Tiger Blood (DS Webber Mystery Book 2)

by Penny Grubb

  * * *

  As Webber sank into the silky magenta-patterned cushions of the settee and accepted a wafer-thin bone-china cup of fierce tea, he felt that he’d walked through a time warp, not just up a driveway and into a house. The unsmiling elderly woman who’d let him in could have come straight from a 1950s film set, just like the room into which she ushered him. He’d offered his ID but it had barely been given a glance and now lay on the table. He placed his teacup carefully beside it and looked across at the elderly man in the chair opposite. Farrar’s father. He only knew the headlines; ex-military, ex-Foreign Office, ex-mountaineer. It must have been Davis’s call that had tipped Melinda over the edge. She’d catapulted him into a situation that would be a red rag to Farrar the moment he found out about it.

  Farrar’s father was distant, as if he couldn’t be bothered. His housekeeper, if that’s who the woman was – there were no introductions – fired genteel resentment at him as she gave him his tea. Farrar senior assumed his son had sent Webber. He didn’t contradict the idea.

  ‘I go every year in May, on the 19th,’ the old man said, but without much interest. He seemed more resigned to answering questions than keen to do so.

  It was when the story was over that the timbre of the interview changed. Webber thought about Donald Farrar’s insubstantial answers, his talk of the young chap he’d half recognised, of the young woman he’d never seen before, the Dr China of Lana’s note, and he tried to see behind the words. ‘Something about the young woman touched you,’ he ventured. ‘What was it?’

  At that point he’d seen a glimmer of surprise in the old man’s face. He watched as Donald Farrar reached for his glasses and held out his hand for Webber’s ID. Having inspected it, he scrutinised Webber, then his eyes narrowed in a speculative look. After a moment, his lips curved to a smile. ‘She spoke as I left the table,’ he said. ‘I think she said, “Poor Quinny.”‘

  ‘Quinny?’ Webber queried. ‘Do you know what she meant?’

  Donald Farrar shook his head. ‘I don’t know what she meant, but I know she meant it. It came from the heart. If I’m honest, I didn’t listen to much of what they said to each other. Wasn’t interested. The young have their agendas. If I’d known …’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘Known that she was going to tell you about Pamela Morgan?’ Webber prompted.

  ‘Was it a suicide?’

  A movement caught Webber’s attention. The woman who’d let him in was in the garden beyond the French windows. It still drizzled out there. He wondered what she was doing. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She left a note.’ He thought about the note being unsigned. It had been long and hand-written. There were no doubts that she’d authored it. He told Donald Farrar about Robert Morgan, about the animal rights stunt gone wrong.

  ‘Nasty way to go,’ Farrar commented. ‘But odd she should wait 15 years.’

  ‘Yes, I thought so. It might be to do with the perpetrators being released. I don’t know.’

  ‘And the friend she addressed the note to?’

  Webber spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I haven’t even found out who it was. John asked me to have a quick look, but we’re too stretched to do much. We don’t have the resources to dig deep.’ Webber hesitated. Commenting on resources sounded silly when he’d come all this way. ‘I have the weekend off.’ That too, sounded daft.

  ‘I said I didn’t listen to much of what they said to each other, but I heard some of it. I think that’s why that last comment stuck. It wasn’t just the way she said it. I remember thinking at the time that their talk was full of Qs.’

  ‘Qs?’

  ‘Quinny … quintets … Quintina … Now, I only heard her say Quinny that once, but he mentioned quintets a time or two. She just brushed it off. And Quintina was mentioned by them both. He was … I don’t really know … resentful I think gets closest. She was awkward. But assuming Quintina and Quinny are one and the same, she spoke quite differently when she thought the young man wasn’t listening.’

  Webber wrote the words, tracing his pen around the capital Q of Quintina. He didn’t doubt that Farrar’s father had plucked the significant exchanges from the words he’d overheard. Even if he hadn’t been interested at the time, his decades of experience would have kicked in to log the key points. One of the things Farrar senior was unable to give him was much of a physical description.

  ‘I struggle with my eyes in that sort of place. Too many lights everywhere.’

