RUTHLESS CRIMES a totally captivating crime mystery (Detective Sophie Allen Book 9)

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  ‘Who is it?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Tommy Carter. We already know him and have a rough idea of his capabilities. He’ll be useful on this occasion because he’s a Weymouth local. He’ll be on probation with us for three months, and then we’ll need to make a decision. He’ll report to you, Rae, because you start officially as DS in the unit next week. But keep Barry posted.’

  ‘You don’t sound too thrilled, ma’am,’ Barry said.

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re reading me wrongly. I’d have liked to have a choice but, on this occasion, there isn’t one. It was either take him or leave the position unfilled. It’s the cheap solution, you see. Now, I need to get on the blower to Matt Silver and Jim Metcalfe about this safe-house business. It’ll be up to HQ for me first thing in the morning, I expect. Can you get a summary prepared for me, Rae? I’ll need all the facts at my fingertips. Barry, can you stay a moment?’

  Sophie waited until Rae had left her office. ‘I just wanted to warn you. Joel Kennedy is in hospital after having a heart attack last week. He’s our resident Special Branch person. Apparently, he’s in a bad way. It means we can’t tap into his background knowledge at the moment, so we’re operating in a bit of a vacuum. His second, Karen Brody, may know something but she’s unlikely to have Joel’s pool of background knowledge and know all of his contacts. There’s also the fact that we have different priorities. We’re investigating a murder. She’ll be investigating a possible security leak.’

  * * *

  Tommy Carter arrived about an hour later. He stepped through the door looking around nervously. Rae gave him a wave, and stood up to greet him.

  ‘Hi, Tommy. Welcome to the Violent Crime Unit, currently on location in your own cop shop. You’ve only had to walk up some stairs, haven’t you? I’ll be your immediate senior officer from next Monday when I officially become a detective sergeant, but the boss wants us to start the way we intend to go on. Let’s go and meet the others. They’re ensconced in the broom cupboard that is laughably referred to as the SIO’s temporary office. The boss suggested I bring you along when you arrived.’ She noticed Tommy’s anxious expression. ‘No need to worry. They’re both great to work for. You’re at an advantage anyway. You’ve worked with us before on the Andrea Ford case.’

  ‘That’s what worries me,’ Tommy admitted. ‘I don’t know whether I came up to scratch then. She’s a bit intimidating, isn’t she?’

  ‘You’ll be fine, Tommy. Just be prepared to work hard. Don’t expect this to be a cushy number, because it sure isn’t one. We’re Dorset’s top team, and that’s something to be proud of.’

  Rae tapped on Sophie’s office door and they went in.

  Chapter 5: Recollections

  Tuesday morning

  Jim Metcalfe, Dorset’s Assistant Chief Constable, chaired the meeting in his office. The four officers sat around a table, notepads in front of them, glasses of water to hand. Matt Silver, Sophie’s boss, sat to his left, Sophie opposite. Karen Brody, sitting to his right, looked nervous in the presence of such senior officers, which was understandable considering that she’d only been in the post for six months.

  Sophie started by giving a summary of the case and Rae’s discoveries of the previous day. Karen listened in silence, making an occasional note.

  ‘So, you have the details as they stand, Karen,’ the ACC said. ‘What can you tell us? Were you aware of the existence of these houses in the county? And their use?’

  Karen sat up straighter. ‘It’s possible we were aware of them, but not their specific locations, their purpose, nor who was in them. That’s Border Force stuff, while our main business is with internal security and the terrorist threat. Joel may have known more but, if he did, he didn’t share it with me. Sorry, sir.’ There was a short silence.

