by Iain Cameron
‘About nine months.’
‘He must like you to give you his season ticket.’
‘Could be, or he’s so relieved to find someone in the office who likes football, as most of the people I work beside don’t follow any sport at all.’
‘What’s he like as a boss?’
‘He’s fair, I’ll say that. If you do something good, he tells you but if you mess something up, you’ll get a bollocking, or if you do something really bad, you get fired.’ Osborne shrugged. ‘It happens a lot in our business, an occupational hazard, you might say, but there’s plenty of other jobs out there.’
‘Do you know Brian Langton, the guy who sits in my seat?’
‘Sure, he’s been in our offices a few times and he’s been here a couple of times when I’ve been to games.’
‘He’s quite the successful businessman by all accounts.’
‘There are so many people who’ve been on telly and you never hear of them again but this guy and his missus keep popping up in the papers and those celebrity mags you see in Tesco, every other week.’
‘I suppose he’s still on the telly, but now all you see is his name in the credits.’
‘I saw the programme he used to front on YouTube,’ Osborne said, ‘the one where he challenges criminals by sticking a mike under their noses and asking them if they murdered this guy or paid for a stack of drugs. The funniest one I saw was when he got punched in the face by this ugly bruiser from Liverpool. What was the show called again?’
Wood was trying to think, a difficult thing to do as his usual sharp memory was clouded with beer. Moments later, it came to him. Wasn’t it called Criminal Watch?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
With only a few minutes to go before the start of the second half, fans started streaming back to their seats. He deposited his empty beer glass on a shelf and joined Osborne in the throng. Further conversations were impossible now as a tremendous roar rattled the roof when the teams came running back on the field and since he came there to watch a football match, he put all thoughts of Brian Langton and Jack Monaghan out of his head and concentrated on the spectacle in front of him.
After the game, which Brighton were lucky to win 3-2, he said goodbye to Brendan outside the stadium, declining his offer of a lift back into town, as the stadium car park was choked with cars and buses and he would be fortunate to get home this side of midnight. The buses back to the racecourse were also busy but the people standing there reassured him that plenty were running and so he didn’t mind waiting.
He knew little about Brian Langton other than he was married to a beautiful woman, he set up his production company just as television networks such as the BBC began clamouring for independent content, and with a reputation as a hard bastard. So why did his wife disappear?
Was it possible Brian was up to his neck in something illegal and maybe Kelly found out and threatened to blow the whistle, or was Kelly having an affair with Jack Monaghan and Brian exacted some form of terrible revenge?
It was all speculation as he didn’t know any more than anybody else, but he possessed an advantage not enjoyed by other media hounds because in a small way, he knew the main protagonists and if he wanted to interview one, Celia could organise it. However, in order to write something newspapers would want to publish, he needed to dig the dirt on some of her friends and he wondered if she would still be his girlfriend after he did all that.
Fifteen minutes later, he squeezed his thin frame into a tiny gap between three uber-fat blokes who reeked of sweat, half-time beers and a recent intake of chips. Mercifully, the trip didn’t last long and by the nature of his immovable position, he didn’t get thrown about as much as some other people when the bus hit a pothole or sped around a corner.
They pulled into the racecourse, the bus stopped and as soon as the doors opened, several men with jowly faces and fat guts who looked as though their only exercise was picking up a burger or reaching for a pint, exited the bus in double-quick time and ran to their cars in an attempt to get out of the car park before everyone else. There was little point in him doing the same, as he’d arrived late and parked at the back and so took his time walking to the car in the hope that by the time he set off, most of the traffic would be gone.
Even under sparsely spaced sodium lights, brighter in some areas than others, he could see his Honda Civic in the distance, a metal and glass oasis in a desert of grass, as many of his near-neighbours were gone. He was twenty yards away and searching for his keys when he felt a mighty thump on the back of the head, forcing him onto his knees. Before he could understand if he had been struck by lightning or a piece of space junk, hands grabbed his collar and arms, and dragged him into a gap between a couple of high-sided 4x4s.
They threw him to the ground and before he could make a move to get up, boots and fists came raining in. The suddenness of the attack forced him into a curled ball to protect his head but the ferocity of the blows thumping into his torso one after the other convinced him they were trying to kill him.
He moved his hands away from his face and a groin faced him. Without hesitation, he struck out as hard as he could. The punch made a sound connection with someone’s balls and the guy yelled and doubled up in pain, distracting the others from their work for a moment. Seizing on this momentary lapse, he forced himself upright and drove a punch into the guy’s face. When his fist made contact, the guy’s nose flattened.
He turned to be confronted by two other heavy-set guys who didn’t hesitate to wade in. A fist came out of nowhere and crashed into his head, turning his knees to jelly and causing him to black out for a second. He tried to protect his face but they kicked at his hands and when that didn’t satisfy them, they kicked him in the balls, leaving him breathless and groaning in pain and exposed to whatever they wanted to do.
