Blood and Stone

by Chris Collett

  ‘It adds up,’ said Griffith, puzzled.

  ‘Except I’m pretty sure there is no mail order operation,’ said Mariner. ‘I checked with Ron Symonds first of all, and he knew nothing about one.’

  ‘He might not know everything.’

  ‘But mail order these days is all done online,’ Mariner persisted. ‘If you look at the contact details on the side of the van, there’s no email or website address.’

  ‘So what are you getting at?’ asked Griffith.

  ‘That the whole organic veg thing is a scam,’ said Mariner. ‘Those crates that I saw being loaded into the transit were in fact being unloaded. They were the crates of vegetables we saw the next day in the new aluminium shed. Parsnips, like the ones Tony Knox got analysed. Remember the logo on those crates? It was Dutch. Willow made some crack about having ‘acquired’ the crates illegally, but that was to cover the fact that the veg themselves are imported. You should contact that company and find out what relationship they have with Nigel Weller, because I think they’re selling him cheap non-organic vegetables in bulk, which he’s then passing off as these home grown organic veg and making a tidy profit from them. There is no magic formula, or even fertilizer.’

  ‘The sly bastard,’ said Griffith. ‘I’ve never trusted that stuff.’

  ‘That in itself is fraudulent, but what if Theo Ashton was about to expose what was going on?’

  ‘It would bring Willow’s business and credibility crashing down around him and may well be enough to provide a motive for murder.’

  ‘And if Willow thinks that both Hennessey and I saw something, then Hennessy’s murder is self-evident,’ said Mariner.

  ‘And Jeremy Bryce’s?

  ‘That could, as we first thought, be a case of mistaken identity; him instead of me,’ Mariner pointed out. ‘I have been sniffing around the farm quite a lot. Mainly innocently, as it turns out, but Willow isn’t to know that.’

  ‘Joe Hennessey could have been directly involved,’ said Griffith. ‘Seems he was pretty versatile. He was a photographer of a kind; he syndicated photos to the national press. If he had media connections then he might have been helping Theo Ashton to put together a story.’

  ‘It would explain the pictures of the farm on his laptop,’ Mariner agreed. ‘Where was he based?’

  ‘Looks like north London somewhere, so doesn’t really help us yet.’ Griffith had smoked his cigarette down and stubbed it out on the wall beside him before flicking the dog end into the gutter. ‘Either way, it’s about time we went and had another chat with Mr Weller.’

  Much as he’d have liked to be, Mariner realized that he wasn’t included in that ‘we’. ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do …’ he said instead.

  ‘Sure. Just talking to people, keeping your eyes peeled, would be good. If there’s anything you find out before we do, I’d be grateful.’ In the circumstances it was the most that Griffith could realistically offer.

  As he was walking away, Griffith’s phone rang and he pulled it out to answer it. The call stopped him in his tracks. ‘What? Are you sure about that?’ Mariner heard him say. Turning back, he caught Mariner’s eye, though he continued talking into his phone. ‘Well, I’ll need confirmation, and if it is true, then there needs to be a search of all places west of here. The CCTV will need to be looked at again too.’ Griffith paused, frowning, as he listened to the speaker at the other end. ‘Well, if that’s the case we’ve got somewhere to start. See if you can get hold of the footage there too.’ Ending the call, he pocketed his phone and walked back towards Mariner. ‘The search of this holiday cottage has turned up an empty prescription medication bottle. It belonged to Glenn McGinley.’

  ‘Christ, are they sure?’ But as he said it Mariner knew it wasn’t the kind of thing that anyone could mistake. ‘So they’ve been wrong all along in thinking he escaped to Ireland.’

  ‘He must have set up a decoy,’ Griffith said. ‘I’ve just been told too that a member of the public phoned in a sighting of him at Aberystwyth station last Friday. They saw a man fitting McGinley’s description who looked in a bad way, but because Caernarfon police were certain that he’d already boarded the ferry by then, it wasn’t taken seriously. Even with what you’ve told me about Abbey Farm I don’t think we can entirely rule out McGinley any longer.’

