by Iain Cameron
His brother was a talented guitarist but didn’t pursue a career in music as everyone expected, and instead he joined the Army. There is an urban legend about James Blunt, a more famous musician-soldier than his brother, that his guitar was strapped to the back of his armoured vehicle while he patrolled the streets of Kosovo on peacekeeping duties. Archie was convinced this was simply marketing hype as knowing the Serbs as he did, a price would be offered to anyone who could put a hole in it. Archie’s guitar didn’t make it to Afghanistan and if the reports sent home about the locals were accurate, they wouldn’t have appreciated his music anyway.
After dumping the dirty dishes in the sink and resolving to wash up before he went to bed, and not four days later as usual, he ignored the unplugged television and sat down in the only armchair, positioned strategically beside the large sash window to benefit from the good light it offered, with an excellent view of the green opposite from its elevated position on the third floor.
With a glass of Glenmorangie in one hand and the Lehman file in the other, he opened the file and knew he had to get out of his head any prejudices, legal short comings and small-town sensibilities about the porn industry before he started, otherwise there wasn’t a chance in hell he would be able to look at the evidence in front of him with any objectivity.
He had never worked in Vice nor seen the negative effect of their activities at first hand, but he possessed a deep seated resentment of anyone who exploited women and could never respect a person that had amassed a fortune without working bloody hard to earn it, or stole it off the backs or efforts of others, and Dominic Green seemed to tick all the boxes.
He picked out the reports provided by the team interviewing students attending the same party as Jon Lehman, on the night Sarah died. The more he read, the more it sounded like a drunken binge, topped up with banging loud music and very drunk guys and girls making fools of themselves in front of their friends.
At least seven people remembered seeing Lehman and the last sighting of him was at three in the morning, by a boy that was in one of Lehman’s seminar groups. He felt sure this was sufficient corroboration for his alibi but unfortunately none of interviewers noted down the condition of the interviewees and whether they were in any fit state to recognise Jon Lehman or even tell the time. It was a small point but experience had taught him that the successful prosecution of many cases often hinged on such small issues.
He was just making a note to ask someone to follow-up that very point when his phone rang. He was sorely tempted to ignore it as he found sessions like this; a problem to wrestle with, a seat by the window and a glass of whisky in his hand, were invaluable at juggling disparate facts into some form of cohesion.
‘Is that Detective Inspector Henderson?’
‘Aye, it is.’
‘This is Lewes Control Room. We have received reports of a body in Hove. You’re the current SIO on my list, can you investigate?’
He sat up. ‘I can. Let me have the details.’
‘Thank you sir. The location is West Hove Golf Course.’
NINETEEN
Dominic Green was drinking a mug of coffee while finishing off an article in the Argus, written by their Country and Environment correspondent, Rachel Jones about the grants available to landowners for planting trees. There was plenty of space at Langley Manor and he liked trees as much as the next man, so why not? He made a note to follow-up, as the one thing that got the adrenaline flowing in his veins was free money.
The rumble of car tyres over stone chips broke his concentration and wearily he put down the newspaper. A few minutes later, he heard the sound of Alan Stark and Jon Lehman being led into the small lounge by his housekeeper. He stopped her in the hall and was just giving her instructions to bring in coffee for his guests, when another car drew up. The pale blue Porsche Cayman parked beside Stark’s 5-Series BMW and shortly afterwards John Lester came into the room to join them.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ Green said after coffee was served and the door closed. He was pacing the room impatiently, his mind buzzing with ideas. ‘Now we know why we’re here, so there’s no need to fuck about. Sarah Robson, a lovely girl who’s appeared on our web site quite extensively and was very popular, according to the analysis done by my nephew, has been killed, murdered by person or persons as yet unknown.’
Stark and Lehman looked contrite as well they might, but Lester was wearing his serious face and that meant he would happily strangle or garrotte the killer if he walked into the room right now.
‘For those of you that have been with me a while, you’ll know I won’t tolerate anybody trying to damage my business interests, trying to muscle in on my turf or trying to rile me with their petty jealousies or thirst for revenge. I didn’t get to this position by pussyfooting around or accommodating my enemies and I’m not going to start now.’ He looked at each one intently. ‘We’ve got to find this person before he does this again and rid the earth of his odious presence.’
He turned to Stark and Lehman, sitting together on the settee. ‘How did this happen, fellas? This is just innocent fun after all, so how come this little girl is dead? Who is doing this to us, Alan?’
He had known Alan Stark for years, ever since his father died and left him a large legacy, which he wisely invested in one of his apartment developments. When it was completed, with his money doubled as he told him it would, he continued to prosper in the years following and wore clothes, drove cars and lived in houses, way beyond the level that a university salary could provide.
It was Alan that introduced Jon Lehman to him and although he was younger by about twenty years, he was smarter than the wily lawyer Stark. It was Jon that came up with the web site idea in the first place, a better money generating idea he had yet to see and one that had not yet fulfilled its full potential and therefore something he would not let go without a fight or a bloodbath.
