Home Help (DI Falle Book 2)

by Gwyn GB

  Her dad’s police medal and the photograph of him receiving it at Buckingham Palace, were right in front of her. She stared at it. Shame added to her guilt. Yet another reminder that she couldn’t quite live up to his expectations.

  Bob wavered.

  'I'm sorry to hear that Claire but if I can't rely on you, can't trust you..'

  'You can, I promise you.' Claire was pleading now.

  Then like she had so many times in years gone by, Claire's mum diffused the situation by bustling cheerily into the room and asking Bob if he wanted a cup of tea.

  In traditional British fashion, a cup of tea helped calm the situation, and gave Claire a twenty minute respite before Bob suggested they return to the station and the job in hand.

  It wasn’t an easy ride back. A part of Claire was thinking about accessing the image they had of Rachel and taking it back home to her mother to see if she recognised her as Theresa. The other part of her realised she wanted to keep her job. Her mum was absolutely fine. Theresa had been nothing but lovely to her mum. Maybe that rankled somehow, maybe she did need a psychologist to work out what she was feeling about everything. Perhaps guilt was making her over-protective. Perhaps the long hours and lack of sleep were blurring her boundary between fact and fiction. Or perhaps she just needed a bloody good holiday and to forget about Rachel Hill.

  Bob said no more in the car except to tell her that they would be discussing what happened at another more appropriate time. He did ask Claire if she honestly felt she was really on form and able to carry on with the murder inquiry, and he also confirmed he was asking Lew over to join them. Claire felt like a disgraced child and her thoughts turned again to her dad. What damage was he causing? If it got out that he was interfering in their case after accessing confidential documents, she might as well resign before she was kicked out the force.

  39

  Claire, Saturday 11th November 2017, Jersey

  When she got back to the station, Claire excused herself and went to the toilet. There was one person she really could do with seeing right now and that was Mark Rodgers. She locked herself into a cubicle and gave herself a few moments, looking on her phone at the selfie she'd taken of them both the night he was here in Jersey. If only she could turn back the clock, be there right now with him. She felt isolated and lonely, not even trusting her own judgements, let alone anyone else. Her father was about to ruin her career, her mother would soon be dependent on them. She had no one else.

  She sent Mark a text and waited to see if he replied straight away. Nothing. He was probably mid-way through an examination. His dark head would be bent over a microscope or collecting tiny samples of evidence which could find the cause of death or in some cases, catch a killer.

  Claire looked at the time on her phone, it was four-thirty. Her little drama had cost them two and a half hours and she was due to go and see the final ball committee member, Jane Carter, in half an hour. She was going to have to leave Bob to handle James Parkin himself. If she was honest, that was a big relief. It wasn’t that she minded interviewing a potential murderer, it was more the prospect of having to sit in a room with DCI Bob Walsh right now.

  Speaking to Jane would give her the chance to confirm that Gillian was cleaning the house at the time of the phone call to Terry and therefore help corroborate her evidence about James making a call.

  Jane Carter lived in Trinity, about a fifteen minute drive from the police station. She had a large Victorian house set in a well-established garden. It was a nice spot, surrounded by agricultural fields and what looked like a small stable block and ménage to one side of the house. Jane opened the front door, dressed casually in faded jeans and a jumper with a large American flag on it. Claire thought it looked like something by Ralph Lauren. She had a sing song voice and welcomed Claire into the house.

  'Come in, we might get interrupted by the children because they're desperately waiting for my husband to come home. He's promised to take them out to Pizza Express because he's been away on business for a few days,' Jane explained as she showed Claire into the kitchen.

  Her kitchen was clearly the heart of their house, it ran the full length of the back of the property, obviously extended, with a large open plan cooking area, sofa seating and informal dining table, all looking out onto their back garden and patio. Claire wasn’t one for getting jealous about kitchens and houses, but this one made her turn a bit green. Despite the low winter sun, it was light and airy. If it was hers, she wouldn't want to leave. Right now, she wished she didn’t have to.

