Tiger Blood (DS Webber Mystery Book 2)

by Penny Grubb

  His gaze strayed again to the hands of the wall clock. ‘You need to start talking Edith, before it’s too late.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d bite, but it was worth a shot.’ Her tone had flattened, the anxiety he’d heard before had gone. ‘Maybe you’re right … maybe it’s too late already.’

  ‘It’s not too late to tell me what you know, Edith.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, but I’m not going to. You don’t get anything for nothing in this life, Webber.’

  He sensed she was about to cut the call and grabbed at a memory. ‘You had something for nothing once, Edith, a generous gift from your friend, Pamela. You can’t return the favour to her, but you could repay something by talking to me now.’

  There were a few seconds silence. He wished they had a video connection. He wanted to see her face. Eventually she murmured, ‘Dear Quinny,’ her voice soft, reminding him of the change in Drake’s voice when he’d talked about Pamela Morgan. ‘She should have been pleased.’

  Before he could shape a response, there was a click. The echoey cavern was gone and the DI’s voice was in his ear.

  ‘She’s cut the call. I’ll talk to Hull, see if they can push her face to face, but if this means that Suzie Harmer was with Stevenson’s friend, Drake, then she’s safe while he’s in custody.’

  Webber wondered if the upbeat tone was an act by this DI to keep up the energy in his team. ‘Bear in mind,’ he said, ‘that Streetwise met Stevenson, not Drake. I’m not saying you’re wrong but we still don’t know where Suzie is.’

  ‘I’ll keep you posted, Guv, and sorry, that was a bit of a waste of time.’

  As the call ended, Webber looked round for Ahmed who was standing in the big office, a sheaf of papers in his hand, his stare aimed at one of the evidence boards. Not entirely a waste of time, he thought. Edith Stevenson might have given them a key piece of the jigsaw. He couldn’t quite catch the significance but had an idea that Ahmed was working along the same lines.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said as he went through. ‘Did you hear any of that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m trying to figure out if they’re right; was it Drake or was it one of Streetwise’s gofers.’

  Curiosity fought with the need to chase Melinda. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I’m looking at the chronology … Tom was first approached by Boots Boy when he was in Hull. It makes sense that they’d have wanted a closer look at him. On paper he was a perfect recruit. It’s the link with Drake and Stevenson that’s the puzzle. Why did Streetwise target Stevenson? I’m looking at the traffic lights thing. Someone was scouting for someone to mess with traffic lights and Tom took the bait because there was good money on offer. He had some family loyalty but …’ Ahmed looked troubled.

  ‘There’s a good chance he would have turned a corner, done OK,’ Webber prompted. ‘But what are you saying?’

  ‘I can’t see where Boots Boy fits in. He and Streetwise have shown no interest in anything round here apart from when they came to see Stevenson. It was Hull they were focused on, the port and all that. They approached Tom but they didn’t keep up the contact … well, not as far as we know.’

  ‘That makes sense. They’d have checked him out but Tom Jenkinson wasn’t anywhere near reliable enough for their sort of operation.’

  ‘So if the traffic scam was nothing to do with Streetwise …’ Ahmed paused for a moment. ‘I’m thinking that Tom knew there was big money to be made when Boots Boy first approached him in Hull, but somehow he’d blown his chance. Then this traffic light thing pops up in York. Maybe Tom saw the chance of a quick buck by passing it on. If you were Streetwise wouldn’t you be curious about someone doing a job on a city’s junctions like that?’

  ‘You mean Tom Jenkinson gave them the mystery man.’

  ‘Or woman,’ said Ahmed. ‘It was Stevenson they went for.’

  ‘Apparently as the go-between. It wasn’t her on that footage.’

  Ahmed spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘You’re saying Jenkinson was the link.’ Webber mused. ‘Streetwise and Stevenson. Remind me, those old enquiries; Tilly Brown, Robert Morgan … the quintets were interviewed, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but never as suspects. They came forward as acquaintances of Will Jones, so there was a bit of interest in them, were they involved in the animal rights stuff, all that … but they had their alibis ready.’

  ‘And if I remember rightly, some random CCTV footage firmed up some of the stories.’