  ‘Do you know a man called Brad Tippet?’

  Donald Farrar sat up with a start. ‘That’s it!’ He gave Webber a grin. ‘I knew I knew him. That’s who the young man reminded me of. Tippet. Must have been a relation, his son maybe. Does Tippet have a son?’

  Webber could only shrug a don’t-know. He’d never been so badly prepared to interview a witness.

  When he sauntered back down the drive just an hour after he’d arrived, he felt buoyed up. Farrar’s father had made a huge effort to delve into his memory, and John Farrar must have considered the possibility six months ago of it being Tippet. Why else had he written the name? A bigger puzzle was why he’d never talked to his father about it, but clearly he hadn’t.

  The car was parked by the gates. Melinda climbed out as he approached. He saw from the defensiveness of her stance that she was expecting a row, but his head was full of the things Farrar senior had told him.

  ‘Quite a set-up he has here,’ he told her as he climbed into the driving seat. ‘I don’t think John and his father get on, but I’ve found out why he wrote Tippet’s name on the file. Looks like it was Tippet’s son who approached Farrar senior back in May. I wonder how he guessed. What have you two been doing?’ He turned see Sam clutching a plastic toy.

  ‘Called in on a friend,’ Melinda said. ‘So it was worth seeing him, was it?’

  He laughed as he nodded. ‘But if you drive off like that again without your seat belt, I’ll book you.’

  She didn’t react, but he had an idea she was holding back a smile. ‘You’ve had a couple of calls,’ she told him. ‘Davis again. Wants you to ring back. And Ayaan Ahmed. Ditto.’

  He glanced at his phone in the tray under the handbrake. He blew out a sigh as he set off down the narrow lane. ‘Davis will have heard from the lab. He can email me. I wonder what Ayaan wants.’

  ‘Davis was quite insistent, sounded upset when I said you weren’t available.’

  Upset? ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Call him back.’

  She clicked in the number and switched it to speakerphone. ‘Martyn Webber,’ he said as Davis answered. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I’ve had the lab results back.’

  He wouldn’t have used the term ‘upset’ but Mel was right, this wasn’t Davis’s normal laid back tone. He sounded on edge. ‘And?’

  ‘It’s not big brother post office in the back of that car. It’s not any relation, and we’ve no match. We don’t know who it is.’

  Webber sighed inwardly. This was going to end up in a full underwater search, he could feel it. And that wouldn’t do anything to appease Farrar’s temper. He listened as Davis told him what he’d initiated, the trawl of missing persons reported around the time the car was known to have disappeared, the interrogation of the original dive team. He felt surprise to learn that Davis could shift himself when he had to. He supposed he’d had Farrar on his case. This wasn’t the sort of loose end anyone wanted. He wondered if he’d be able to have a coherent conversation with Farrar by next week.

  ‘Are you going to have that pit dragged?’ Mel asked as he ended the call to Davis.

  ‘Probably have to. We can’t leave it with some poor sod rotting at the bottom of it.’

  When she offered to call Ayaan Ahmed back, he knew her motive was to keep herself up to date on the detail he might otherwise not tell her, but that was fine. They were going to need neutral ground over the next few months if they were to keep talking at all.

  He wondered about Ahmed. It must be something about J
enkinson. Maybe he’d got a name. But then why ring Webber and not one of the team who were on duty today. It wasn’t like Ahmed to pester anyone on a day off.

  ‘Did you tell him I’m not at work today?’

  ‘Yes. He said sorry, but he needed to talk to you. He said it’s about Jenkinson.’

  He felt a frown crease his brow. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made that Ahmed should call him and not the team back at the station. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Call him back.’

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘Thanks for getting back to me, Martyn. I’m sorry, I know you’re off today but I can’t let this lie. There’s more to it than they think.’

  Webber slowed the car as they left the hamlet behind and headed out into open country. What had been a mist was now a steady drizzle. Hard to know where they could go that wouldn’t be every bit as miserable as sitting in silence at home. Sam, now wide awake, began to intone, ‘Oy oy oy,’ and Webber felt the rhythmic thump of his son’s shoes in the back of the seat. It didn’t happen to Mel. She had the seat further forward, out of his reach. He saw her now in his peripheral vision as she turned to crinkle her eyes at Sam. He needed to see her smiling at him like that again.