  Focusing on what she needed to ask Jane wasn't easy, her mind was worrying about other things, firstly about what occurred this afternoon, and secondly what mischief her father was currently up to. She couldn't understand how everything could suddenly just stack up against her.

  They sat at the kitchen table. Claire asked for water as her head was already pounding and didn't need the added pressure of a caffeine hit.

  'I'm asking anyone who was at the Parkin household on the morning of the 31st October, if they made a phone call to a Terry Morgan?' she started.

  'Not me. I only rang the wine people while I was there that day. We spent most of our morning talking about what kind of seating and decoration we wanted in the marquee.' Jane replied.

  'Do you know if anyone else made any phone calls?'

  'I think someone called the marquee hire company to check on a few pricing options, but that's it.'

  'And who else was in the house besides yourself?'

  'Well, Melanie, Suzette, Deborah and Anna obviously. We were together all morning. I think James popped back at one point but he didn't come in to where we were.'

  'Was there anyone else in the house?'

  'Oh yes of course, Gillian was there, I saw her car. She cleans for us too and I heard the hoover upstairs.'

  'She cleans for you too?'

  'Yes, I think she also cleans for a couple of the others, Deb and Suzette. Melanie had recommended her, we've been using her for years.'

  'I see,' Claire encouraged.

  'Her name is Gillian Faber, she's actually James's half-sister but we're not supposed to talk about that. Bit of a family skeleton,' Jane smiled. 'I think her mother used to work for James's dad in one of his hotels, he had a bit of a reputation. When the inevitable happened, she was paid off and asked to keep quiet, but you know Jersey. Hard to keep anything quiet here.'

  That last statement wasn't what Claire wanted to hear right now, not after she'd just sent half of Jersey's police force on a wild goose chase of an emergency call - not to mention what her dad was going around doing. At some point he was going to talk to someone who knew him, someone who knew that he's supposed to be retired and that he's her dad. Claire tried to pull her mind back onto the job.

  'Do you know Melanie and James well?'

  'Yes, our kids go to the same school, we often socialise together... why are you asking about Melanie and James? They're not in any trouble are they?'

  'I was just seeing if you knew them outside of the ball committee.'

  Jane gave her a sideways glance full of suspicion. So far she'd obviously not heard about James's arrest, but Claire's questions had sent her gossip antenna up. Melanie would be keeping this as quiet as possible for as long as possible in the hope it would just all go away. Claire could bet that Jane would be on the phone to her as soon as she was out the door.

  'I think that's all I need for now, thank you,' Claire reluctantly said. She would far rather stay here in this gorgeous kitchen, sipping water and avoiding Bob's wrath, but that really wasn't going to help matters.

  Before she set off for the station, Claire phoned her mum to check she was OK and hadn't been upset by the earlier incident. She was fine, watching some quiz show on TV, but she still hadn't heard from her dad.

  'I can't remember where he said he was going, sorry love,' she said.

  'It's OK mum I'll keep trying his mobile,' Claire wondered how much of her forgetting where her dad was had to
do with her dementia and how much to do with the fact he'd just not told her. The latter was just as likely, if not more, than the former.

  She rang her dad's mobile again. This time it went straight to answer phone. He'd turned it off. Obviously fed up with her trying to ring him. He was avoiding her. Does that mean he'd realised he'd annoyed her and was going to stop what he'd been doing? Or did it mean he was carrying on regardless and avoiding her? Whatever it was, she couldn't do anything about it right now. She started the engine and headed back to the station.

  40

  Claire, Saturday 11th November 2017, Jersey

  As she drove, her mobile phone buzzed on the seat next to her, a text coming in. She itched to pick it up and see if it was her dad. As soon as she pulled into the car park she looked. Part of her was disappointed, half of her delighted. It wasn’t from her dad, but it was from Mark. 'Missing you, can't wait until you're back xx' his message said. She allowed herself half a minute's quiet memory time, a sweet morsel of happy thoughts, before she pocketed her phone and exited the car.

