“Yes. It doesn’t happen often, but you are liable to have your vehicle searched as you come into the yard and again when you leave. That search right extends to locker rooms. Now and then senior management, those above us, will order a full search, and security have to open the lockers.”
“There are strict protocols, Joe,” Amy said, taking up the tale. “Lockers cannot be opened without either the owner or his-stroke-her union representative and a member of the management staff, either Dave or Peter or one of the senior people in Dispatch, being present. Forgive me, but you seem to be making quite a lot of this.”
“I am,” Joe admitted, “but it’s because Burrows will when he gets his act together. Tell me something, both of you. What time did you turn up for work yesterday?”
“Half past eight,” Amy replied.
“I was here for about nine,” Kane confirmed.
“So unless you had sneaked in earlier, neither of you could have tampered with Stan’s flask because by the time you got here, he was gone, on his way to Manchester. And if you did sneak in earlier, it would show up in the security logs somewhere along the line. But I’m not so concerned with who spiked the coffee. The obvious culprit is Peter … no, no, hear me out, Amy. I’m not accusing, simply stating the obvious. Right now, I’m more concerned with what happened to the flask later, and there are four possibilities. One, Stan had done the dirty on himself, whether by design or accident, and he got rid of the flask. It doesn’t seem likely, but it’s a possibility. Two, Peter spiked the drink, and later, while Stan was at the police station, he went to the locker and removed the evidence. Three, you, Dave, found the flask in the tractor unit and disposed of it, and four, you, Amy, got rid of it when you went down to collect Stan’s bag.”
Chapter Eight
Like the day before when he had announced Cruikshank’s death as murder, Joe rode out the inevitable protests, silently formulating his response while Amy and Kane took turns to curse and castigate him.
When silence fell, Kane was left red-faced and sweating, Amy simply red-faced with anger, and Joe took up the reins again.
“Let’s look at the reality of the situation, huh? Because if I don’t, Burrows and his people will, and at some point, they’ll drag you both to the station for questioning. The business between Peter and Stan has been going on for about ten years, so you say. And who’s to blame? When you boil it all down, who is the real guilty party? Stan. All right, Amy, so you fell for his charms, whatever they were, but if you’re no pushover, and I assume you’re not, then it means he pursued you. We all know it takes at least two to party, but would you still be married to Peter if Stan had not seduced you?”
Her answer was reluctant, filled with bitterness. “Possibly. Probably. I don’t know.”
“And you, Dave. You tell me that Peter was your natural successor, your protégé, but Stan consistently undermined his authority, and you spent a lot of time in meetings with Amy and Stan trying to smooth things out. So if you had to get rid of one man, who would it be? Peter or Stan? The answer, so it seems to me, is Stan. Get rid of him and everything falls into place.”
“Joe, I’m the boss. There are ways and means of getting people out from under your hair without killing them.”
Joe screwed up his face. Do you mean out from under your feet, or out of your hair?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” Kane rasped.
“All right, I know. But I’m not talking about the death of either man. I’ll come to that eventually. Right now, I’m talking about Stan getting tanked up, and how that may have come about.” He fell silent, again mentally forming his words. “Let me paint you a picture. Like you, Peter has had enough of Stan, so he needs to find a way of getting rid of him. The opportunity presents itself yesterday morning, so he sneaks strong alcohol into Stan’s flask, then sends him on his way to a collection in Manchester where he knows Stan will be idle for at least an hour… no, no, hear me out, Amy.”
Again he paused so she could back off and listen.
