by Iain Cameron
‘Angus? Steve Harris here. I can’t talk long as I’m just waiting to go into a meeting with the Chief Constable but I need a status update on the Robson case. Andy Youngman is getting his ear bent by Owen Robson as he and Youngman seem to know one other from some charity foundation they’re both involved in.’
That was all he needed, the victim’s father pestering the Assistant Chief Constable, the man with overall responsibility for CID. ‘I’m just heading back to the office now, sir as there’s been some new developments.’
‘That’s good to hear. What are they?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll find out when I get there.’
‘Have you just been over to the hospital to see Rachel?’
‘Aye, I have.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s got a broken wrist, broken leg, face and arm lacerations but she’s out of danger.’
‘Good. Tell her I wish her a speedy recovery.’
‘Thanks, I will.’
‘Now, because you’ll be visiting hospital a lot and when she comes out, looking after the invalid, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to spend all your time on this case. Therefore, I think you might need someone to join the investigation team to assist you.’
Here we go again, Harris couldn’t even be subtle about it now. It was yet another brazen attempt to parachute his friend, DS Richard Phillips into Major Crimes, a move Harris had been trying to engineer for over a year. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this. I’m away from the office for a few hours to visit my injured girlfriend and you accuse me of not being able to do my job. I’m heading back to the office right now and I’ll be working on this case for the rest of the afternoon and a good chunk of this evening. I don’t need reinforcements.’
‘Angus, you’re not thinking straight. Rachel is going to need a lot of attention in the coming days and weeks, especially as she lives on her own. How can she do anything for herself with a useless arm and leg and I imagine, more cuts and bruises than a professional boxer?’
He took a deep breath. The same subject had recently crossed his mind but as yet, he hadn’t come up with a solution. ‘It’s covered Steve, the investigation won’t miss a beat.’
‘Convince me.’
‘Her parents were at the hospital today and they’ve decided to look after her until she feels able to move back into her own flat.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Aye, they’re all for it, apparently. I mean what parent wouldn’t want their only daughter back in the fold for a few months?’
It was not often he could he claim to have knocked the wind out of Harris’s sails as the Chief Inspector had more bluster than a Force 7 south-westerly, and as such it was a moment to savour. However, a deeper satisfaction would surely have been gained, if only it was true.
‘Ok, right, but...I need to make sure you stay on top of this and keep the ACC happy.’ The phone went quiet for several seconds. ‘What I want then, is a twice-weekly update meeting. Just you and me and any other officers you think we might need.’
‘No can do, sir. I really don’t have the time to set aside a couple of hours each week during the middle of a high profile murder investigation like this one, especially with the ACC looking over our shoulders.’
‘Yes but...’
‘How about I send you a weekly status report?’ He did one anyway and filed it for all to see and so sending a copy to Harris wouldn’t involve him or anyone else in any more work.
‘All right...ok then but I need to see it first thing on Monday morning and covering all the previous week’s activities.’
‘Fine,’ he said smiling at his own deft and cunning. Offering to send a report to a born administrator like Steve Harris was like handing a four-pack to a drunk in the park but if playing one trump card in a Harris conversation was damn lucky, what did it mean if he played two? He really needed to buy a lottery ticket.
‘Right, ok,’ he heard him saying to someone in the background. ‘Angus, I’m getting the call to go back in. I need to go. Call me as soon as you know more about this latest development. Bye.’
He strode into Sussex House and headed straight for the Murder Suite. Throwing his jacket over an empty chair, he walked towards Gerry Hobbs, a figure of studied concentration in the corner, staring intently at a computer screen.
‘Hi boss,’ the DS said, ‘I didn’t see you there. Give me a minute and I’ll bring up the pictures that I was telling you about.’