‘I’ve been racking my brains, Dominic,’ Stark said. ‘Jon and I don’t have any enemies to speak of, as you can imagine, its difficult making serious enemies in a benign educational institution like a university. We’ve looked at all the emails received on the site over the last year and none addressed to Sarah, or to any other girl for that matter, were in the least bit malevolent.’
‘Fair enough but what about the people that come and go, like delivery men and our two snappers?’
‘I checked them out too. The only people that are allowed to go beyond the front office where your nephew sits at his computers, and into the area where the pictures are taken, are the two photographers.’
‘What about them?’
‘Graham and Jeff have been with us from the start, you’ve met them.’
He grunted; that was true. He didn’t normally like arty types but they seemed like a couple of decent lads.
‘I’ve talked to them both and using the excuse of me being a lawyer and someone needed to check their alibis before the police did, I questioned them about where they were on the night she was killed.’
‘Do they check out?’
‘They do, plus I get the impression that both of them would rather get involved with men than women.’
‘What about the people in the warehouses next door and the maintenance people that sometimes come in and fix the roof or the toilets? Are any of them taking too close an interest?’
‘Not according to your nephew and as you know, we don’t have the name of the website up on the warehouse wall so all the mail we receive is delivered to Belanco Entertainment and anyone on the outside wouldn’t know what’s going on in the inside, not even the people beside us on the industrial estate.’
‘Jon, what’s your take?’
‘I did much of the checking with Alan and we found nothing that would point to a stalker or a weirdo targeting Sarah, or any of the other girls. In any case, only thirty per cent of our subscribers come from the UK and even then, all we know about them are their name, address, email address and encrypted credit card details, so
we wouldn’t know if someone was a vicar or a serial rapist. Also, that number doesn’t include casual viewers who can view limited parts of the site without signing up, and until this thing happened and your nephew took them off the system, pictures of Sarah were up there.’
‘Yeah, I thought you might say that,’ he growled. ‘Not many of them live in the UK as you say and even less in this part of the South East. Although at the end of the day, I just need to get my hands on one.’
He walked to the window and looked out. It was early spring and only a few bushes and trees were showing any signs of budding but he couldn’t see anything much now as it was dark and even the security lights didn’t stretch that far. He would take a walk around the estate in the morning for a more complete picture, as he was particularly fond of the apple trees and was looking forward to seeing a decent crop this year.
‘Could it be one of your business rivals, Dominic?’ Lehman asked.
Green spun on his heels and faced the young lecturer who shrunk back in surprise. The guy was like a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights, no wonder he was a bloody academic and not out in the real world. ‘Don’t you think I’ve thought of that already, Jon?’
He started to pace the room again. ‘It could be, could be but that’s a bit extreme don’t you think? I mean if they wanted to get at me, why wouldn’t they attack me here in the house or when I’m down at one of my clubs in town and take their chances when Mr Lester’s not looking? Now if they just wanted to bring down the web site because they are offended by the content, although, why would they be when there’s another million or so just like it, why not just set fire to the warehouse or,’ he turned to face them, ‘why bother with the girls at all and just kill one of you two?’
He liked his little macabre jokes and the expressions on the faces of the two men were a picture. They might be bright but if they didn’t realise they might also be targets, they were idiots. He took nothing for granted in business and in situations like this, suspected everyone, whether it was a friend he had known for years or someone he had just met.
‘I realise you’re thinking out loud Dominic,’ Stark said, his voice betraying an uncommon nervousness in this normally confident lawyer, ‘but I really don’t think that’s what this murder is about. It’s probably more simple like some weirdo out there has probably seen Sarah on the site and targeted her.’
‘Who says I was thinking out loud?’ He paused. ‘I have to say, I agree with you Alan, that this could merely be the actions of a psychotic killer who has picked on her for no reason other than she was coming out of that club in Brighton alone, but what if it’s not? What if it’s the work of a clever criminal who will kill more and more of our girls until we pay a ransom or close down the site or do whatever the hell he wants?’
‘Surely not,’ Lehman said, clearly appalled, ‘that’s an awful scenario.’
‘It is Jon, but we must guard ourselves against such things. So listen up gents, here’s what I propose to do about it. I will take steps to review my business relationships and investigate a couple of miscreant characters that it has been my misfortune to deal with in the past. Jon, I would like you to analyse the subscriber stats and provide Mr Lester here with a list of all you know about those that live in our neck of the woods, for argument’s sake let’s call it Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Kent but we’ll spread the net wider if we have to. We need to start our own investigation immediately because if the meeting I had with the filth is anything to go by, they haven’t got a bloody clue.’
TWENTY
It gave him no satisfaction to be one of the first on the scene and avoid the sarcasm of the Home Office Pathologist, but this time there was no excuse as Henderson lived only a few miles away from the West Hove Golf Club and traffic at this hour of the evening was light. Before the murder of Sarah Robson, he didn’t like golf much but now with another one to add to that list, he was sick to the stomach of the game and never wanted to see or hear of it again.