  ‘This is a bit of a problem,’ the ACC continued. ‘We need to get a grasp of what might be going on. We have an ongoing murder inquiry and, in my mind anyway, that’s a high priority, particularly if it looks more like an assassination, as it does in this situation. What always worries me in a case like this, is that there could be more. So, we need to discuss this as a group, make some decisions and meet regularly to monitor the situation. That’s what the chief has decided. It’s my job to make sure we’re all up to speed on the background, and my decisions will be the final ones if we can’t agree. The only other person to be in on the loop will be the chief herself. She’s aware we’re meeting this morning and will want a report, including our plans. I’ll try to find out a bit more from the Home Office and colleagues in neighbouring counties because Sophie’s team can’t be left to blunder around in the dark not knowing what they’re getting mixed up in. The fact is, with this Robert Bunting, if that’s his real name, now a murder victim, it looks as though someone might have found a loophole in the security framework, whether the powers that be like it or not. We’re duty-bound to investigate a murder. They have to recognise that. Any ideas, anyone?’

  ‘They may have secure safe houses available in other port towns along the south coast,’ Karen added.

  ‘That fits with what we discovered late yesterday,’ Sophie said. ‘Rae Gregson, my DS, did a bit of clever digging in various different property records, then matched the details with the security records we have access to. It wasn’t difficult. But if she can do it, you can bet your life others can too, and maybe people we don’t want probing around in that way. We need a clearer picture of what we’re dealing with.’

  Karen still looked troubled. ‘I don’t know anything else for sure. My guess is that Special Branch haven’t been officially informed, because Joel would have told me. I checked as much as I could but couldn’t find anything else.’

  ‘Well, we can try to make a guess,’ Sophie said. ‘You can tell me your thoughts. These are port towns on the south coast, which means it’s something related to the Channel. Crossing it maybe? Right now, smuggling migrants across from France and the low countries is a very lucrative business. The sums of money involved must be enormous, the kind of huge amounts that might explain a cold-blooded murder like this. Any migrants intercepted crossing the Channel are put into special holding camps, so these houses are not for them. The Home Office is trying to put a stop to the smuggling, so will be actively attempting to identify weak links inside the smuggling gangs and using them for information, maybe even turning some of them. So, maybe these properties are to house those people, possibly on a temporary basis. Other scenarios, like drugs or weapons, are a possibility we have to consider but I’m not sure they fit the facts as closely. And if it was terrorism, Special Branch would be in the mix and Karen would know all about it.’

  There was a silence. Finally, Jim Metcalfe said slowly, ‘You could be right. As I said, I’ll do some checking around, both officially and unofficially. I know there’s a gossip grapevine and that my opposite numbers in Hampshire or Sussex might be aware of something. Joel would have picked up on it if he’d been here.’

  ‘I’ll be going to see him once he’s well enough to receive visitors,’ Karen said. ‘Do you want me to ask him, sir?’

  The ACC shook his head. ‘No. We have to make it official and on the record because of the security implications. I’ll do it. But we’ll need to hold off until the medics think he’s well enough.’

  Matt Silver, Sophie’s immediate senior, was quick to point out another puzzling observation. ‘I can’t understand why no one’s been in contact. It’s now been more than three days since Bunting was murdered. Surely that triggered some kind of alarm. What are they doing, for goodness sake? Why hasn’t someone been in touch with us?’

  Jim Metcalfe shrugged. ‘I’m worried that this could all blow up in our faces, so I’ll get the go-ahead from the chief and then, as I said, try to find out exactly what’s been going on. We need to pin down who was operating that house and why. We might think it was MI6 or a special unit from the Border Force, but we can’t be sure at the moment. God knows what we do if we find it isn’t them.�
�

  ‘It’s got to be some such organisation,’ Sophie said. ‘And remember that someone’s been seen watching the house, according to my team. The neighbours saw men or a man in a large BMW several times in the week prior to the murder. Who might that have been? Security keeping an eye on Bunting, or the killers tracking his movements?’ She deliberately kept quiet about the youth on the bicycle that Barry had seen. That was still being followed up.

  * * *

  Back in Weymouth, Rae was taking the new boy, Tommy Carter, through the Violent Crime Unit’s procedures.

