by Iain Cameron
‘With renewed vigour, I would say. She slips bran into my breakfast cereal.’
He laughed. ‘She’s a devil that one. I would say she’ll be the death of you, but if she gets her way you’ll live to be a hundred.’
‘Not smoking these things, I won’t,’ he said holding up the white stick between his fingers.
‘Ach, we’ve all got our vices. I mean, wanking makes you blind, puffing these will give you cancer, pork pies lead to a heart attack. If you try and avoid all those, where’s the bloody fun in life?’
‘Shagging a twenty-seven-year-old comes near the top of my list.’
‘It would in mine too, but there’s no need to rub my face in it.’
‘How did you get on at Calais?’
‘Your money’s safe this week. I drove fast past a big bunch of illegals about a mile from the port, and closer in, the police were keeping them away from the waiting areas. I think these new locks on the doors make a big difference. They can’t sneak in when I’m having a break at a service station.’
‘I’d take a gun and shoot the bloody lot of them if I could. A couple more fines and we’ll be branded a trafficker and the supermarkets will scarper like rats from a sinking ship.’
‘They must see the measures we’re taking to try and prevent it.’
‘The market’s too competitive, George,’ he said, before sucking a final drag from his cigarette and stubbing it out in the bin. ‘One black mark against our reputation and they’ll replace us in a flash. What we do, a hundred companies can do.’ Mathieson stood and stretched. ‘See you later, mate. Thanks for the smoke.
He returned to his office upstairs in a thoughtful mood. The illegals had been a thorn in his side for the last couple of years, and now the authorities were fining trucking businesses and the driver up to two thousand pounds for every illegal immigrant found in their truck at Dover.
The tricks they tried were becoming ever more daring and dangerous. They laid obstacles in the road to slow the trucks down or engaged drivers in an altercation at a service station, allowing time for their pals to break the locks on the trailer and jump inside. If they couldn’t get into the truck, now made more difficult with the sophisticated locks that he and other truck companies were using, they hung on to wheel axles or laid themselves flat on the roof.
He was running a business and didn’t want to be fined, money he could put to better use buying fuel or warehousing racks, but he and his drivers were human too. For all his bluster, he didn’t want to see any of them killed, crushed under the wheels of an HGV or dropping from the roof while it sped along the motorway at seventy miles an hour. He wished they would all go back to where they came from. The ineffective meddling of politicians was, as always, at the heart of such problems and it was up to them to find a solution.
He picked up an industry report about the issues companies like his would face when the United Kingdom exited the European Union, when his phone rang.
‘Ted, good afternoon to you. Jim Levitt, Clifton Oak Furniture in Manchester.’
‘Good afternoon Jim, how are you?’
‘Good. Yourself?’
‘Excellent, couldn’t be better. What can I do for you, Jim?’
‘Did you see the response I sent about your proposal?’
‘I did. My secretary’s drafting a reply as we speak. In short, you like everything we offer, but not the rate.’
‘Got it in one.’
Levitt waffled on about tight margins, competitive industries, fickle customers, the whole nine yards. Mathieson wanted their business. They needed twenty trucks a month to go out to a hardwood furniture manufacturing facility in Croatia, and bring wardrobes, sideboards and dining room tables back to their gigantic furniture warehouse in Chorley. The goods would be vacuum-wrapped on pallets, easy-peasy work, and if Mathieson played his cards right, very profitable too.
‘If I’m not mistaken, do I detect a man who would like a little something from the deal to treat his wife or girlfriend to a night out once in a while?’
‘You might say that.’
‘How about five hundred–’
‘Wait a minute Mathieson, you don’t get me so bloody cheap.’
‘- a month.’
‘Now you’re talking, but I was thinking closer to a grand.’
‘No can do. The union are expected to demand a 3% pay rise for drivers about the middle of this year. It could wipe out any profit I make on this arrangement at a stroke.’
‘You’re breaking my heart. Seven-fifty.’
