by Iain Cameron
‘Evening Mr Green,’ he said, sitting down.
‘Would you like a glass of this stuff? It’s very good.’
‘No thanks, not when I’m working.’
‘Fair enough. What news?’
‘Our mutual friend is with us.’
‘Where?’
‘Picked him up in the middle of Brighton as he walked back to his flat, piece of cake.’
‘No little old ladies sitting at the window with their notebooks and telephones at the ready just in case something interesting happens in their little part of the world, perhaps?’
‘Nah. Nothing. We picked him up down a side street near the seafront with a few dark spots due to a couple of dud lights, so even if anybody saw us, it would be hard to tell us from a couple of pissheads having a barney.’
‘Good man. So what, he’s down at Shoreham with Spike taking care of his every need?’
Lester nodded. ‘Yep, the little man’s looking after him.’
He finished the last of the Amarone in his glass with an undignified gulp, so unbefitting for such a fine wine, and after dabbing his mouth with the serviette, told Antonio he could drink the rest. The effusive Torinese looked impressed, as well he might, as it would make a welcome change from wine-lake rosso, his usual accompaniment to a late meal when all the customers were gone.
‘Right,’ Green said, ‘we better get moving.’
It came as no surprise to see the car parked outside, as Lester hated walking, a fact at odds with the fit and toned individual in front of him, now reaching for door handle of the Roller. Green liked to walk, but as a recognisable figure around the town it didn’t matter if he was sitting in a restaurant or out with his wife, celebrity-obsessed oiks would approach and ask him for the secrets of his success or to pose for a selfie. If the wife was out of sight, the offending twerp might get their arms twisted or their phone trampled but if she wasn’t, he would impart one pearl of wisdom which usually went along the lines of, ‘by trampling over little weeds like you’.
Within sight of the perimeter fence of Shoreham airport stood a building everyone in his team called the warehouse. Inside, they stored drugs brought in from the continent by light plane and distributed by a small group of trusted dealers. Also, alcohol and cigarettes from Eastern Europe, smuggled aboard grain ships which docked at Shoreham Harbour and merged with the kosher stuff within his entertainment businesses, but without paying the government a cent in tax; sweet.
The warehouse was flanked by the Shoreham Airport runway on one side and a number of empty industrial units on the other, ideal for bringing in contraband, as it wasn’t overlooked by nosy neighbours, and when interrogating a suspect, only the seagulls could hear them scream.
Lester unlocked the door and pushed it open. Green walked inside to be greeted by the familiar sight of Spike sitting on a chair looking at his smartphone and giggling about some shit or other, while their guest for the evening, Wayne Garrett, swung from a rope attached to his outstretched wrists, his feet a couple of inches off the ground.
‘Evening Spike.’
‘Evening Mr Green.’
‘How’s Garrett?’
‘In the mood for talking, I would say.’
‘Good.’
John went off to make the tea while Green pulled over a couple of chairs. There was no time to waste so he didn’t wait for a brew to arrive.
‘Spin him round a bit Spike, I want to speak to his face, not his arse.’
‘Right-oh, Mr Green.’
Job done, he took a good look at him. As usual, Spike hadn’t bashed his face in, not yet, as he still required the power of speech, but he would bet he’d given his guts a sound pummelling.
‘Garrett,’ Green said, ‘if you take a look around this place you find yourself in, what do you notice?’
‘Eh? You guys–’
‘No, no, you dickhead. Look at the merchandise, the shelves, what’s on the floor.’
‘Boxes and cartons and packages–’
‘You don’t get it do you? There’s a hole, there’s spaces, gaps where our recent shipment from Pakistan should now be sitting. Capish?’
‘Ah, yeah.’
‘To refresh: my boys went over to Shoreham Harbour to pick up said shipment on Thursday night and do you know what they found?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The whole place was swarming with fucking cops,’ Green said, raising his voice.
‘Too fucking bad.’
Green nodded to Spike.
