Tiger Blood (DS Webber Mystery Book 2)

by Penny Grubb

  ‘Looks like illegal disposal of cattle carcases from the 1960’s,’ Webber said. ‘Coincides with a foot and mouth outbreak. We’re checking but there’s nothing recent turning up.’

  ‘And Tom Jenkinson?’

  Webber outlined the strands of the net they had closing around Jenkinson’s killer.

  ‘But no one in the frame.’

  ‘No names yet,’ Webber admitted, ‘but we’ve shone a spotlight into every corner of Tom Jenkinson’s life, we have to have him … or her in the net somewhere.’

  ‘Links?’ Farrar asked. ‘Jenkinson’s behind-the-scenes contacts and the traffic chaos business. Are you still seeing them as unrelated?’

  Webber nodded. ‘Jenkinson’s mystery man was offering a sizeable sum for the traffic lights scam. Jenkinson kept his ear to the ground. He’d go for something like that. He was after the money. His other contacts were more arms’ length. He was playing the long game. From one side it’s clear he was keeping that area of his life very low key while he had Ayaan actively on his case. This was no stranger killing. It wasn’t random and it was a rush job. It fits with Jenkinson trying to do a double cross on the traffic scam. The story he gave Ayaan won’t have been far off. He was a clever lad. He’d have dressed up a few angles to keep things from us, but he knew how to spin a convincing line close to the truth. If we could have had him back a second time when we knew a bit more, we’d have been home and dry on that side of things, but maybe someone else figured that out.’

  ‘You said from one side. What about from the other?’

  ‘Not good,’ Webber said. ‘The theory there, is that someone got wind that he was moving into Ayaan’s camp and decided to get rid before he could do any damage.’

  ‘Did he know enough to do damage?’

  Webber wobbled his hand in a yes-no gesture. ‘Doesn’t look like it. We’ve copies of everything off his cloud storage, and we’ll get notice if anyone else tries to access it, but no one has to date, which says to me no one’s worried about it. His computer disappeared but that might be just to make it look like a robbery, though it’s possible they destroyed the hardware without realising he’d kept copies.’

  ‘OK, so you’re going with the mystery man for now. Did you have CCTV or have I got that wrong?’

  ‘Yes, we have someone from the street round the back at about the right time. It’s indistinct. Shows an odd gait.’ His gaze searched the space, running down the myriad lists plastered about the place. ‘There.’ He pointed, showing Farrar the Mystery Man heading with its scant data attached.

  ‘Funny walk,’ Farrar read from the board. ‘Is that the best you can do by way of distinguishing features?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It shows on the CCTV. We’ve tried enhancing it but it just becomes less distinct. It’s nothing much, just a bit odd. Like this.’ He pulled back his shoulders and minced across the floor trying to emulate his memory of the grainy footage.

  Behind him Farrar laughed. ‘You look like you’re trying to walk in stilettos, Martyn.’

  Webber smiled. ‘Such witnesses as we have, Jenkinson included of course, say a man, but it could be a woman. And I’m sure I didn’t do justice to the walk. It’s odd whichever sex the mystery person is.’

  Farrar’s gaze swept the empty space. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘They’re out talking to a group of students who lived in the same block practically on top of Jenkinson. They’re just back from a three-week exchange trip abroad but they’d have been on the spot when Jenkinson was claiming to have had his visits from the mystery man. Students keep odd hours. We’re hoping to flesh out the bits of sightings we’ve already had. We’ll be catching up in the morning,’ he added, in case Farrar had been expecting a briefing tonight.

  Farrar moved forward to study the photographs of Jenkinson’s room. ‘No forensics,’ he murmured.

  ‘Not a trace,’ Webber said. ‘Cleanest student flat in history.’

  The long second-hand on the wall clock ticked its way towards the hour. He didn’t expect Davis’s team back tonight, but Suzie and Ahmed would probably return to dump whatever they’d gone to collect from the gravel pits. The old cases weren’t high on his radar now he’d solved the mystery of the anomalous growth on that deserted stretch, but he wanted to have things wrapped up before Suzie got back because Melinda was dropping off her car to be serviced and would call in any time now for a lift home.

