Detective Sophie Allen Box Set 2

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  ‘Your friend is a bit moody. Is it just tonight or is he always like it?’

  ‘He’s normally okay, but he’s been like this since last week. Something’s bugging him. We don’t talk much. I don’t even know what his job is. We just talk football, darts and booze. Oh, and women.’

  ‘What about women? Go on, tell me.’

  He shrugged. ‘The usual. Who’s really hot. Who’s got good legs. What they might be like in bed.’

  ‘Well, thank you for being honest with me. And how do I do on the Craig rankings? For looks, I mean. Don’t even try to guess the last one.’

  He grinned again. ‘Pretty good, I’d say. But you’re not his type. He’s into slim blondes. I’ve never seen him with a brunette.’

  Mole returned with the beers, one each for himself and Craig, but nothing for Rae. She would have felt humiliated if her reason for being there had been purely social. Was this some kind of test? She decided to act that way. She stood up and glared.

  ‘Obviously I have to buy my own drink. While I’m at the bar, would you two gentlemen like anything? Nuts, perhaps?’

  Craig came to the bar with her. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him. That was way out of line. He was like it on Saturday night too. Sorry. Let me get this.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. He’s got a huge attitude problem, though. That was quite deliberate.’

  As they turned away from the bar, she saw Mole leaving by a side door, with a mobile phone clamped to his ear. She turned to Craig.

  ‘I need the loo. Can you take my drink? I’ll be back in a tick.’

  Rae hurried out past the toilets. A path led around the building to the rear garden, and here she spotted Mole. He was deep in conversation with another person. No one else was around. Rae crept closer, keeping behind a line of shrubs. She switched her phone into record mode and held it out towards the two men.

  ‘Are you fucking mad? This is my place and you shouldn’t be here. I told you, don’t bother me. I’m out of it. Can’t I make it any clearer?’ Mole hissed.

  ‘I need to know what your lot are up to. Find out for me. I need to know we’re in the clear before I sign on the dotted line for Frimwell’s places. That’s all I want. But it needs to be quick.’

  ‘Jesus. You’re unbelievable. You fucking come here without warning and expect me to jump through hoops for you? Listen. I won’t do it. It’s too risky. This is way beyond the few favours I did for your dad.’

  ‘Ten grand. Just for this. Then it ends and you won’t hear from me again.’

  The ensuing silence seemed endless. Rae could feel her heart beating hard in her chest.

  ‘Okay. Then I never want to see you again. If I do, I’ll fucking slam you in the clink. Understood?’

  The other figure moved off towards the car park. Rae slid silently back around the building and made her way to the toilets. She washed her hands, patted them dry with a paper towel and checked her makeup. Still passable. She thought she looked quite sultry. She made a face at herself in the mirror and returned to the bar. Craig and Mole were arguing. Craig was making it clear that he was annoyed by the earlier snub to Rae.

  ‘Oh, fuck off you wanker.’ Mole finished his pint of beer in one swallow, pushed Rae aside and walked out.

  Craig shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen him this bad. Maybe I’ve never seen the real him before. Or maybe something’s really worrying him. Whatever it is, there’s no excuse. I’m really sorry.’

  Rae smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got the hide of a rhino. It all just bounces off me. How about another game of pool? I’ve got another couple of hours till my taxi comes. How about playing for a fiver? I might manage to pay the fare back to the station then.’

  CHAPTER 30: Taking the Bait

  Tuesday Morning, Week 3

  Sophie Allen and Barry Marsh walked up the steps of Bournemouth’s ornate town hall and entered the lobby. They were both in business attire, Marsh wearing a blue suit and Sophie in powder grey. The receptionist looked up from her desk and smiled.

  ‘We’d like to see Councillor Blythe, please,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  Sophie held out her warrant card. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Allen. No, I don’t have an appointment, but I know he’s in this morning. No need to let him know we’re here. Just point us in the right direction.’

  ‘Ah. Second floor, turn left and look for the third door. I’ll have to log your visit.’

