. He had noticed the missed calls on the mobile, but was putting off the time when he’d have to explain himself. He thought about what to say to Price. At that moment, he had an incomplete picture but if he didn’t speak to the superintendent it would only make matters worse. He picked up the telephone, his heart beating a little faster.

  The call was short. Drake listened and mumbled confirmation of the time for the rearranged meeting. He hoped that before then he’d have progress to report. Otherwise, he’d face Price and Thorsen knowing that he’d be off the case.

  Drake pulled out a power drink from his desk drawer. Sian would never approve, but he needed a good energy boost. Caren passed him the memo on access to medical records and he underlined phrases and highlighted sections with a red biro. Caren returned to her desk to finish reading the list of files that Roderick Jones had been dealing with.

  By eleven Drake had read Caren’s report.

  ‘So there’s a good argument?’

  ‘Will the surgery agree?’ Caren said.

  Drake put his hands behind his head and leant back in the chair. He puffed out a lungful of air.

  ‘I’ll set up a meeting with Price and Thorsen in the morning.’

  He turned to the list Caren had been reading.

  ‘Anything in this list?’

  ‘Where do we start?’ she asked.

  Caren had used various coloured highlighters to differentiate the North Wales files from the rest. He started reading.

  The first columns had the personal details and then the name of the property and a column with various numbers; he could see that one of the columns was headed ‘planning application number’. His eyes stopped at the name of James Harrod. He read across the row and scanned the details of Harrod’s file.

  He read down again and saw names from all the counties of North Wales.

  He noticed the names of the occasional high-profile planning application that had been on the television. Anything that promised more jobs always attracted lots of press coverage.

  Then he read the name Beverley Owen and moved down to the next name.

  He stopped and read the name again.

  ‘Let’s find the file of Beverley Owen,’ he said.

  Caren eventually found the papers in one of the boxes and passed it over to Drake.

  Beverley Owen – planning consent for conversion of outbuilding – refusal.

  He opened the file, put his head in his hands and groaned.

  Beverley Owen was Moxon’s late wife.

  Chapter 42

  Thursday 1st July

  Sian didn’t stir when Drake slipped into bed in the early hours.

  He stared at the ceiling, fearing that sleep would elude him again. Shadows from the night sky shimmered past the curtains and his thoughts turned to the journey on the morning it had all started. The breakneck speed. The automatic weapons of the armed officers. The Traffic car and the two bloodied bodies.

  He glanced over at the clock, the face lit up as he adjusted the time of the alarm. In the morning he would leave before any explanations became necessary. Someone had told him that counting in thousands helped them get to sleep, but by the time he reached fifty thousand, he was more awake than ever and abandoned the idea.

  Eventually he fell asleep, but not before the images of Harrod’s interview and the sight of a sobbing Jan Jones in the manager’s room on the top of Snowdon came crowding back into his mind.

  When the alarm sounded, Drake felt that he had only just fallen asleep. Sian murmured something by his side before turning over and going back to sleep. He hoped she wouldn’t wake. He couldn’t tell her anything: dared not tell her.

  In the hallway, he picked up his locked briefcase and checked that the file of Beverley Owen was still safely inside. He pulled on the jacket of his suit and, looking in the mirror, ran a finger over the brown bags under his eyes and brushed back the flecks of grey hair above his ears. Outside, the temperature was still cool but the sky a clear blue, the tops of the trees moving slowly with the morning breeze. It was going to be another bright, clear day.

  He put the briefcase safely on the passenger seat and pulled the car out of the drive.

  Caren was waiting for him in the car park, empty apart from the occasional patrol car.

  The smell of disinfectant and cleaning fluid permeated the air as they threaded their way through headquarters, taking the stairs to the Incident
Room two at a time. He unlocked the door to his office and checked that everything was undisturbed. They had to review the evidence and notes. They had to prevent a fifth death.

  ‘I keep thinking something’s missing,’ Caren said.

  Drake shared her unease, as though a burglar had been rifling through the paperwork, leaving empty handed.

  ‘I don’t want Gareth or Dave in the loop at the moment.’

  Caren nodded. It was going to be difficult.

  ‘What are you going to do about Moxon?’

