by Iain Cameron
‘Did you enjoy the training course?’
‘In summary,’ Henderson said, ‘I learned nothing and there were moments when it left me bored witless but I met some interesting people, although I have to say some of these Met boys can drink. I’m glad it was only a two-day course as I could never have survived a week and not at the bar prices in that hotel.’
‘I don’t think anywhere in London is cheap.’
‘Nevertheless, it’s always a welcome relief to get away from the daily grind for a bit, even if it meant putting up with some strange people knocking on my door at one in the morning.’
‘Well, it’s what you get for leaving your room key where everyone can see it.’
‘True but in the last place I stayed in, they gave me one of these programmable cards with no room number printed on it and a couple of times I tried getting into the wrong room. So, what’s been happening here while I’ve been away? Not much I suspect, as I’m sure you would have phoned me if there was anything earth shattering to report.’
‘Maybe earth shattering is putting it a bit strong but I think we’ve made some progress. If you remember, I’ve been contacting ports, trying to find our exported cars and following up the sightings of the chilled food van. I’ll deal with the ports issue first.’
‘Refresh my memory, it needs a little jog this morning.’
‘Phil Bentley and me have been talking with Customs at all the main ports on the east coast, trying to find out anything about the exportation of high-value cars.’
‘Even though I asked you to do it, I imagine it’s been a fairly thankless task.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up, you might have told me earlier.’
‘In my experience, getting anything out of Customs is the nearest thing to root canal treatment.’
‘So we found out. Cars and everything else that are being shipped overseas are moved inside a container and rarely get loaded aboard a normal ship for lots of reasons that I won’t bore you with. Mind you, if I had to listen to a detailed explanation a couple of times, why shouldn’t you?’
‘No thanks. You know my next question, can you find out what’s in the containers?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. Customers rent the box and they can put whatever the hell they want inside.’
‘I understand but there must be some sort of export documentation to go with it. They can’t just fill it up with whatever they like, I mean what if it's guns and drugs?’
‘Customs carry out spot checks to make sure what’s inside the box matches the export paperwork but with tens of thousands of these things exported each week, millions a year, there’s no way they can trawl through all those records looking for a specific car unless we can identify the port, date, shipping line, or container number.’
‘Hmm, not good. I always imagined by now all that stuff would be computerised and all they would have to do, is press a few buttons and out the information would pop. However, I suppose the incentive for your little team is to find one car from our list and we’re away.’
‘Yes, true but it’s not as easy as you might think as we can’t even identify the day of export. If you think I’m being pessimistic, then you’ve probably realised I’m not that hopeful on this side of the investigation.’
‘I thought you said something about progress? It doesn’t sound much like progress to me.’
‘Hold your horses,’ she said picking up another sheet of paper. ‘I’m now going to tell you what we’ve done about the chilled van sighting and as you will hear, it turned out a whole lot better than bloody shipping containers.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I need some cheering up.’
‘If you remember, in the course of interviewing neighbours living close to the houses where cars were stolen, two witnesses came forward and said they saw a white van in the early hours of the morning, not long after raids had taken place. You sent Sally Graham to follow up.’
‘So I did. Doctor Masters and Margaret Draper wasn’t it? How did it go?’
‘Very good. The Novocain must be wearing off.’
‘Booze, more like.’
‘I have to say, Sally did a brilliant job. Doctor Masters is three weeks shy of his eightieth and walks with a stick but even though he’s a bit weak in the limbs and doddery on his feet, his brain and eyes are still as sharp as a knife.’
‘How could she tell?’
‘The doc is a keen ornithologist and as a little test, she asked him to name the strange looking bird she could see at the bottom of the back garden.’
‘Clever, although he could have said he saw a Chinese Red Spotted Eagle or some other rubbish and she wouldn’t know if he was right or not.’
She shook her head. ‘No way, our Sally’s a twitcher too.’