The little dynamo, who probably ate spinach for breakfast, like Popeye, pummelled his midriff with a succession of punches, so quick they were a blur. A keen lifter of weights, a punch from him came not from the wrist or the fist, but from his powerful shoulders, giving the same impact as the kick from a mule, going by the mess it made of those on the receiving end. Spike stopped the beating and returned to his chair and his smartphone. He might be thick but he knew an incapacitated prisoner would tell them nothing.
There would be a lull now, as Garrett nursed his wounds, not easy with his hands tied up, and probably calculating his chances. John appeared at his side with a steaming mug of the good stuff. Green took it from him and placed it on the floor at the side of the chair to cool.
‘Now Garrett, I know somebody down at the docks tipped the cops the wink about this shipment and you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I think it was you.’
‘Bloody hell. No, no, Mr Green. It wasn’t me.’
‘There’s no point in denying it. There’s only you and one other guy down there on my payroll. You’re the only people who knew about it.’
‘It must be the other guy, has to be.’
‘No way. He’s a straight shooter. Listen up, Garrett, here’s the big question. Did you tell your copper contact about me?’
‘No, no I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.’
‘So, you did talk to a copper?’
‘No, no…’
Spike got up and pulled out a small stiletto knife. He walked over to Garrett and with a practised movement, stuck the blade into his thigh, all the way up to the handle.
If any pigeons or seagulls were sitting on the roof, trying to sleep or resting after a hard day stealing peoples chips or shitting on their cars, they would all be halfway to France by now after the fright they received from Garrett’s high-pitched screech.
Green gave him a few minutes to recover before he said, ‘who’s your cop contact?’
‘He stabbed me, I’m fucking bleeding man, help me.’
‘You need to help yourself, Garrett by telling me what I want to know. Who’s your cop contact? What’s his name?’
‘Keep that fucking maniac away from me, y’hear? Henderson.’
‘Speak up man, I can’t hear you.’
‘Detective Inspector Angus Henderson.’
He stared hard at Lester. ‘Isn’t he the tall Scottish bloke?’
‘Yep, that’s him.’
‘Didn’t we try to get him on the payroll?’
He shook his head. ‘Nope, Jackie advised us not to bother. He said we’d both end up in jail.’
‘Phah. Principles? Not worth a bag of beans where I come from. Everyone’s got a price, you just need to find it.’
He turned back to Garrett. ‘How much did Henderson pay you?’
‘A grand.’
‘A grand? The miserable Scottish bastard. You get more than that from me every month, you wanker. What do you need more money for? Are you in debt? Are you a gambler or a drinker?’
‘I gamble, horses.’
‘Pah, gambling’s a mug’s game, and that’s from a guy who owns a couple of bookies. Did you tell Henderson about me?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, between sobs incongruous in such a large, rough man. ‘I swear I told him nothing.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m not fucking lying, I’m telling you stra
ight up. I didn’t say anything about you. I need help, Mr Green my leg, my leg’s bleeding.’
Spike acknowledged Green’s nod, put down his phone and walked over to the prisoner. He pulled out the stiletto and in the same practiced move, stuck it into the other leg. This time, it was obvious the sadistic little bastard hadn’t heard enough screaming or seen enough blood, as he twisted the knife before pulling it out. Garrett screamed louder this time, probably frightening the sleeping birds on the roofs of neighbouring warehouses.
‘This is your last chance Garrett,’ Green said taking a slurp of tea. ‘I’m in no mood to fuck about. Does Henderson know the shipment belonged to me?’
‘No,’ he said in a meek voice.
Green glanced over at John, who shook his head. ‘I think he’s lying.’
‘Me too,’ Green said.
‘You want me to take Henderson out?’
‘Hmm it’s tempting, but no, not yet. Let’s see how this thing plays out.’
‘Fine. What about him?’ he said, nodding towards the prisoner.
‘Talking to cops is one thing, but having snitches in my organisation is something I can do without. Take him out on Danny’s boat. You know where he leaves the keys?’