  Mariner didn’t contradict him. He was having exactly the same thought. Suddenly it turned everything on its head again. ‘One of my constables, Millie Khatoon, has been convinced all along that McGinley was headed down here,’ he told Griffith. ‘I don’t know what it might be, and I certainly don’t have any recollection of Glenn McGinley, but Tony Knox told me that Millie has been working on trying to identify some connection between McGinley and me.’

  ‘It would be good to find out if there is one,’ said Griffith. He seemed to be considering something. ‘I’ll get one of my men to drive you in to the town. We’ll see if we can set up a conference call.’

  Tony Knox arrived in CID that morning to find a uniformed PC waiting for him. ‘I understand you’ve been looking for a Hugo Westerby?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  She handed Knox a slip of paper with a number written on it. ‘That’s the ward he’s on at present, but you’ll need to be quick.’

  ‘They’re getting ready to ship him out?’

  She gave the briefest shake of the head. ‘Only on a mortuary trolley. A bunch of girls on a night out fell over him in an alleyway off Broad Street a couple of nights ago. He’s had the living crap beaten out of him by someone; he’s got a fractured skull and cerebral haemorrhaging among other things. If you’re planning to talk to him I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’

  Knox went straight to the ward at City Hospital where Hugo was being intensively cared for. One of his CID colleagues from Handsworth, Sue Jericho, was also there for the same purpose – to talk to Westerby as soon as he regained consciousness, through that prospect seemed unlikely. ‘Bit of a mystery really why he was attacked,’ she said. ‘It could have been robbery, though the state he was in it’s hard to imagine he was carrying anything of much value, or that muggers would have been in any way attracted to him.’

  ‘You might be looking at something drugs-related,’ said Knox. ‘He was a user and it’s possible he’d got himself into trouble with someone further up the food chain.’

  ‘That would explain why they weren’t interested in the phone in his pocket,’ she said. ‘We managed to use that to trace the next of kin.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Knox asked. He nodded towards the room where Hugo lay, bandaged and wired up to several complex looking machines, watched over by a young woman.

  ‘His sister, Annabel,’ said Jericho. ‘The mother is around somewhere too. Gone off to make a phone call I think. They’ve travelled up from Gloucestershire. The mother admits that he’s dabbled in drugs in the past, but insists that he’d cleaned up his act, had got a respectable job working in a bar, and was back on the straight and narrow. Some of it might be true – he had a security ID in his pocket – but the physical state of him tells a different story.’

  ‘Have you been in touch with his flatmate?’

  ‘Didn’t know there was one,’ said Jericho.

  ‘Giles Ridley-Coburn,’ Knox said. He recited the details while she wrote them down. ‘I think he’ll give you a more realistic picture. He may even know something about what happened here, and if he doesn’t, at the very least he’ll be wondering where Hugo’s got to. Either way I think you’ll find out that our friend Hugo was well and truly back on the hard stuff. I’m pretty sure I caught him at it.’ Describing the encounter at Mariner’s house, Knox peered in through the window again. ‘Hard to tell under all that machinery, but I’m pretty sure that it was him.’

  ‘I won’t break it to his mum or sister just yet,’ she said.

  Knox was inclined to agree. ‘No point in making it any worse for them.’ He turned to his colleague. ‘If he does come round though, can you l
et me know? I’d like to talk to him.’

  In the meantime, Knox did step in to take a closer look at Hugo Westerby. The young woman looked up as he entered the room and he raised his warrant card to identify himself. For a couple of minutes Knox stood silently watching, before Annabel said: ‘This is my fault.’ Her voice came out as little more than a whisper. ‘He called me and told me he was in trouble. He wanted money; a lot of it.’

  ‘Did he say what he wanted it for?’ Knox asked, carefully.

  ‘He owed it to someone. I know Mum thinks Hugo’s clean, but that’s because he was. He had treatment and had kicked loose from it. Then he came to Birmingham and got a job working in a bar.’ Across the hospital bed, she caught Knox’s expression. ‘I know, not the ideal place for a recovering junkie to work, but the job offers weren’t exactly flooding in. To begin with it was fine; Huey was doing well, making a lot of money on tips and things. But it didn’t take him long to find out that the staff had a sideline in distributing what they called “optional extras”. He was invited to join in, except he decided to set up his own informal distribution network.’