Havana Bay had supplied them with copies of the recordings made by their cameras, which were mounted all around the vast club, on the night Sarah was murdered. Hobbs was looking at the one located on West Street and focussed over the main entrance, monitoring the queue. He watched as Hobbs fiddled laboriously with the keys on the computer, trying to advance the DVD to the time when her flatmates told them they had arrived. It was obvious that he and the DS were cut from the same lump of stone, as Hobbs was as gormless at using these things as he was.
‘I need to move it along a bit more... here. No, that’s not it, a bit more, here, yes. Just a sec, I’m nearly there now.’
He looked away while the pictures flashed by as the rapid movement was making him feel queasy. Over the room-dividing screens he could see two whiteboards that were steadily filling up with notes, photographs and connecting lines. In particular, the picture of Mike Ferris stood out. Now that they knew he was working as a bouncer at Havana Bay, moved him up from being only a ‘witness’ to a ‘person of interest,’ but as yet there was no evidence to connect him to the victim.
He returned his gaze to the computer screen where he was pleased to see the images were now moving slower. The quality was good, even though it was shot on an outside camera at eleven o’clock at night, as it had been a dry night without the sleeting rain and gusting winds that often blew up from the seafront in winter, conditions that buggered up the pictures from another case he was involved in a month or so back.
It was that time of the night when punters left the pubs where they had been drinking for hours, and began queuing outside one of the many clubs in this area. Already, fifty or sixty youngsters were lined up outside Havana Bay, huddling close to the wall to keep away from a cold wind, which would have been tolerable if only they were wearing more suitable clothing and not short dresses and tight fitting t-shirts.
He often drove through that part of the city at night, returning from a restaurant in town or a late-night stint in the office and he couldn’t help but notice what a Mecca the streets around there were for young people as it contained dozens of pubs, eateries, nightclubs and cash machines, all in close proximity.
With the DVD in slow motion, the crowd crept towards the entrance at a steady pace and when the time on the screen corresponded to what was on the piece of paper Hobbs was holding, he slowed it down to normal speed. A few seconds later, they saw Sarah.
She was standing in the queue with her two flatmates, Jo and Nicole but it was Sarah that stood out. She was taller than the other two and stood slightly apart as if excluded from their conversation, but exuding a confidence that suggested she didn’t mind being on her own or require the succour of others.
It was a weird experience looking at a dead girl moving, looking around and talking as if she was still alive. Unlike many of the detectives he knew, he was rarely haunted by the voices of the dead, visiting them in dreams or when out walking in the park. However, her face would never be out of his head until her killer was caught, allowing her family to move on with the rest of their lives, safe in the knowledge that the bastard who killed her was behind bars and to feel the sense of satisfaction that justice had been served.
‘Now watch what happens in the next few minutes.’
Slowly, the three girls made their way to the front where the entry criterion, according to a regular clubber in the murder investigation team, DC Sally Graham, was variable. In general, girls needed to be neatly dressed, not downright ugly, not part of a hen party and not drunk, whi
le boys were excluded if they came in wearing football shirts, in large groups or if they were in the least bit scruffy.
From that camera angle, which was set to scan the crowd from a height of about twelve feet, they could see the clubbers quite clearly. They were lined up against the wall of the club, a ragged line snaking down towards the seafront but only the backs of the bouncers, or Door Supervisors as they were now called, as they were facing the queue while guarding the entrance door.
When Sarah edged closer to the front of the queue, a bouncer moved out to talk to her. It was obvious they knew one another and that he wasn’t approaching her just to tell her off, as Sarah was smiling and the bouncer’s head was nodding in response. The powerful build and close cropped haircut, suggested Mike Ferris but if confirmation was needed, his smirking mug was there for all to see a minute or so later, when he turned to walk back to his station.
‘Whoa, I can’t believe I just saw him do that,’ Henderson said. ‘Ferris bloody well knows Sarah Robson, you could tell by the look on her face.’ He pushed the chair back, leant back on its creaky lumber support and stared at the ceiling. His gut reaction was to immediately issue a warrant for his arrest but something was niggling him.
