Out of Sight

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘I imagine that you believe that my brothers killed Anish because of some business arrangement that went wrong?’ she continued.

  Warren kept quiet, knowing that the best strategy was to let her fill the silence. Now he was really intrigued. The motive that Vasava suggested was certainly one that the team had been actively considering. Had she deduced this herself or was she floating the hypothesis to see his reaction, because she knew it was true?

  ‘Or perhaps you believe that my brother was killed to protect our inheritance and hide the shame that Anish was bringing on our family through his lifestyle? Perhaps you think that we decided he didn’t deserve to inherit a share of the wealth that the rest of us worked so hard to create?’

  For the first time since the interview began, she looked at Warren square in the eyes.

  ‘You probably think that when we found out that Anish had found a way around those clauses in our father’s will that we decided that the only way to stop him taking what was ours was to kill him?’

  The air in the room was electric. Even the solicitor, who had already heard everything that Vasava was planning on telling them, seemed transfixed. Beside him, Sutton remained immobile.

  ‘Well, you are right about some of it. But my brothers didn’t kill Anish. They are just too stupid and stubborn to save themselves.’ Tears formed in her eyes. ‘They’re trying to protect me. And because of that, they’re going to go to prison. I can’t let that happen.’

  Vasava’s solicitor opened her laptop.

  ‘I have here a prepared statement that Mrs Vasava would like to be entered into the record. I’ll provide you with a written transcript once I have read it out.’

  Warren agreed. Beside him, Sutton moved to a more comfortable position.

  ‘I would like to start by stating that my brothers, Manoj and Jaidev Patel, did not kill our younger brother, Anish Patel.’

  Seated beside her solicitor, Vasava closed her eyes, her face a mask.

  ‘On the night of Thursday November 24th, my brothers, Manoj and Jaidev, attended an unofficial social gathering in a warehouse on the Fowler Industrial Estate. Entry is by invitation only. My brothers have been going there at least once a week for the past few years. Because of the unofficial nature of the club – and the entertainments provided within – Manoj and Jaidev thought it wise to leave their personal mobile phones at home, taking only an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone with them.’

  ‘What type of entertainments?’ asked Sutton.

  Ordinarily, the investigators would be reluctant to break the flow of what was clearly building up to a confession of some sort, however the statement was pre-written and they would receive transcripts afterwards. Furthermore, Vasava’s willingness to answer awkward questions would give an insight into how much the statement was her own words and how much it had been ‘massaged’ by her solicitor to paint her in a more flattering light.

  The solicitor said nothing, studiously not looking at her client. Would Vasava heed her advice not to incriminate herself further, or give Warren and Sutton a show of good faith?

  Vasava swallowed. ‘Gambling. Drugs. Girls.’

  Beside him, Warren felt Sutton shift slightly. The type of establishment that she was describing was more the purview of the Serious Organised Crime unit, who typically played their cards close to their chest. Nevertheless, DSI Grayson was usually made aware of such activities within Middlesbury, if only to stop CID inadvertently interfering with ongoing operations. He hadn’t mentioned the club to either of his senior officers. Had Vasava revealed the existence of somewhere as yet unknown to SOC?

  ‘How do you know about this?’ asked Warren. It didn’t seem like the sort of place one would boast about to loved ones.

  Vasava closed her eyes briefly. ‘Manoj’s wife told me. After he was arrested.’

  ‘She knew about it?’ Warren’s suspicion that the family had been talking to one another and swapping stories after the brothers’ arrest appeared to be well-founded.

  ‘Yes,’ Vasava swallowed. ‘Manoj can be very … controlling. He believes that what he does in his own time is his own business and nobody else’s. Lavanya has very little influence over my brother. He’s very like our father in that way.’

  The description certainly chimed with the impression that Lavanya Patel had given in interview, with her hasty and clumsy attempts at lying to cover for her husband. Not for the first time, Warren wondered what life was like behind the closed doors of Manoj and Lavanya Patel’s home.

  ‘And what about Jaidev?’ asked Sutton. ‘Was his wife Kamala also aware of what he and his brother were up to?’