‘I didn’t know. Ok, we’ve established the old boy is compos mentis and has good eyesight. What then?’
‘He said he didn’t know much about commercial vehicles and so couldn’t tell the make of the van or anything, but he remembered it was tall and white with no windows and he also said he saw some writing on the side.’
‘Call me sceptical, Carol but I’m not pulling in every Tesco driver in the south east for an interview.’
‘It wasn’t Tesco or any well-known company. He said it was, something, something Chilled Foods Ltd.’
Henderson opened his mouth to speak but she put up her hand to stop him. ‘Let me finish. All this will make sense when you hear the whole story. After seeing the doctor, Sally went to meet Margaret Draper. She’s a bit younger than him by about thirty years and with good eyesight. She often gets up at this time of the morning as she suffers from insomnia.’
‘Perhaps the two of them should get together, you know a doctor and a bad sleeper.’
‘Very good, but you’re starting to sound like Harry Wallop. Now without prompting or putting words into her mouth, she said she also saw a similar looking van to Doctor Masters and spotted writing on the side as he did, but she got a better look than the doctor and was quite definite it said, S&C Chilled Foods Ltd.’
‘Are you sure she wasn’t coached?’
‘I assure you sir, she wasn’t. She only remembered the name because it’s the initials of her two granddaughters, Sophie and Charlotte.’
‘Let me think about this for a sec.’ Henderson said, rising from the chair and pacing the room. ‘Their description of the van ties up, the colour, the size, the time of the morning?’
‘Yes. Tall and white, no windows, boxy, a raspy engine, indicating it wasn’t new or had just started out on its journey, all of that.’
‘I suppose it’s possible. I assume you’ve checked this company out?’
She nodded. ‘I’m sure it’s made up. There’s a chilled foods business in Blackpool with the same name but they never venture further south than Manchester and none of their vans have been stolen recently.’
He sat down. ‘So, now we’re left with what? Reviewing CCTV pictures? Trying to find a few more witnesses?’
‘Seen it, done it, got the t-shirt. Now for the mega interesting news.’
‘There’s more? I should go away more often.’
‘If you remember, car number seven, an Audi R8, nicked at the end of last week from a house near Handcross.’
He sighed at the memory. ‘Don’t remind me.’
‘There aren’t many white vans moving around Sussex at three in the morning, so we searched for it on CCTV, about the time the owner thought his car had been taken, and now to the accompaniment of a big roll of drums, we found the van.’
‘Bloody hell, Carol, you’ve done some great work. Where did it go?’
‘We first picked it up travelling north on the M23 and then tracked it all the way into Croydon where with better lighting and higher resolution cameras, we could see two occupants inside and confirmed the name on the side was indeed S&C Chilled Foods.’
‘Bloody excellent. Did you get anything on the reg?’
She shook her head. ‘The
number is registered to a Ford Focus, owned by a woman in Clapham.’
‘Well there’s another offense we can get them for. How far did you take it?’
She reached over to his desk and picked up Henderson’s well-thumbed London A-Z, last used to direct him to his training course hotel, and flicked through it until she found a map of south London. She edged her chair closer to Henderson and placed the map in front of him, tracing the route with her finger.
‘We tracked them up the A23, through Stockwell, Lambeth, and across the Thames to here, Prichard’s Road in Hackney. A couple of cameras were out but I wasn’t so bothered as I thought I could pick them up later, but when we looked again the van had disappeared.’
‘Did you wait, in case they stopped for a fag, a toilet break, or maybe to check the load?’
‘Yep,’ she said, but it sounded like a groan, the memory of a long and tedious job still fresh. ‘We checked every street for a mile radius over the next hour, from about four to five in the morning, but found nothing.’
‘Hmm. I think they must have pulled into a lock-up or a garage along the way.’
‘We thought so too.’
‘So, I guess you’re now at a dead end?’
