by Iain Cameron
‘He’s an experienced investigator and a former crime journalist and should know what to do if things start to turn sour.’
‘What about this name Perry gave you, David Frankland? Have you talked to him?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Do it soon,’ she said. ‘I don’t want this case grinding to a halt and the ACC saying he warned me it was all a waste of money.’
‘I get the impression that Frankland is Perry’s go-to guy for problems solving. He might be called the operations head or whatever, but if he’s required to do something dirty, he’ll do it.’
‘He sounds like a nice bloke, but don’t underestimate Perry, Angus. He’s a violent streetwise geezer who might wear flashy suits and drive smart cars, but underneath, he’s evil. The Met have been trying to put him away for years but something always gets in the way and they’re forced to back off.’
‘So I heard.’
‘I assume you’re liaising with them. I don’t want a call from that tosser Commander Tom Waite, chewing my ear off because one of my officers dared step on to his patch.’
‘I’ve talked to them. The message I’m getting is I can do what I want, as they’ve got nothing on him, but they want a piece of the action if I do.’
‘They backed away from Perry after the McCardle trial collapsed. Too bloody embarrassed if you ask me.’
‘This was the land deal that went wrong?’
‘It went right for Perry. McCardle was a property developer who got into debt. His mistake was not financing his shortfall from banks as a normal businessman would do, but from ‘friends’ in East London finance companies. When he couldn’t pay the interest, they threatened to break his legs. He turned to Perry. He sorted everything out and in return, acquired a strip of land containing nothing but half a dozen derelict warehouses with fine views over a stretch of the River Thames.’
‘The land turned out to be worth something, I thought.’
‘It did. An American bank decided they wanted to build their European HQ there and paid Perry millions for the land. McCardle, realising he’d passed up the chance to become rich, threatened to sue Perry claiming he’d been duped into selling the land. The rest, as they say, is history.’
‘Especially for McCardle.’
‘Yes, especially for him. Have you seen pictures of Perry’s new wife?’
‘No.’
‘Check her out on the web if you want a treat. She’s a twenty-nine-year-old ex-model, only ex because her hubby’s so rich she doesn’t have to work. Hits the gym at five every morning and does a couple of hours every day.’
‘She deserves a slim figure if she can hit a gym at five in the morning. I know I couldn’t.’
Edwards stood. ‘I need to go. Remember what I said, Angus, watch yourself with Daniel Perry. He’s dirty and devious and he’s got a lot of low-life friends. Make sure you build a strong case against him if you’re convinced he’s behind this. Plenty have tried and failed and I don’t want you to be one of them.’
THIRTEEN
It was three o’clock in the morning and private investigator Harvey Miller was in the company of Billy Rush, a career burglar he’d sought out in a seedy bar near Uckfield Station. In the US, the hungry look often gave people like Billy away, but here in the UK, it was the ferret-like way they scanned a room looking for phones, abandoned handbags and undercover cops.
They met in a car park and the back of a recently constructed housing development and walked across scrubland before dipping into a thin line of trees bordering the Bell Lane Industrial Estate. In a hushed voice, Rush explained the routine of the mobile security guards patrolling roads nearby and the position of CCTV cameras dotted around the building they were approaching.
For a couple of days last week, Miller had staked out a warehouse at the Bell Lane Industrial Estate in Uckfield. This was the place where his contact in the Met said the vans seen at Château Osanne in France ended up, and true to his contact’s word, he spotted them. Problem was, close up they were run-of-the-mill delivery vans. To compound their ordinariness, the boxes he could see inside the warehouse of PFB Parcels, where the vans were parked, were boxes of wine from Château Osanne, bearing the logo of the Café de Paris, a UK restaurant chain.
This would have been enough to send a rookie investigator scuttling back to Brighton to pack his bags and hop on the next plane back to the States. Then, when he’d summoned up enough courage, he’d report back to Robert Wilson and tell him that his investigation had reached a big fat dead-end; but no. Harvey Miller always had bags of patience, persistence and sheer bloody mindedness and they received their reward when he got out of the car and went out for a stroll.