  Vasava gave a tiny shrug. ‘I don’t know. She’s never spoken to me about it … but she must suspect something. I think she’s in denial.’

  ‘So why didn’t either of them tell us this themselves?’ asked Warren. ‘If they could have supplied an alibi for that night, we might not even have arrested them.’

  Vasava snorted. ‘Why do you think? They’re never going to willingly admit what goes on in there.’ She shook her head slightly. ‘Not to mention the curse of all the men in my family: arrogance and sheer bloody stubbornness. They know they didn’t murder Anish, so to their mind, there’s no way they could be convicted of it. Far better to listen to their solicitor and keep their mouths shut, and it’ll all go away in the end.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Bloody fools, do they think that innocent men never go to prison?’

  She folded her arms and looked over at her solicitor again, who cleared her throat slightly. Warren motioned for her to continue reading from the statement.

  ‘The cigarettes that were found in Manoj’s garden shed were illegally imported from Eastern Europe. They were sold through the newsagents our family manage at full price. The profit was taken as cash.’

  The revelation told them nothing new; it merely confirmed what the team had already deduced. But why was Vasava admitting to it? Was it a show of good faith, or was she playing a game with them?

  ‘And what was Anish’s part in this?’ asked Warren.

  Vasava looked over at her solicitor, who continued reading from her laptop.

  ‘Anish agreed to store the cigarettes in his apartment, for a fee. He gave a key to Jaidev, who would periodically drive over and pick up a few cartons to replenish those that had been sold. When you came to the house to tell us that Anish had been murdered, we knew that as soon as I gave you his address, you would search his flat and the cigarettes would be discovered. Jaidev drove over, removed the remaining boxes and hid them in Manoj’s shed.’

  ‘Why was Anish involved?’ asked Sutton. ‘I thought he had nothing to do with the family business?’

  Vasava sighed. ‘He didn’t, but he needed the money. Anish was … profligate. He liked to live the high life. Fancy clothes, expensive meals, a flash car. He was drowning in debt.’

  She paused. ‘And we needed somewhere to store the cigarettes. We couldn’t risk storing them in the shops, in case we got raided by Trading Standards again. Jaidev had no space to store them. Manoj … well, he knew Lavanya wouldn’t approve. The one place we knew Dad would never find them was Anish’s flat. Everyone was a winner.’

  That at least explained why Anish had kept his expensive suits on a wheeled rail, rather than in his wardrobe – he’d needed that space to store the cigarettes.

  ‘I thought you said that Manoj believed that what he got up to in his own time wasn’t any of his wife’s business?’ Sutton said.

  ‘I think Manoj is starting to realise that the way he has treated Lavanya over the years might just come back and bite him on the arse.’

  ‘He was worried that she might report him to the police or Trading Standards?’ said Warren.

  ‘Worse, she might tell our father.’

  ‘So, your father was unaware of this business arrangement?’ asked Warren.

  ‘No, he wasn’t aware, and he would have been furious if he found out.’ A faint smile returned. ‘For all their bluster, my two br
others are very scared of what my father would do to them if he caught them selling illegal cigarettes out of his shops. He has spent a lifetime building up a reputable, honest business.’

  Vasava leaned forward, her voice becoming more earnest. ‘What you have to understand is that for my father, appearances are everything. He craves the respect that his parents never had. His name is above each of our shops and it is his reputation that would be destroyed if one of them were raided. He was beside himself when Jaidev was almost prosecuted by Trading Standards a couple of years ago. He made it very clear to my brothers what the consequences would be if such a thing happened again.’

  ‘And what would those consequences be?’ asked Sutton.

  Vasava’s eyes flashed and her mouth tightened. ‘He would disown them. To his mind, that would be the only way that he could save face. Our father owns our houses and pays our mortgages. His name is on the ownership documents for our cars. He employs us and he employs our partners. All that would be gone—’ she clicked her fingers ‘—just like that.’

  ‘OK, I get that,’ said Sutton. ‘But if he’s willing to disown Manoj and Jaidev for being in trouble with the police, then why didn’t he disown Anish for being gay?’