“Peter’s plan is simple. Stan will get drunk on the coffee, and ring in for a relief driver to come and bring the rig back here. At that point, Stan will face disciplinary action for being drunk on duty. You may sack him, but even if you didn’t, even if you just relocated him to another department, he’s still out of Peter’s hair and yours. But it all goes wrong when Stan drives the truck back, does a lot of damage to other vehicles on the motorway and the police are called in. Worse than that, there will be a preliminary hearing and Peter knows Stan will accuse him. He has to get that flask and get rid of it before it can incriminate him. So he approaches you, Dave, or you, Amy, and confesses. After a bit of argument, he persuades one of you to help him. Either you, Dave, got rid of the flask over in the workshop, or you, Amy, removed it from Stan’s locker. Stan has no proof, he’s on his way out, one of you has a useful hold over Peter, and everyone is happy… except Stan, but who gives a damn about him?”
Joe fell silent again, waiting for their response. When it came, it was from Kane, and it was remarkably mild.
“It didn’t happen, Joe.”
Satisfied, Joe said, “I didn’t say it did. I said it was a theory. Trust me on this, Burrows may be a grumpy copper, but he’s not thick. He can’t be to get to his level. He will come round to this eventually, and unless we have alternative ideas, he will pursue it.”
“So how do we prove we’re innocent?” Amy demanded.
“We find the flask.” Joe gave his suggestion a little more thought. “Mind you, even if we find it, it’s not conclusive. Unless you were wearing gloves, your dabs will be all over it, but let’s say your prints aren’t on it? If it’s been wiped clean, say, then that supports the theory and you could have a tough time explaining it away.”
“Great,” Kane grumbled. “We have nothing to do with it, but we get accused just the same.”
Joe smiled. “I’ve been there. I was accused of strangling a woman last year. Not only one, but two. I’d a hell of a job proving it wasn’t me, but I got there in the end.”
“Two?” Amy gaped.
“It was a deliberate attempt to frame me, and the killer made enough mistakes for me to solve the case.” Joe laughed. “It happens. Especially when your name’s Joe Murray. Now come on. We need to move on and concentrate on the actual killings.”
Kane looked confused. “We know nothing about them, Joe. All I saw is what you saw yesterday, and I’m sure Amy was in her office all afternoon.”
“You know a lot more than me,” Joe replied. “You just don’t know you know it yet. We need to think about the timescale. Y’see, it’s very difficult for a pathologist to establish time of death with any great accuracy. They make educated guesses based on a number of factors. Now in this case, we know exactly what time Peter died. We were there. What we don’t know is the time Stan died. If Burrows is right, then it was before Peter was killed. If Burrows is wrong, then it’s all up in the air. It could still be before, but it could also be after. The post mortem will not be able to narrow down the time of death that closely, so it’s all about who saw whom, what, where and when. Now, Amy, you were with Stan after the meeting. What time did you leave him?”
“About ten past two.”
“And at that time, you say he was clearing out his locker.”
“Yes. He was obviously expecting the sack.”
“Is that one of those lockers I saw in the drivers’ rest room?”
“Yes.”
Joe switched his attention to Kane. “Dave, you spent a few minutes talking to Peter after the meeting, and then you went to the workshops. What time did you leave Peter?”
“Like Amy, it would have been about ten past two.”
“And you got back to security at about twenty to three. I know because I was there. After speaking with Keith and myself, you went to get your forms and you say you returned to this office, where you saw Peter. What time would that be?”
“As near as I can guess
, about ten to three.”
“And Peter was alive then, as we know. But was Stan?” Joe strummed his lips thoughtfully. “Let’s assume he took another five minute to clear out his locker, and then left the building. That would be a quarter past two. Dave, while you were out in the yard, you didn’t see Stan?”
“No. But then it would be unlikely that I would.”
Joe was at once puzzled. “How come?”
“Blind spots.” Kane stood and moved to the windows, gesturing for Joe and Amy to follow. “We have most of the yard covered by CCTV, but there are areas which are not, and some of those areas are practically invisible even when you’re in the yard. One of them is the workshops and the area outside them, the maintenance yard.”
Kane pointed over to the far left, where a young man dressed in mechanic’s overalls, emerged from a low building carrying what looked to Joe like a bent and twisted bumper bar, which he threw in a skip full of similar scrap parts.
