He got his phone and called Dan Carter.
‘Hello Mac, I hope things are going better with your cold cases that the one I’m working on.’
‘Still getting nowhere?’ Mac asked.
‘Not so far. My God you’d think in this day and age that people couldn’t just disappear without someone noticing. Anyway enough of my whingeing, how can I help?’
‘I’d like you to re-open the Ashley Whyte case.’
There was a moment’s silence while Dan tried to recollect the details.
‘She was that girl who was murdered with a hatchet in St. Albans, wasn’t she? Drug gang they thought.’
‘Yes that’s right.’
‘So what have you got?’ Dan asked.
Mac took him through the facts of the case and then told him what he’d learnt from Kate Grimsson.
‘Bloody hell seems like this DCI Ibbotson’s made a right bloody mess of it and unfortunately it’s our mess now. What do you suggest?’
‘DS Grimsson knows the case well and she says she hasn’t much on at the moment so I was wondering if you could get her on a temporary attachment and have her work with one of the team. I’d think having a team of two to kick off with wouldn’t impact on your current caseload too much and, if they uncover anything, then you can always think about putting more resources in then.’
‘Well I suppose that makes sense especially as the case has been parked for a while anyway. Okay I’ll see what I can do. Will you be okay to liaise with whoever I put on it?’ Dan asked.
‘Oh yes absolutely. I’d really like to know how this case works out.’
‘Okay leave it with me then. I’ll call around later and let you know what the arrangements are going to be.’
Dan called around less than two hours later.
‘So how’s it going?’ Dan asked.
Mac thought he looked a bit grumpy, which was normal for Dan, but he also looked a bit worn out too.
‘As well as it can be I suppose in the circumstances,’ Mac replied. ‘Oh and can I say thanks again for the cases, I’d have gone totally doolally by now without them.’
‘God Mac it should be me who’s thanking you. You’ve already solved one and, knowing you, I wouldn’t bet that you won’t crack this Whyte case too.’
‘So you’re re-opening the case then?’ Mac said with a grin.
‘Yes I am. I’ve arranged for DS Grimsson to join us for a while and she’s going to team up with Tommy as Martina’s away on a course. I’ll get them to liaise directly with you. Just let me know if there’s any progress in the case.’
‘That’s great, I’ll see if I can get together with both of them later today and get the ball rolling. By the way how’s the Priory Park case coming along?’
‘It isn’t, which is the other reason I came to see you if I’m honest. I’ve had the team scurrying around doing all the usual things but, for all their work, we’ve come up with absolutely nothing.’
‘So I take it that you now think it’s time to try some of the unusual things?’ Mac asked.
‘To be honest I’ll try anything just now but all we’ve got is the corpse and that’s not yielded anything of use so far. I was thinking about facial reconstruction. Have you had any experience of that?’
‘Yes I’ve used it in two cases where we came up against the same brick wall that you have.’
‘How did it work out?’ Dan said as he leant forward.
‘Well the first time we tried it we got nowhere but the professor did warn us that it wasn’t foolproof.’
‘The professor?’
‘Yes Professor Catherine Watkins, she works out of the Medical School at Manchester University.’
‘So you said it didn’t work first time what about the second?’
‘We got a positive ID within two days and had the murderer behind bars twenty four hours later.’
‘So why did it work for one and not the other?’ Dan asked.
‘Any number of factors really. The Professor said that although she can get the face looking reasonably like it would have done in life things like skin or hair colour are a bit of a guess. Then there are other things such as wrinkles, moles and scars. Apparently you only have to get a few things wrong for a face to become more or less unrecognisable.’
‘Sounds like it might be worth a shot though,’ Dan said looking a little more cheerful.
‘Oh definitely, I think you’ll find it a really interesting process too.’
Mac smiled at seeing Dan leaving a bit happier. He would have phoned Tommy straight away but Amrit insisted that he should eat his lunch first. Mac relented on learning that it was Lamb Tikka. He repaid Amrit by giving her lunch his full and undivided attention.