  The door opened into a small secretarial area, where a member of staff was working behind a desk. She didn’t look up. Sophie waited a few seconds then said, ‘Councillor Blythe, please.’

  With her eyes on the screen in front of her, the secretary held up her hand, as if stopping traffic. Sophie pushed her warrant card wallet into the outstretched fingers and the woman looked up. ‘Oh,’ she said, then, ‘He has someone with him. I’ll phone through that the police need to see him.’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘Phone, but don’t tell him we’re police. Just say he has very urgent visitors who can’t wait more than two minutes.’ She smiled coolly at the receptionist.

  ‘Would you like to take a seat?’

  ‘No, we’ll wait right here.’

  Looking perplexed, the receptionist phoned, using Sophie’s precise words. The two detectives waited at the desk for exactly two minutes, walked to the door bearing Blythe’s nameplate, opened it and walked in.

  A fleshy man in his late forties was talking to a young couple. All three looked up in surprise. ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t just barge in here like this,’ said Blythe. He had probably been handsome a decade or so earlier, but now the years were beginning to take their toll. Sophie would have bet that his red face was due to more than annoyance, and the heavy jowls and bulbous nose indicated years of rich living.

  ‘Oh, but I can. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Sophie Allen from Dorset police and it’s very important that we talk. Right now. So if these two people wouldn’t mind waiting outside for a few minutes, please?’ She smiled brightly at the couple, who stood up in some confusion. ‘The receptionist outside will make another appointment for you if you need one. I really do apologise.’ She waited until the couple had left and sat down opposite the scarlet-cheeked councillor. He looked as if he wanted to explode in anger, but there was wariness too.

  ‘I’d better explain,’ Sophie began, smoothing out her skirt. Marsh sat down in the other chair and took out his notebook.

  ‘Yes, you’d better,’ Blythe hissed. ‘This is unacceptable. Why didn’t you let me know in advance?’

  ‘It’s a murder inquiry. A triple murder inquiry, in fact. I see people when I’m good and ready, and I don’t give them warning.’ She paused. ‘Phil and Wayne Woodruff, Councillor Blythe. Tell me about them.’

  ‘But Phil Woodruff’s death wasn’t murder, not as far as I know. I thought his death was down to a stroke.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Yes, it was. Left hemisphere. Fatal. But it isn’t his death we’re investigating.’

  ‘So whose is it?’

  ‘My question first, please. Tell me about your relationship with the Woodruffs.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘You were at Phil’s committal at the crematorium. A committal usually involves family and close friends only, unlike the main funeral service, which is often open to anybody who wants to come.’

  Blythe visibly relaxed and sat back. ‘I couldn’t make the main service because of an important council meeting here. I told the family and they suggested I go to the committal instead. That’s all there was to it.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘Why were you there at all? They don’t live in the ward you represent. No other councillors attended either service.’

  Blythe leaned forward again, stabbing the air with his finger. ‘Why is this of any importance? I can go to funerals if I want to. We don’t yet live in a police state, despite what you may wish. What’s it got to do with you? Why are you
here? All I have to do is lift my phone, call the Chief Constable’s office and complain about your heavy-handed approach to whatever it is you’re investigating, and you’ll wish you’d been a bit more careful.’

  ‘Go ahead. I’ll wait.’ The air almost crackled with tension.

  Blythe sat poised, then relaxed back into his seat. ‘Never let it be said that I refused to help the police go about their work.’

  ‘Good. Now tell me how you come to know the Woodruffs.’

  ‘They own leisure properties in the area. Leisure and tourism is this region’s lifeblood. As a councillor, it’s my job to keep a finger on the pulse.’