  They’d spent an uncommunicative weekend together. He’d scrutinized her boards while she was out but the new entries were crammed in, written in shorthand that he couldn’t decipher. She wasn’t keeping it from him, just using contractions to fit everything into the inadequate space.

  Looking back, it seemed they’d both got stubborn. When she’d arrived home on Saturday he’d been irrationally annoyed that he’d been so worried about her. She’d clearly been bursting with something to tell, but she’d been sniffy about talking in front of Sam. Then the local news had shown the gravel pits; his name had been mentioned. He’d waited for her to ask but she’d feigned indifference.

  Once Sam was in bed he’d assumed they’d have it all out but wasn’t going to invite another snub so hadn’t asked any questions. Maybe she too had decided she wouldn’t be the one to initiate discussion, so they’d watched a DVD in fairly frosty silence that had leaked over into Sunday.

  Tonight he would make the effort, unthaw relations between them again, but he didn’t want her arriving at the front desk at the same time Suzie returned with Ahmed. Time was getting on.

  ‘Do you think we’re done with the traffic shenanigans?’ Farrar’s question popped out of nowhere. It took Webber a moment to realise that the Chief Super had intercepted his glance at the clock. This was the time of night the strange events had kicked off.

  ‘Nothing for almost three weeks now, nothing since Jenkinson.’

  ‘Do you think he told his mother anything?’

  Webber thought over the briefings he’d had from Davis. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty clear he went to see her and he wasn’t one for family visits for the sake of it. But we need to get an unembellished version out of her. Davis is going carefully with it.’ He smiled. ‘Ayaan Ahmed’s itching to have a go at her himself.’

  ‘Any mileage in that?’

  Webber shook his head. ‘Ayaan’s influence was with Tom, not his mother. It’s a shame. Ayaan would have won the war. Jenkinson was tipping towards mentoring some of the youngsters the way Ayaan had mentored him, getting a taste for the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Until some bastard cut him down.’ Farrar’s gaze turned to the shots of the walkway; the foundations where Jenkinson had died. ‘Where’s Ahmed, anyway?’

  ‘Out at the gravel pits with Suzie. They had a call.’

  ‘Why the interest? I thought they’d found animal remains.’

  ‘Yes, they’ve excavated three pits. So far cattle and small animal bones – dogs and cats. All very degraded. Someone called in about something in the third pit. I don’t know what.’

  Farrar heaved a sigh. ‘Well, don’t turn the place into a cold case unit, Martyn, and certainly not a veterinary one. But tell me about Davis. Are you happy with him? Is he pulling his weight?’

  ‘Yes.’ Webber was surprised at the sincerity he could put into the affirmative. Davis had an oddly quiet way of working but he made steady progress; kept his team up to scratch. He was about to comment on the transformation from bored DI sitting it out to retirement to safe pair of hands when the clatter of footsteps and voices stopped him.

  Ahmed and Suzie, dripping wet, boots caked with thick mud marched into the big office, their chat and laughter cut off abruptly at the sight of Webber and Farrar standing there.

  Webber took in the evidence bag that swung from Suzie’s hand. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I’m sending it for analysis,’ she said with a touch of defensiveness, ‘but we want some better photographs before we let it go.

  ‘What is it?’
r />   ‘If I knew that I wouldn’t need the photos,’ she muttered.

  Ahmed shot her an alarmed glance and leapt in with, ‘We don’t know. We’ve got pictures of it in situ but with the weather, we thought we’d just take a couple here in a proper light.’

  ‘OK.’ Webber nodded. He took the point. The site had swallowed more resources than he’d wanted, but he’d kept it to a minimum for old animal carcasses. And an artefact older than the car they’d pulled out a scant few weeks ago wasn’t going to climb anyone’s priority list. He was surprised they were even thinking of sending it for testing. It might never reach the top of the list with everything else that was queuing for attention.

  Farrar voiced the thought. ‘Why do think it’s worth testing at all? What’s so special about it?’

  Suzie shrugged. ‘We don’t know, but it was at the same depth as what they think are more remains. It’s plastic so it’s not rotted down. Possibly a large box that’s been crushed over the years. This could be part of a handle. It’s conceivable there’s forensic trace caught in the twisty bit.’