  Drake had been trying to answer the same question since leaving the house. He put a biro on the file of papers in front of him and knew he had to find an answer. He glanced at the clock on the computer screen. The operational support department wouldn’t start for another hour.

  ‘I want you to ring one of the other officers in operational support and ask if Moxon is there. At least we can find out if he’s on duty today. After that … well … it depends.’

  He could barely believe what he was thinking. Arresting Moxon would be high profile. He couldn’t afford to take any risks now. They read through the folder once more until they were satisfied it covered everything. Drake suppressed the dark mood dominating his mind.

  A baffled look crossed Hannah’s face when Drake explained that his meeting with Price and Thorsen had been organised late the night before.

  ‘Just routine,’ he added.

  Before she could say anything further, Thorsen walked in, complaining about his schedule for the day.

  ‘Where were you yesterday, Ian? I thought our meeting had been rearranged for later this afternoon.’

  ‘There have been developments.’

  ‘That’s what Wyndham said on the telephone last night. This had better be good.’

  Drake hesitated, knowing that if he was wrong then the investigation was out of his hands and that maybe his career was over too.

  Then Price breezed in and Hannah asked about the unscheduled meeting.

  ‘Won’t take long, Hannah. I know I’ve got a busy diary. Coffee for everyone, thank you.’

  Drake and Caren exchanged a furtive glance as Price led them into his room. They sat next to each other across the polished table. Drake cleared his throat.

  ‘We have reason to believe that there are good grounds for suspecting PC Moxon is our killer.’

  Price looked stunned, his mouth opening in disbelief. Drake couldn’t read the expression on Thorsen’s face, as always he appeared inscrutable. Drake didn’t wait for a response from either.

  ‘We established yesterday that Moxon was on Snowdon on the day of Roderick Jones’s murder.’

  ‘How?’ Thorsen asked.

  ‘An off duty officer saw him in Beddgelert, coming down from one of the paths.’

  Thorsen resumed the inscrutable pose. The only sign of his unease was a muscle twitching below his left eyelid.

  ‘And yesterday Jan called me about Roderick Jones’s iPhone.’

  Price clenched his jaw.

  ‘There were photographs of Moxon wearing a ponytail and baseball cap going past Roderick Jones on Snowdon.’

  ‘But … the motive … Why …?’ Price stammered.

  ‘In Roderick Jones’s files we found a planning application submitted by Beverley Moxon. He turned it down for no reason – against advice. And the property was at the foot of the Crimea Pass.’

  ‘Bit of a tenuous link for killing them on the mountain pass,’ Price said.

  Drake shrugged.

  ‘But why kill two fellow officers?’ Thorsen asked.

  ‘Mathews had an affair with Beverley Moxon some years ago and the likelihood is that she contracted chlamydia from him. Our guess is that’s why she couldn’t have children.’

  ‘Guesswork. We’ll need more than guesswork,’ Price snorted.

  Drake paused and added slowly. ‘Moxon was a friend of mine. I knew him well. He always wanted children and one of the side effects of chlamydia is infertility.’

  For a moment, Price and Thorsen looked at Drake without saying anything.

  ‘And West?’ Price asked, shaking his head.

  ‘Beverley was a patient of his. We’ve prepared a memo,’ Drake said, pushing two copies of the notes over the table.

  Both men read the paper, pens raised ready. Thorsen preferred to underline, sometimes three times, and Price scratched asterisks in the margin and circled sections. Drake and Caren waited. Price snapped the top back onto his brightly coloured fountain pen and looked at Drake, a serious look in his eyes – his earlier briskness had evaporated.

  ‘So the missing link is evidence for the motives against West and Mathews?’

  Drake nodded. Thorsen let out a faint cough. ‘Who knows about this?’

  ‘Only the four of us. It’s been kept from the rest of the team.’

  ‘Good,’ Thorsen said.

  Milk was poured into the coffees and sugar stirred into the mugs, as they discussed how to proceed. It would be difficult. Should Drake be excluded? Would it not be better if Price was involved? When Thorsen’s mobile rang, he fumbled for it in the jacket draped over the back of his chair and switched it off. Drake continued until the telephone on Price’s desk rang, and he told Hannah not to interrupt again. Thorsen wanted to be cautious but Price had no time for conventions.

  ‘If this bastard is responsible we need to close him down now, today. Before he kills again.’