  Bloody timewaster, thought Sophie. ‘Well now, Councillor. We could sit here all morning playing silly games, but it will just end up wasting time for both of us, so let’s just get down to the nitty gritty, shall we? Two elderly people were found dead nearly two weeks ago. They’d died in extremely suspicious circumstances. Their bodies were found in their abandoned car, hidden deep in a nature reserve in Wareham Forest. You’ll know all this from the press coverage. What interests me is the fact that they were at Poole Crematorium to attend a funeral directly after Phil Woodruff’s committal. You bumped into them when you came out in rather a hurry and, apparently, in a bit of a temper. You scowled at them. A few days ago the body of a senior employee of the Woodruff organisation was found only a mile or so away from where we found the bodies of the couple a week earlier. He too had been at that same committal. Coincidence? It’s possible but unlikely.’

  ‘I thought the couple’s death was down to suicide. That was the press line.’

  ‘We always wait for detailed forensic evidence before drawing conclusions, Councillor. We get facts from the post mortem, from searching the immediate scene, from sifting through anything we find. It’s only then that we make a judgement.’

  She waited.

  Blythe took the bait. ‘I heard the search was rushed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A whisper that the search team missed something.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Blythe hesitated, then said, ‘I can’t remember. Does it matter?’

  ‘No, not at all, particularly since I have total faith in the forensic search team. Do you have contact with an insider?’

  ‘No, no. Of course not. Maybe I misheard.’

  He’s just realised that he’s let the cat out of the bag, thought Sophie. Time to move on. ‘So you sit on the planning committee for big leisure developments?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied guardedly.

  ‘So Woodruff’s application for the conversion of one of his clubs into a casino complex would have come forward for scrutiny?’

  ‘Yes, I believe there was one a month or two ago.’

  ‘And was it ratified?’

  Blythe nodded, his eyes narrowing. His ruddy complexion had faded somewhat, and he looked ill at ease.

  ‘I understand you spoke quite eloquently in support of the application. You must have been pleased when it was approved by the committee. By a slim majority vote, wasn’t it?’

  Blythe nodded again. It was as if he didn’t trust himself to speak, in case he gave something else away.

  ‘I’d like to return to my first question, Councillor Blythe. The one that you haven’t yet answered. How do you come to know the Woodruffs so well? Would you care to answer it now?’

  ‘As I said, we were bound to meet. Our interests in the leisure industry overlap.’

  Sophie stared at him. ‘So the fact that your wife and Wayne Woodruff’s wife are twin sisters doesn’t come into it?’

  The ensuing silence seemed to last for minutes. Eventually Blythe said, ‘They don’t get on. They hate the sight of each other.’

  Sophie stood up. ‘This has been very useful, Councillor. I may want to speak to you again.’ She moved towards the door with Marsh following, but then turned to face Blythe. ‘You never made that call to the Chief Constable’s office complaining about my heavy-handed approach. Feel free to do it now.’

  The two detectives left the councillor’s office, passing the puzzled-looking couple, still waiting outside.

  ‘That was interesting, ma’am,’ Marsh said. ‘He blundered right into it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Give a fool enough rope. He’ll be on the phone right now, warning the whole lot of them. But it’s too bloody late for them to cover it up now. I think we’ve had all our suspicions confirmed, so it’s just a question of getting the evidence. It’ll have to be completely watertight. We’d better hang around here for a while. There’s a good chance that Blythe will head off somewhere interesting once he calms down and gathers his thoughts. Maybe a bit of tailing is called for.’

  ‘That could be a problem, ma’am. As well as this entrance, there’s a staff-only one that leads from the office area to an internal car park. Shall I take that one? I’ll try to find somewhere to wait that isn’t too obvious.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sophie replied. ‘I’ll wait here in the main parking area, but you can tail him if he does leave. I’ll need to pay a visit to the ACC at headquarters later this morning and time is ticking by. If he does come out, it’s more likely to be by car, so you’ll catch him. I’ll wait about twenty minutes.’