  She held up the bag for inspection. Orange plastic, an unusual shade. It wasn’t a shape Webber could make sense of. It could almost have been a section ripped from a plastic football except for the small protuberance and that the curve was more eggshaped than spherical.

  ‘Suppose it’s the handle off a box,’ Ahmed put in. ‘It might have had a body in it. A plastic coffin.’

  ‘What makes you say that and if it hasn’t rotted where’s the rest of it?’

  Suzie pulled a face. ‘They might find more … it might have been crushed. It’s just that they found a tooth, a human tooth. That’s why they called it in.’

  One tooth doesn’t make a crime, thought Webber, no matter how deep it’s buried. ‘Any bones?’ he asked.

  Suzie shook her head. ‘It’s the terrain, and after this length of time, they say we’re lucky to have an odd tooth in recognisable shape. They think they’ll be sifting soil for bone fragments.’

  Farrar gave an irritable gesture. ‘They unearth Roman remains all over the place in pretty good shape. Why should modern bodies crumble to dust? And what’s to say we don’t have Romans here?’

  ‘The archaeologists have had a look,’ said Ahmed, ‘but they’re pretty certain it’s not. They’ll know for sure when they get some soil analysis done.’

  ‘And they didn’t bury Romans with plastic artefacts,’ muttered Suzie.

  Farrar glared at her. No longer the blue-eyed favourite, thought Webber. She should watch her step.

  She turned to him with a bright smile. ‘What do you think, Martyn?’ He was taken aback by her coquettish tone. Was she deliberately winding Farrar up? She could be a real idiot at times.

  No. The train of thought froze. Not an idiot, a vicious little cow, stirring things just because she could. Reflected in the glass partition barely even in his peripheral vision he caught a familiar shape, familiar colours. She shouldn’t have been allowed through. Suzie would have a clear view from where she was standing, but with just enough angle to pretend she hadn’t noticed Melinda in the corridor outside.

  ‘Get the thing photographed and sent off,’ he snapped. ‘Then do something with that lot.’ He pointed at the suspects list that Ahmed and Suzie had compiled for Robert Morgan. ‘Just because it happened 30 years ago doesn’t mean you can swan about for another 30 years. Focus on the job in hand.’

  Suzie flushed and pursed her lips. Ahmed shuffled his feet, a picture of guilt; clearly he had been focusing on the wrong things, but that wasn’t news.

  ‘Come through,’ he said to Farrar, turning his back on the two of them. ‘Interesting development on Jenkinson.’

  Racking his brain for some new detail to tell Farrar that might come under the heading of interesting development, he strode towards his office and was able to put on a credible start of surprise to see Melinda standing waiting for him.

  Farrar greeted her warmly which was a relief. He might have bawled someone out for letting her in unchaperoned. ‘A sight for sore eyes, Melinda. It’ll be good to have you back on the team. Not long now, is it?’

  Webber watched his wife drag her attention away from Suzie and Ahmed, scurrying about their tasks, and return Farrar’s smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes … I’m talking dates with HR.’

  Was she? He didn’t know that. She hadn’t talked dates with him. He watched Farrar gallantly wave her ahead of them into the office and saw her peep sideways over Farrar’s shoulder with such a piercing glance that he looked back himself. It seemed to be Ahmed in her line of sight, not Suzie. Ahmed holding an evidence bag up to the light, the gaudy orange of the plastic fragment undimmed by age.

  Chapter 29

  Ahmed stared at the suspects list. After all these years wasn’t it pretty good to have found five names and unfair of Webber to have a go just because they hadn’t yet cut it down? Robert Morgan’s death hadn’t even been classified as a murder until the other week. But maybe there was some trimming to be done. Pamela Morgan could surely be crossed off. She hadn’t been anywhere near the scene; she hadn’t gained from her husband’s death.

