by Iain Cameron
‘It’s no way for a normal person to treat an ex but having met him, I can understand how he behaved like he did.’
‘If she was using him, what could it be for?’
‘The obvious one is sex,’ Young said.
‘If that was the case, I imagine he would get wind of her displeasure before the big chop. There would be complaints in bed, the odd sly comment when they were out socialising, perhaps.’
‘What if,’ Walters said, ‘Harrison wasn’t the target at all, but the guy they were both working for?’ She picked up her notebook and flicked to the most recent page. ‘Constantin Petrescu.’
‘I know of him. He owns the wine warehouse in Portslade I sometimes buy from.’
‘I’ve been there too. Same guy don’t you think?’
‘He owns more than the Portslade warehouse and by the speed with which he opens new premises, I don’t think he’s short of a bob or two. A large house in the country sounds about right, plus it’s hardly a common name in Sussex.’
‘True.’
‘Remind me what they were both doing at his house,’ Henderson said.
‘He was there as a handyman and she as the photographer of the family and the house. It seems the owner is the fastidious type, Harrison told us the house had only been recently remodelled a few years back and here he was re-painting walls and re-laying wood flooring.’
‘So, she takes a fancy to the owner of this large house, who we think is much more in her league than Harrison, but first she targets Harrison and spends three months with him trying to find out more about Petrescu. I don’t buy it.’
‘Me neither,’ Walters said. ‘Maybe she wanted to get closer to Petrescu, not in a sexual way, but for what he stands for or something he’s involved in.’
‘This sounds a bit more like Cindy, as she’s quite the righteous campaigner. If this guy owned, for example, a company in the fracking business or a manufacturer of firearms, maybe she wanted to get friendlier with him to find out more about his activities, or to try and influence him. I don’t know him too well, but any time I have spoken to him it’s usually been about the drinks business.’
‘Maybe it’s not about the owner at all, but about the house,’ Young said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Maybe she wanted to buy it or was sounding him out for a friend.’
‘An interesting angle,’ Henderson said. ‘Let’s run with it and see where it takes us.’
‘Maybe she wanted to use the house as the location for a photo shoot,’ Walters said.
‘Or the house possesses interesting features she wanted to photograph.’
‘Could be there’s some new development taking place in the area,’ Young said, ‘like fracking or a new road, and she wanted to elicit his help in opposing it.’
‘She might have been interested in all those things,’ Henderson said, ‘and targeting Mike Harrison made sense as it would keep her in touch with the owner. But, I can’t see how her involvement in any of those could lead to her death.’
‘Me neither,’ Walters said. ‘We’re back to the owner.’
‘Ok,’ Henderson said. ‘See what you can find out about him Carol, the businesses he owns, if he’s got a criminal record, anything at all.’
‘Shouldn’t we bring him in for questioning?’
‘What for? Hiring Cindy to carry out a short photo session a couple of months back? No, it’s not enough. He’d be within his rights to tell us to get lost. The connection we know about is between Cindy and Mike Harrison. Find out why she targeted him and we’ll be on the way to solving this.’
The two officers left Henderson’s office a few minutes later and Henderson returned to his seat behind the desk. They’d uncovered a new name, Constantin Petrescu, but he didn’t hold out high hopes. The links between him and Cindy were too tenuous. It had to be for some other reason that Cindy targeted Mike Harrison, but at the moment, he couldn’t think what they might be.
THIRTEEN
Henderson returned to his office, a cup of takeaway coffee in his hand and his head full of Grafton Rawlings’s comments from the post-mortem. A minute or so later, Carol Walters and Phil Bentley came in and sat down in the visitor’s seats.
They had been his companions at Brighton Mortuary along with the photographer, the coroner and the Mortuary assistant. He half-expected to see the Chief Constable in attendance, as an hour or so before the P-M, Henderson and the CC appeared together at the Cindy Longhurst kidnap press conference. It seemed most of the UK media, and some European and American networks too, were also there. This case had gripped the public conscience like no other he could remember in the last couple of years, partly due to Cindy’s good looks and the fact that she was succeeding in a business dominated by men. The CC told him he was keeping a close eye on developments.