‘You know I keep thinking that your lunches just can’t get any better and then they do. That was fantastic,’ Mac said as Amrit took his tray away.
‘Oh it’s easy to cook for someone who appreciates food the way you do,’ Amrit replied with a smile. ‘Do you need anything else?’
‘No I’m okay for now. By the way I’m hoping to have a couple of visitors a bit later on. Dan Carter’s agreed to re-open the Ashley Whyte case.’
‘Really?’ Amrit said with wide eyes. ‘You will let me know what happens though? I’m only halfway through the series as it were and I’m dying to know how it all ends.’
Mac smiled at Amrit’s insistence.
‘Don’t worry I’ll keep you fully informed,’ Mac said reassuringly.
Mac arranged to meet Kate at four. He then rang Tommy and asked him to come a half an hour earlier. He arrived at three thirty on the dot and Mac brought him up to speed with the details of the case before Kate Grimsson arrived.
Amrit ushered Kate into Mac’s bedroom and then returned with an extra chair.
‘Anyone want coffee?’ Amrit asked.
‘Oh yes please,’ Mac replied.
Kate and Tommy smiled and nodded.
‘So introductions first, Kate this is DC Tommy Nugent and he’ll be working with you on the case. Tommy’s part of the Major Crime Unit team and I’ve worked with him on a few cases now. By the way, not that it will have any bearing on the case but just so that you know, Tommy is also my daughter’s boyfriend. Tommy this is DS Kate Grimsson from Hatfield who worked on the original investigation. Dan’s managed to get her temporarily attached to the MCU for this case. With Kate on board we can get the new investigation up and running straight away.’
Kate and Tommy shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
‘Okay so we start tomorrow and, for now at least, it will just be the three of us,’ Mac continued. ‘Kate is in charge of the investigation but Dan has asked that you liaise with me if that’s okay.’
‘I’ll be I charge?’ she asked as if unsure that she’d heard him correctly.
‘Well yes, you’re the senior rank here, I’m just a civilian.’
Mac could see a fleeting look of mistrust in her face but she quickly regained her composure.
‘Yes, yes of course I’ll liaise with you. What does that mean exactly?’ she asked.
‘Good question. I suppose it means whatever we want it to mean. My idea was that we could get our heads together every day or so and, based on what we’ve learnt, discuss what direction we think the investigation should take. I’m happy to give advice but it’s totally up to you whether you follow it or not.’
Kate gave this some thought.
‘Okay that sounds about right to me. However, I’m aware of your reputation so I think that I’ll be taking your advice very seriously if that’s okay.’
Mac smiled.
‘Okay, so Kate where do we start?’
‘I’ve been giving it some thought. As I said earlier I think that the ‘North London drug gang’ theory is just plain wrong but drugs could have something to do with it. Ashley was a user so where was she getting it from? Was she dealing on the side? We interviewed her sister and some of her friends and they all denied any knowledge of Ashley bein
g back on heroin. Someone must have known something though. Then there’s the rehab clinic. Her father paid for her to go to a private clinic to try and get her off drugs. She started going nine months or so before she died.’
‘Yes, it was called the Al-Faran Clinic, wasn’t it?’ Mac asked.
‘Yes that’s right. She spent four weeks in the clinic initially and then she went back every couple of weeks or so as an out-patient. I’m thinking that she could have met someone there, I mean places like that are useful if you want to recruit dealers, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, that’s a good point. If you can get them hooked again then they won’t have much option but to sell to others to keep their habit up,’ Mac said. ‘Okay then the clinic seems like a good place to start.’
‘We also spent a lot of time looking for this ‘dre man’ but we were probably looking in the wrong place,’ Kate said.
‘Dre man? What’s that?’ Mac asked.
‘Wasn’t it in the file?’ Kate asked.
Mac puzzled expression was answer enough. Kate fished out her phone and after many taps on the screen passed it to Mac. It showed a text message or rather an image of a text message. It was from Ashley and it was dated the day she died.