  ‘Because to do so would be to admit it,’ said Vasava. ‘I’m not sure exactly what he tells his friends about why he so rarely sees Anish, but I’m certain that it has nothing to do with Anish’s sexuality. They probably don’t even know that he has been cut off.’

  ‘So why do it?’ asked Warren. ‘Why rock the boat? It looks to me as if you’ve all got it pretty good.’

  Vasava’s eyes flashed again. ‘Because we don’t have any control. He pays us the bare minimum; we own nothing. Our wages cover our bills and our food; anything else and we have to ask him for a handout.

  ‘I’m thirty-two years old. My brothers are in their forties. We have lovely houses and expensive cars, but we have to ask our dad to open his wallet if we want to buy something nice for Christmas. My TV packed up last year; I had to take Dad to the showroom to choose a new one, because he was paying for it. Do you know how that feels? At thirty-two?

  ‘My husband wanted to take me away as a surprise for our anniversary. Dad knew where we were going before I did, because he put down the deposit.

  ‘We can’t get a credit card with a decent limit because according to our bank statements, we don’t earn enough to pay off the balance. When I first got married, Dad applied for one on my behalf,’ she snorted. ‘I was delighted; it never occurred to me that the statements would go to him, because it was all in his name. He came into the house one morning – oh yes, he has keys to all of our houses, another reason we paid Anish to look after those damned cigarettes – brandishing the statement, demanding to know what I’d been buying from Victoria’s Secret that cost almost two hundred pounds.’ Her voice cracked. ‘It was my husband’s birthday, and I’d bought something sexy to wear and, well something to help us as a couple. The humiliation …’

  She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘The money made from selling those cigarettes was our money. Money he knew nothing about. Money we could spend how we wished. Is it any wonder Anish was so bad with his finances? When he moved away and started having to look after his own affairs, he couldn’t cope. On his salary, he had no business driving that car or wearing those clothes. Without the money from looking after those cigarettes, he’d have been out on the street.’

  Her piece said, Vasava sagged back in her chair.

  Warren looked over at the solicitor, who was scrolling down the statement.

  ‘That’s pretty much everything that Mrs Vasava wished to say,’ she said. ‘I’ll still send you the formal version.’

  ‘Then I think that now would be a good time for a break,’ said Warren, rising to his feet.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ said Vasava.

  She licked her lips. Her solicitor looked over in surprise.

  Reaching into her purse, she withdrew a piece of paper. ‘These are the numbers for Manoj and Jaidev’s second mobile phones.’

  Warren called a quick team briefing. Vasava’s revelations had answered a number of questions and confirmed several of the team’s suspicions. But the list of questions that she hadn’t answered was even longer.

  ‘Pretty convenient that her brothers’ alibis are essentially that they were visiting some sort of illegal gentleman’s club,’ said Hutchinson. ‘What are we supposed to do? Knock on the door next Thursday and ask if any of the dealers or prostitutes can remember if the brothers Patel were there that night? We don’t even know what time Anish was killed; they could have bumped him off on the way home.’

  ‘The club could be another link to Leon Grime,’ said Sutton. ‘We suspect that he was dealing drugs, and that he was also out and about somewhere he shouldn’t have been that night. Perhaps that’s how they all met each other? Maybe he introduced them to Nicholas Kimpton so they could use their catering business as a cover? This story about Anish looking after dodgy fags for them to sell through their shops might just be the tip of the iceberg. They could have been selling drugs also. A pint of semi-skimmed, twenty dodgy Bensons and a gram of your finest coke, please.’

  ‘She’s also given everyone a bloody big motive to kill Anish,’ said Ruskin. ‘What if he was the one that threatened to tell their father what was going on?’

  Warren turned to Pymm and Richardson. ‘Reva gave us what she claims are the numbers to her brothers’ burner phones. Work your magic. If we can prove or disprove the brothers’ alibis, we’re halfway there.’