  He opened his mouth to suggest they put a line through her, but Suzie was rubbing at her hair with a towel, her stare targeted across the corridor at Webber’s office. Seeing the look on her face, he closed his mouth and turned back to the list. There was the suicide of course. They should dig deeper into that before discounting Pamela, but not yet because she was a long-shot and they should concentrate on the more promising leads. Mentally he bracketed Brad Tippet with Pamela Morgan as another outsider. Enough time had been spent on them. He thought about the neighbour, Mrs Bell. He’d been coming from her house when he’d bumped into Melinda Webber that time, or rather when she’d bumped into him. Instinctively he shot a narrowedeyed look towards the closed door where she’d disappeared with Webber and Farrar.

  ‘What’re you thinking, Ayaan?’ Suzie watched him from across the office space.

  He looked again at the list before he answered. ‘Mrs Bell … Tippet’s neighbour. No one’s ever asked her about the car, beyond did she see it that night?’

  ‘And?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. It just struck me, that’s all.’

  ‘D’you want to go back to her?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Tippet and Pamela Morgan are way down the bottom of the list. We need to focus on the top end.’

  ‘Who are you putting up there, big brother post office?’

  Again he shook his head. ‘He’s in the mix somewhere but I think Will Jones is the front runner. He was the ring leader of the animal rights lot.’ Ahmed plucked a marker pen from the table and drew a circle around the name. ‘And Gary Yeatman,’ – another circle – ‘Jones went to see him when he got out of prison but Yeatman wouldn’t have anything to do with him. We need that first hand. Can we have a word with Yeatman’s wife? She’s still around.’

  ‘She’s the one who knows the Webbers, isn’t she? I wonder how.’

  ‘Melinda Webber,’ corrected Ahmed, as they both turned to look at the closed door. ‘I think she met her somewhere recently. I don’t think they know her well. I don’t think Martyn knows her at all.’

  ‘Yes, well, if we need to talk to her, we’ll do it. We don’t need their say-so. Her husband’s death was a suicide wasn’t it, like Pamela Morgan?’

  ‘Suicide, yes, but not like Pamela Morgan. She took an overdose; he drove his car off the road.’

  ‘Yeah, that cruise control thing,’ Suzie said, her gaze unfocussed.

  ‘Like Arthur Trent in the Jenkinson enquiry.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ said Suzie. ‘Don’t look for complications. God, is that the time already? Come on, let’s get that thing photographed and packed up.’

  Ahmed arranged a desk lamp to show the plastic fragment to best effect and held a ruler next to it leaving Suzie to click the camera. After Webber’s outburst he was no longer sure why they were bothering an
d said so.

  ‘Because they think they’ve got human remains,’ Suzie reminded him, ‘and this was at the same depth.’

  He nodded, depressed at the implications. Yet another ancient case to be untangled that would leach resources from the here and now of Tom’s death. Suzie looked tired. He offered to stay and tie loose ends and she accepted with alacrity, shaking out her still sodden coat before putting it on. He raised his hand in acknowledgement of her, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and bent over the orange plastic, carefully repacking it to avoid any disturbance to the twisty bit that might yield secrets to a forensic probe.

  The fading of her footsteps down the corridor coincided with the click of a door opening. He read the situation immediately and felt no surprise to hear Melinda Webber’s voice greeting him. It was an effort to look her in the eye with any semblance of a pleasant smile. It’s just as though you were waiting for her to leave. He’d have liked to say it aloud.

  She murmured something about leaving them to discuss things, which was all very well but she shouldn’t be here at all. Webber should have escorted her back to the reception area, not just let her loose like this.

  ‘What on earth’s that orange thing, Ayaan?’

  ‘Oh … well … we don’t really know. Probably nothing.’

  ‘I heard about the work you did with the lad who was killed.’ He watched her gaze stray to the evidence boards. She shouldn’t see any of this. ‘Martyn said you were winning; said you’d have turned him right round in another few months.’

  ‘Did he?’ He looked at her surprised. The things that had come to light about Tom since his murder suggested almost the reverse; that Tom had been after recruiting him, Ahmed, to a life of crime and given the duplicity of his dealings it looked on paper like he might have been succeeding.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Melinda said. ‘Martyn was quite clear about it.’

  She picked up the evidence bag and held it to the light, turning it slowly as she inspected it. Ahmed felt a sudden certainty that she wanted to touch the object, that she would pluck it free of its protective polythene. He found himself hovering at her elbow ready to grab it back.