  ‘Selling what?’ asked Knox.

  ‘Weed mainly, I think, but the strong stuff.’

  ‘Skunk?’

  ‘Yes. It was all done very discreetly and only for certain customers. Then they started trusting Huey with the stash. I don’t know where it was kept, but he had access to it. And Huey, being Huey, saw an opportunity.’

  ‘To start his own business,’ Knox guessed.

  ‘That’s about it, yes. It was so stupid. He took a large chunk to sell himself and planned to use the profit to buy cheaper stuff and replace what he’d taken.’

  ‘That sounds like a dangerous game.’

  ‘He got found out almost straight away, stupid idiot. They came after him, ransacked his place. He managed to avoid them at first but clearly they caught up with him.’

  ‘Have you any idea who these people were?’

  ‘I’m not sure that Huey even knew exactly.’

  ‘And the name of the club?’

  ‘Sorry, I only know it’s some place in the middle of Birmingham. Huey didn’t tell me.’

  Leaving Annabel at her brother’s bedside, Knox went out to Sue Jericho. ‘What happened to Hugo Westerby’s possessions?’

  ‘There wasn’t much. Just the phone, security pass and some other worthless crap.’

  ‘That security pass. Do you remember which bar it was?’

  ‘Yes, it was RedZone, the one on Broad Street. Good club, we go there sometimes …’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Knox.

  Outside the hospital Knox checked his mobile and found a message from DCI Sharp asking him to return to Granville Lane as soon as possible, but no later than two p.m. He managed to make it with eight minutes to spare.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Knox went up to CID to tell Sharp about what he’d learned. ‘I think we can discount Goran Zjalic,’ he said. ‘This is just some dispute between Hugo Westerby and whoever these guys are. I think we’ll find that the prints found at Tom’s house will match those at Katarina’s flat. Any Albanian connection is purely coincidental.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Sharp, surprisingly. ‘And from what I’ve heard about these killings in Wales, we’re looking at an assailant who feels comfortable in the outdoors. There’s every reason to think that McGinley is at home in that kind of environment.’

  ‘McGinley?’ Knox thought he must have misheard.

  ‘Yes, you didn’t know, did you? McGinley didn’t make his escape to Ireland after all. He’s in mid-Wales, and there’s strong evidence to suggest that he’s been in the vicinity of Caranwy in the last few days. I needed you back here because we’ve scheduled a conference call with DI Griffith and Tom for two p.m. We need to share our information.’ Getting up, Sharp went to the door. ‘Have you talked to Millie since you got back?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Well, I know you think she’s been going off on one, but she has turned up something interesting. I’ll get her in here now.’

  Millie seemed reluctant to come in and Knox regretted having been so dismissive before. She asked after Mariner and he updated her. It was the appointed time for the conference call so they went into the meeting room where the big screen showed Ryan Griffith and Mariner. They all exchanged greetings.

  ‘And congratulations, Millie,’ Mariner added.

  She blushed in response. ‘Sorry, Boss, there never seemed a good time …’

  ‘I know,’ said Mariner. ‘Just make sure you take care of yourself. You on light duties?’

  ‘I will be soon, sir.’

  ‘DCI Sharp said you’ve come up with something,’ said Griffith.

  ‘I looked up Glenn McGinley’s history,’ said Millie. ‘I started on the premise that Tom – DI Mariner – and he had crossed paths, but there was no obvious overlap from the DI’s arrest record and McGinley’s convictions. So then I spoke to DI Glenda Scott on Merseyside. Turns out that McGinley spent quite a lot of time sounding off to an old guy undergoing medical treatment at the same time he was. The old guy didn’t take much notice at the time, but of course then sees in the news that McGinley was more than just talk. He says McGinley was hell bent on what he perceived as revenge. Some of it was for himself, but some of it was also what he called ‘a favour’, so I started looking at who he might have spent time with when he was inside. Again, nothing really stood out until I remembered the riots we had two years ago at Winson Green Prison. Because of them, some prisoners had to be temporarily moved and McGinley ended up at Long Lartin for a month. And guess who was also residing there at the time?’