Large, concertina doors were open, but because of the strong sunlight, Joe could see almost nothing of the building’s interior. By concentrating, he could eventually make out the front of the STAC bus.
“The workshops are set back from the main yard,” Kane was saying, “and they’re on a lower level. As you enter the site, unless you looked into that corner, you wouldn’t see them. At this end of the yard, you can’t see them because they’re blocked off by vehicles on the tractor and trailer parks.”
“And you don’t even have CCTV coverage of that area?”
“It’s not considered a risk,” Kane explained. “The mechanics don’t have access to the Sort Centre or any of the storage warehouses, so it’s impossible for them to steal anything. In fact, Joe, this office and the top of the stairs on this floor are the only two places where the workshops can be seen. Stand anywhere else on site, and they’re invisible… well, you can see the roof of the building, but that’s all.”
Joe brought his gaze closer to them, staring straight down onto the trailer parks. Lined up three deep, he found it easy to correlate the view he had had the day before from close up.
He gestured down at the trailers. “And I take it that the individual trailer parks are not covered by CCTV either?”
“You couldn’t do that without putting up a camera every three metres,” Amy said, “but there are cameras at either end of the building which cover the roadway in front of the trailers.” She, too, pointed down at the broad road between building and parks where a shunt tug was moving slowly along as if the driver was looking for a particular trailer.
At the very back of the parks, barely visible beyond the top of the rear trailer, was a tarmac car park half filled with private vehicles. Joe recalled seeing a wire mesh fence behind the trailers but he could not see it from this angle.
He turned from the window and leaned on the narrow, metal sill facing both. “Now there’s a thing. Dave, did you say to me that the only route into and out of this building was through the security scanner at the main entrance?”
Kane nodded. “What about it?”
“And Amy, did you say that Stan was clearing out his locker and then he was on his way home?”
She, too, nodded. “Yes.”
“So what was he doing here?” Joe aimed his finger down at the trailer lines. “See, when Keith and I first arrived yesterday, we were told to stick to the pedestrian footpath while we were wandering round the yard. I noticed that all your car parks are over there.” He pointed to the blank, west wall of the office. “When I followed you out through the Dispatch exit, Dave, I also noticed that there’s only a narrow footpath outside Dispatch, which runs parallel to the building, and takes drivers to their tractors, also parked over there.” Again, he indicated the west yard. “But even if you did have a footpath running along or between the trailers, which would be bloody daft, it still doesn’t account for why Stan was there and not on his way off site.”
They exchanged resigned glances, and Kane sighed. “He was sneaking out using a short cut.”
“A short cut?”
Amy faced the windows and pointed to the small car park Joe had spotted behind the trailers. “That is the official driver’s car park. Every department is allocated a parking area for its staff. It’s not a rule that’s strictly enforced, especially in the autumn when we’re in the run up to Christmas and we have a lot of temp labour on site, but technically, that is where the drivers are supposed to park their cars, and most of them do. Now, behind the trailers is a mesh fence.”
“I saw it yesterday,” Joe told her. “When we found Stan.”
“What you won’t have noticed is that behind the trailer at the back of park fifteen is a hole in that wire mesh where someone has cut it away from the metal pillar. Sometimes, if Dispatch is busy and no one is taking particular notice, drivers will sneak out through the Dispatch exit, and duck down park fifteen, where they can’t be seen by anyone other than a passing shunter or driver, and nip through the fence to their cars.”
“And is it a problem?” Joe asked.
“A hell of a problem,” Kane admitted. “They’re evading a potential search, which is a breach of company rules. It’s a disciplinary offence.”
Joe frowned. “Then why hasn’t the hole been stitched up?”
“Budget,” Kane replied. “We reported it to General Maintenance in January, but they were short of money. They got their new budget at the beginning of this month, and it’s on the schedule for repair.”
“Not that it will last long,” Amy said. “One of the drivers will only cut through it again.”