‘Yep, unless we can get some manpower on the streets of Hackney to kick in a few doors and rattle a few hinges.’
He frowned in concentration. ‘It doesn’t sound like an easy job. There’s paperwork, budgets, overtime, and a load of other stuff to consider.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Wait a minute, I’ve just had an idea.’
He got up and removed his wallet from the jacket hanging from a hook at the back of the door.
‘I’m sure I’ve still got it …ah yes here it is.’
He pulled out a business card, marked with the familiar blue logo of the Metropolitan Police.
‘This guy,’ he said holding up the card, ‘knows everybody in the Met. If he can’t find someone to help us, nobody can.’
THIRTEEN
With a whoop of delight, she threw her pen into the air. It landed on the back of the Daily Telegraph where for once, the Quick Crossword was complete. Now, Rebecca Walker’s husband, Marty, could no longer accuse her of being thick and refuse to take her with him to the pub on a Thursday night during quiz night.
She put her empty coffee cup on the drainer and reached for the dog lead. At the sound of the rattling metal, Holly, the golden retriever roused from her slumber, stretched, and walked towards her wagging her tail and if she could smile, her face would be plastered with a big grin as she loved her walks. Rebecca took a quick look out the window and for once it looked dry, but there were heavy black clouds massing in the distance, leaving her in two minds, fleece or rain jacket? She clipped the lead on to Holly’s collar, put on a waterproof, and headed outside.
They lived in Woodmancote, a sprawling village on the edge of the South Downs, an affluent place of large detached houses with multiple cars, burglar alarms and piss-off gates. They didn’t live in a normal house like other people, because her husband, Marty liked ‘character’ and instead their house was a creaky old cottage with leaking windows and mice in the loft and a place any children’s writer worth their salt could base a thousand scary stories upon.
It only took a couple minutes to reach the path leading over to the big field, the place where she often walked the dog. On the far side of the field, there was a copse of trees where Holly would run around and behind it, a stream. On warmer days than this, the silly pooch would jump in and have a good splash about.
However, there had been heavy rain over the last few days and Holly might fancy splashing around in the stream, but she didn’t want to be dealing with a sodden, dirty dog, and as the field where they were walking was boggy, it was likely the stream would be in spate and fast enough to carry Holly away. She called the dog over and a few seconds later, she came bounding towards her and when close enough, Rebecca grabbed her collar and clipped on the lead.
They crossed the lane and headed into Shaves Wood, which she knew would be drier than the field, as the trees were tightly packed and provided a dense canopy. The change of venue proved to be a hit as Holly was in one her ‘wood-moods’ when she preferred rooting around the base of bushes and digging holes, to galloping across the grass, chasing an imaginary ball.
Fifteen minutes later, Rebecca felt tired and in need of a cup of tea, and even Holly looked as though she’d had enough. She didn’t fancy walking back through the woods and decided instead to make her way over to the road, as the tarmac surface would be easier to walk on than crunching through broken twigs and mushy, slippery leaves. Blocking the way was a wide strip of overgrown foliage, brambles, nettles, and rhododendrons. She selected a place where the vegetation was less dense and waded in, the dog following hesitantly behind.
Halfway through, something caught her eye. It was large and shiny, more colourful than the old beer cans and milk cartons selfish motorists often chucked out of their car windows to litter up grass verges. Why couldn’t they take it home and put it in their own bins without messing up our back yard, she would moan to Marty whenever the subject came up.
She moved towards it, her heightened curiosity supplanting any fear that it might be something dangerous, such as an old fire extinguisher or a can of toxic chemicals, lobbed out at night by odious fly-tippers. Her heart did a little flip when she realised she was looking at a bike, but not any old bike, a Ducati Panigale.
She knew something about bikes as Marty had lusted after a new one for months, when he wasn’t lusting after the barmaid with the broad smile and tight blouses in The Wheatsheaf. Hoping to wear her down and let him buy a new one to replace their aging Honda, a reliable old workhorse used for holidays and weekends away, the shallow chancer had begun leaving brochures for new machines all around the house, including one for this bike.