  The pieces floated about, Jenkinson … Streetwise … Michael Drake. It had begun to look like it could coalesce into a coherent whole. Jenkinson gave Drake or Stevenson or both to Streetwise. Maybe Drake told Jenkinson too much about the traffic scam before he realised that the boy was a liability. Jenkinson had followed a man and a woman up towards the gravel pits. The scant description fitted Edith Stevenson’s car.

  ‘Jenkinson gave Streetwise enough to track them down,’ he said. ‘That must have hit Drake and Stevenson like a bombshell, having someone like Streetwise materialize knowing their secrets. And it’ll have flagged up that Tom knew who they were. That’s why they had to get rid of him. He must have known the identity of his mystery man all along. If only he’d come clean with you. He was on the verge of it.’

  ‘It was Drake.’ Ahmed breathed the words, his tone incredulous. ‘It was Drake.’

  Webber looked at him, momentarily fazed by his look of horror, but of course if Drake was as embroiled in this as he seemed to be, then who else but Drake had killed Jenkinson? And Ahmed had spent time with the man, felt sympathy with him over his rocky marriage, his unstable wife.

  ‘It might be Drake,’ Webber amended, ‘but that doesn’t mean we can prove it and it doesn’t mean Suzie’s safe.’

  Chapter 55

  Head hunched against the rain and cutting wind, Webber sprinted down the street and across to his car. He climbed in, slammed the door against the drizzle and pulled out his phone to ring Melinda.

  Disbelief! He stared transfixed at the screen, finger frozen in the act of calling up the number. It showed a missed call from her. It must have rung as he hurried across to his car, the sound drowned out by the weather. He couldn’t believe it had happened again. He jabbed in the number and clamped the handset to his ear. It went straight to voicemail.

  It didn’t mean anything sinister … she was probably trying the office phone … she’d ring back.

  He had to fight to stop his mind going into overdrive with thoughts of grids and trackers … of not knowing where she was.

  He drove away from the station concentrating to distinguish car lights from reflections in the damp and mist. In his head he tracked his route, knowing that in a few minutes he’d be at a T-junction where he had to decide … left or right … head for home or for Joyce Yeatman’s. It wasn’t a decision he could make with the information he had. He must pull over and call Mel, find out where she was … call home too maybe. If he ended up heading for Yeatman’s the neighbour would be on duty for longer than expected.

  The need to know she was safe was a constriction in his throat. He moved forward with the flow of traffic slowing for the red lights as the junction approached. Left or right? Indicators flickered from the cars in front, orange pinpricks winking on and off. He reached forward to slot the phone in its cradle. One more try to get Melinda before he gave in and pulled over, didn’t want to lose his place in the queue. Plenty of time … these lights took an age to change.

  Relief hit him in a wave of elation as her voice filled the car, her tones irritated, ‘God, Martyn you’re impossible to get today.’

  The audacity was breath-taking. ‘You can talk!’

  ‘Have you spoken to Ayaan? He said he’d try to catch you.’

  ‘I’ve just left him at the station. He’ll be on his way home now. And no, I don’t have the full story. There hasn’t been time.’

  ‘Full story? Oh you mean Edith Stevenson.’ Her tone was dismissive.
‘I didn’t mean that. I spoke to Ayaan not five minutes ago. He answered your office phone.’

  Webber became aware of a low moaning sound. It was coming from the phone.

  ‘Mel, where are you? Who’s with you?’

  He still didn’t know which way to turn. Ahead of him the sea of orange pulsing lights flashed left and right as the traffic began to move … in a few more metres he would have to make up his mind one way or the other. He’d wanted a few more seconds to decide …

  ‘Oh, it’s just Joyce,’ Melinda said. ‘Ignore her. I had to get her to talk.’

  ‘Christ, Mel, what have you done to her?’

  A bolt of shock coursed through him. Yeatman and Melinda vanished from his mind. He’d forgotten where he was … had wanted a few more seconds … expected a few more seconds … the lights had changed too soon. No! He wanted to leap out and scream at the cars ahead, but it was too late, they were pulling out into the main road blinded by the high wall and poor visibility, impatient to be home, beckoned on by the luminescent green disk.