It was then he noticed that the parcel business didn’t occupy the full length of the warehouse. One end of the building appeared to be sectioned off, the windows blacked out with no visible markings. He initially believed it was empty, surplus space that the PFB Parcel business didn’t need, but this all changed when a van pulled up outside and someone disappeared inside the ‘secret’ part of the warehouse. The van belonged to Fraser Brook’s Fine Wines, and half an hour later, he spotted two men loading a number of heavy boxes into the back of the van.
Billy Rush was young, late twenties, but prison had added lines to his drawn face. Like a soldier, he kept himself fit to outrun pursuers, and wore his hair short and his clothes tight to give security men and the police nothing to grip if they tried to make a grab for him.
Two nights previously, Rush had come down here and triggered the alarm system by levering open one of the back windows. He did the same last night and again tonight and it was his expectation that the harassed key holder would cease setting the alarm until an engineer arrived and repaired the fault. Never fails, he told Miller.
It was a dark, cool night with barely a sound, and as a man from a bustling and noisy city, Miller felt unnerved. No one but the odd owl took notice as the two men headed down a small slipway at the back of a large warehouse, carefully avoiding rattling four wheelie bins and ducking into the recess beside the fire door.
Rush didn’t carry a tool bag, for obvious reasons, and kept everything in multiple pockets of his clothing. From his jacket he withdrew a long, thin piece of metal. He leaned over and whispered, ‘Soon as I lift the bar, I’ll give the door a shove. If the alarm’s on it’ll sound. Yeah?’
‘What do we do then?’
‘Run like hell back to the woods.’
‘That‘s it? Game over?’
‘Nah. We’ll give it an hour or so and the key holder’ll turn up. Wait’ll you see his face, it’ll be worth hanging around for.’
Rush delicately slipped the thin metal between door and door jamb and began moving it slowly up and down, while Miller held his breath.
‘Got it,’ he hissed. ‘This might be a bit noisy so I’ll wait for a little background noise.’
They waited for what seemed like an age until the sound of a motorbike in a nearby housing estate echoed in the cool, still air. Miller was so intent on watching and listening for any response to the clatter of the door lever, which seemed really loud, that he didn’t realise Rush had opened the door and disappeared inside. Miller took one final look around and followed.
‘It just seems noisy,’ Rush whispered, ‘because there’s no one about, but if anybody heard, they would just think somebody dropped something; maybe a jemmy or something,’ he said, laughing.
Miller tried to smile but he was too nervous, and it felt like a sickly grin. Not that Rush could see as the windows were blacked out, leaving the inside of the ‘secret’ part of the PFB Parcel warehouse inky dark. When his eyes became more accustomed he could see weak light filtering in from an open door leading out into a small corridor, an omission no doubt made by the aggravated key holder as they rushed back home to a warm bed.
Despite the darkness, he knew he was in a large, airy room and walked slowly towards the middle, trying to avoid bumping into anything or kicking a hidden o
bject. He bumped into Rush. ‘There’s fuck-all in here mate, except that big work bench and some offices out through that open door. You take a look around here and I’ll poke me head around the offices.’
He started to move but Miller caught his arm. ‘Remember what I said earlier, Billy. Don’t touch anything, they mustn’t know we’ve been here.’
‘Right on skipper,’ he said before he slipped away and was swallowed up by the darkness.
Miller moved towards the work bench and laboriously counted five high stools. He sat down on one and ran his hand over the surface of the bench, which he could feel was flat and blemish-free, like melamine or porcelain and clean, clinically clean, his opinion amplified by the distinct smell of disinfectant. The five positions were lit by individual overhead lamps and each position had a mobile magnifying glass, indicating the technicians working here were undertaking intricate work.
On the shelf above the bench he felt the shape of big bottles or flasks. He had brought a little torch and decided to switch it on as the batteries were weak and he was sure not much light would escape outside. He aimed it at the bottles but it didn’t do any good as the labels were all written in Chinese.