  ‘When we’re on a case, it’s like we live out of bags and boxes in someone else’s home. We’ve got an office up at county HQ but we’re always in some kind of temporary incident room when an investigation’s on. We’re all waiting for a murder to happen in Wool or Winfrith, so we can use our own base as the incident room, but what are the chances of that happening? They’re pretty small places. I live in Wool and I know it’s got its fair share of nutters, but most of our cases are going to come from the big towns. You put Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch together as a single block, and you’re talking about half a million or more people. What’s the rest of the county? About a half of that?’

  Tommy shrugged. Rae guessed he’d never done any population analysis. Maybe he’d never had the need to, based as he’d been in Weymouth’s small CID unit. Because the VCU’s operating region spanned the county, and often beyond, she had a much clearer idea of the spread of population. Added to which, they’d expanded into neighbouring counties in recent years, both in the investigation of specific crimes and because the unit’s expertise was increasingly being called on by other forces in the south west. Rae sometimes wondered if there were long-term plans afoot to initiate a totally regional unit to investigate serious and violent crimes, one that would cover the whole of the south west. It was the way things were going in other parts of the country, with local units feeding into a wider command structure. She could see the sense in it, though problems would arise if bureaucracy triumphed over practicalities. Such a scheme would work if someone like Sophie Allen were in charge, but not some of the other senior officers that Rae had come across. She wondered if that was one of the reasons for Sophie’s recent promotion. Indeed, her own promotion to DS might be a pointer to a different approach.

  Rae realised that Tommy was watching her. Here she was, lost in thought, and there was a murder to solve.

  ‘Why don’t we head out?’ she said. ‘I’ve got the names of a couple of people to visit who were in or around the train station late on Friday evening at about the time that our man got stabbed. We need to jog their memories a bit. The problem is, Tommy, people often see something that might be relevant, but they don’t realise it. We have to get them to remember Friday night in precise detail — who they saw, where, what people were doing, what cars were moving out of the car park. We’re starting with one of the taxi drivers who was just finishing his shift. He claims that he didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, but we need to push him a little.’

  Tommy looked around him. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘The boss is at a high-level meeting at HQ. She’ll fill us all in on that later once she’s got to the bottom of the puzzle. Barry, that’s DI Marsh to you, is back at the house we visited. He’s trying to follow up his sighting of the youth on the bike on Saturday afternoon. It’s a bit of a puzzle, you see. Here we are thinking that Bunting’s murder might have some kind of connection with security, but what was a young guy on a bike doing watching the house? That doesn’t seem to fit, does it? So, if he was keeping an eye on it, why? And who was he? Anyway, time for us to move.’

  * * *

  Darren Pike had been a taxi driver for more than twenty years. That made him a bit of a veteran as far as the younger cabbies were concerned and they joked about him among themselves when he was off duty or out on a job. Nonetheless, they were glad to tap into his pool of knowledge when they needed to. And new cabbies were quick to realise that very little escaped his observation or his dry wit. It was Darren who Rae and Tommy were talking to now over a coffee in the station café. Scratching his greying, short-cropped hair, Darren was thinking back to late Friday evening.

  ‘It was a bit drizzly earlier, but it’d dried up when that last train got in. I don’t usually do the station late on Fridays. You get more jobs in the town centre with people coming out the pubs. But the place was a bit dead. I thought I might strike lucky up here, but the station was pretty quiet too. Only a few people got off the train.’

  ‘Do you remember seeing anything unusual that night? Either before the train came in or just after, as the people came out of the station?’ Rae asked.

  ‘Well, I saw your guy come out, if that’s what you mean. The thing is, I’ve had him in my cab a couple of times but that was before he got his bike. He came in on that train a few times. Not every week, mind. He never said much but he did tell me that he was getting a second-hand bike because he couldn’t afford the cab fares. I asked him why he didn’t just walk — after all, his place wasn’t that far, but he said he had some kind of leg injury. I don’t really see how a bike could be any better than walking, but he never explained. Odd sort of guy. He had a vague kind of accent, but I couldn’t pin it down.’

  ‘Foreign, you mean?’ Rae said.