‘How are you feeling, Phil,’ Henderson asked, ‘after the P-M? I looked round a couple of times and thought you weren’t feeling well.’
‘A lot better now than when Mr Rawlings ran his scalpel around her skull. My face must have been green.’
‘What do we make of his findings?’
‘The cause of death didn’t come as a surprise,’ Walters said. ‘We all know the effect of a bullet to the skull, but I couldn’t get my head around the marks on her ankles and wrists, indicating she’d been tied up.’
‘Not only tied, but the marks and abrasions on her face and body suggesting she’d been beaten. Also, the dirt and grime on her clothes, hair and nails, evidence she’s been imprisoned in some grotty place since being kidnapped.’
‘I didn’t hear Mr Rawlings say that,’ Bentley said. ‘I was probably too busy trying not to throw up.’
‘So, we’re back to the question we’ve been asking ever since we became involved in this case. Why would someone kidnap Cindy Longhurst, and now, why would someone beat her up before putting a bullet in her head? She’s a portrait photographer, not a bloody drug dealer, for God’s sake.’
‘It has to be someone or something she took a picture of rather than someone who didn’t like her,’ Walters said. ‘We’ve talked to the two dodgy people in her life, Mike Harrison and Tony Mitchell, and while Mitchell’s alibi isn’t sound and needs another interview to clarify, neither men look a good fit.’
‘I agree but taking pictures of what?’
‘Perhaps a well-known person she photographed in a compromising position.’
‘I would be more interested if she worked for a tabloid newspaper or a photographic agency and spent her time hanging around outside a nightclub waiting for celebs to appear. It doesn’t fit with the image I have in my head of a portrait photographer. Her job, it seems to me, is working in her studio at Hurstpierpoint, taking photographs of people like Maggie Hyatt.’
‘You’re right,’ Bentley said, ‘but don’t forget, when she went on those marches and protests, she always took her camera.’
‘How do you know?’
‘In her office there’s loads of photos on the walls and I looked through some of the cupboards. It’s the same sort of thing you see in newspapers: a group of people all linking hands and singing, or the crowd having a bit of argy-bargy with the boys in blue.’
‘Maybe one time when she was out protesting,’ Walters said, ‘she might have taken a picture of someone or something they didn’t want her to take.’
‘Could be.’
Henderson stood and walked to the window. ‘What did she see that could be so bad it would get her killed? Why go to the bother of beating her up first? What were they trying to find out?’
‘Maybe they wanted know the location of the originals of the pictures she took,’ Walters said.
‘Yes, and remember Cindy’s assistant, Annie told us she thought the kidnappers took away a box of SD cards. In this age of digital photography, they’re the originals.’
‘Okay, but what if they looked through the box and found it wasn’t what they wanted and beat her up to find out where she kept them.
’
Henderson nodded. ‘The kidnappers maybe didn’t have time to look through the SD cards individually when they came to the studio, and didn’t come back as they thought we’d be there. The fact we haven’t heard reports of it being wrecked or burnt down suggests she might have told them where she’d stored them.’
‘And maybe they killed her,’ Walters said, ‘because she was the only person who knew where they were and what they contained.’
‘What if,’ Henderson said, ‘the pictures they took away from the studio weren’t the ones they wanted and so they beat her up to reveal their location. They killed her, not because she revealed their whereabouts, but because she refused to do so.’
‘Which means…’
‘Which means the pictures they killed her for are still at the studio.’ Henderson returned to his seat. ‘I think the time has come for us to start searching through her pictures.’
‘I agree with the conclusion,’ Walters said, ‘but there’s so many it would take twenty people a year to complete. Even then, we don’t know what we’re looking for.’
‘Maybe it won’t be so bad.’
‘I’d like to know how.’