  ‘Hang on, Ayaan, you’re losing me. What’s happened? Last I knew was that you had Jenkinson coming in this morning to look through some photos.’

  ‘He didn’t turn up. It looks like he’s done a runner. I got the warden to let me into his room. He’s cleared his stuff. There was just a stack of drugs paraphernalia.’ Webber heard a level of disgust in Ahmed’s voice. He imagined the upset of seeing his successful mentoring going full circle and heading towards Hull gaol. ‘They think it was all an act from start to finish, but I wouldn’t have missed that. I know Tom. There’s more to it.’

  Webber blew out a sigh. Mel was still leaning into the back playing some game that made Sam giggle, but she was listening to every word.

  ‘He was pretty well prepared for you, Ayaan. I mean he seemed shocked to see you, but he had a story all ready when it was needed.’ Not only that, thought Webber, but when he appeared to give up altogether the story had been incomplete, giving them nothing to go on, unless the gravel pit was anything, but that too could have been a carefully prepared diversion which did nothing to lessen the unease of the coincidence. ‘You said there’s more to it. What do you mean?’

  ‘I think there’s the promise of money behind it. He’d go to ground for that. Either he was holding something back about his dealings with the mystery man …’

  ‘Or woman,’ murmured Webber, thinking about the anomalies in Jenkinson’s tale. He was aware that Mel shot him a curious glance.

  ‘… or he’s trying something stupid. But there’s more to it than they think.’

  Webber replayed Jenkinson’s carefully crafted tale, with all its layers. The most likely explanation, though Ahmed wouldn’t like it, was that it had been honed with Ahmed in mind. Maybe there was no third party involved at all. They were chasing the supposed child accomplice, Emmett, and the CCTV from the night Jenkinson said he and his mate had followed the silver cars, but if Jenkinson’s story was made up, he wouldn’t want to risk another face to face to have it pulled to pieces. His record said he was the type to act first and think later. Ahmed’s professional pride had taken a knock with the assumption of Jenkinson holed up somewhere laughing at how he’d been duped.

  ‘What sort of stupid?’ he asked.

  ‘If he told me the truth, he was after rooking that man for some setup with the traffic lights. Maybe he doesn’t want to give that up … maybe he’s going to use police involvement to see what he can get. Money for keeping quiet, something like that.’

  ‘What are you suggesting we do about it, Ayaan?’

  ‘You need to up the urgency on finding him. Find out what it’s really about. There’s more to it. This isn’t the Tom Jenkinson I’ve known for the past two years.’

  Webber turned his attention to the junction that took them back on to the main road. ‘I’ll see where we are on Monday morning, Ayaan. But you need to keep an eye out for him in Scarborough. If he wants to keep out of our way, he’ll probably head for home.’

  After she’d cut the call, Melinda put down his phone and said, ‘What was so urgent about that, that it couldn’t wait till next week?’

  ‘Just wanted to get his side in first,’ Webber said. ‘If the lad’s gone to ground, it looks like he had Ayaan round his little finger. Bruised pride.’

  ‘Could he be right? Is there more to it?’

  Webber shrugged. His goal was to focus this weekend on Mel and Sam, emphasise how strong they were as a family, start to draw Mel out of her angry bubble. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to keep an open mind on it. Ayaan knows his stuff, but he’s emotionally wrapped up in this one. Tom Jenkinson was a big success story for him. Whatever the truth of it, it’ll keep till Monday.’

  * * *

  The following afternoon, the weather had lifted. It was as though they’d swapped countries. Clear skies made for a hard, cold day; the bright autumn sun making a warm cocoon of the car. Webber was behind the wheel again, Mel at his side, Sam in the back. They shouldn’t be with him, but Mel had been too determined and he was supposed to have the weekend off. He hadn’t found a way to say no. The words echoed in his head. It’ll keep till Monday. Talk about tempting fate.