He sat up. ‘Well spotted Gerry, excellent detective work. Can you print it?’
‘Done it already.’ He opened a folder containing a small pile of pictures taken at various stages; the time Sarah was first spotted, her meeting with Ferris, the confirmation shot of his face and the point when she finally entered the club.
‘Shall I grab somebody and we’ll go over to Mannings Heath and wheel him in?’
‘Not yet, mate. Have you looked at when she left the club to go home?’
‘Yes, I made a note of it somewhere.’ He began searching through the piles of papers, DVD’s and notes that were littering his desk and a few moments later, found what he was looking for. ‘Let me see,’ he said holding up a piece of paper, ‘it was at two-twelve.’ He fiddled with the controls and soon they were looking at the same spot outside the club but now, the queue was gone.
Minutes later, a few drunks staggered out, some, making their way down the street towards the seafront and others crossing the street. Then, a couple came out and stood at the entrance clumsily kissing and touching one another against the cold wall. Just when it looked as though they might not make it back to the privacy of a warm bedroom, the guy put his arm over her shoulder and slowly they walked under the camera on their way up the hill towards the Clock Tower.
‘Any second now...’ Hobbs said. ‘There!’ His finger shot to the screen and the unmistakable, erect figure of Sarah Robson came into view, her light jacket buttoned up against the cold and wearing a facial expression that looked like abject disappointment.
Hobbs flopped back in his chair, looking exhausted. ‘It took three people about four hours to find all this.’
‘It was worth it, the case has definitely moved further forward. Good work.’
‘I’ll turn it off now as nothing much happens from this point on.’ His hand moved towards the mouse.
‘No, wait a sec. If Ferris was involved in Sarah’s abduction, we should see him coming out of the club a few minutes later, wouldn’t you think?’
‘Bloody Norah! I didn’t think of that.’
They watched the screen for a full fifteen minutes but no one fitting Ferris’s description left or entered the club and so they decided to spool forward to two-thirty, when the club closed, and from that point on left the DVD running. They watched in amusement as a steady stream of drunk and boisterous youngsters spilled out onto West Street, and no little amazement at the number of people it disgorged, as neither of them had any idea how many the seemingly vast club could hold.
In fifteen minutes the flood became a trickle and then nothing at all for at least three minutes, until the appearance of a ragbag of sorry individuals whose bedraggled posture and clothes made Henderson think they were found sleeping in the toilets. Their progress was being carefully monitored by a small posse of bouncers who looked alert and immaculate in dark dinner suits, in stark contrast to the scruffy and dishevelled appearance of the stragglers. Standing at the back was the tall, broad and unmistakable figure of Mike Ferris.
THIRTEEN
It was the end of a hell of a week for Jon Lehman and now he needed a drink. Sober since his meeting with Alan Stark two days ago, he was in the mood for a real blowout. To live without the solace of a drink and the stimulating company of whoever was in the bar was bad enough, but after enduring a seminar with a bunch of dullards who were instructed to write an essay on, ‘Quantifying the Benefits of Takeovers,’ and to his annoyance, most couldn’t think of nine when at least fifteen were contained in the recommended texts, the booze now served a medicinal purpose.
True to Stark’s word and his reputation as a fixer, he smoothed things over with their business associates and life went on much as it did before. Sarah’s pictures were no longer appearing on the website and all traces of the work she did was expunged from the records, and as far as the business was concerned, she had never existed. The same could not be said for the feelings that lurked at the back of his head like a hungry wolf, ready to pounce on his wounded conscience when he least expected it.
The enforced sobriety did however have some beneficial effects as for a change, he spent some time working on the website’s financials, a job he was often loathe to do as working with numbers reminded him of what he did in his day job.
With the latest business report from DeeZee in his possession, it didn’t take long to confirm the month-on-month growth in subscribers was a touch over thirty per cent and if that pace continued, each of the three equal partners would trouser a pay-packet of one hundred grand by the end of the month. Now that was something worth celebrating.