The SOCO’s were there already and starting to rope off the scene and erect a bank of arc lights. He spotted Pat Davidson, The Crime Scene Manager, busy directing his team and he walked over to talk to him but he could offer little information at this early stage and they agreed to meet later. From the boot of the car he donned a plastic suit, overshoes and hat and started to climb the short slope leading up to the site, and even though not many of his people had arrived yet, there was enough activity close to the top to tell him where he needed to be.
Among sharp gorse bushes and overgrown rhododendrons, he bent down to take a look. Despite having attended dozens of murder scenes, there wasn’t much he could determine with any certainty without the benefit of a skilled pathologist, but it would take an idiot not to recognise the similarities with the Sarah Robson case as it was young girl about her age, naked, badly bruised, with serious head wounds and hidden in the undergrowth beside a golf course.
He thumped his fist into the ground and screamed. ‘Ahhhhh! You bastard! You’ve done it again!’ The sound was only heard by those close by, causing them to look round briefly before it was lifted by the whistling wind and drifted away.
A few minutes later, Davison tapped him on the shoulder and led him down the hill and introduced him to Jenny Holmes and Peter Franks, the couple that first reported finding the body. They were standing close to a continuously expanding collection of squad cars, unmarked detective cars and SOCO vans that were now gathered in a long line on a narrow access road known as Badger’s Way.
He slowly regained his composure, the cold night air and a chat with a sombre Pat Davidson were seeing to that, but not his anger. This was not because he feared the screaming headlines in the Argus the following morning, proclaiming police incompetence, nor the equally strident tone his boss would take when he found out, but a voice in his head that was telling him this woman would still be alive today, if only they were smarter, if only he was smarter and Sarah’s killer was now locked-up in jail.
Holmes and Franks were huddled together, covered in blankets and clutching large mugs of tea. He flashed his warrant card and said as calmly as possible, ‘hello there I’m Detective Inspector Henderson of Sussex Police, the senior investigating officer on this case.’
They shook hands but before he could frame a question, Franks jumped in.
‘We were just leaving the clubhouse see, which is just down the road there and I was giving Mrs Holmes here a lift home to her house in Portslade ‘cause her hubby Danny doesn’t play. I took short and rather than go all the way back to the clubhouse where I had just said goodbye to everyone five minutes before, I decided to go into the bushes. I took the torch and all, and then I...’
Henderson felt a hand on his arm and turned. ‘Sorry I’m late sir,’ Carol Walters said, slightly breathless.
‘Good evening, Sergeant Walters, its good that you’re here.’
‘I’ve just been talking to Doctor Singh as she turned up about the same time as me and is now over there getting all her kit out of the car. We’ve interrupted her monthly book club so we have, so she’s not in a very good mood.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind when I speak to her. Let me introduce you. This is Jenny Holmes and Peter Franks, the couple that discovered the body and this,’ he said to Holmes and Franks, ‘is Detective Sergeant Walters.’
‘So,’ he said looking again at Franks, ‘you were saying?’
‘Where was I?’
‘You were heading into the bushes with the torch looking for a place to pee.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. So I move deeper in the bushes so Jenny, that’s Mrs Holmes, still sitting in the car down there can’t see me, and here I notice something strange catch the light, something white. So I like go over thinking its maybe a scarf or blanket or something, and then I lean in and take a closer look.’
He heard one of the technicians shout, ‘ok to switch on!’ and seconds later their little group was brightly lit in a cold, white light enabling him to get
a better look at his two witnesses. Franks was young, about twenty-five with a thin, weathered face which in combination with a long, narrow nose gave him a hungry, hawkish look. His hair was trendy, as were the leather jacket and trousers but Henderson suspected he was making the best of the iffy hand as even the best hairdresser and tailor in town couldn’t make him look more handsome.
Holmes was a few years older, which Henderson estimated to be about mid-thirties with shoulder-length brown hair and a pretty, rounded face marred only by a thin, two-inch scar below her right eye. She was smartly dressed in a pink cardigan, grey pleated skirt and navy duffle coat and it was clear she had been enjoying the clubhouse hospitality as her breath reeked heavily of booze. In comparison to her gregarious companion, she was withdrawn and taciturn and had such a guilty expression on her face that Henderson thought she would make a better perpetrator than a witness.
‘Then, I see it’s a body and I, you know, I kinda back away in shock. I ain’t never seen a dead body before, only in films and on the telly and that. I’m telling you, I was scared just in case the bloke that did it was still hanging around.’
‘Did you touch or move anything?’
‘What me? No, I touched nothing. I’ve seen enough of these cop shows on telly to know you don’t touch nothing otherwise the crime scene gets contaminated, right?’
‘Quite right Mr Franks. So what did you do then?’
‘I went straight back to the car and I must have been white as a sheet as she knew right away something was wrong, didn’t you love?’
‘Too true. He was babbling like an idiot and paler than I’ve ever seen him before. After he got his act together and told me what he saw, we phoned you lot.’