  He held his breath, every muscle tensed as he saw the cars at the head of the queue surge confidently forward.

  No smash. One car at least had snaked round the corner and out of sight. No sickening crunch of metal on metal.

  It was late, the main road might be clear.

  That didn’t mean safety. A heavy goods vehicle could be thundering down the hill right now seeing only a green light clearing its way.

  His turn now at the head of the queue. Slowing to a crawl, he edged the car out straining to see through the gloom and beyond the wall that blocked his view of the main carriageway, desperate for a glimpse of the opposing lights … ready to slew his car sideways and block the road. The motorists behind him signalled their impatience in a blare of horns.

  It was OK. The cars on the main road were stopped, their lights on red. He breathed again and speeded up. Paranoia … misjudgement over the timing …

  ‘Sorry Mel, what did you say?’ He pulled his mind back on track. His heart thumped hard as he tried to force his breathing to slow.

  ‘The lock-up.’ She sounded impatient. ‘I told Ayaan. He’s going to get on to it.’

  ‘Lock-up? What lock-up?’ They’d chased down every lock-up, every garage they could find that had any link to Drake or Stevenson … found nothing.

  He couldn’t stop. It was a clearway, visibility was bad. His need to check the lights had forced him to turn across the traffic, not the way home.

  ‘Wait, Mel. Give me a minute. I’m driving. There’s a layby up ahead.’

  ‘I need to get home. I’ve left Sam with …’

  ‘I know, I know but just give me a minute.’ That was it … the low moaning … that throwaway comment. ‘What have you done to Joyce Yeatman?’

  She laughed. ‘I woke her up, that’s all. Did you think I’d hit her?’ A level of defensiveness behind her words left him unsure. ‘She’s drunk … barely coherent. And by the way …’ Her voice took on a grim tone. ‘She’s got the note, Pamela’s note.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’ The layby appeared. He signalled and pulled in. A dark mass filled the parking space. As he closed on it, his headlights revealed a giant cattle truck that rocked gently as he watched, though whether from a live cargo or the strength of the wind he couldn’t be sure. Wisps of straw flew free and skittered away into the darkness. The bulk of the vehicle wasn’t unlike the old photographs of the tiger cage that had been taken to that warehouse 30 years ago.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Melinda answered him, ‘But I know she’s got it from what she said when I finally got her to talk. It’s obvious she’s read it recently but she must have stashed it before she got wasted. Thank God she doesn’t have open fires and I can’t see any sign she’s tried to burn anything anywhere.’

  ‘If she’s kept it this long, she’ll find it hard to destroy,’ Webber said.

  ‘I’ve looked through the bins anyway. And it’s not in her handbag or anywhere obvious.’

  ‘Mel! Stop. You can’t go searching her house. If need be we’ll get a warrant. Let the woman sleep it off. We’ll get someone to her first thing.’ It occurred to him that if Yeatman was as bad as she sounded then Mel must have broken in to get to her; he pushed the thought aside. ‘But what was it about a lock-up?’

  She sounded triumphant. ‘Something Gary told her. He mentioned it the last time she saw him alive. I knew she’d know something. She didn’t react to Edith Stevenson the way she did for nothing. The Browns, Tilly Brown’s parents presumably, had a lock-up. They kept it on after they moved away. They rented it to Michael Drake’s parents.’

  Electricity prickled across his skin. They hadn’t had a sniff of this in their hours of searching. A lock-up that might still be in the name, Brown. ‘Where? Does she know where it is?’

  He heard her sigh. ‘I think so, but I couldn’t get it out of her and she’s past saying anything now. It’s not my thing, Martyn. I needed you here.’

  He felt a disproportionate surge of pleasure to hear her say she’d needed him. She’d broken into Yeatman’s house, conducted an illicit search, possibly assaulted the woman to get what she’d got out of her. He shouldn’t be pleased at all. She was right. It wasn’t her thing. She could subdue a crowd of unruly drunks in the blink of an eye but the subtleties of chipping out information from a witness bored her.

  ‘You say you told Ayaan Ahmed all this?’

