by Iain Cameron
‘It’s ok.’
‘Come in. You want a coffee?’
‘Sure.’
Expecting him to call down to room service, Miller surprised him by filling a water receptacle from the bathroom and starting up a Nespresso machine, a slightly smaller version than the one Henderson had at home.
The room, which he assumed was a suite, faced the front of the building, and through long, double-glazed windows which were spotted with salt residue, he could see the Palace Pier, Esplanade and the pebble beach. It was a delightful view on a warm and sunny spring morning, but he could imagine it would be a grim outlook during January and February when winter gales came calling, some so strong they could lift tons of pebbles from the beach and dump them on the Esplanade.
‘It’s a nice room you have here,’ Henderson said. ‘You have a great view.’
‘I know we Americans always bitch about the small rooms in Europe, but I kinda like them. It suits me, especially as I’m often travelling alone.’
Henderson took a seat near the window where a two-seat settee and chair with matching coffee table were placed. Looking closely at Miller now he could see bruises on his face, the stiff way he moved his arm, and the limp in his leg when he walked over and handed him a mug of coffee.
‘How are the injuries, Harvey? Are you expected to make a full recovery?’
He put his own mug on the table and slumped into the chair opposite. ‘I’ve been better, for sure, but I’ve had worse. Philly can be a rough place too.’
‘Tell me what happened in France.’
Miller relayed the story of his talks with Chris Fletcher, losing contact, meeting Pierre, his evening of watching vans at Château Osanne and being beaten up as he walked back to his hotel in Bordeaux.
‘You’re sure the guys who attacked you were from the vineyard?’
‘I didn’t get a good look at them as it was dark and they caught me by surprise, but it was what they said. A small stocky guy stuck a knife in my face and said “We don’t want your sort snooping around here,” or something. The only place I’d been snooping around was at the vineyard.’
Henderson laughed. ‘You do a good English accent.’
‘Years of watching British TV shows.’
‘How did you become involved in this?’
‘This story goes back a long way. Over the years, there have been regular reports in the US papers about wine fraud, tucked away in the depths of a newspaper, but it never really broke the surface. Then Robert Wilson approached me. He’s a well known party giver and fund raiser in Philly, and knows all the influential people in the town. He’s proud of the wine he serves when he hosts a reception or party.’
‘What sort of wine does he buy?’
‘Top-end stuff from France, Italy, the US. He goes to a couple of auctions a month and spends tens of thousands of dollars each visit. Here’s something you maybe didn’t realise, rich folks who buy a two thousand dollar bottle of wine most times don’t have any intention of drinking it.’
‘You’re right, I didn’t.’
‘It’s true. They don’t usually buy one bottle, but six or twelve in an old wooden case, and keep it in air-conditioned wine cellars. When friends come round to a dinner party, they show them what smart wine connoisseurs they are. Some people do it simply for investment, as at times wine has been a better long-term bet than classic cars or stamps, but you can be sure they still show it off to their friends.’
‘So they buy a case of wine, don’t open any of the bottles, keep it for a few years and then what, sell it to someone else?’
‘The cases are worth more if they’re intact; same for classic cars. A special case of really old wine might change hands every five or ten years, or some collector could lock it away for decades.’
‘Ah, I get it,’ Henderson said. ‘If the owner never opens a bottle and tastes what’s inside, he’ll never know if it’s the genuine article or not.’
‘Precisely. This is what the fraudsters are basing their business model on.’
‘Until you and Robert Wilson came along.’
‘You’ve got to understand a little about Robert. He was a corporate raider, crash and burn, anything to shift stock prices. He’s retired now and according to the man himself, he’s slowed down, but the attitudes that served him well for years in business still glow bright. He buys wine to drink and keep, not sell. He’s so rich he doesn’t need the money.’
‘I guess he found this out when he opened one of his expensive bottles?’
‘He’s done it a number of times. He first noticed a problem when he opened a bottle of Château Latour 1935, the year his mother was born. This from a case that had set him back nearly twenty-thousand bucks. He says, particularly with really old bottles, the wine inside could be corked or oxidised…you following me?’
‘I think so.’
‘A case of wine may have changed hands a few times and there’s no way of knowing if any of the previous owners really looked after it.’
‘I suppose it’s the same with a classic car. You assume the previous owners had the thing serviced and kept it out of the rain, but you don’t really know for sure.’
‘Exactly. With this 1935 bottle, it didn’t taste off but it didn’t taste anything special either. The wine inside looked fine, it smelled ok but it tasted like something out of a ten-buck bottle.’
‘Did he try any others?’
‘Sure. The same wine was in each of the bottles in the case but it wasn’t Château Latour.’
Henderson did the maths. If the faking gang had been operating for a few years and selling regularly, with a profit of five hundred or a thousand pounds on each bottle, they must be making millions.
‘What’s the mechanics of the trade? I presume if it was easy, more people would be involved.’
‘Robert buys most of his wine from auction so I assume it’s coming through there.’
‘Is it easy to sell wine at auction?’