‘Jim, just remember my company’s delivery time hit rate. I bet it’s the best of all the companies bidding for this work. When the furniture comes into Chorley bang on time, week after week, that alone will make you look good in front of your bosses. Six-fifty. It’s my final offer.’
‘You’re a hard bastard, Mathieson and no mistake. You’ve got yourself the business.’
He put the phone down a few minutes later and rubbed his hands together in satisfaction at a deal well done. Deals like this where the customer believed they were getting one over the supplier didn’t fail to give him pleasure. Most of what he said to Jim Levitt was lies, but once they’d signed a contract it wouldn’t matter. He’d researched Clifton Oak and knew a lot about what they did and how much money they made. In essence, Levitt needed something to show his bosses what a good job he was doing, and Mathieson, like a good soldier, had just handed it to him.
He worked until nine, sustained or otherwise by a tub of cold chicken, rice and peas prepared by his lady wife this morning. It didn’t taste bad, but for a guy who could take part in a pork pie or doughnut-eating contest and expect to be competing for a top three place, it didn’t satisfy. He was about to extract a Snickers bar from a catering-sized box he kept in the office when he heard a truck drive into the yard.
Mathieson Transport drivers arriving after six in the evening usually parked in the yard, making sure the perimeter gate was locked before leaving for home. If the loading bay was empty and open, they backed inside, leaving the crew coming in at seven in the morning to unload.
Tonight, Ted Mathieson had deliberately left the loading bay doors open, and the driver, Steve Hedland, backed the big lorry inside. Steve had just driven back from a dry food packing facility in southern Germany with sixteen pallets of tinned peas, baked beans, soup and coconut milk.
When Steve climbed out the cab Mathieson was waiting with a mug of coffee in one hand and a Mars bar taken from his box in the office in the other.
‘That was some fucking drive,’ Steve said taking the drink and chocolate bar from Mathieson.
‘Problems with the law?’
‘Nope. Accidents. It seemed every motorway I joined was congested with some pile-up or other.’
‘Some parts of southern Germany get a thick early fog. It takes most of the morning to clear.’
‘Sounds like it. Any way I’m here now.’
Steve was young, good-looking and smart, not the attributes often associated with long-distance lorry drivers. He wore his hair short and kept his facial hair trim, looking more like a businessman than a commercial driver. Mathieson knew some drivers who liked to wear their hair long and grow bushy beards. Despite the well-publicised ‘war on terror’ they couldn’t understand why their trucks were habitually stopped as they tried to enter the UK.
‘No problems with the load?’
‘The main or the special?’
‘Both.’
‘Nothing at all. Want to take a look?’
‘I’ll wait until you’re finished.’
‘How’s business going?’
‘Great. I think I just bagged Clifton Oak Furniture. They’re an out-of-town outfit in Chorley.’
‘Good to hear. Age and the demands of a pretty wife haven’t robbed you of your touch.’
‘Cheeky bastard.’
‘Clifton want us to do what?’
‘Bring wooden furniture they’re having made in a factory in Croatia
over to their main warehouse in Chorley.’
‘Pallets?’
‘Yep. Fancy it?’
‘Not me. I like what I’m doing and so do you.’
‘Too right, mate.’
‘Ok,’ Steve said, screwing up his chocolate bar wrapper and scoring a hole in one when he threw it over a two-metre distance into the bin. ‘Let’s do this.’
They approached the truck, a Volvo FH, still looking good despite over sixty thousand miles on the clock and after completing a round trip to Southern Germany.
Steve grabbed a set of ladders and positioned them at the side of the cab on the passenger side and climbed up. Leaning behind the wind deflector, he used an electric screwdriver to remove recessed screws and open a compartment not in the original spec drafted by the vehicle’s designers in Gothenburg.
He removed the lid and put it to one side.
‘How’s Otto?’ Mathieson asked as Steve worked.
‘Getting fatter.’