He moved the torch around him, careful to keep it low and not to let the light glint though a gap in the window paint. He could see the outline of a filing cabinet across the room from the bench. It was a document cabinet with an up-and-over roller door, closed only to the halfway point where a large folder blocked its path.
He eased the door up and pointed the torch at dark shelves. A thick, well-thumbed loose-leaf book caught his attention. He pulled the book out and placed it on the floor. If he didn’t suspect this was a place used by wine fakers, he would believe this was an avid wine collector’s life work. Encased within plastic sheet after plastic sheet were labels from the most famous wine houses in the world: Batailley, Beychevelle, Château Du Tetre.
A hand on his shoulder made him jump.
It was Rush. ‘It sounds like from all your huffing and puffing you’ve found something.’
‘Christ you gave me a fright,’ he whispered. ‘Did you see anything in the offices?’
‘Not a dickey; just stationery and stuff. I’ll take a gander around here, looks more interesting. What’s that?’
‘A book of wine labels.’
‘Ah great. Prefer the real thing myself.’
Miller returned to the folder of labels. Between plastic sheets were the originals, some old and stained, others faded and scratched. Reading the notes inside, he realised it was a template for faking wine labels. The job of the technicians sitting at the high stools, was to copy the details and add ageing marks and stains, which were all described in the book, befitting the condition and age of an old wine bottle. Ingenious!
He was about to remove one of the labels and examine it in more detail when a loud rattle from the front door made him freeze to the spot.
Rush moved beside him. ‘It’s a bloody security guard checking the doors. Did you lock the fire door?’
‘What? No,’ he hissed. ‘Was I supposed to?’
‘Bloody hell! Come on!’
They walked quickly to the fire door, making as little noise as possible. Rush gripped his arm. ‘It’s too late to lock it with the bar, he might hear,’ he whispered.
‘What do we do?’
‘Push our backs against the door.’
‘Will it be enough?’
‘It’ll have to be, or him out there will be getting a bit of this,’ he said tapping his jacket pocket.
Miller didn’t stop to ask what ‘this’ might be and instead, pressed against the door, his trainers finding a strong grip on the uncarpeted floor.
‘After he does the front, he’ll come down ‘ere and try the fire door,’ Rush said. ‘It’s what he does on all the warehouses.’
A minute or so later they heard the sound of boots shuffling across the concrete. Not the smart, snappy walk of a military man, but the sluggish, lazy gait of a jobsworth, forced to depart from a warm guard house to do something that he regarded as an inconvenience and not a necessity.
Miller was wound as tense as a guitar string, when suddenly the guard let out a yell, causing him to stifle a yell in response. Seconds before, Miller heard a clang and realised the security guard had struck his shin on a long piece of metal sticking out from the bottom of one of the bins, an obstacle he and Rush had been careful to avoid.
They listened as a series of curses resonated noisily in the still air, making it clear the man was in considerable pain. Rush stifled a laugh. They waited another two or three minutes, all the time maintaining pressure on the door, when the guard moved from the bins to the fire door. As he approached, a chink of light from his torch appeared at the base of the door.
His boots scraped across the concrete outside and they heard him mutter something. Without warning, he banged his hand on the door then gave it a push. To Miller’s relief, it didn’t move. His boots shuffled and began to move away. Miller relaxed and was about to release his hold of the door when Rush’s arm came across his chest and he mouthed, ‘Wait.’
Nothing happened for what seemed like five minutes, but in likelihood, was no more than fifteen seconds, then he heard the shuffle of the guard’s feet; he was still outside the fire door. A voice in Miller’s head screamed, ‘what the hell are you doing out there! Go, will you?’
‘These fuckin’ bins,’ the guard said to himself. ‘Me sodden leg’s bleedin’ so it is.’
A little more shuffling and then the familiar splash and tinkle of someone pissing against a wall. Miller looked over at his companion. Rush’s hand was covering his mouth, his shoulders moving up and down as he tried to stifle a laugh, forcing Miller to turn away, fearing his merriment would be infectious. At last it was finished and the guard zipped up. Seconds later he walked away, his footsteps, moving faster this time, and gradually they receded into the distance.