‘She must operate some sort of cataloguing system. If so, we can put aside anything that looks like her day-to-day work: portrait pictures, shots for catalogues and the stuff she does for adverts. We only need to look at what’s left, which might be five per cent or less of the total.’
‘True, but how do we recognise the important pictures when we come across them?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s clear whoever we have looking at them needs to apply a certain degree of common sense. We’re trying to find a picture or pictures that are so awful, embarrassing or extreme that someone will do anything to ensure they’re never published. Something like this shouldn’t be so hard to recognise, should it?’
‘When you put it in those terms, no.’
‘Good,’ Henderson said. ‘Carol, I’d like you to get this organised.’
‘Ok.’
‘Now, where are we on forensics?’
‘Ah, Angus, I’m glad I’ve caught you,’ Detective Chief Inspector Lisa Edwards said as she walked into his office. She nodded to the other two, ‘Sergeant Walters, Constable Bentley. I’d like to introduce a new addition to your team, Detective Sergeant Vicky Neal.’
A few minutes later, after Edwards returned to her office and Walters and Bentley to their desks, he sat down at the meeting table facing the new Detective Sergeant. He knew of her impending arrival, here to replace Gerry Hobbs, now a Detective Inspector in the Drugs Unit, but a couple of emails and a curriculum vitae could not replace a one-to-one discussion.
‘What made you want to move to Sussex from Manchester? I would have thought there was enough activity in their serious crime unit for any new DS.’
‘It was a personal issue rather than a work one,’ she said, her Mancunian vowels coming thick and hard. ‘You’re right, we’ve got it all there: gun crime, big drug deals, people trafficking and all the rest but it’s relentless. Every week, another shooting, every fortnight a major drugs bust. Like a factory conveyor belt, they just kept coming.’
‘Your DI has said some complimentary things. It sounds like they were sorry to lose you.’
‘How can I put it, I brought a bit of intelligence to the unit. They’re all good detectives, don’t get me wrong, but not many have studied criminology like I have.’
Henderson noticed this on her CV. After a degree in Psychology from Reading, she completed an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Psychology at Portsmouth. If asked, Henderson took the view that only detectives with a lot of experience under their belts really benefited from studying Criminology at degree or post-graduate level. Vicky didn’t have any experience when she started the course as she’d joined the police straight after completing her studies.
‘He said your contribution in solving the Salford Poisoner case was key. Tell me about it.’
‘Did it make the nationals? I don’t know if you’d have heard about it down here.’
‘No, I didn’t, I saw something about it on an internal document.’
‘Okay, some bloke in Salford was going into off-licences and corner shop grocers, replacing Coke bottles with one of his own, laced with a rat poison that made people, mainly kids, vomit.’
He watched her as she spoke. She was tall and slim, with shoulder-length, dark brown hair, and brown intense eyes. The overall effect was attractive and perhaps the reason Phil Bentley went gaga when first introduced. He didn’t think her good looks would present a problem around the office, but her forthright attitude might ruffle a few feathers.
‘With your DI’s glowing recommendation and your qualifications, you could have the pick of where to go next. Why Sussex? As far as you could get away from Manchester?’
She smiled, but not warmly. ‘Something like that. I know I sound like a died-in-the-wool Salford lass, but I’ve got a couple of relatives in this area. I used to come down to Worthing as a kid to visit my grandmother.’
‘What do you know of Sussex from a policing perspective?’
‘I know it’s a mix of big towns like Brighton, Worthing and Crawley, plus Gatwick Airport, and small towns and villages. There’s crowd control issues with events at the Amex stadium, not as big as Old Trafford or the Etihad, but still a big football match to police. Plus, pop bands, celebrities and political conferences at the Brighton Centre.’
‘I see you’ve done your homework. Where are you staying?’
‘I’m renting a flat in Lower Rock Gardens, near the seafront.’
‘I know where it is. You’re about a mile along the road from me, although I don’t think you’ll get much time to settle in. You’ve joined us right in the middle of a murder investigation.’
