He spent the next twenty minutes thinking about it. It wasn’t like him to be unable to put a name to a face and his failure to do so didn’t improve his mood. He was still racking his brains when a police car pulled into the lay-by and parked behind him. Giash Chakrabati climbed out and nimbly ran the few yards that separated them.
“PC Tandy and I have been sent by DI Yates. He said you’d brief us.”
“Hello, Giash. I don’t know much more than you do. I interviewed the supervisors at the de Vries plant here a few days ago in connection with the girl that was murdered at Sandringham, and DI Yates has asked me to see them again. Individually, this time, and without anyone else present. Tony Sentance, their FD, was with them last time. Have you met him?”
“Yes. Slimy character.”
“I agree with you there. It looks as if he might be the chief suspect, too. He’s just pulled off a disappearing act.”
“How do you want me and Verity to help you?”
“It’s probably best if I talk to you both together. Go and get her, would you?”
Fifteen minutes later, Giash had driven into the approach road to the de Vries plant and halted at the security check. Verity Tandy sat beside him. DC Andy Carstairs was seated in the back of the car. He’d left his own car in the lay-by. Roberts, the security guard who’d checked him in on his last visit, emerged from his hut. He seemed not to be in such a genial mood today. He frowned at Giash.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I’ve brought DC Carstairs to see Miss Nugent.” Giash gestured behind him. The guard craned his neck to look through the open window at Giash’s passenger.
“Oh,” he said. “I remember you. Got an appointment, have you?”
“No. But I think Miss Nugent will want to see me.”
“I’ll check,” said the guard gruffly. “Hang on.”
He returned to his hut. They could see him using the telephone in there, gesturing at them and turning his back when he saw them watching. He put the phone down and strode across the tarmac towards them.
“She’s not here.”
“Are you quite sure about that? I thought I saw her car when I came past earlier.” Andy saw Roberts’ face register the stark reality that he’d been caught in a lie. “I’m here on urgent police business. It’s an offence to be deliberately obstructive.”
The guard looked uncertain.
“Yeah. Well, the receptionist says she can’t find her at the moment.”
“That’s OK. We’re happy to come in and wait.” Giash switched on the ignition as Andy spoke. Still frowning, the guard returned to his hut and raised the barrier. Andy noted that on this occasion he offered no parking instructions. But the really important question was whether or not he’d been warned about their visit in advance. Had he been told to stall for time? If so, by whom, and how had they found out that Andy would be calling?
“Unpleasant guy,” said Verity Tandy.
“Just doing his job,” said Giash.
“I think that might not be the last time that we hear that sentiment this afternoon,” said Andy.
Three quarters of an hour later, they were still waiting in reception. The receptionist had brought coffee and water. She’d offered them old copies of de Vries Monthly News to read. She’d turned on the flat television that was mounted on the wall. Andy had little doubt she’d been told to delay them as long as possible. She’d done a good job, but he was exasperated with waiting. He would get a lot tougher with her if she didn’t now do as he asked.
“Thanks for the hospitality,” he said. “It’s appreciated. But we really need to see Miss Nugent immediately. If you can’t help us further, I’m going to have to insist that you page her so I can speak to her myself. And we’ll need to search the premises.”
As if on cue, Margaret Nugent suddenly appeared from a door to the right of the receptionist’s desk.
“DC Carstairs,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m sorry I’ve had to keep you waiting so long. A staffing difficulty. Would you and your colleagues like to follow me to my office?” Andy thought she was as effusive as the security guard had been hostile: a strange about-face from his last encounter with her.
He accompanied her along the dingy corridor, Giash Chakrabati and Verity Tandy following in their wake.
“Now,” she said, eschewing her rather grand desk and instead choosing to seat herself companionably at the small table in her office which just about accommodated four people. “Would you like some tea?”
“No, Miss Nugent, that’s very kind, but we wouldn’t. What we need to do with some urgency is to interview all the supervisors I saw last time I was here, not all together, but individually. But I want them all to gather in the same room before we start, so that the ones who have yet to be interviewed can’t compare notes with the others. If you supply the room, PC Tandy will look after them. PC Chakrabati will assist me with the interviews.”
“It’s rather difficult to release all of them together . . .”
“I’m aware of that, Miss Nugent, because Mr Sentance pointed it out last time. However, he managed it then, and I’m asking you to do it now. What’s the matter?” he added. He thought she had paled visibly when he mentioned Sentance’s name. She recovered her composure quickly.
“Nothing at all. I’ll see what I can do. Some of them may have to be called from home, though it’s shift-change time, so you may be lucky. I assume you have a warrant?” she added, a glint of her old steeliness returning.
“Not yet. There’s one on its way. If you insist on waiting for it, I can demand that the supervisors are kept together in the same room until it arrives. Otherwise we can start now. Your choice.”
“Well, I suppose there’s no point in wasting time in that way.” Her face said the opposite. Andy concluded that she dared not oppose him further. She wasn’t as formidable when Sentance wasn’t there to back her up. He decided not to mention the man yet, but he would stake his pension that she knew Sentance had gone.