  After a sham of a family Sunday lunch, with both of them talking to Sam and around each other, the phone had rung. Instinct told Webber what sort of call it would be so it hadn’t come as a surprise to hear Davis’s apologetic voice at the end of the line. And something in his expression had alerted Mel. She made no secret of picking up the extension to listen in.

  Webber brushed aside Davis’s apologies for another disturbance to his weekend. ‘The … uh … the Chief Super said to call you. I’m on my way up to the gravel pits. We’ve had an emergency call. The site owners, they’ve sent their divers down again. They’ve found something else.’

  ‘What the hell are they doing there at all? The site’s supposed to be closed off.’ He heard the rebuke in his tone, knowing it wasn’t fair. Keeping that open site secure would have taken a battalion. He tried to soften his voice as he asked, ‘What have they got?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just had the call from John Farrar to get on to you and to hot-foot it up there.’

  As he put back the handset, Webber glanced at Melinda expecting to be the target of an unsheathed-daggers glare. But no, she wasn’t looking at him. She was lost in thought, eyes unfocussed. ‘How would they get a dive team on to the site?’ she asked. ‘And why risk it?’

  ‘It’s taped off,’ Webber told her, ‘but we can’t keep it secure 24/7. They’re only a small group, the ones who own the site. We’ve told them to stay clear of that gravel pit but it’s their livelihood we’re threatening all the time we’re keeping them from it. It’ll have been those interviews.’

  ‘How d’you mean? Come on, Sam, let’s have you changed.’ She picked up the boy as she looked at Webber. Her expression was interested, open. It might be fleeting but he could see that for a moment she’d forgotten the hostility that had underlain every interaction since she’d found out about Suzie Harmer. She was right of course, the site owners had been cowed into acquiescence to start with. The interviews were the only things that had happened that could have made a difference.

  As she saw to Sam, he allowed himself to think aloud. ‘Davis got them interviewing the divers who’d found the car. It’s a small outfit. I think there are only five of them, and they are the dive team. They’ve pooled their resources to make a go of this venture. We hadn’t talked to the two who’d actually found it. I told Davis to get the detail from them on what they’d seen. No one knew at that point that we weren’t going to match the DNA with the third brother of the post office trio.’

  ‘So these people could lose everything if this delay goes on too long?’ Her concentration was on Sam’s arm and getting it to mesh with
the sleeve of a pullover, but her tone was still all focused on the case. It occurred to him that she must miss being part of the dialogue, batting theories back and forth, easing out the answers from the remnants of crime. She’d always been good at it.

  ‘Yes, they’re probably kicking themselves for not keeping shtum about the car in the first place. But they must have pushed for answers. How long? How serious? All that stuff.’

  She sat Sam up and battled the chubby fists that tried to join in getting buttons and buttonholes together. Webber thought the outfit a bit on the warm side.

  ‘Someone’s told them more than they should, d’you think?’

  He tipped his head in a yes-no gesture. ‘Probably nothing concrete, but they’ll have got the idea. The papers got on to the car pretty quickly so they could easily have researched the post office raid.’

  ‘You can see their point. Go and get your boots, Sam.’ She stood the child on his feet and he toddled towards the footwear. Webber didn’t think he needed boots, but wasn’t going to comment. ‘You won’t hand back the site,’ she went on, ‘because there might be a 30-year-old corpse. But you’re not going to go down and look because it costs too much.’

  ‘And they have a dive team ready and able,’ he finished. ‘And if they could pull out whatever’s down there they could get things moving. Probably thought it well worth whatever rebuke they were going to get.’

  ‘Well, it looks like they’ve found it.’

  ‘Found something anyway. Does Sam need his jacket on? Won’t he be too hot?’

  ‘No, it’ll be cold up by those gravel pits.’

  * * *

  Webber showed his ID, asking questions of the two uniformed constables as he ducked under the replenished stretch of tape that flapped by the side of the tattered original. Something had been found, they weren’t sure what, but focus was on a half-built walkway as well as the pit. The Chief Super was on the site somewhere with DI Davis.