  * * *

  Marsh only had to wait fifteen minutes before a car appeared from the tunnel and slowed to a crawl as it approached the junction with the road. There was no mistaking Blythe’s angry face as his vehicle was forced to wait for a line of slow moving traffic. Marsh started his engine and pulled out behind the councillor’s car, keeping his distance along straight sections of road, but moving closer as the traffic approached junctions and roundabouts. They were heading north towards Winton, one of Bournemouth’s main residential areas. The traffic thinned for a while, so Marsh could afford to drop back further, but then it began to get busier as they approached the commercial centre of Winton. Blythe slowed and pulled into a parking bay. Marsh took a left into a quiet side street, parked his car and walked quickly to the corner. He watched as Blythe left his car, crossed the road and entered a coffee shop — the Priory Cafe. Wasn’t that one of the properties on the Woodruff list? Marsh bought a newspaper from a vendor and walked to a low wall that surrounded a nearby playground. It provided a near-perfect vantage point. Who could Blythe be meeting? One thing was for certain. This was no coincidence. His and Sophie’s visit had caused the councillor to panic, exactly what they had hoped for.

  Blythe left the cafe some fifteen minutes later, still looking angry. Marsh wondered whether to follow him further or make an attempt to identify the person he’d met. Clearly the councillor hadn’t got his own way, so it would be useful to find out who he’d talked to. Marsh made his way across the road to the cafe. It was clean and a welcoming aroma of hot food emanated from the warming cabinet of pasties and pies. He sat at a table near the door and waited for the waitress to take his order for coffee. He resumed his study of the newspaper, taking out his pen and making a start on the crossword. Several other tables were occupied, but he doubted that it was any of these people that Blythe had met. They all looked to be shoppers having a welcome rest.

  The waitress arrived to take his order and he complimented her on the cafe’s welcoming atmosphere. She recommended the flapjack and he took a slice with his coffee. When she returned with his order, she began telling him about the business side of the cafe chain. While they were talking, a middle-aged man emerged from the back of the premises and headed out into the street, looking preoccupied. He was one of the three men who’d been at the Rising Moon pub the previous week, having lunch with Sorrento and Woodruff.

  The waitress told him what he wanted to know. ‘That’s Mr Griffiths, one of the company owners. He’s really nice.’

  Barry thought back to the list of senior personnel in the Woodruff business. Following the death of Sorrento, Justin Griffiths was now second-in-command, according to DS Stu Blackman’s findings the previous day. Pete Armitage had also mentioned the
name as the originator of the decorating contracts. Presumably he’d been here to meet Blythe. Things were falling into place nicely. The problem was, although they now had the links between most of the major players in the business and some idea of the factors that had led to the Armitages’ murders, there wasn’t enough evidence to make any arrests yet. And Marsh had no idea where that evidence would come from. They really needed help from an insider, and how likely was that?

  * * *

  Sophie Allen was lost in thought as she made her way out of county police headquarters at Winfrith. The meeting with Jim Metcalfe, the ACC, had provided her with some unexpected information. She’d reported her suspicions about the police mole, the insider who’d been leaking information to the Woodruffs, and played him Rae’s recording from the pub garden. There had always been a possibility that the bent cop wasn’t really bent, but was working undercover. Sophie didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed when Jim Metcalfe had denied it.

  ‘I’d have known,’ he’d said. ‘No, we have a rotten apple. There’s no one working undercover inside this Woodruff lot. How could there be? We didn’t even know about them till this case.’

  It was his second piece of information that had caused her to worry. ‘He was a firearms officer some years ago,’ the ACC had reported. ‘So you need to tread carefully, and keep me fully in the picture. No action without full backup from an armed unit. I’ll get Greg Buller’s squad primed, so contact him as soon as you’re ready. What you don’t know, and we’ve kept under wraps for a couple of years, is that one of our handguns went missing four years ago. It’s never been found. He was one of the suspects at the time. Be extra careful, Sophie. We don’t want anything to go wrong when he’s lifted.’

  Sophie looked up as a familiar vehicle pulled into the parking space beside hers. She gave Matt Silver, her boss, a wave and walked to his car.

  ‘Well, surprise, surprise. You didn’t tell me you’d be here this morning. I’d have rescheduled if I’d known,’ he said.