‘Yep, in a plastic bag beside the wheelhouse.’
‘Good man. Take Garrett out for a nice night time sail, just make sure he doesn’t come back.’
FIFTEEN
After a twenty-minute delay, at last the train pulled away from Stoke-on-Trent station.
‘Thank the lord,’ DS Gerry Hobbs said, ‘I thought we’d be there all day.’
‘I could never commute,’ Henderson said. ‘If I worked for the Met, I would need to move up there as I couldn’t sit on a train every day and put up with all these delays.’
‘You’d miss Brighton, you would but I couldn’t do it either. As much as I hate traffic and putting my car in for its MOT and seeing a mechanic with a sour face who says you need new big ends or the gearbox doesn’t sound right, I would miss driving into work every day.’
‘What are you reading?’
Hobbs put down the can of Pepsi in his hand on the table between them and picked up the magazine in front of him. ‘It’s an article about this red-headed American actress, Jessica Chastain who’s appearing in a new sci-fi film by Brighton’s own Graham Dynes, Interstellar Wars. Have you heard of it?’
‘Nope.’
‘I don’t usually go in for much sci-fi stuff but this one sounds good, I might go and see it when it comes out, if we can get babysitters. What about you? How’s your book, mind I heard a lot of huffing and puffing and a lot of gazing out of the window.’
‘Is it so obvious? I’m at chapter four and I still don’t have a clue what it’s about.’
‘I hate it when–’
Henderson’s phone was ringing.
‘Hello Angus, it’s Lisa,’ Chief Inspector Lisa Edwards said.
‘Morning ma’am.’
‘We can ditch the ma’am bit, Angus. We’ll be working together on many cases in future so let’s pass on the added formality. Call me Lisa, ok?’
‘Fine by me.’
‘I’m going into a meeting about the Langton case with the ACC and his coterie this afternoon and to be honest, I would rather you were with me but I do understand why you needed to go to Manchester. Option two is for you to give me an update on everything you know and what you’re planning to do and I’ll pass it on to the ACC. How does it sound to you?’
‘No problem but remember, I’m sitting on a train.’
‘Got it. Now, we’re what, three weeks into this investigation?’
‘Four, this coming Tuesday.’
‘God almighty,’ she exploded, making Henderson pull the phone away from his ear in surprise. ‘It’s a long time to be missing in anybody’s book.’ The phone went quiet for a couple of beats. ‘Ok,’ she said in more measured tones. ‘The evidence against Brian Langton is firstly that we believe he is having an affair with his secretary, Melanie Knight.’
‘Allegedly, but while we received a statement to this effect from her best friend, we are yet to find anyone else to substantiate it.’
‘Including Ms Knight.’
‘Especially Ms Knight, as she kept her mouth shut throughout the interview and left us with the impression she and her boss are no more than colleagues.’
‘She knows where her bread is buttered, that girl. Next on the list is a report by a neighbour of Langton, Charles Vincent, who claims he saw a mini digger in their garden.’
‘Neighbour in the loosest sense of the word, as his cottage is about a quarter of a mile away, but he pops into Manor House Farm now and again to undertake bits of maintenance work.’
‘I see. The digger came from where?’
‘Builders fixing the pot-holed driveway, the poor condition of which was reported by several attendees of the Saturday night dinner party, the one held the weekend before Kelly disappeared. Langton asked them to leave it behind.’
‘Why?’
‘He said he wanted to level part of the back garden where it was uneven.’
‘Hmmn, or maybe something else. Now, last and most compelling in my mind is that he took out a large insurance policy on his wife’s life, three months before she disappeared.’
‘Yes. Langton said he did it because his business was doing so well, and as a way of reducing his tax bill.’
‘Does he need the money?’
‘I don’t think so, as I understand it his business is successful, but as he says, it was just a way of reducing tax.’
‘Yes, but there’s a big difference in being successful and being cash-rich, as many growing businesses find to their cost. Get someone working on the financial analysis, Angus.’
‘Will do.’