‘I don’t mind, sir, it’s what I came here for.’
Henderson went on to explain about the kidnap and subsequent murder of photographer Cindy Longhurst.
‘I know something about the case,’ Neal said, ‘I’ve been reading The Argus on-line for the last few weeks.’
‘Good. You might also know we don’t have any strong suspects. This is despite interviewing her ex-husband, ex-boyfriend and her business partner, although I intend re-interviewing the father of a disabled man Cindy knocked off his bike four years ago. We’re now of the opinion the answer lies in a photograph or photographs she took, but as you can imagine over the course of a near twenty-year career, there are tens of thousands, perhaps millions of pictures to sift through.’
Neal paused for a moment. ‘You’ve looked at her customers, I assume. Someone might have tried it on with her and maybe it left lingering resentment.’
‘We’re doing this at the moment. It’s a long list of names and all we can do at the moment is run their details through the computer and see if anyone has form.’
‘What about forensics? Did they find anything?’
‘I was about to get an update when you and CI Edwards walked in. Why don’t we go through to the Detectives’ Room where you can meet the rest of the team and we can get the forensics status at the same time?’
FOURTEEN
At five o’ clock in the morning it was still dark outside. Ted Mathieson walked through the house to the integral garage. Upstairs, he’d left his wife, Tamsin, sleeping. Despite her liking for the morning workouts she did with her personal trainer, ‘early’ for her was more like nine or ten. His daughter wouldn’t be perturbed by his early start either, as she boarded at her school, Hurstpierpoint College. It would be a couple of hours before she would be woken up by boisterous girls talking excitedly about their boy-infested dreams or a discussion about which moisturiser they should use today.
He hefted the holdall into the back of the car and slammed the lid shut. Ted Mathieson yawned as he eased his wife’s VW Golf out of the garage. Friends had come around to the house for dinner last night, more like business acquaintances if he was being honest, so neither he nor h
is wife knew them well. At times, the conversation turned quiet or sounded stilted, but his legendary depths of hospitality didn’t disappoint and to compensate for the lack of spark, they’d all drunk too much.
As the owner of Mathieson Transport, he didn’t need to work the long hours he used to. He had a trusty colleague in Brian Everett, his commercial Director and right-hand man. With the exception of negotiating contracts, Brian could easily manage the place while he was out, and with such a good deputy in place, Mathieson could work part-time if he chose to do so. His wife didn’t think too hard about those sorts of issues and it was easy to palm her off with an explanation that his early-morning start was due to the pressures of work. However, his daughter, despite her tender years, was as sharp as a tack. It was a good job she was boarding.
The bag in the boot contained four kilos of high quality cocaine. Their contact in Germany, Otto, came up with the goods every eight weeks with the same regularity as the tick-over of a BMW six-cylinder engine. A couple of weeks after receiving their last big delivery, Otto told Mathieson’s driver, Steve, he could get them some more if they wanted it. He gave him some spiel about a bumper crop in Columbia, the cartels working overtime, less product being seized by the American authorities, blah de blah de blah.
Did he take them for a couple of fucking tosspots? He’d done his homework on Otto and far from being the congenial beer-swilling fatso he wanted them to believe, he was a razor-sharp property developer. He was ploughing all the dough he made from his drug dealing business into new property developments in Bavaria. The ‘extra’ coke he offered was not manna from the gods, as he suggested, but some from his private stash to provide the readies to finish off a sports centre being built in Nuremberg.
Mathieson’s buyer, Charlie McQueen, sounded non-committal about the extra product, citing low prices and for a moment Mathieson considered selling it to someone else or reducing his next order from Otto. Again, Mathieson had done his homework and knew McQueen’s operation was coming under severe pressure from the authorities, first the local drugs squad and, rumour had it, the National Crime Agency. They hadn’t scored any big successes against McQueen’s organisation yet, only the closure of a few ‘crack’ houses and the seizure of a few kilos, but recent statements made by the police sounded as though they were getting close.
