Tiger Blood (DS Webber Mystery Book 2)

by Penny Grubb

  ‘Hmm.’ Webber’s tone was noncommittal. Ahmed clenched his fist, a silent tribute to the triumph in Davis’s tone. They’d homed in on a prime suspect. It was just a matter of time.

  ‘Ayaan? What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh … uh …’ With a guilty start, Ahmed juggled his phone. ‘I was just coming to see you. Um … just checking a message from Suzie. I’m going out to see Edith Stevenson.’

  ‘Agreed to see you, has she?’ Davis gave him a hard look. He felt a slight flush warm his face. It must be crystal clear that he’d been eavesdropping.

  ‘Well … not yet, but Suzie’s going to see Michael Drake and I’m going to call in on Mrs Bell before I go to Stevenson’s. We’re confident we’ll get something to loosen her tongue.’

  ‘Which one of us were you coming to see?’ Webber asked. He looked distracted, mildly irritated at the interruption.

  ‘Er … either of you really. It’s that body underneath Jones behind the gravel pits, it’s big brother post office … uh … I mean the eldest brother from the post office raid.’

  Webber nodded. ‘Predictable,’ he said. ‘I wonder if that makes it a family feud after all. Dumped about the same time as the car, right?’

  Ahmed murmured assent. ‘Only that’s not all …’

  ‘Oh God, what now?’

  He told them about the third body deep in the makeshift grave.

  ‘45 years ago?’ Webber sounded incredulous.

  Ahmed outlined what he’d learnt from the woman at the lab. ‘Probably dumped at the time they were testing for rerouting the bypass.’ He explained about the digging equipment. ‘Next one in the same pit was the post office brother about 15 years later, and Jones is the most recent about 20 years ago which matches the time he was known to have come back to the area.’

  ‘Who is it, the third one?’

  ‘We don’t know. They haven’t estimated age or sex or anything yet. She’s optimistic they’ll get something. The remains are better preserved than the one above it. Something to do with the depth and the soil and so on. But she hasn’t anything so far. She was just … um …’

  ‘Getting in quick with the bad news,’ completed Webber dryly. ‘What’s the link between these bodies, any ideas?’

  Ahmed shook his head. ‘As yet nothing …’ He swallowed the word concrete. ‘Nothing solid, but circumstantially it has to be the same person coming back, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Or someone who knew about the earlier grave,’ put in Davis. ‘OK, get on to missing persons, all that, you know what to do.’

  Webber let out a sigh. ‘We’ve no extra resources for a 45-year-old body, not just now anyway. Have the press got it?’

  Ahmed shook his head. ‘We talked about it. We think it should stay under wraps. We have 24 hour surveillance on that site. It’s possible someone might get twitchy about how far down we’ve dug, if they’ve heard about the first two and know there’s another one down there. We’ve had our share of ghouls out sightseeing. We’re logging them all. No one of any interest to date.’

  Webber nodded his approval. ‘OK, let’s see what happens. You get on with wherever it was you were going.’ He turned to Davis, drew in a breath to speak and then stopped, looking round at Ahmed again. ‘What? Is there something else?’

  ‘Well, no … yes … um … I couldn’t help overhearing. Tom. You’ve found a link to a big drugs cartel.’

  Webber shot a sideways glance at Davis who answered with the ghost of a shrug. ‘You can’t be involved, Ayaan, you know that. But we’re close. This case won’t go cold.’

  ‘He’d have told me,’ Ahmed burst out. ‘Maybe not two years ago but he’d changed. He was turning his life round. I know he was. Whatever he was in, he was in too deep, but he’d have told me.’

  Webber’s stare bored into him. ‘Did he tell you anything, Ayaan? Anything at all?’

  With a feeling of defeat, Ahmed shook his head. ‘I’ve been over and over the past two years. I’ve even had his “Kids with Potential” records out. I can’t find anything that matches something as big as this.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, Ayaan, I think you’re right. He would have told you. I just wish he’d made up his mind to it sooner.’

  As Ahmed hurried away pulling on his coat he reran the overheard fragments. Boots Boy was wingman to someone called Streetwise, and now Boots Boy had been eliminated from the suspects list for Tom’s murder. That left Streetwise. As far as he could work it out, they still struggled for a name but their positive ID of Boots Boy had been the bridge they needed. They’d have this Streetwise character soon and could only hope he’d be within their jurisdiction when they found him … or her.