  Walking into the police station felt like that moment you have to walk into school after having a fight with someone the day before. You have no idea what's waiting for you, how many people have been talking about you, who might be on your side, and whether your rival had arranged for a not very welcoming party.

  As it was, Claire found Bob at a desk in the office, concentrating on his screen. The other officers in the room looked up when she entered, but there was no obvious eyebrow raising or knowing looks - at least none that she caught.

  'Sir?' she said.

  Bob looked up at her, he was obviously still not over what happened earlier because his face lacked its usual warmth.

  'I've just been to see Jane Carter who confirmed that Gillian had been there and was another witness to the fact that James came back that morning.'

  'Well, he denies it,' Bob almost brushed away her evidence, 'He says he can't understand why she said he’d made the call. Didn't get anything more out of him. Computer forensics have just said they've found spyware on his laptop and mobile phone. No idea yet who could have planted it there, but they're investigating. It opens up a whole new possibility. We're going to have a team briefing in about an hour. Log the interview and we'll talk more then.'

  It was already 5.30pm on Saturday, Claire wondered just how late they were all going to be tonight. She couldn’t help feeling that at least some of it was her fault.

  At just gone 6pm she got another text from her mother, 'Dad still not home, have you heard from him?' Claire tried calling his mobile again, it was still switched off. She knew what he was doing, he was going around poking his nose into their investigation. Maybe she should tell Bob, get all the bad stuff out in the open in one day, but she suspected that if she did, she'd be dismissed from the case and on the next flight home in disgrace. Her dad would head home for his dinner, and she'd talk to him later, find out exactly what he'd been up to and who he'd seen. Maybe she could still keep a lid on this.

  The briefing room was packed with the Jersey team and on screen was Steven Corden who Claire had asked to look into Terry's accounts, plus Lew and a couple of the others. Bob sat at the front of the Jersey room, the link between the two.

  'We're going to hear first from Steven in London who's been looking into Terry's accounts. David Lyle's Jersey neighbour reported that he'd told him he'd seen a pattern that was dodgy. So they've been looking to see if they can spot what he saw.'

  'Yup, we're going to share our screen with you now so we can talk you through what we've found.' A spreadsheet of names and transactions appear in front of them all. 'You can see here the transactions made in the name of J.Parkin, these are the share deals which raised the attention of FCU. They're fairly large, but not so obvious that they would be immediately spotted. The proceeds from these transactions go directly to a Swiss bank account and that's already been verified to be in James Parkin's name. However, what we also discovered, were a series of much smaller shadow transactions by different clients. These smaller clients seemed to choose some of the same deals as Parkin, but they also made several other lucrative purchases. When we started looking into those transactions, it turns out that they too are linked to company news. This appears to be further examples of potential insider dealing.'

  'Why haven't these been picked up before?' Bob questioned.

  'Basically, they're too small to show up on the radar. However,' added Steven, 'we started looking at the bigger picture. We have always thought that the murders were a message, that they were somehow symbolic or a warning. When we started looking at the trading that David Lyle was investigating, we discovered that there were other dealers making similar trades around that same time. None of them are for huge amounts, but if they were combined, even with fees, you are talking about a pretty tidy profit being netted.'

  'Some kind of insider dealing network,' said Bob, thinking aloud.

  'We think it could be, yes,' confirmed Steven. 'We think that the small trades we've found going on with Terry Morgan have been mirrored several times over. There's nothing on the scale of what James Parkin was doing, but collectively, these small deals are a whole lot more interesting. There's a lot more we need to investigate and we've got FCU here involved, but what we could be looking at is some mastermind running an insider dealing network which operates under the radar because it's small transactions, cloaked with other less lucrative trades.'