  Darren shook his head. ‘Not sure. He didn’t talk much.’

  ‘What did you notice on Friday?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’d picked up a fare, someone from that same train who was out pretty quick. But I caught sight of your man just as I was heading out of the taxi rank. He was walking across to the bike racks, limping slightly, like he always did.’

  Rae noted this down. ‘Nothing else unusual going on, was there? No one behaving oddly or anything else suspicious?’

  ‘Not really. There were a couple of cars waiting to pick people up in the drop-off bays. There was a middle-aged woman in a dark coat waiting for someone. She appeared just before the train arrived.’

  Rae looked up from her notebook. ‘Was she alone?’

  ‘I can’t be sure. There may have been a guy with her. But it wasn’t obvious they were together.’

  ‘Can you remember anything about him?’

  Darren chuckled. ‘Nah. When I’ve got a good-looking woman to look at, I don’t bother with the blokes. It was a bit dark to be sure and she was standing in a shadowy area. But him? No, nothing I can recall.’

  Rae thought for a few moments. ‘Well, we’ve finished our coffees. Let’s go back out to your taxi and park it in the same position you were in that night. You can point out where they were, as far as you can remember.’

  The trick worked. Once Darren was sitting in his cab and they were roughly in the right spot, his expression cleared.

  ‘She had a hat on and gloves, I think. Maybe trousers? All dark. I think she had fair hair — a bit was peeping out from under the hat. I still don’t remember anything about the bloke.’

  ‘Where were they standing?’ Rae asked.

  He pointed to a spot by one of the walls of the station building. Rae and Tommy got out of the taxi and walked across to where Darren had indicated. Rae looked around her.

  ‘This wouldn’t be a particularly good spot to wait for someone if you were down here to pick them up from the train. You’d be missed too easily. But if you’re watching someone it’s useful for keeping an eye on the two key places — the main exit from the station and the bike rack. And Darren was right. It’d be in shadow at night. Look where the car park lights are. Now, if the two people Darren spotted happen to be the same ones that were seen on the station the next morning, we’re onto something.’

  ‘You mean that they came back the next morning to check, because he’d got away from them?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Something went wrong. Maybe he took them by surprise, and they didn’t see where he went.’

  ‘Do you think he fought back, and they weren’t expecting it? He might
have hurt one of them.’

  Rae smiled. ‘That’s good thinking, Tommy. Let’s have another chat with the station staff who saw the couple on Saturday morning. We’ll prod their memories a bit in the same way we did with that taxi driver. You never know, we might get lucky.’

  Their luck held. One of the station cleaners who’d been working the early shift on Saturday morning did now recall a couple of very useful facts. The man who’d been briefly seen alongside the woman with the wheelie case, had a sticking plaster across the bridge of his nose. And there’d been a large black BMW 4x4 parked in a near-empty area of the car park for a short while. Rae looked at the cleaner with interest. That last fact might help Stu Blackman with his search for vehicles that had possibly been in the area. Definitely worth following up.

  Chapter 6: Selfies

  Barry Marsh was also out on the streets of Weymouth, with Stu Blackman in tow. Barry was keen to trace the young cyclist he’d seen on Saturday but didn’t want to flood the area with uniformed officers whose presence might well send the youth into hiding. This was why Barry was dressed more informally than usual, and he’d asked Stu to do the same. They wore dark jeans, zipped jackets and trainers. Barry even had on a flat cap in an attempt to hide most of his ginger hair. His partner, Gwen, had teased him about his appearance when he’d set off from home earlier.

  ‘I could really fancy you in that garb, Barry. Are you sure you haven’t got a secret floozy lined up at work?’

  As usual, he’d been unable to think of a suitably witty reply and had merely given her the customary hug. It certainly made a change from his usual tailored jacket, collar and tie. He liked his ties and so did Gwen. He’d always owned ties in a range of colours, but Gwen had added several with much livelier patterns and styles and made sure he wore them. Today, though, his shirt was open-necked, with a thin, blue jumper over it.