  Suzie wanted him to go straight to Edith Stevenson, but Suzie wasn’t here. His first call would be to Mrs Bell, the interview he’d done just before Melinda Webber had collared him in that coffee shop. This time he would ask all the questions about the Tippets that should have been asked 30 years ago.

  He was on his way through the door when his phone buzzed. It was Suzie. Her voice was low, her tone urgent. ‘Ayaan, where are you?’

  ‘Just setting off now. I had to update–’

  ‘Never mind that.’ She cut across him. ‘Find some excuse to ring Michael Drake. I’m with him now. He’s out of the room. He won’t be long. Ring him. Push him to trust me with intel about his wife … where she’s gone … anything. He’s on the verge of telling me. I need you to push him over the edge.’

  ‘But … Why am I ringing him? What …?’

  ‘Just do it!’ The line went dead.

  He paused, didn’t want to go back to the office and risk being quizzed by Davis. On the other hand it was freezing outside. The foyer was quiet. He pushed his mind over what he and Michael had talked about the times they’d met. He supposed he could be calling just to check on how they both were after the trauma of Tiffany’s suicide attempt. The ring tone sounded in his ear. Three … four … five … then it was answered.

  ‘Hello Michael, it’s Ayaan Ahmed. How are you?’

  ‘DC Ahmed? One of your colleagues is here.’ Michael sounded surprised. As well he might, thought Ahmed rerunning Webber’s perennial comments about lack of resources. Here was Michael Drake getting personal service from two officers.

  ‘Oh yes, that’ll be Sergeant Harmer,’ he said. ‘Is your wife there too?’

  ‘No, she’s still away. She …’

  ‘Talk to Sergeant Harmer, Michael. She’s just the person to help you and Tiffany. She used to work with …’ He tripped mentally on the phrase rape crisis centre, not at all appropriate, and gabbled out a jumble of words ‘… special training … relevance … problems … You should talk to her about Tiffany.’

  Michael must know he was spouting rubbish; he could only hope the man’s instinct for compliance remained strong.

  ‘Sergeant Harmer,’ Michael’s voice was low, hesitant, ‘she’s quite a … forceful sort of person.’ It was almost as though he was asking for help.

  Ahmed smiled. Now who’s the bully, he thought.

  * * *

  Webber watched Ahmed stride away from the station. He had a vague idea he should know where he was off to, hadn’t he said when he’d been telling him and Davis about the third body in the old grave? His mind wasn’t on Ahmed. It was on Tom Jenkinson. It troubled him that Boots Boy had been so easily eliminated. Davis was cock-a-hoop to have shrunk his suspects list after the frustrations of the past week but Webber wasn’t ready to celebrate. They had a strong front runner but he wasn’t comfortable with the idea that this Streetwise man had killed Jenkinson.

  ‘If Streetwise is as big a player as he’s painted, then what’s he doing getting his hands dirty with Tom Jenkinson? I mean who is Jenkinson to an outfit like that? A possible new recruit; small fry? He steps out of line and they get rid of him, but how is he more than a minor irritant? Guy like that, he’d send in one of his wingmen, not do the job himself … or herself,’ he added after a pause. He’d be surprised
to learn that Streetwise was a woman but it didn’t do to close off any avenues.

  ‘From what we know he’s an out-and-out psychopath,’ Davis said. ‘Enjoys the hands-on. It’s how people like that climb the tree, no one wants to get in their way.’

  Webber conceded the point with a shrug. ‘I’m not saying he isn’t a strong frontrunner, but without hard evidence to put him in the frame, we can’t eliminate the rest of the list.’

  Davis let out a sigh. Webber understood his frustration. They did have a good frontrunner but this wasn’t ancient history like Ahmed and Suzie were chasing. He wanted solid evidence. The crime was recent, evidence was there for the taking if they could find it. They had to uncover it before it began to dissolve into the landscape. He didn’t want to think about Streetwise evaporating from the enquiry the way Boots Boy had, because that would open up the possibility he’d told Ahmed wouldn’t happen. The leads petering out one by one, resources having to be pulled, the case gradually going cold.