‘To sell anything, including wine, requires a thing that auction people call provenance. They need to know where your Picasso painting or Greek urn has come from, who used to own it, why you’re selling it, the full nine yards. They don’t go as far as asking you to produce a birth certificate, as people do find things in attics and flea markets, but as long as it comes from a reputable dealer or a known collection, it will be auctioned and buyers will bid.’
‘I’ve heard of fake art being passed off at auctions but never wine. Have you tracked any of it down? Do you know, for example, the auction house they use or the name of the dealer representing them?’
‘Nope, nothing yet. I was nurturing Chris as a new contact when he disappeared. What did you find out from your end?’
‘Chris was first reported as a drowning, a man who had fallen from a cross-Channel ferry. When his father came to see me, he talked about his suspicions and we took a closer look at the post-mortem; an autopsy to you. I believed then, and I haven’t heard anything today to contradict it, there are enough questions over his death to conduct an investigation.’
‘I see.’
‘Chris left his lodgings in Blaye on Saturday morning and took the train to Dieppe where he boarded the evening ferry to Newhaven. He didn’t arrive in England, and the first time anyone realised he was missing was when a man travelling on the ferry who knew Chris, alerted the captain.’
‘Didn’t they look for him on-board?’
‘They did, they searched the ship.’
‘Did they conduct a sea search?’
Henderson shook his head. ‘The captain, rightly or wrongly, took the view that the person who reported Chris missing was a bit drunk and might have been mistaken. According to our witness, the ship docked approximately an hour or so after the time he thought Chris fell in; no one could survive in the water around there for more than fifteen to twenty minutes.’
‘It’s that cold?’
‘Very cold, especially in spring. His body was washed ashore on Thursday
and after being identified, Chris’s father, Dennis, came to see me and told me he believed his son had been murdered. So far, we’ve talked to the ship’s crew, the guy Chris knew on board, Chris’s father, local police and we’re trying to make contact with the vineyard where Chris worked.’
‘Good luck dealing with them. Do you think he was murdered?’
‘Chris’s father thinks so. I think we’ve seen enough evidence to suggest his death looks suspicious.’
‘I’m with Chris’s father, I think he was murdered too. I believe it happened because he was about the disclose what was going on at the château.’
‘I wouldn’t put it so bluntly, Harvey. You were beaten up for snooping around the château, and one of their former workers is dead, all that is clear, but what else do we have? Do you know something you’re not telling me?’
‘You didn’t see the château. It’s big, way bigger than you would expect for a small-time producer like them. Plus the warehouse, the grounds, the buildings all looked well-maintained. The place reeks of money.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘What I did before I met Chris was talk to other producers in the area and ask them if any of the competition were doing well, you know, batting above the area’s average. Loads of them talked about Château Osanne and how the owners had rebuilt the château and built a new warehouse and fences, and yet they believed the château’s wines were no better than their own. They’re all as jealous as hell.’
‘Maybe they export to Japan and the US. From what I know from the odd visit to France, many small producers can’t be bothered with export and supermarkets, and only sell through a local distributor.’
‘The other vineyard owners said the same.’
‘But you don’t believe it?’
‘The smart buildings, late night activities and the death of Chris; there’s too many coincidences for my liking.’
‘I’m beginning to agree with you. What do you know about the château?’
‘It was started by a former British Army captain in 1885. His name was George Wolf, hence the wolf on the wine bottle label. The name of the château comes from Osanne Fevrier, the love of the captain’s life. The vineyard stayed in the family until the end of the Second World War when it fell into disrepair. It was revived in the nineteen seventies by a group of entrepreneurs who revived it and then sold it, and it’s been bought and sold every twenty years or so since. The current owners bought it six years ago.’
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘Nope.’
‘It’s owned by Château Osanne Ltd, a British registered company.’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘The company has three directors: Daniel Perry, James Bennett and David Frankland. I’ve never heard of the last two, but Daniel Perry’s a well known villain in these parts.’
‘That’s interesting.’
‘Anything else?’
Miller shook his head ‘That’s it, Inspector; it’s all I’ve got. What about you? Where are you heading with the police investigation?’
Henderson gave him a flavour of the interviews done, the research on the château and its owners, and his discussions with Chris Fletcher’s father. A combination of Chris’s post-mortem, Sally Graham and Deepak Sunderam’s interview with the barman aboard theBrittany ferry, and CCTV pictures from the ship, convinced him, as well as CI Edwards, that Chris had not intended to kill himself, or had died in a tragic accident. Chris left the bar at the rear of the ferry to take some air and wasn’t seen again. The bit missing was why, but Harvey’s theory of a potentially multi-million pound fraud was the best he’d heard yet.
They still hadn’t found his belongings, and the crew didn’t find an unaccompanied bag when they searched the ship. He could only assume it had been stolen or thrown overboard. This still left the issue of the two men seen walking out on deck immediately after Chris. The team were searching through CCTV pictures to try and identify them, but unfortunately a camera was not positioned directly outside the bar.
‘What about you, Harvey? What are you going to do now? Return to the States and make your report to Robert Wilson?’