It was obvious they were trying to hit his face and stamp on his hands, as they did it whenever they could. It stopped as suddenly as it started as someone grabbed him by the neck and hauled him to his feet. A face met his but he could only peer at him through slits, as his eyes were swollen, with blood and a throbbing head clouding his vision.
‘This is for Kelly you hack scum,’ a fat, dark face with a thick northern accent said.
He felt a blow to his stomach and only when his knees buckled and he collapsed on the ground, did he realise his shirt was soaked with blood. A glint of steel came towards him and hit him again, again and again, until he felt no more.
NINE
He drummed tunelessly on the steering wheel, waiting for the traffic lights on Lewes Road to change. When DI Henderson brother’s band lost their drummer to a road accident all those years ago, he’d volunteered to stand in as the unfortunate incumbent, Donny Sands, was a nice lad but a farmer’s boy and thick as a haystack and anything he could do couldn’t be so difficult, could it? Henderson could keep a basic rhythm, fine for a couple of tunes, but he couldn’t master more than a quarter of the songs on the evening’s playlist. Chastened by the whole experience, he went back to being a roadie.
Before being called out by Lewes Control, DI Henderson was sitting in his flat at Seven Dials in his favourite spot, a seat by the bay window, reading the transcripts of all the interviews done with Kelly Langton’s friends and associates. Fortunately for the operator at Lewes Control, and for him, his stock of his special tipple, a ten-year-old Glenmorangie was exhausted otherwise he might be on his second or third by now, and he didn’t hold back with the measures as they did in local hostelries. A drop of the hard stuff always helped with his thinking, evidenced by this evening’s effort, as he couldn’t find anything in the interviews worthy of further investigation.
None of Kelly Langton’s business colleagues, friends or the people who attended the recent dinner party, had spotted anything untoward about her behaviour or anything to suggest she would jet off without telling anyone, or needed to get away from something. Her friend Liz Egger told DS Walters that Kelly suspected her husband wa
s involved in an affair with his secretary, but even though this had provided the motivation for many murders in the past, he wasn’t yet convinced it was a big issue in this case.
Other witnesses commentated on how happy they looked together and suggested Brian often acted like the cat with the cream and no wonder, as Kelly was a successful businesswoman and in his opinion, as attractive now as the days when she was modelling, or perhaps this was a feature of the aging process and admiring women of a similar age.
His new boss, CI Edwards, was a keen media observer and demanded regular briefings and updates and she had taken a close interest in the Langton case from the start. He tended to take a more chilled approach and rarely looked at newspapers or television unless provoked, like an actor ignoring critical reviews for fear of denting his confidence, but he suspected it would become a source of tension between them in time to come.
Despite the man-hours expended, neither Edwards nor anyone in the Condor team could understand why Kelly left without leaving one clue to indicate her intentions or whereabouts, not one of her friends or acquaintances had received a text from an unknown phone number, there were no strange transactions on her credit card from bars in Marbella or Puerto Rico, and her husband hadn’t found a creepy envelope full of newspaper cuttings or murderous messages made up from words cut from a children’s reading book.
Media companies had outshone themselves this past week with new glamour shots from Kelly’s early career, to details of her businesses, and their current obsession, offering a new theory every other day, the latest being that the book she started writing would harm the reputations of some important and powerful people. There were no stories yet of alien abduction or falling into a sinkhole but in time, he wouldn’t be surprised to see such suggestions in print.
A few minutes later, he turned into the car park at Brighton Racecourse. On match days, it required time and patience to find a parking space, but at this time of night it was deserted, save for a small knot of people in the distance working under bright arc lights.
It was a couple of hours after the final whistle of a match Brighton won, so it wasn’t a surprise to find it empty, as he would imagine a good proportion of them were in pubs now, toasting the team’s success or sitting at home and watching the highlights on television.
With the choice of places to park, he didn’t suffer from ‘empty car park syndrome’ and park beside the only car for miles around, and instead drove past the glare of lights and stopped in the distance. He wasn’t unaffected by the police activity going on behind him, but he needed some fresh air to clear his head of all thoughts of a missing woman and a pile of unsatisfactory interview sheets, and concentrate on finding who murdered this poor soul.
When he got closer, he spotted Pat Davidson, the Crime Scene Manager at the back of the group, holding a clipboard and writing up notes. He headed towards him.
‘Evening Pat.’
‘Evening Angus. How are you?’
‘Not best pleased to be standing here. We’re stretched as it is. You?’
‘Me neither as it buggered up a cosy meal I was having with my new woman. I could have picked any night of the week but I had to go and pick this one, didn’t I?’
‘C’est la vie.’
‘Do you think I can make a claim for emotional impairment as there’s a fair chance she’ll never talk to me again and bad mouth me on Facebook?’
‘Pat,’ he said, putting his hand on his shoulder, ‘you can make all the expense claims you like, getting anyone to sign them is a different matter. What do we have here?’
Pat walked towards the group of SOCOs huddled around the body, the scene lit up by occasional flashes from the photographer’s camera and Henderson followed behind him.