‘I don’t think such a thing is possible.’
‘He blames Oktoberfest. He can’t resist another glass of beer from one of the pretty girls, he says.’
‘The toad. He wouldn’t know what to do with it if one of them took a shine to him.’
‘Couldn’t find it under all those layers of fat, I suspect.’
‘I’m surprised he hasn’t been topped by the Albanian gang he deals with, the way he talks about them, calling them cabbage farmers and pig shaggers.’
‘Yeah, that’s what he tells us, but to them, he’s probably good as gold.’
‘You could be right.’
‘Here we go, first one out,’ Steve said, easing a large bag out of the long, shallow compartment, high enough and wrapped in oil-soaked paper so the dogs at Dover wouldn’t get too excited.
Mathieson caught the bag without trouble. He’d been a fly-half in amateur rugby until a broken collar bone stymied a stellar career, but he was still a solid catcher. He got plenty of practice as the two men had played this gig many times before.
They unloaded six bags, same as last time and the time before. Inside each bag, cocaine, the drug of choice for bored housewives and middle-class dinner parties. They didn’t need to do anything more tonight except lock the bags away in a secure box. At five-thirty tomorrow, before the loading bay crew arrived, he would remove the bags and meet his buyer, a dealer from Brighton.
On the street, the twelve kilos of premium coke could be worth anywhere between one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half million pounds. If the buyer doctored it with glucose powder or benzocaine, much more. However, it didn’t do to be greedy. The five hundred grand the two men shared every six weeks or so suited them both just fine.
SIX
Henderson stretched. The previous night he’d tossed and turned, the numerous possibilities behind Cindy Longhurst’s disappearance flipping around his head like the inside of a washing machine spin programme. At least now he could discount the innocent and frivolous: the hen party, birthday prank, surprise weekend away and a whole raft of other possibilities, as this was now day four.
No one in their right mind would leave a photographic studio open to the elements for this many days, not after spending so much time and money developing it. It was winter outside and strong winds and frost would soon make mincemeat of her room dividers and lighting rigs. The studio also contained other expensive equipment such as cameras, portable lighting units, coffee machine and computers, all easy to sell in the car park of a pub or from a stall at a street market.
The computers, he now knew, were for the use of independent photographers and filmmakers who could hire the studio for a day or a week to make their own videos or film their own photo-shoots. When finished, they used the editing software on the computers to view and amend their work. Someone from a production company might have kidnapped Cindy, and they had been added to their list of people to talk to.
The forensic team started work in the office at the studio on Saturday morning but found no suspicious fingerprints, suggesting her assailants wore gloves or didn’t touch much. The blood on the desk had been analysed and matched to Cindy, no surprise there, but what piqued his interest was Annie Heath telling him that a box of SD cards was missing.
In one scenario running through his head in the wee small hours, the two men went there to retrieve pictures taken by Cindy. In which case, he could understand the removal of a box of SD cards if they believed it contained the pictures they were seeking, but why did they need to take Cindy as well?
In many respects, the results of the forensic team analysis posed more questions than it answered, but in this type of work, not every risk paid off. He grabbed the file and headed off for his eight-thirty meeting.
‘Phil,’ Henderson said to DC Phil Bentley when the hubbub in the Detectives’ Room subsided. ‘The investigation into Cindy’s background. Did you find anything interesting?’
‘Her emails and other correspondence drew a blank. Sure, we found some heated exchanges between her and the Managing Director of the company proposing to drill for shale oil at the Balcombe site, but nothing you could call malicious or threatening.’
‘What about other protests she’s been involved with?’
‘Nothing. Balcombe seemed to be the one she took the most interest in. The others looked like she was making up the numbers. A face in the crowd.’
Henderson sighed. ‘A dead-end.’
‘Yep, sorry boss. Better news on the financials, though.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
Sally Graham lifted her papers. ‘Six years ago, Cindy received an inheritance from her grandmother of almost half a million pounds.’