He walked into the Ringmer Bar, a place frequented both by students and staff and began to look round for a friendly face. This was not an essential requirement as he was perfectly happy drinking alone but it usually made for a more satisfying evening as it was easier to eye up women in the company of others, than standing forlornly at the bar and looking to the rest of the world like a loser.
After picking up his order, a pint of lager with a whisky chaser, single if he was taking it easy, double if he was celebrating, he spotted a table with a smattering of psychology and politics lecturers and walked over to join them. If they were members of his own faculty, he would have avoided them like the plague as their talk would be about finance, accountancy and economics, the stuff he did all day and trying hard to forget, and invariably, once emboldened by drink, they would start to snipe at what they regarded as his facile publishing career.
The ‘oligists,’ as he liked to call them, moved along the bench-style seating to make space for him and immediately resumed their discussion on how ill-prepared many of the first-year students were for university life, the results of which were now reflected in poor exam results for January and they all feared the summer exams would be a step too far for many.
They turned to him for the view of the ‘numbers people,’ and despite sounding like a derogatory term, as if somehow ‘numbers’ equated with a subject that could be solved using a calculator or computer and was outside the exalted ‘thinking’ fields of psychology, sociology and politics, it didn’t bother him as he didn’t give a flying fuck what anybody thought and was only happy to oblige.
Thanks to a business idea that came to him when he possessed a little more hair and drank a lot less, he could now buy and sell the lot of them, with the exception of that arrogant Scots git, Robert bloody McLagan, a Politics Professor who was sipping his double G&T and lording over the table as if he owned the place. On more than one occasion, he used the phrase, ‘if he fell in the Clyde he’d come out with a salmon’, referring to a student who effortlessly sailed through their exams without doing much work, but equally he could be talking about himself because if he fell in a river, he would come out holding a box of fres
h fish, filleted, shrink-wrapped and ready to take home.
Chucked out by his second wife for serial philandering with various secretaries and interns, he had calmed down since meeting Amanda on one of the many external training courses he was responsible for running, and which also brought a much needed boost to university funds. There followed a three-month whirlwind romance when they were married and moved in together but only five months later, her father kicked the bucket and left the happy couple several million pounds.
‘We don’t seem to have that problem, Robert,’ Lehman said clutching his whisky glass as he did a water bottle during lectures. ‘Many of our students studied Business Studies and Accountancy at A level and so at this stage, I think they are probably ahead of the game and should find the exams a bit of a doddle.’ It was all a load of absolute tosh of course, as the performance of that dreary lot in his last seminar ably demonstrated, but to stick a pin in that pompous prick’s balloon was well worth it.
‘Well, we’re going to have to do a hell of a lot of work to get our people to pass. I’ve never seen such a bunch of lazy bastards, not one of them hands their work in on time...’
Blah de blah, it was the same old record he had been spinning for years. With his new found status as Lord of the Lucky Rich Bastards, his colleagues and hangers-on were sitting around with their mouths hanging open, gagging at his every word, hoping he would buy them a drink or holy of holies, invite them back to McLagan Manor or whatever the hell he called that enormous pile where he now lived.
He reached for his drink but both glasses were empty. McLagan was still pontificating over some hobbyhorse or other and still with perhaps half a pint to go, he excused himself and went for a leak. When he came back, he decided to leave them in their mutual self-flagellation club and instead, joined a thick throng of students that were crowded around the front of the bar.
He stayed until twelve and would have stayed longer as he was enjoying the banter about Britain’s asinine energy policy on which a second-year Engineering student was taking a radical line, but Art student, Megan Bartlett, with whom he was having a spirited conversation earlier about the impact of Impressionism on modern art, waylaid him at the cigarette machine and put her soft, moist tongue down his throat, he knew it was time to beat a hasty retreat.