“Thank you. We appreciate your co-operation.”
“Will you wait here while I try to find them?”
“PC Chakrabati and I will wait here. I’d like PC Tandy to come with you, if you have no objection. She may be helpful to you, if the supervisors are too inquisitive. I’d like you to tell them as little as possible before we interview them.”
“I can’t tell them very much when I don’t know myself why you’re here.”
“Correct. But PC Tandy will come along anyway.”
“Let’s go, then,” Miss Nugent said gracelessly to Verity.
“I’m still worried that she’ll manage to brief them in some way, even with Verity there,” Andy said to Giash after the door had closed behind them.
“As she said, she doesn’t know enough to cause much damage. Besides, Verity will keep close tabs on her. She’s quite capable, you know. She’s grown on me. I think she’s a good copper.”
“I’m pleased to hear it, although she’d have to be quite a bad copper for you to say so. But if you really mean it, tell DI Yates. He’s not been very impressed with her so far.”
“He goes too much by appearances and first impressions.”
“I don’t think that you . . .”
Andy’s mobile gave the two short pips that indicated that he’d received a text message. It was from Tim: Call me when you can.
Andy stood up and crossed to the window, so that he was as far from the door as possible.
“Give me a nudge if you think you hear someone coming,” he said to Giash. “Sir?” he said to Tim.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Miss Nugent’s office, waiting for her to fetch the supervisors. Giash is with me.”
“Is Nugent on her own?”
“No. Verity Tandy’s with her.”
“Oh, God, is she?”
There was a pause. “Well, when you get in there with the supervisors, don’t let Nugent stay with you. But do make sure she doesn’t make any calls, or otherwise communicate with anyone else. And don’t mention Sentance at all.”
“OK,” said Andy, a little aggrieved that he had actually already thought of most of the things Tim had told him to do. “Have there been any new developments, sir?”
“Just one. Jackie Briggs has told us that she doesn’t know where her husband is. She says it’s ‘out of character’ for him not to tell her where he’s going, even though he goes away quite a bit. Personally, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but she’s upset about it, obviously. He may just have failed to mention what he’s doing, but there’s a chance he might have gone somewhere with Tony Sentance as well. Officially he’s unemployed, except for the odd jobs he does for the de Vries family, but he may have some connection with whatever else it is that Sentance is up to his ears in. You’ll remember it was Briggs who alerted Sentance when Laurieston House was first burgled.”
“Yes . . .”
“Someone’s coming,” Giash whispered.
“I think Margaret Nugent’s coming back, sir. I’ll have to go now.”
“Remember what I said.”
“I will,” said Andy. He terminated the call as abruptly as he could.
Fifty-One
Andy Carstairs and Giash Chakrabati were having a frustrating afternoon. One by one, they had interviewed the supervisors at the Sutton Bridge de Vries plant. Each interview had followed the same pattern. Andy had introduced Giash, offered the supervisor concerned water or tea (which were always declined) and said that the police had had a tip-off that the girl who had been murdered had had an association with the plant. He’d agreed with Giash that he couldn’t reveal more without running the risk of putting Dulcie Wharton in serious danger.
Each interview had been more or less a duplicate of its predecessor. The supervisors were less truculent than they’d been when he’d first met them. He thought that each in his or her own way was making some kind of a stab at courtesy. Nevertheless, his questions were clearly being stone-walled. The supervisors were united in being adamant that they could not recognise the girl from the photographs they’d seen, the least distressing of which he’d asked them to look at again. They were certain she had not worked at the Sutton Bridge plant. If she had, they would all have recognised her. Because shift patterns changed regularly, they all knew all of the staff.
Andy had asked Giash to observe the interviews. It was, of course, prudent for him to have another police officer present, but he had another reason. He wanted Giash to look out for two things: signs that the supervisors had been briefed to tell the same story and any evidence that he could detect that one or more individuals was either lying or showing signs of nervousness. He had a quick debrief with Giash between each interview.
“I think they’ve been quite clever if they’ve agreed beforehand on what to say,” said Giash after the sixth interview. “They’ve all given you the same information, but they haven’t put it in the same words. Some of them have volunteered extra stuff, like telling you about the shift patterns. And the only one who seems nervous is Eric Saunders. But he’s got a pronounced nervous tic, so it’s probably just how he behaves, anyway.”
Andy nodded.
“I agree with you. We’ll see what happens when Dulcie Wharton comes in. I don’t know whether I should be worried that we haven’t seen her yet. It may just be coincidence that she’s one of the last. Or maybe she’s held back until the end deliberately. We haven’t seen either of the two female supervisors yet, come to think about it. I’ll get Verity to send in the next one. It’s bound to be one of them now.”
Miss Nugent had allocated the first aid room to the police for the interviews. Verity and the waiting supervisors were in the canteen. It hadn’t originally been his intention, but after the first interview Andy had decided to send them back to the canteen afterwards, as well. He didn’t want them out on the shop floor talking about his visit just yet.
Verity texted: Last one now.