  ‘But …’ Thorsen began.

  ‘But nothing,’ Price said, waving his hand, dismissing any dissent. He turned to Drake. ‘Better get on with it.’

  Drake sat by a woman whose child had a cough that sounded like a rattle from an old car engine. A man opposite looked deathly pale and two obese women were discussing how they were cutting down on their intake of chips – three nights a week instead of four. Eventually, the receptionist waved them through and the practice manager took them to a conference room. Drake felt he already knew the room somehow, having heard Sian tell him many times about their practice meetings and training days.

  ‘I need you to get the partners in here as soon as possible.’

  ‘But it’s the middle of surgery. You’ve seen how busy it is.’

  Barbara Mills was a woman in her fifties with an intense fussy manner. She had a lanyard round her neck with a biro hanging from the bottom.

  ‘I don’t have time to discuss it, Barbara. I need to speak to Sian and Dr Walker.’

  ‘What are we going to do about the patients?’

  ‘Can you get both partners? Now.’

  Drake paced around the room, unable to sit down. Caren sat at one end of the conference table, her hands folded on top of two copies of her carefully prepared notes. He glanced at his watch. ‘How long does it take?’ he spluttered to no one in particular.

  Dr Rhys Walker was the first to arrive, the annoyance clear on his face.

  ‘Ian, what the hell is going on?’

  Moments later, Barbara Mills returned, followed by Sian.

  ‘Ian, is everything all right?’ she said, looking at Drake, worry etched on her face. She smiled weakly at Caren.

  ‘This is something I need to discuss with the partners,’ he said to Barbara Mills, who pouted and left the room, the biro swinging in front of her.

  He got straight to the point.

  ‘We believe John Moxon may be responsible for the deaths of Mathews, Farrell, Roderick Jones and West. We need access to his wife’s medical records.’

  A silence descended on the room.

  ‘She was a patient,’ Walker began. ‘I cannot possibly disclose the records without the consent of the next of kin.’

  Drake suppressed an urge to correct him, sensing that he had more to say.

  ‘We have very strict guidelines about confidentiality, Ian. As I’m sure you know. We cannot possibly disclose the records without consent. We’d be struck off.’

  Sian sat quietly by the side of her senior partner.

  Drake cleared his throat; he had o
nly one chance to persuade the doctor.

  ‘During the investigation we’ve had a series of messages. They have all been song lyrics from 1979. This number happens to be John Moxon’s police number. With each body has been a number. Mathews and Farrell had the number four. Roderick Jones had three and Anthony West, two. This can only mean one thing, that there is one more murder. We want to stop that happening.’

  ‘We know that Moxon took the death of his wife badly. She was a patient of Anthony West. He must have blamed him for some medical reason we believe the records will disclose. And Mathews had chlamydia and I know that Beverley couldn’t have children. We need to have access to the records to establish if the infection made her infertile.’

  Walker moved in his chair and jutted his jaw out. ‘Well, you’ll just have to get a court order.’

  Sian gave the papers in front of Caren a fleeting look. ‘You didn’t mention Roderick Jones. Why would Moxon want him dead?’

  ‘He turned down a planning application that Beverley had for the conversion of outbuildings to a studio and holiday homes. It was something she had set her heart on and the file has dozens of pleading letters, imploring Jones to grant the application.’

  Caren pushed the copies of the memorandum towards Drake.

  ‘We’ve looked at the procedures governing the release of patients’ records. You can release them if it’s in the public interest to do so. We believe that a crime could be prevented by their disclosure.’

  ‘But we’d still need to notify John Moxon,’ Walker said.

  ‘No. If you look at the GMC guidelines …’ Drake shuffled the papers over the desk. Walker picked up one copy. Sian furrowed her brow and they both began reading.

  Drake continued. ‘You can release without notifying the patient’s family.’

  ‘This is highly irregular.’

  So is murder, thought Drake. Four murders and maybe a fifth.

  ‘We haven’t got much time. We need your decision.’

  Walker stood up abruptly. ‘We’ll have to call the BMA,’ he announced and left the room, Sian trailing in his slipstream, giving Drake a backward glance over her shoulder.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Drake said. He picked up the papers and found that the words on the page blurred as he tried to read. Suddenly he remembered about Moxon.