She wasn’t stupid enough to think it had been abandoned by some dissatisfied owner and all she had to do was take it home, clean it up and gift-wrap it for her ungrateful husband, but owners of stolen bikes often posted rewards in magazines and on the web and even if they hadn’t, the insurance company might have written it off and allow them to buy it at a knockdown price.
On closer inspection, the bike displayed no signs of rust but the front wheel and forks were twisted, there were scratch marks all over the paintwork and the lights were smashed, all indications of being in a collision. It looked bad but from her knowledge of bike mechanics, nothing a few hundred pounds worth of spare parts and matching paint couldn’t fix.
The newness of the bike, the damage it suffered and the fact that she hadn’t heard any reports of a local bike accident, left a niggling doubt in her mind; maybe it hadn’t been reported and the rider was still here.
With no regard for her own safety, she fought through an almost impenetrable barrier of four-foot nettles and brambles, bearing long runners that either scratched her skin or tried to trip her up, as she walked in the direction she thought the bike had been travelling.
Ten minutes later and nursing multiple lacerations on her hands and face and dozens of little lumps where she had been stung by nettles, she considered giving up on what was becoming a fruitless pursuit, when she spotted a blue helmet. Moving closer, she realised it wasn’t the whole helmet but only part of it. She went to search for the other piece.
Rebecca Walker failed to find the other piece of the helmet but what she did find was the lifeless body of a man, his head smashed to a pulp.
FOURTEEN
He guided the car slowly up the bumpy driveway. When Cahill told them this mark lived on a remote farm, he wasn’t joshing as there were no streetlights, no villages, or houses nearby and no cars passed them on the narrow B-road receding back into the night behind them.
It had been raining during the day with thick clouds blocking the afternoon sun and turning the streets of South London grey and miserable and even now, at two in the morning, it hadn’t shifted, blotting out the moon and stars in this part of East Susse
x, leaving the land all around as dark as the colour of his hand.
Jason Ehuru’s family were from Nigeria and his elderly relatives still talked of wide open spaces, the endless blue skies and the calm, still nights when distant galaxies could be spotted with the naked eye, but even though he looked and spoke like a Nigerian fresh off the boat, he was a London boy at heart.
He was born in Faskari, close to the Kwiambana Game Reserve in northwest Nigeria, where the body of his father lay, but he had been raised since the age of twelve by his uncle in Clapham. He would never admit that he hated the countryside, too small-minded for a thinker and street philosopher like him, but he despised the peace and tranquillity and the darkness which enveloped him, like the inside of the wardrobe where his uncle used to lock him up as a kid, whenever he was becoming too noisy.
Not long after he arrived in the UK, his elder sister Monifa and her boyfriend Kosoko would take him to Clapham Common or Hampstead Heath and let him play on his own while they disappeared behind some bushes to do whatever teenage kids did together. One time, he got lost and wasn’t found until a search party stumbled upon him, shivering, starving, and crying at the base of a tree.
Never again was she allowed to take him out alone or with one of her boyfriends and he swore he would always stay in the city and never venture out into the countryside again. So, what was he doing here? Why did he keep coming back again and again, like a character in some Faustian nightmare?
Beside him in the passenger seat, Rab McGovern seemed to be enjoying himself. He knew these dark, open spaces spooked him and as they approached the driveway of the target house, the mean bastard lowered the window. He said someone had farted and he needed fresh air, but Ehuru knew it was bollocks; he was trying to wind him up. They had been friends for years but a couple of months ago he had beaten the crap out of a friend of his and while he never said anything for fear of spoiling this nice little earner, he didn’t forget. Perhaps McGovern saw his inaction as a sign of weakness, hence he was taking the piss but he didn’t care, his time would come and McGovern would regret crossing him.