‘Trina worried can I stay at yours think I said wrong thing and dre man’s men are coming scared A’
Mac sighed and wondered what else was missing from the files.
‘Who’s Trina?’ Mac asked.
‘Trina Derbyshere, she was an old friend of Ashley’s. DCI Ibbotson thought that ‘Dre man’ was some sort of gang nickname,’ Kate explained.
‘Why wasn’t this in the case file?’ Mac said with a frown.
Kate shrugged, ‘When he knew we weren’t going to solve the case in five minutes he sort of lost interest. As he was retiring I honestly don’t think Joe Ibbotson cared one way or the other about whether we found who killed Ashley.’
‘Is there anything else I might be missing?’ Mac asked, still scowling.
To him all evidence was sacrosanct and not including it in a case file was a cardinal sin.
‘I’ll let you have my case file tomorrow. I’ve made sure that everything’s in there,’ Kate said.
‘Thanks.’
‘There’s a Dr. Dre,’ Tommy volunteered. ‘He’s a rapper, used to be in NWA.’
‘NWA?’ Mac asked.
‘They were a sort of band. Don’t ask what it stands for,’ Tommy warned. ‘Anyway I think that ‘Dre’ is short for Andre.’
‘So this ‘dre man’ might be a dealer, possible called Andre. Even if he isn’t involved in drugs Ashley said she was scared of him and then died a few hours later so we need to find him. Who runs the clinic?’
‘A Dr. Al-Faran, she’s in her forties and she’s got quite a good reputation for getting people off drugs. However it might be slightly easier for her than for a lot of other doctors as most of her clients tend to be very rich. Apparently she charges somewhere in the region of thirty thousand pounds for a basic course of treatment.’
‘Basic? How much do the extras cost?’ Mac asked.
‘Well if you need more than one stay at the clinic it can cost up to fifty thousand.’
Mac shook his head
‘Well, I suppose if you’ve got the money and it works but it still seems a bit steep to me. Were you able to get a list of her patients before? I didn’t see anything in the file, unless that’s missing too.’
‘No she totally refused to give us any information about her patients. She insisted that she’d only hand any details over if we had a court order and she said that, even if we did, she’d contest it in court. Her clients pay for ‘total discretion’ is how she put it.’
‘For fifty grand I suppose that’s the least you might expect,’ Mac said. ‘Did you do any surveillance on the clinic, see if you could spot any of the clients going in and out?’
‘I tried but it was a waste of time. The clinic’s in an old country house just outside St. Albans, there are some pictures of it in the file.’
It took Mac a while to locate them.
‘I think I see what you mean,’ Mac said, looking at the photos.
He was looking at a massive old Victorian house set well back behind an electronic gate with very tall hedges on either side.
‘Clients arrive in a Mercedes four by four owned by the clinic and, unfortunately for us, it has black tinted windows,’ Kate said. ‘It always pulls up around the back of the house so you can’t even get a clear shot with a long lens from anywhere outside the clinic grounds.’
Mac looked up at Kate with puzzlement.
‘How in God’s name would you know that?’
‘We arrested a paparazzi once when we were doing observation outside the clinic one day. He was hanging out of a tree trying to take a photograph with a long lens when we saw him. He was lucky really, he was about thirty feet up and he’d have probably killed himself if we hadn’t come by.’
‘Who was he after?’
‘He was trying to get a shot of a famous actress who, it was rumoured, was staying at the clinic in between movies,’ Kate said. ‘However, we never found out if she was ever there or if the photographer had just gotten a bad tip.’
‘Okay I tend to agree that the clinic might be a good place to start, especially as DCI Ibbotson’s investigation leaves us knowing virtually nothing about it. I’d advise that you get a court order anyway and see what happens, you never know she might just be bluffing.’
‘Okay, that’s what I wanted to do in the first place,’ Kate said.