  ‘Yes, and he’ll pass it on before he goes. You can come home. I’m just setting off now. I should be back before you.’

  You can come home …

  He could hear the enticement in her voice and swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. She was all fired up by the adrenaline of battle even if it had only been Joyce Yeatman and not a rowdy football crowd. ‘Are you sure she’s OK, Mel? Should you call her an ambulance?’

  ‘She’ll be fine.’ He could tell from the way she raised the volume that she intended Joyce Yeatman to hear her couldn’t-care-less tone. A pause. ‘In fact it looks like she’s asleep again, stupid cow.’

  Webber toyed with the idea of driving straight to Joyce Yeatman’s. He was uneasy about the woman. He wanted Melinda away from her but wasn’t sure she should be on her own. If she was really that far out of it she might not be safe, and if she was putting on an act she might be waiting for Mel to leave so she could destroy evidence or get away … but what evidence and away to where? If she was going to destroy the suicide note, she’d have done it by now.

  ‘Don’t leave her on her back, Mel. We don’t want a corpse on our hands come morning.’ What he meant was that if Joyce died there would be no hiding that Melinda had been there. ‘I’ll see you at home.’

  He pulled out on to the main road. The layby didn’t allow for a U-turn so he had to continue in the wrong direction through the dusk and drizzle.

  The road was clear now. He reached for the phone and clicked in the number of the station across town. Ahmed would have been in touch but he wanted to be sure.

  They got the DI on the line when they knew it was him. Yes, Ahmed had updated them on Mrs Webber’s information from Mrs Yeatman. Webber smiled coldly at the formality and phrasing. Melinda had blurred the detail of just how and when she’d had the information from Joyce and they were plainly curious. He wondered what the reaction would be if he were to say that she’d broken into the woman’s house and beaten it out of her.

  ‘The records are so old,’ the DI told him in despairing tones. ‘We’re getting people out of their beds and all sorts but it’s needle in haystack stuff. Shame they were called Brown. We’ve found an allotment they had …’ Webber felt a burst of anticipation immediately damped by the words that followed ‘… but they gave it up when they left, and anyway it’s a housing estate now. But it’s looking like the best lead we have. We’ll find it.’

  Headlights shimmered towards him, reflecting off the slick road surface, but it was hardly heavy traffic, not enough to justify missing another chance
to turn back, but he carried on anyway. Where was he going? He wondered if Ahmed too was trapped in this no man’s land. Going home would be going to Melinda; but it would also be pressing a pause button on his part in what was happening and he wasn’t sure he could do that. He imagined trying to say to Mel that it was nothing to do with Suzie, that it would be the same whoever it was.

  There was a right turn up ahead. It was a circuitous route but he could go that way, swing round a long looping detour and head for home. He flicked on the indicator and listened to it ticking as the car left the main road. There was no need to loop so far round. He could slash a couple of miles off the journey by simply cutting back.

  He continued on the longer route. In about half a mile there was a turn that would take him off on another tangent. He knew now exactly where his gut was leading him. He reached forward to make another call.

  The DI’s voice in his ear held suppressed impatience that he wouldn’t leave them to get on with it.

  ‘That dive team,’ Webber said. ‘The group who lease the fishing lakes and all that land, have you been on to them?’

  ‘Well … no. What for?’

  ‘Aren’t there some old allotments up there, right at the far end of the site? Possibly lock-ups too. Get pictures of Drake and Stevenson in front of them. See if they know them. Let me know what you get. Ring me.’

  By the time the call ended, Webber could see the scrubland that fringed the site, its outline melting into the dusk. He swung the car to face the gates, flicking the headlights to main beam, lighting up the track that led down to the lakes, the hut, the half-built walkway. There were garages and storage areas attached to the hut; not rented out, but part of the commercial fishing operation. He climbed out of the car, pulling his collar high to shield him from the rain, and went to inspect the padlock securing the gates. It was large and chunky but not the last word in security. He could undo it with a penknife.

  The night closed in around him, the wind biting through his jacket. There was enough light from somewhere to paint a gleam across the surface of the fishing lakes. And off to one side would be the dark expanse of the water in the gravel pit but that wasn’t visible from here, not even in the day time.