  'Any idea who could be behind it? Are we thinking James Parkin?'

  'We don't know yet. We have highlighted eight client names in Terry's accounts who we believe are linked to this, but we don't think any of them are real people.'

  The screen changes and eight highlighted names show up among the list on the page: M. Ellis, Edward Stafford, L.Daye, Ursula Watson, Steven Upshott, Ian Gosling, Nicholas Paige and Elaine Aston.

  Claire's heart thumped in her chest and she sat up straight.

  'Melusine,' she said out loud.

  Bob and the rest of the team looked at her.

  'The initials of their first names spell out Melusine, that's the name Terry had written down and David's neighbour said he'd mentioned a name that was like Melanie. It was Melusine. It makes sense. Melusine was half woman and half snake. It tallies with the cobras.'

  'OK. Good work Steven,' Bob said to the screen, 'keep at it and let us know if you can find other accounts like this. We'll look at the significance of these names this end, you focus on finding others.'

  'No problem, and we'll also send through the details of what other companies have had their news breached. If we can track down where the information has come from then we might have a chance of finding out who is behind it.'

  'Where does that leave us with James Parkin?' Gavin Watson, Jersey's FCU lead spoke up.

  'We've charged him with insider dealing,' Bob replied, 'that still stands because there's the evidence trail in his name to the Swiss bank account, but we need to keep an open mind. If James Parkin is behind this network, why go to all the trouble of hiding these transactions and then go and ruin it all by doing some really obvious ones in your own name? Maybe he is being set up as he claims. If he is, who and why him?'

  The briefing broke up with lots of discussion, this had changed the whole focus of the investigation and if anyone thought they were going to be winding down now they'd got James Parkin, that hope was now dashed.

  'DI Falle,' Bob called Claire. Her heart sank, what now?

  'Sir?' she said, as the rest of the officers left the room.

  'How's your mum?' he asked.

  'She's fine thank you,' Claire looked down at her feet.

  'Have you had time to reflect on today?'

  'Yes. I appreciate that I need to forget about Rachel Hill.'

  'Yes. I also think that perhaps I should have done more to make sure that what happened in London hadn't affected you. When you go back I want you to get some help, talk to the psyche,'

  'Yes sir,
no problem.'

  'You've had a bad run of luck, what with Jackie Stiller's death and then Rachel disappearing. Plus we put a lot of pressure on you, maybe you were being pushed for promotion too soon.'

  Claire must have given something away on her face because Bob quickly softened.

  'I'm not wanting to be unfair, and hell, we've all made mistakes, but I just don't get what happened today, how you could have worked yourself up into such a state that you believed Rachel Hill was in Jersey and with your mother.'

  'I don't know Sir, I just promise you that when I saw the woman in the car that day, it looked like her.'

  'How good a look did you get?'

  'It was only quick, but...'

  'You haven't seen Rachel in a year,'

  'I know. Look I'm sorry I promise I'll go and see the psyche when I get back and I promise I will concentrate on this case.'

  'OK. No more slip ups please DI Falle.'

  'No Sir,' But Claire's mind was spinning with the possibility that out there right now was her father, about to land a bombshell on her career prospects. She had to get him to stop before it was too late.

  41

  Gillian, Saturday 11th November 2017, Jersey

  Gillian looked down at the man on the floor. Blood trickled across his forehead where she'd hit him. She didn't think he was dead but either way she was going to need to be quick - make sure none of the blood went on her hall carpet. Peter would help her and then she'd need to get Peter's cases packed. The house in Spain was all set up and ready, she wanted him out the way until everything was all sorted because he wasn't the best at keeping secrets. She'd no idea who knew the man was coming here, she didn’t even know who he was, apart from the fact he wasn’t a police officer. What she did know was that he seemed to have worked out that it was her not James. Time to destroy the computers Peter had used and cover their tracks. She wasn’t going to let this little hiccup wreck her plans. She'd deal with the man later.