That was strange, thought Andy. There must be two interviews left to go, the ones with the two female supervisors. Perhaps Verity meant the last one after this one?
There was a brief rap at the door before Molly Cartwright entered. Andy had marked her down as a hard case on their first meeting. One look at her face convinced him that he’d been right. A large, unattractive woman, she came in hatchet-jawed and unsmiling.
“Mrs Cartwright, thank you for co-operating with us again. Please take a seat. This is PC Chakrabati.”
Molly Cartwright met Giash’s eye boldly before she gave him the briefest of nods. Giash had met her type before, though not often. She was barely bothering to conceal her dislike of his race. No doubt she thought of him as a ‘Paki’ and beneath her contempt. She looked away and took the seat that Andy offered her.
“Would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you,” she said, as if he’d affronted her.
“Well, if you want water, there’s some on the table. Please help yourself.”
She barely acknowledged the offer. Andy produced the photograph.
“Mrs Cartwright, do you remember that when I first came here it was to investigate the murder of the girl in this photograph?”
He held it in front of her. She didn’t take it from him.
“Of course I do, yes.”
“Have you had any further ideas about who the girl might be? Has anything jogged your memory? You’ll remember that unfortunately some of the photos I showed you were quite unpleasant. I saw you looking over Dulcie’s shoulder at them. You must have been thinking about them since.”
“Can’t say I’ve thought about them a lot,” Molly Cartwright said. She sat back in the chair and folded her arms, then unfolded them again, perhaps sensing that Andy would interpret the gesture as aggressive. “I might of been more troubled if I’d of known her. But as I told you – as we all told you – she didn’t come from here.” She met Andy’s eye with an unblinking stare. She was lying, he thought. But he’d have a hell of a job on to break her story. He took a moment to gather his thoughts. He’d try a different tack with her from what he’d used with the others.
“Mrs Cartwright,” he said, “you’ll remember that your colleague, Dulcie Wharton, seemed to be a lot more upset by the photographs than the rest of you. Do you know why that was?”
Molly Cartwright fidgeted in her chair. It took her a while to reply.
“You’d have to ask her that. She’s not at work today, though.”
Giash’s head jerked up. He looked pointedly at Andy and frowned. Andy didn’t need the cue. The alarm bells were already ringing loudly in his head.
“Oh? Do you know why that is?”
Molly Cartwright shrugged.
“She’s off sick, I think.”
“Well, Mrs Cartwright, if you can’t help me any further, I’d like you to accompany me back to the canteen now, please.”
“Why’s that? You haven’t ‘accompanied’ (she put on an affected voice) anyone else there.”
“No, but yours is the last interview and I’d like to see you all together now.”
“Back up?” Giash mouthed at him as they left the room. Andy raised his thumb.
“PC Chakrabati,” he said to Giash out loud, “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind finding Miss Nugent and asking her to join us as well. And ask her for Dulcie Wharton’s address, will you?” Andy was trying to sound as casual as possible, but he sensed that the woman beside him was feeling his fear. He wondered if she was afraid, too. He turned to look at her, but the hatchet face betrayed nothing.
Tim responded immediately to Giash Chakrabati’s call. Its urgency didn’t surprise him – he’d had an uneasy feeling about Dulcie Wharton ever since their conversation had been so abruptly cu
rtailed. He was extremely worried now. Perhaps he shouldn’t have sent Andy to Sutton Bridge. If he’d responded in the wrong way, he knew that it could have put Dulcie in danger. She’d certainly been at work when she’d rung him that morning.
After some prevarication (stuff about data protection which the HR manager herself must have known was nonsense, given the circumstances), Giash had succeeded in worming Dulcie’s address out of Miss Nugent and texted it to Tim. Tim rang Spalding, asked them to send a squad car to join him at Dulcie’s home and got them to arrange with Boston for immediate back-up at the Sutton Bridge plant. He called Ricky MacFadyen and told him to get to Laurieston House as soon as possible. He rang Jean Rook, who was still at Laurieston, to ask her to remain with Kevan de Vries and, on being passed to de Vries, told him that they must stay inside the house until Ricky arrived and not to let anyone except him inside. Although privately he thought that the possibility was slight, he told de Vries that he and his son could both be in danger if they didn’t do as he said. To his surprise, he seemed alarmed and thought, if that were so, he would be unlikely to disobey. Not for the first time, Tim wondered exactly how far his involvement in Sentance’s activities had gone. When he asked to be passed back to Jean Rook, he found that she seemed pleased, probably because she’d been asked not to let de Vries out of her sight. She also gave further proof of her renowned presence of mind.
“What about Mrs Briggs?” she asked.
Tim had forgotten about Jackie Briggs. He had never doubted his original impression of her, that she was a pleasant, straightforward woman married to a bastard – a view endorsed by Juliet. But Jackie was now the wife of a man on the run and had always demonstrated unswerving loyalty to her husband. He didn’t know whether she could be trusted not to help Harry if he made a secret reappearance to ask for her help.
Sausage Hall Page 26