  ‘Goran Zjalic?’ offered Knox.

  ‘No, Frank Crosby.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Mariner.

  ‘No, really, Frank Crosby,’ Millie insisted.

  ‘Crosby.’ Knox had only met the man once and at that time he hadn’t been their suspect, but he knew that he and Mariner had considerable history.

  ‘But if this is true, how would McGinley, or for that matter, this Crosby, know where DI Mariner is?’ asked Griffith.

  ‘Crosby’s got plenty of contacts,’ Mariner said. ‘And he knew Anna Barham’s brother, Eddie. He could easily have put McGinley up to all this and provided the backup. But what I don’t get is why? I didn’t realize things had got that personal.’

  ‘Maybe they hadn’t. This could all be in McGinley’s head.’

  ‘But even if it is, why the hell would McGinley agree to do it for someone he barely knows?’

  ‘I found out some other stuff about him,’ Millie said. ‘McGinley’s father died after a scuffle years ago at a football match. The other people involved were police officers. McGinley has a pathological hatred of the police.’ She paused. ‘Oh, and he’s dying from liver cancer,’ said Millie. ‘He’s got nothing to lose.’

  Everything went quiet as those facts were digested.

  ‘It certainly explains a few things,’ said Griffith eventually, blowing out air. ‘If McGinley’s doing this as a favour, it means he doesn’t know you and is working on a description, or at best some kind of photograph. It would explain why we might have some cases of mistaken identity.’

  ‘That’s entirely possible,’ Mariner agreed. ‘If McGinley was looking for a man walking, say, in Plackett’s Wood, he could feasibly have mistaken Theo Ashton for me, especially from the back. There’s a big age difference, I know, but we’re of a similar height, same sort of hair colour.’

  ‘Could that investigator, what was his name, Hennessey, have been working for McGinley?’ asked Sharp. ‘How long had he been in Caranwy?’

  ‘He was already established by the time I got here.’

  ‘He’d been here since the Saturday,’ said Griffith. ‘And then a day after you arrived, Theo Ashton was killed, right in the area where you were walking.’

  ‘When I came across him, Hennessey looked pretty shocked. I assumed it was because of the disco
very of the body, but maybe it was seeing me alive and well.’

  ‘He would have found out that afternoon that you were staying at the hostel—’

  ‘—and a couple of days later Bryce is murdered there.’

  ‘We found a shortwave radio at the byre,’ said Griffith. ‘If it belonged to McGinley he’ll have realized pretty quickly that he’d fucked up.’

  ‘Or Hennessey communicated that to him,’ said Sharp.

  ‘So then he will have found out where I’m staying and tried to do the job properly.’

  ‘How does this fit with the SUV though?’ Griffith queried.

  ‘Crosby’s contacts are many and varied,’ said Mariner. ‘It would be like him to not just rely on one person.’

  ‘There’s a big difference in the MOs of all these attacks,’ Griffith pointed out.

  ‘They’re all knife attacks though,’ Mariner countered. ‘McGinley’s first victims, the ones personal to him, were shot, which would indicate he’s more comfortable with firearms. Maybe when he kills Theo Ashton it’s the first time he’s used a knife. The attack smacks of desperation because he was unsure of his weapon and working out in the open so needed to get it done quickly and thoroughly. He does it over and over to make it certain. With Bryce he thinks he’s alone in the hostel and has got all night to allow Bryce to slowly bleed to death.’

  ‘It’s more of an assassination,’ Griffith seemed to agree, although the frown on his face seemed to belie it.

  Even though he barely knew the man, the expression was a familiar one to Mariner. Something wasn’t adding up. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s just that from what little is known about McGinley it sounds too organized, too resourceful. McGinley is small time; an inadequate petty criminal. Would he go to these lengths simply to earn the respect of someone like Frank Crosby?’

  ‘Going out in a blaze of glory?’ suggested Sharp. ‘If he wanted the notoriety, he’s certainly achieved that, if only in the short term.’