  ‘You were chasing some CCTV,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘Where did that go?’

  Davis pulled a face. ‘Useless. For whatever reason they can’t enhance it, not the stretch with the guy we want. Or did you mean that footage of Edith Stevenson?’ he added. ‘The analysis is back but I haven’t looked yet.’

  ‘Come on.’ Webber turned to head for the office. ‘Let’s see if we can at least cut her out.’ He didn’t have any real doubts but it would be a relief to strike a line through Edith Stevenson’s name. She didn’t belong in Tom Jenkinson’s realm; she belonged with the cold case. Edith Stevenson … wasn’t that who Ahmed had said he was on his way to see?

  Davis was at the keyboard, searching emails for the report. ‘Here we are. The odd walk. The style … hang on … more or less identical. No, wait a minute …’ Webber had to hold back from barging Davis out of the way to see for himself. ‘They remark on the similarity,’ Davis continued. ‘I was unfair on Ayaan. He wasn’t making it up.’

  ‘They’re not saying it could be her?’ Webber’s mind began to spin with the implications.

  ‘No, no … They say … chances of it being the same person …’ Davis reeled off the percentages, skipping over the statistical jargon, clearly as impatient as Webber to get to the final verdict. ‘It’s not her. Definitely not. Chance in a million … thank God for that.’

  Webber nodded taking in a breath to slow his heartrate which had begun to race. There was no link between Tom Jenkinson and the cold case. It was a link that had never made sense and now it was severed.

  He became aware that Davis’s attention had shifted. There was a notepad propped against a telephone handset. Webber looked at the rough sketch, recognised Ahmed’s writing in the captions. This must be where he’d taken the call from the lab. It was a cross section of a grave, three stick figures on their sides, the topmost labelled ‘Jones 20 yrs,’ the middle ‘PO guy 30 yrs,’ and the deepest simply labelled with a question mark and the number 45.

  More links, he thought. Robert Morgan’s murder … the stolen Ford Tempo … the ring-leader of the gang that released the tigers. But what relevance could attach to this latest find from so long ago?

  Davis gave him a quizzical look. ‘45 years ago,’ he said. ‘That’s when that schoolgirl went missing. The one from Dorset. Tilly Brown.’

  Chapter 41

  Ahmed felt impervious to the cold as he walked away from Mrs Bell’s neat bungalow. She’d fed him hot mince pies and a steaming cup of strong tea. He hadn’t tried to hurry her reminiscences but wondered just how relevant they were after all this time. Someone should have talked to her like this 30 years ago. She’d not only known the Tippets but several of the quintets. She was of their parents’ generation, not theirs but if Robert Morgan’s death had been correctly categorised at the time, Mrs Bell could have been a goldmine. Now her memories were fragmented, skipping from weddings to the car theft to thoughts of schooldays. Some of her observations predated the time of the killing by years.

  ‘Young Tilly Brown, it was heart-breaking,’ she’d said. ‘They shouldn’t have taken her away. She didn’t want to go. She could have finished her schooling here. Any of her friends would have taken her in. One of them offered, I know … got her parents to agree and everything. Tilly was a lovely girl and every bit as clever as that little one; so much nicer too.’

  ‘That little one …?’

  ‘Oh I don’t remember all the names. A little madam, miserable as sin, I remember that much. Very sniffy about young Michael Drake getting married. He wed Tina Tippet, you know. Such a tragedy when she died. It tore the family apart, all those accusations Brad made. I told Michael off once for ribbing young Brad, but who could blame him really? It used to infuriate Brad when Michael took his car. Tina had keys, you see. I said to Brad once, stop minding so much and it’ll not be sport for them. But then it was properly stolen, wasn’t it? Turned out not to have been Michael that time. But yes, that small one who never smiled, she minded more than Brad about Tina and Michael getting married so quick.’

  ‘Edith Stevenson …? China Kowalski …?’

  ‘China, that’s right. Silly name.’ She’d paused in thought and then laughed. ‘And that’s right, Edith … Edie. I liked Edie. She was the one who offered young Tilly a place to stay. Oh, and she tore a real strip off young China, told her it was up to Michael who he married.’