‘We have a male,’ he said, ‘aged about forty, white, lower than average weight, average height with extensive bruising on his face, arms, hands and legs and multiple stab wounds to his stomach and chest. He has no ID as his wallet and phone are missing, assuming he brought them to the match with him. The pathologist is on his way. That’s all I know at the moment.’
‘Please don’t tell me he was wearing a Sheffield United shirt.’
‘No, he didn’t have a Sheffield United shirt, scarf or anything else, but nothing from the Albion either.’
‘Thank goodness for that, it’s all we need right now is a war between Albion fans and some other outfit to add to the aggro we get from Crystal Palace and Portsmouth. Mind you, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd when everybody going to a match nowadays wears something bought from a football shop?’
‘I can see you in a replica strip.’
‘Not on your life, but I do have a hat and scarf.’
Henderson stepped back and climbed into the paper suit and overshoes he carried to prevent contamination of a crime scene, before bending down to look at the body. The victim’s back was to him while a SOCO examined the ground underneath the body, and when finished, he turned him over.
Henderson recognised him immediately as his photograph was in the file, one he had been looking at before he came out.
‘His name is Ricky Wood,’ Henderson said. ‘He’s a reporter.’
‘What sort of reporter?’ Davidson asked. ‘Was he covering the match?’
‘No, I don’t think so. His interest is in criminal investigations.’
‘How do you know him? Is he under investigation?’
‘No, he’s a witness in the Kelly Langton missing persons enquiry. He was one of the attendees at the dinner party that took place at the Langton’s house a few days before she disappeared.’
Henderson stood, and through the glare of the bright lights spotted DS Walters standing close by. He walked towards her.
‘Evening Carol. You just arrived?’
‘Evening sir. No, I got here about forty minutes ago and since then I’ve been interviewing our so-called witnesses.’
‘I guess from your tone they didn’t see anything.’
‘Got it in one. It was dark, there was a lot of movement of cars and like all men, those who might have passed the spot where our victim was attacked were too wrapped up talking about the game to notice anything else.’
‘Touchy tonight, aren’t we?’
‘You know what I mean.’
Walters had been going out with a guy for a couple of weeks, but the first time work intruded on their relationship, a five-hour stint a few Saturdays back when she was called in to interview suspects in an armed jewellery theft, he’d dumped her.
‘I’ve identified our victim.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Ricky Wood, the journalist we interviewed in connection with the Kelly Langton case.’
‘I remember him. Was that a bad luck dinner party or what? I’m glad I wasn’t invited.’
‘Give me a flavour of what the witnesses did tell you.’
She pulled out her notebook and turned it towards the light.
‘I found five people who parked near to where the murder took place and stayed back to try and assist us. Three heard and saw a scuffle but not much else and I’ve got their contact details if we need to speak to them again. Another watched the beating until an angry shout by one of the attackers forced him to move on, but he couldn’t describe them beyond ‘big guys and wearing dark clothes’, while the last one I would reckon is our only real witness.’
‘You can’t see it now,’ she continued, ‘because the vehicles are gone, but Ricky Wood was attacked in a space between two high-sided 4x4s, one of which we know was an Audi Q7 belonging to our main witness, Darren Hinckley.’
‘Where was Mr Hinckley while the attack was taking place?’
‘He was walking back to his car, which was on the left side of the attack area, and about to press the door opener when he saw the fight. He thought of wading in himself, but he could see four gorillas and common sense prevailed. He walked past and called us.’
‘A smart move for sure otherwise we might be looking at two vic
tims. Did he see any of the attackers? Can we get a description?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it was dark and he only glanced up as he walked past. A few minutes later the men ran off and he attended to our victim.’
‘Did he see how the attackers left the racecourse? Were they on foot, did they use a car?’
‘No, Hinckley said they melted into the night and there were so many cars around, they could have been in any one of them.’
‘It’s not much to go on, is it?’
‘No, it’s not, but what would you expect from a crowd of football-obsessed blokes?’
‘First thing, call The Argus and get them to put out an appeal for witnesses. The usual thing, the date, the time, the incident, you know the drill.’
‘Sure, will do,’ she said.
‘Next, put a board and a couple of PCs here on the racecourse for Brighton’s next home game and flush out any witnesses we missed, it won’t help us much initially as the game isn’t until a week on Saturday.’
‘In that case, I’ll also try and get an announcement over the tannoy for the next away game.’
‘Good idea, see if you can sort it out.’
‘Right-oh.’
‘Is there anything else we can get our teeth into now, otherwise I’m going home and back to the interview sheets I was looking at before coming out here. There’s not much else for us to see until Pat’s crew have finished their bit.’
‘Ok but there is one other thing,’ she said, ‘although I’m not sure how relevant.’
‘Try me.’
‘Our main witness, Darren Hinckley, thought he heard one of the assailants say something to Ricky a few seconds before they left the scene. I quote, ‘this is for Kerry’.’
‘This is for Kerry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Could be a person, what’s it short for, Kieran?’
‘It might be a girl’s name, a surname, or the place in Ireland where butter comes from.’
‘Fancy a trip to Ireland, do you? I thought your family were from Wales.’