On Rush’s signal, Miller moved away from the door and was about to walk back inside the building when he felt a blast of cold air. He turned. Rush had opened the fire door and was peering out. ‘He’s gone,’ he said smiling.
He lifted the bar and locked it ‘That’ll stop him if he comes back unexpectedly, but he won’t. These guys only look at each building on their patch once a night.’
Miller headed back to the book cabinet. For the next few minutes, he looked through what appeared to be the production schedule. The heading in one column, FB, had to be Fraser Brook’s Fine Wines, the van he’d spotted while sitting outside last week. If his assumptions were correct, the numbers in the ‘FB’ column represented the number of fake bottles Fraser Brook picked up each week; sometimes thirty, other times more.
Rush appeared at his shoulder and hissed, ‘Hey, come here and see this, mate.’
Miller flashed his torch in the direction of the voice only to see that the wall, which he first thought looked blank, was in fact lined with racks of wine bottles, their dark shapes glinting in the faint light of the small torch. As he moved towards Rush, he could see he held a bottle in his hand. It was empty. ‘They don’t make bottles like this nowadays,’ he said. ‘Feel ’ow heavy it is,’ he suggested, handing it to him. Miller was surprised to find how solid it felt, more like a cudgel than a bottle.
‘If that don’t sail your boat, cop this,’ Rush said. He followed the voice and Rush handed him a piece of paper. He lifted the torch. It was a Château Margaux label printed in an old typeface and dated 1945. He wasn’t an expert, but it didn’t look like a recently made label trying to look old, it felt and looked like the real McCoy; stained, frayed and a little bit fragile.
In a wall display of small plastic bins three across and ten down, each bin contained dozens of labels of Lafite, Lafleur, Lafon and further over, Palmer, Pavie, Petrus. He shone the torch past the labels, to a smaller set of red bins with aged corks, and white bins full of faded and cracked neck capsules.
Emboldened now, he used the torch to walk
around the room, and on the wall opposite he spotted four wooden wine barrels, resting on sturdy plinths. He tapped each in turn with the back of the torch, and the dull sound that returned suggested all were full of wine. A handwritten label stuck to the side indicated three were ‘Claret’ and the fourth, ‘Burgundy.’
He was about to walk back to where Rush stood when he spotted some stencilled writing on the side of the first barrel. He almost cried out in triumph when he saw the line drawing of a leaping grey wolf with the words, ‘Château Osanne’ underneath. It was the link he had been searching for.
He walked back to Rush, his head reeling and his heart racing. ‘I’ve seen everything I came her for. Before we go, I’d like to take some photos; the books in the cupboard and those racks of labels. I’ll need to use a flash, do you think it’ll be ok?’
‘Sure. We should close the door to the offices and make it really pitch in here, but you’ll need to shield it. I saw some technician’s overalls on the pegs over there. Get everything under the overall and take the picture, but you’ll need to shut your eyes when the flash goes off or you’ll be blinded.’
Ten minutes later, they headed back to the fire door. Rush lifted the handle and peered into the gloom. ‘The coast’s clear, mate. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
Outside, the cold air hit Miller’s face like a wet cloth after the stuffy clamminess of the warehouse. He waited until Rush locked the door using a thin strip of wire. They then made their way past the bins, stopping at the edge of the warehouse. Miller glanced at his watch, four-thirty, but still dark. They heard nothing; no voices, no shuffling of feet, no car doors closing. With a nudge from Rush, they ran across the road and ducked into the cover of trees and bushes bordering the industrial estate.
They parted company at the car park with a firm handshake and the satisfied smile of a job well done. Miller was pleased that his beating in France had not been in vain and he was now on the trail of wine fraudsters who, based on the detail he saw in one of the books in the filing cabinet, were making millions. In all likelihood, the fear of Chris Fletcher blowing their lucrative secret was what got the poor fellow killed.