Joe was still puzzled. “But why do they do it?”
“Time,” Amy explained. “You see, Joe, at the end of a shift, the drivers sign off in Dispatch, about a hundred yards from their cars. From there, they have to walk through the Sort Centre, go through the scanner, where they could be pulled for a search, then they have to leave the building and walk all the way round the site to their cars. On a bad night, finishing at the same time as the Sort Centre staff, say, the queue at the scanner is usually at its longest, and it can take anything up to twenty minutes to get from Dispatch to your car. By cutting through the hole in the fence, they’re in the car in less than two minutes and no hassle.”
Joe absorbed the information. “And Stan made regular use of this short cut, did he?”
Amy shrugged. “No more than anyone else, I don’t think. He wouldn’t go that way every night. Maybe once a week, once a fortnight. And he probably went that way yesterday as a way of thumbing his nose at the company.”
Joe’s versatile mind began to follow fresh tracks, piecing together the events into various scenarios, and after a moment’s deep thought, one of them became more likely than any other.
“Stan was killed in the middle of the trailers on park fifteen. But how many people knew he would go that way? Huh? How many people knew he would leave the site via that route? No one. He made a decision on the spur of the moment, and that means the confrontation was also a spur of the moment thing.” Joe picked up his notes and scanned them. “Peter could have seen him from here and hurried after him.”
Amy shook her head. “Stan would have been on the car park by the time Peter got downstairs and out into the yard through Dispatch.”
“True,” Joe agreed. “But he could have called Stan back, couldn’t he? And you said Stan was in a blazing mood, so he wouldn’t have hesitated to come back and face Peter.”
Amy let out a sigh of utter frustration. “For the last time, Joe, it was not Peter. I told you, any fight between these two would have been no worse than handbags.”
“Then give me some other leads, Amy.” Joe returned to the table, tore off a fresh sheet of notepaper and consulting his notes began to scribble. When he was through, he invited them both to lean over his shoulder to see what he had written.
“Now look here. Stan left the building at about quarter past two. Both you and Dave were gone by ten past. Peter was seen at ten past, and again at t
en to three. Stan must have been killed in that forty minute gap. You had time to do it, Amy, and at pinch, Dave, you could have done too, but favourite is still Peter. Burrows will leap on this, but I’m with you. I don’t believe it was Peter. He had the opportunity, yes, he probably had the motive, but you, Dave, said he was back in this office when you returned at ten to three. Did he look injured?
“No. I told you. He was quiet, but he didn’t look as if he was in any pain.”
“And yet, between you seeing him at ten to three and him arriving at security at five past, the blow which he’d received overtook him and killed him. And he must have spent a good deal of that fifteen minute gap making his way from here to security. It also means that although he was in terrible pain after the fight with Stan, made his way back up to this floor first.” Joe shook his head. “No, I don’t think it was Peter, but who else? Amy you had the motive and opportunity. Dave, you had the opportunity, but do you have a motive?”
“No, I don’t, and Amy, in case you’ve forgotten, has an alibi.”
“There are plenty of other men – and women – in this place who would have cheerfully throttled Stan,” Amy said. “Megan in Dispatch, for instance. She was Terry Dodd’s girlfriend for long enough, but Stan split them up a few years ago.”
“Alf Sclater’s another,” Kane said. “He caught his daughter at it with Stan in the gent’s lavatories here. Stan was suspended, and Alf’s daughter only just managed to save her job.”
“He was a bit of a ladies’ man, then?” Joe said, trying to suppress a note of envy in his voice.
“You shouldn’t be envy him, Joe,” Amy advised. “He caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people, men and women alike, and I always wondered what he would do when he got older. Alone, no one to look after him.”
“He never got the chance to grow older alone, did he?” Joe pointed out. Dragging them back on topic, he said, “Right, so we have plenty of bodies who might be in the frame for killing Stan, but why Peter?”
The pair exchanged blank stares and Joe ran through his notes again.
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