  The names Gary Yeatman, Pamela Quinliven and Will Jones had sparked no recognition. Robert Morgan’s gruesome death didn’t seem to have registered either though she couldn’t have missed the news reports at the time. Ahmed assumed she’d never matched it to the children she’d known and, as she didn’t know any of the players, he hadn’t enlightened her.

  ‘No one asked me any of this at the time,’ she’d said at one point. ‘Nothing about the family, just where was Brad that evening. And he was right there the whole time.’

  Ahmed’s phone buzzed a call from Suzie as he reached his car. He was pleased to see her name on the screen. He wasn’t sure what he’d got from Mrs Bell. Talking it through with someone was the way to unravel it. But when he clicked open the call, her voice was low.

  ‘Are you with Stevenson?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’ve just –’

  ‘Don’t go. Not yet. I’ve a couple of names for you to try first.’

  ‘Are you still with Michael Drake?’

  ‘Yup. He’s upstairs looking for the notebook where Tiffany keeps her passwords. He’s going to let me look at her email. She emails her friends a lot and he thinks she’s been emailing Stevenson. He’s convinced himself that it’ll be OK as long as he doesn’t read them himself. Only he’s taking forever going through her stuff. Won’t let me help in case I don’t leave it just so.’

  Ahmed climbed into the car and started the engine. The warming effects of Mrs Bell’s mince pies were wearing off. ‘She’ll have taken it with her, won’t she?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t been back since the hospital. I had to offer to make tea. I’d have exploded if I watched him much longer lifting old magazines practically page by page.’

  Ahmed laughed. ‘Michael Drake has hidden talents if he can persuade you to make tea. Anyway, you can probably get into her emails without a password, can’t you?’

  He heard a huff of frustration. ‘Don’t tempt me. The computer’s right here. But I can hardly say, can I? I’m chipping bits out of him. There’s the two friends she might be with, but get this, you were right … half right … about Edith Stevenson. Sounds like her and Tiffany have been swapping emails. That stuff about them not getting on; he says they didn’t when he and Tiffany first got together, but just lately they’ve become quite close. He’s not best pleased about it either. I think he’s a bit jealous, like his old friend Edith has betrayed him by making friends with his wife.’

  ‘But are you saying he doesn’t know where she’s gone? I got the impression he knew but wasn’t going to tell me.’

  ‘Give me a sec, Ayaan.’ Ahmed kept q
uiet as he listened to silence at the end of the line. After a few seconds Suzie’s voice was back in his ear. ‘It’s OK, I thought he was coming down to see where I’d got to. I’d better get this kettle on.’ Her voice became slightly distant and he heard sounds of running water. He guessed she had the handset balanced between her head and shoulder. ‘No, he doesn’t know for sure. He said he was ashamed to admit it to you, that he didn’t know where his own wife had run off to. Edith Stevenson’s still a possibility but I’ve two other names.’

  He clicked the phone to speaker and rested it in its cradle so he could make a note as Suzie recited names and addresses. Behind her words he could hear cups clinking.

  ‘Oh yuk!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a bowl of raw meat on the top shelf of the fridge, not covered or anything. Honestly, some people haven’t a clue. Anyway, where are you? How are you getting on?’

  ‘OK, but shouldn’t you be getting back to Michael? He’ll be wondering where you are.’

  ‘Pah! Not him. I don’t think I could get any sense of urgency into him if the house was on fire. And I can’t bear to go back up there and find he’s only half way through the first heap of stuff.’

  Ahmed told her about Mrs Bell. ‘Nothing new really,’ he ended, ‘but it was interesting to hear it from someone who was there. It’d have been a lot more interesting at the time when she could have remembered it better. The feud was quite something, Brad and Michael. She said in hindsight she can feel sorry for Brad but face to face he’s so obnoxious that it was no wonder everyone took Michael’s side.’

  ‘You know what I think. I think Michael Drake was the dummy of the group.’ Suzie said. ‘At school I mean … the quintets. They were all academic high flyers bar him and Edith Stevenson and even she wasn’t behind the door. Those lies about a place at university. Who does that? I know everyone says how well he did at Tippets’ firm, but that wasn’t the currency that counted to that lot.’