‘What about the father?’ Mac asked. ‘In his statement Dr. Mason Whyte says that he chose the clinic for Ashley based on a personal recommendation. Did we ever find out who recommended it?’
‘Yes, it was through a colleague of his, a GP called Dr. Edward Rowan. He said that the clinic had achieved good results for some of his patients,’ Kate replied.
‘And did we interview this Dr. Rowan?’
Kate shook her head.
Mac sighed again.
‘Okay then I’d suggest that you interview the father again and also this Dr. Rowan. See if he’ll divulge who these patients were, you never know we might get lucky.’
‘Okay,’ Kate replied.
‘You mentioned her sister and friends earlier. Do you think they might be worth another go too?’ Mac asked.
‘Definitely, I always felt that some of them knew a bit more than they were telling us.’
‘Anyone in particular?’
‘Well the sister for one. She was definite that it wasn’t a gang murder but when we asked her how she could be so certain she just clammed up. Then there’s Trina Derbyshere who Ashley sent the text to. I remember her looking really uncomfortable when she was being interviewed. I think she’d be worth following up on too.’
‘So enough to be getting on with?’ Mac asked with a smile.
‘So a court order for the clinic’s records and then re-interview the father, sister and Trina Derbyshere, after which we’ll see if we can find this Dr. Rowan. Yes, more than enough I should think,’ Kate replied with a smile.
It struck Mac that this was the first time that Kate hadn’t actually looked unhappy.
‘Okay with you Tommy?’ Kate asked.
‘Absolutely and nice to have someone who already knows the case well, it means we can hit the ground running.’
‘And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.’
Mac thought he could see a glint of determination in Kate’s eyes.
This could be quite interesting, he thought.
Chapter Eleven
Mac hardly closed his eyes that night after a bright shard of pain had pierced his lower back. It wasn’t to be the only one. Every time he was close to drifting off to sleep the pain brutally reminded him of its presence. He was in a bad way by morning, being both in pain and groggy from lack of sleep. He gave up on the idea of sleep and tried to do some work but it was hard going. He hated it when the pain started g
etting the upper hand. It made him feel helpless like he was drowning in it and, try as hard as he might, all he could do was just about manage to keep his head above water.
By an act of will he managed to keep it from Bridget and Tommy that morning but he couldn’t hide it from his nurse.
‘It’s bad today, isn’t it?’ Amrit said. ‘I can tell from your face. You’ve had all your medication I take it?’
Mac nodded. He was only just about holding it together and he was afraid that if he spoke, he’d scream.
‘Okay then, I know it’s going to hurt but move over onto your tummy,’ Amrit ordered. ‘It’s time for some needles.’
In desperation Mac did as he was told. He grunted loudly as the pain spiked when he rolled over.
Amrit rolled his pyjama top up and said, ‘If I do it right you shouldn’t feel any pain, just a little pressure as the needles go in.’
At that point Mac was beyond caring. If it hurt a bit more who cared? It would be like adding a pebble to a mountain.
Amrit had been right, he didn’t feel anything as the acupuncture needles went in which surprised him. He counted them, six in all, arranged in a circle around the base of his spine.
‘So what happens now?’ he managed to ask.
‘People react a little differently but most say that they feel a sort of pleasant tingling at first but it will take at least ten minutes to kick in.’
Mac lay there waiting desperately for the tingling. It came on slowly and felt strangely like a breath of cool air on his lower back. He wasn’t sure if the pain was any less but he definitely started to feel a little better.
Amrit smiled as she watched him slowly relax, his body no longer clenched in pain. She waited until the full twenty minutes were up before she carefully removed the needles and dabbed his back with some cotton wool in case of bleeding.
‘You can go to sleep now,’ she said softly.
Mac rolled onto his back and was soon fast asleep. Amrit picked up his phone and then pulled the curtains over. She was going to make sure his sleep wasn’t interrupted. She looked back at him before she left the room. He looked in peace.
23 Cold Cases (The Mac Maguire detective mysteries Book 5) Page 8