  He turned back to the team. ‘OK folks, Reva Vasava has drip-fed us just enough to potentially clear her brothers. Now let’s turn the screws and get her to tell us what’s really been going on. But before we do that, I have a phone call to make.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Sutton, to no one in particular. Ever since Vasava had mentioned her brother’s heart condition again, an idea had been forming. He couldn’t believe they hadn’t thought of it before.

  Chapter 42

  Reva Vasava was more composed when they restarted the interview a little over two hours later. She probably thought that whilst she may have got her brothers into trouble over their illicit Thursday evening excursions, and landed them in hot water with Trading Standards, she had at least removed the threat of murder charges.

  ‘Tell me about the deal with the cigarettes,’ started Warren, once the recording had resumed. ‘How did Anish get involved?’

  The details of the operation would be of far more interest to Trading Standards and SOC than Warren, but he needed to know how relevant the arrangements were to the investigation into Anish Patel’s murder. They’d decided not to broach the subject of illegal drugs yet; he didn’t want her to stop talking.

  ‘Anish became involved in November of last year, after he moved out of Dad’s and started having to pay his own rent,’ said Vasava. ‘I could see from his Facebook posts that his outgoings must be far more than his salary. Jaidev texted him and asked him if he wanted to take part in a business deal. Anish was reluctant, but he couldn’t afford to turn down the money.’

  Sutton looked down at the phone records Rachel Pymm had furnished him with before they resumed the interview. He gave a tiny nod. Anish had swapped text messages with Jaidev’s personal phone that November. A few days later, a further exchange had been via Jaidev’s burner phone.

  ‘Go on,’ said Warren.

  ‘Jaidev would meet Anish in a layby after dark on the A506 and transfer the cartons from the boot of his Range Rover to the boot of Anish’s Merc.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘That was Anish’s idea. He loved a bit of cloak and dagger; all those years watching spy films and heist movies …’ Her voice trailed off. She cleared her throat and continued. ‘He didn’t want the neighbours to see Jaidev coming in and out of his flat. When Jaidev pointed out that meant he wouldn’t be able to pick up the cigarettes when he needed them, Anish insisted that Jaidev only come by in the afternoon when his neighbo
urs were at work, and fill a bag-for-life so they couldn’t see what he was carrying. Silly sod. We all knew his neighbours wouldn’t even notice, but if it kept him happy …’

  ‘Did Anish ever meet the supplier?’ asked Warren.

  ‘No, he didn’t want any part of that.’ She looked down at the table, guilt passing across her face. ‘He didn’t really want to be involved at all, but like I said, he needed the money.’

  ‘Did the exchange ever take place anywhere else?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘You mean like the hotel where he was found?’ she asked. ‘No, the layby was out of the way. He wouldn’t have wanted to be so exposed. God, listen to me, I’m even speaking like him.’

  ‘So neither you nor your brothers had any link to the Easy Break Hotel?’ asked Warren.

  ‘No, I’ve no idea why Anish was there,’ she replied.

  ‘Thank you, Reva. That’s been very helpful,’ said Warren.

  Some of the tension drained from her shoulders.

  ‘Why did you tell us you thought your father killed Anish?’ asked Sutton.

  Vasava licked her lips. When she spoke, her voice was measured, the words practised. ‘The day that you told us Anish was killed was very difficult, and my father was upset. He had a lot to drink, and things were said.’

  ‘What things?’ said Sutton.

  ‘He said that it was all Anish’s fault. That he brought it on himself, parading around town and shaming us all.’ She closed her eyes. ‘He said that if Anish had so little respect for himself and our family, then perhaps we were better off now that he was dead. That we could move on.’ She covered her mouth, stifling a sob.

  ‘Did he ever threaten Anish in that way?’ asked Warren. ‘Did he speak to Anish at all after he moved out? Try to persuade him not to be so – I don’t know – open about his homosexuality?’

  ‘As far as I know, they didn’t say another word to one another from the day Anish moved out. He wouldn’t even speak to him when he changed his will the week after Anish left.’ Again, her voice cracked. ‘He wrote a letter outlining what he had done and made me post it; he didn’t even want to know his address.’