‘What, to lick my wounds and convalesce? No way; it’s not my style. The night I was beaten up, I took down the licence plates of the two British trucks I saw. A cop I know in the Metropolitan Police checked them out.’
‘Ok.’
‘He tracked them down to a warehouse in Uckfield. I’ll mosey on down there in a day or so and see what I can find. Man, if I can put a log in their spokes, I’ll do it. Sweet payback, I call it.’
ELEVEN
Henderson was driving through rain soaked streets when the sat-nav piped up, ‘You have reached your destination’. He glanced at the electronic box and gave it a quizzical look.
‘Don’t you know, you stupid machine, that Barking Road is a couple of miles long? I don’t know if I’m at the beginning or the end.’
DS Walters beside him didn’t look up. She had been quiet for most of the journey up to East London as mornings didn’t rock her boat, but now that she’d got her teeth into the file in her hand about Daniel Perry, she became animated.
‘I’ve just been looking at his trial for the murder of Don McCardle and it reads like a 1930’s detective novel. Even his wife is a platinum blonde.’
‘Ex-wife. He got shot of her after his lawyer got him off and he walked out of jail. He said she didn’t support him enough.’
‘Strange, as she gave him his alibi. She told the court he was home all evening with her, the night McCardle was killed.’
‘She would say that, wouldn’t she?’
‘You never really find out the real reasons why people divorce. They say one thing and if you know them well enough, it’s often about something else.’
Henderson was well qualified to air his views on the subject as he was divorced from his first wife Laura, now living with her new husband in Glasgow. However, moving in with Rachel felt like a new start and it was time to put all that old baggage behind him, so he decided to keep quiet.
‘Take a look at what McCardle’s family said about the trial,’ he said. ‘You should find it interesting.’
Daniel Perry was a new breed of criminal: smart, well dressed, well connected and, to the outside world at large, running a number of legitimate businesses. In Perry’s case, a successful building supplies outfit with branches all over London, a boat-customising company in Portsmouth, a parcel business in Uckfield, and he owned several properties and land around the East Ham area of London.
A call to a contact in the Met Police confirmed what the papers in Walters’s hand only hinted at. Perry, with his flash suits and stylish cars, was as dirty as any street punk. The Met had been investigating him for years, hampered by witnesses who would never testify and a suspicion that someone on the inside of the Met was looking out for him.
Perry could have chosen to meet them at his offices in Barking or the gated property where he lived in the town, but he chose the place Henderson was driving into now, DP Building Supplies. He parked the car between two small dirty vans and got out. The main products of the business faced him, a succession of large pens filled with sand, pebbles, bricks, and aggregates.
‘It’s not a very exciting business, is it?’ Walters said, walking towards him.
‘I must admit, unless I was doing a house up, I would have to agree with you, but maybe because it’s so low-key and boring, I doubt many people look at it too closely. Let’s go in and meet him.’
The rain made everything look grey and drab but inside the shop it was warm, pop music was playing in the background, jolly signage hung from the ceiling and the staff were having a laugh with a customer. Maybe they were laughing to keep him happy, as he was a huge brute of a man with a craggy face and a large spider tattoo around his neck, and looked as though he could easily pick up both assistants with one hand.
Henderson spotted Daniel Perry, talking to someone. The owner of DP Building Supplies caught the DI’s
eye and nodded.
‘This looks an ok place to work,’ Walters said, ‘taking orders from customers and letting other people do the grunt work and heavy lifting, but I don’t have a clue what most of this stuff does.’
‘Me neither. I lived in a new-build in Scotland so I didn’t have much to do in the way of repairs, and when I came here to Sussex I bought a flat that didn’t need much doing to it. If I’ve ever been in a place like this before, I don’t remember.’
‘Maybe that’ll change now you’re living in an old house. Mind out, Perry’s coming over.’
‘Good morning, detectives,’ Daniel Perry said.
‘Good morning, Mr Perry,’ Henderson said, shaking the outstretched hand
‘I hope you found us ok.’
‘No problem.’
‘And you must be DS Walters,’ he said, turning to face her, switching on a real smile and not the faux greeting Henderson received. ‘So pleased to meet you.’ He shook her hand and placed his other hand on top of hers. ‘They didn’t tell me coppers from Sussex were so pretty. You must come again.’
Walters didn’t snatch her hand away as she normally did when someone made a play for her; interesting. Perry had a reputation as a lady-killer, perhaps it was true.
‘Come into my office, we can talk there,’ Perry said before turning and striding off. The officers followed.
Henderson looked over at Walters, trying to gauge her reaction at being man-handled by a rattlesnake. She simply shrugged her shoulders as if to say, ‘so what?’
The office looked small and wasn’t, he suspected, the main one for this business due to the absence of invoices requiring authorisation, purchase orders to action or a staff rota, covered in amendments and dabs of highlighter hanging on the wall. This was a place to prevent nosey coppers finding out something they shouldn’t.
Perry took a seat behind the desk and they sat in two plastic visitors’ seats.
‘Thank you for seeing us, Mr Perry. I expect you’re busy, we won’t keep you long.’
‘Before we begin, can I get you folks something to drink?’