‘In addition,’ she said, ‘we’ve seen no activity on Mrs Langton’s mobile phone, credit or debit cards or her bank account since she disappeared.’
‘Right, and we know she has her phone and credit cards with her as she always carried them in her purse.’
‘It’s all very strange.’
‘Many of her friends and business associates told us she texted and updated Facebook and Twitter more than most people, and again there’s been nothing since 6th September.’
‘Plus, she didn’t take her passport?’
‘No, Brian found it at home, in a drawer in the kitchen.’
‘That’s the clincher for me. If she was planned to scarper, she would have taken it with her as it provides essential ID for hiring a car, going abroad or booking a hotel room. Even if she possessed an ID card, it’s not always acceptable in every situation.’
‘In which case, her travel movements would be restricted to the UK,’ Henderson said, ‘so why haven’t there been any sightings from other police forces, railway stations or newspaper appeals, as her picture has been plastered all over the media for the last three weeks?’
‘I agree. Thanks for doing this, Angus there’s plenty I can tell the ACC. Now in terms of what we are planning to do, I want you to get over to Manor House Farm and turn over the house and the garden and search ever inch. I’ll get a warrant and it’ll be here on your return but remember he’s a high profile figure and you need to be on your best behaviour. However, if you find a blood stain, a broken piece of crockery or obtain a positive reading from ground radar in the garden, big-shot or not, he’ll be spending his foreseeable holidays with us.’
The train hissed, belched and creaked as it crept along the platform at Manchester Piccadilly, moving like an asthmatic panther with the weight and momentum to destroy all before it if the driver released the brake too soon. Henderson stretched and pushed the debris littering the table to one side and eased himself out from the confines of an uncomfortable seat and restrictive table, and retrieved their bags from the storage area.
The throng on the station concourse appeared similar to London Victoria with the same type of shops, the same harassed travellers gazing at depart
ure boards, and the same cups of coffee clutched in nearly everyone’s hands. However, accents were harder and louder and despite the gentrification of many areas and the development of new industries requiring knowledge instead of brawn, names like Wigan, Warrington, and Macclesfield could still conjure a cold, industrial image.
A car picked them up outside the station and drove them through damp, busy streets towards the ring road. Henderson didn’t say much as he mulled over the call from Edwards and the increasing suspicion surrounding Brian Langton, and his boss’s warning to be on his best behaviour. He had dealt with celebrities before, a visiting rap star who was assaulted in the centre of Brighton as he tried to buy drugs, and an American actress whose jewellery was nicked from her bedroom in the Grand Hotel, but none had generated the same level of interest as Kelly Langton.
The car pulled up outside Pendleton Police Station and Jason Roberts was seated in the interview room by the time they passed through security and picked up a Manchester detective as their escort. Roberts was fifty-eight going on sixty-eight with a lined pale face, narrow eyes, bald head and tattoos all over powerful-looking arms, a poor imitation of a Premiership footballer. His nose was bulbous with the thin blue lines of a serious drinker and misshapen from being smacked too many times by a hard fist. He sat opposite and assumed the classic tough, villain pose, arms folded across his chest, a sneer on his face, and an expression saying, ‘don’t fuck with me, I’m telling you nothing.’
When Hobbs called Manchester CID and told them about the fingerprint gleaned from the car at Brighton Racecourse, they happily picked up Roberts as he was a career criminal with connections to various gangs, and with several unsolved crimes on their books, they hoped a little lubrication from Henderson might encourage him to open up his ugly gob about their cases.
‘Mr Roberts, I am Detective Inspector Henderson of Sussex Police and this is my colleague Detective Sergeant Hobbs.’
‘You’re a long way from home, Inspector. Up here for the sunshine are ye? Ha Ha.’ The accent sounded pure Manchester, straight out of the Stretford End at Old Trafford.
‘I’m investigating the murder of a journalist, Ricky Wood, at Brighton racecourse on Tuesday 13th September, and hoping you could tell me something about it.’