‘Whoa,’ Harry Wallop said, ‘that’s a lot of loot. My granny left me a photo album and a shit-hole in Dereham to clear out.’
‘She moved from her house in Portslade to the house at Hurstpierpoint. Plans for a new studio were drawn up a few months later. It cost a few thousand shy of two hundred grand. Cindy put up half and Ted Mathieson the other half.’
‘Does Mathieson own a share in the business, or did he give her a loan?’
‘It’s a loan. There’s a formal agreement between them and Cindy is up to date with her payments. Her studio makes a healthy profit and it’s her money rather than her ex-husband’s that pays for her daughter’s expensive school fees.’
‘I checked out Mathieson,’ DS Walters said. ‘If you remember, gov, a couple of days back I thought his name had cropped up in some previous investigation.’
‘And did it?’
‘Yep. Operation Skylark was coordinated by the Met in an attempt to put a stop to the flood of methamphetamines coming into London. They raided dozens of addresses including one owned by Brighton drug dealer, Charlie McQueen. There, they found some of Ted Mathieson’s business cards. McQueen said it was because his mother was shipping some stuff abroad, but the team came across no evidence to back up his claims. They talked to Mathieson, but without a warrant, which they didn’t have any grounds to demand, Mathieson gave them short shrift.’
‘As he was entitled to do,’ Henderson said. ‘They went fishing without a rod.’
‘Quite.’
‘Sally, did you manage to examine Cindy’s other financials, her credit cards and bank accounts?’
‘I did and it turned out to be an easier process than normal. She kept all the statements in her office but I found nothing to ring any alarm bells.’
He sighed ‘Another one off a rapidly depleting list. We’ve still got the forensic search of the house, the interviews with her family, ex-boyfriends and the photos to come but I’m loathe to even think of looking at the photos. We’ve no idea what we’d be looking for and if the kidnappers found what they came for.’
This elicited relieved laugher from several of those present. No one fancied undertaking such a mammoth and thankless task.
‘One area we haven’t discussed is the questioning of Cindy’s customers. We’ve got people who come in for a sitting
, such as a family, or in the case of Maggie Hyatt, individuals. We’ve also got businesses that hire the studio and gardens for the day or the week and bring in their own people. With the non-businesses, Sally, check their names against the PNC and see if anyone’s got form. For businesses, and with a bit of luck there won’t be as many, you’ll need to find out the names of the employees who came on-site. Run them against the PNC, and check out the company, see if they’re being investigated by any agency.’
The Police National Computer, PNC, contained a record of all criminal acts. Names could be entered to determine if suspects had previously committed an offence and if any prosecutions were pending.
Sally Graham nodded as she took note.
‘Before you say it sounds like a lot of work, I agree. Gerry Hobbs, as I’m sure you all know is now a DI in the Drugs Unit, has agreed to lend us some bodies.’
‘Good,’ Graham said, ‘we could use them.’
‘Right,’ Henderson said, emitting an audible sigh, frustration evident at not finding a lead. ‘Over to you, Harry, for an update on the search.’
DS Harry Wallop lifted the papers in his hand. ‘For reasons I suspect are something to do with the fact that the missing woman looks, how should I say–’
‘A cracker,’ Phil Bentley said.
‘Photogenic, I was about to say, the papers have lapped it up. Her picture’s been all over the local rags and she’s even been on the telly, on South Today.’
‘Good work, Harry.’
‘We’ve had a number of calls, the more credible ones we’ve responded to, but so far nothing worth pursuing.’
‘It’s a shame we still don’t have Crimewatch. What about hospitals?’
He shook his head. ‘Dead end I’m afraid.’
‘Is her picture out with patrols, on notice boards and so on?’
‘It is. We’re even getting cooperation from a couple of councils who’ve put it up on their websites and social media accounts.’
‘Good. Keep the pressure on with the appeals and follow-ups, it might just jog someone’s memory.’
‘Will do.’
