by Iain Cameron
‘Have you had any contact with Martin since the trial?’
‘Other than trying to lodge an appeal, do you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘I should have had. It’s quite remiss of me. You know as well as I do I was facing serious charges and a possible twenty-year stretch. In the end, I received four, and was allowed out after eighteen months. I’m not trying to rub your noses in the mud, it’s just how the wheels of British justice turn.’
‘We know.’
‘The reason I fared so well was entirely due to Martin’s tenacity in getting to the truth. It’s only when you’re out that you realise this. All the time you’re inside, all your energies are focussed on doing your bird and getting out. I should have taken Martin out to the pub for a drink or a meal and thanked him in person.’
Henderson had never seen Green quite so sentimental about anything before. In fact, in many respects he would have said he was a classic psychopath, lacking any capacity to be empathetic to anyone.
‘Do you know any of Martin Turner’s other clients? Anyone who might’ve wanted to kill him?’
‘You think one of his clients killed him?’
‘It’s one of the strands of our investigation.’
‘The other strands being, what? His private life and his work colleagues. Am I right?’
‘Very perceptive of you.’
‘When you’ve been around criminals for as long as I have, you tend to pick up such things.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘I don’t know if I can be of any help here. I know plenty of cons, but I couldn’t be sure if they were one of his clients.’
‘You must know some. Turner was probably recommended to you by some other con; he might have let slip the odd name during a conversation with you, and don’t tell me cons don’t chat about the performance of their lawyers while they’re inside?’
‘We talked about them, right enough, and I admit some were desperate to get out and do their briefs some damage. Mind you, most of them are still inside, serving longer sentences than me.’
‘Does anyone come to mind?’
‘No, and I’m not saying this because you people are the forces of law and order. Martin was a decent guy, a bit posh for my taste, but a bloke who believed everyone was entitled to a fair crack at justice. I don’t know anyone who didn’t like him.’
Five minutes later Henderson and Walters were outside Rema Foods, walking back to their car. They climbed in and Henderson drove off towards Lewes.
‘He’s got a sophisticated security system back there,’ Henderson said. ‘It looks like a new alarm box with CCTV cameras and detectors all over the place. To justify it, I thought there must be something valuable inside, but as far as I could see it’s only big sacks of flour, rice, and tea.’
‘Maybe there’s been a lot of burglaries in the neighbourhood.’
‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. I didn’t notice many cameras on the other buildings nearby. Perhaps I’ll have a word with Gerry Hobbs and his drug team. It might be something more valuable than tea and pasta he’s protecting.’
‘You could be right.’
‘Do you remember Green saying he hadn’t been in touch with Martin since coming out of prison?’
‘Yeah, he made a point of it. He was looking wistful with a touch of regret, the lying toad.’
‘He’s got as much sincerity as a viper. Did you notice an untidy pile of paper, sitting on the small filing cabinet over to Green’s right?’
‘No, my view was blocked by him and the in-tray.’
‘Sticking out, but not too far was a document bearing the Jonas Baines letterhead.’
‘What?’
‘It was definitely one of theirs.’
‘Might it be an invoice for something they’d forgotten to send at the time of his trial?’
‘I’d imagine if they found something un-invoiced it would have been sent to Green’s wife at the time, and no later than a couple of months afterwards. I didn’t see much but it didn’t look like an invoice.’
‘A statement of account, perhaps?’
He shrugged. ‘Could be, but why now, so many years after the trial?’
‘In which case, Green lied to us.’
‘I wonder why. If it’s got something to do with Martin Turner, I’d like to know what.’
‘There are ways and means.’
‘Not the formal route, as there’s not enough for a warrant, but I’d normally be racking my brains to see if I could come up with a name, someone who could sneak inside Rema Foods and take a look, but no. I’m afraid Green’s over-elaborate security is doing the job it was intended to do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Keeping nosey bastards like me out.’
FIFTEEN
He wound down the window and flicked out his cigarette butt. Despite a chaotic schooling where he ran with the wrong crowd according to his mother, but the right one if you wanted to have fun, Bruce Nolan had never smoked. It was hard at times, as his mates would light up whatever they laid their hands on: tobacco, weed, crack, but inside the nick his resistance had melted. Not because he wanted to look tough, or fit in with the crowd, but because of the sheer boredom of the place. Nothing to do all day but smoke and wonder why he had ended up in there.
It was around eight-thirty, and already dark on a chilly evening. Instead of being home and watching a football match on television with a cool beer in his hand, he was sitting in a cold car outside a terraced house in Elm Grove. It was a neat, trim little house nestling within a row of grubby companions. He didn’t know much about Brighton. He had lived most of his life in Newhaven and only travelled into Brighton at weekends to drink, or if there was something he wanted to see at the theatre or the cinema. He imagined the scruffy houses were rentals, perhaps to students, as he knew some departments of Brighton University were located nearby.
Inside the smart house, Harvey Templeton had probably finished shagging the pretty thirty-year-old with the jet-black hair who had opened the door about a half-hour before. Templeton would now be lying on his back on her soft pillows, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, thinking about his next business deal, or about going home soon to his equally pretty wife.
Bruce Nolan knew all about Harvey Templeton. His name had meant little before his incarceration, one of several property developers who had shown an interest in buying his scrap metal business. Companies would contact him now and again with tempting offers. The business was located on a large site beside the waterfront. Behind it, and across the water, were apartment blocks. The yard was the only industrial unit among a sea of the bloody things.
No matter if they decorated their offerings with tales of sculpted green spaces, affordable houses, and play parks, he was unmoved. He wasn’t selling. He wasn’t an obstinate man, but the scrap metal business had got him out of trouble as a young man and kept him going in the dark days of prison. It was one of the few stable things in his life, and no way would he give it up.
Among the myriad of property companies, developers, and chancers, Templeton had been the persistent one. He had tried every trick in the book, but now Nolan had proof that Templeton had been instrumental in sending him to prison. If things turned out right tonight, it would be Nolan’s turn to behave badly.
He couldn’t understand why the participants in an illicit love affair would do anything with the curtains open. He was unable to see them in flagrante delicto in the bedroom upstairs, but afterwards saw them walking into the lounge, him picking up his beer from the coffee table, and her most likely a vodka and lime. They both took a drink and kissed. The sloppy, languid movements of the après sexed.
They sat down out of sight. He wasn’t some private dick looking for proof of his, or her, infidelity on the instructions of their other half. He didn’t have a sophisticated camera fitted with a telephoto lens and a motor drive to capture multiple shots of their Kodak moment. He wasn’t interested in her, or what they did together.
His only consideration was Harvey Templeton.
At one time, he’d considered going through this woman, or Templeton’s wife, to get at him, but it would have lowered Nolan to Templeton’s level. He was better than him, and in his view the fewer people who suffered, the more he liked it.
The reason he was following him was Templeton was a hard man to get on his own. As a former estate agent and now property developer, he was gregarious and often surrounded himself with colleagues, friends, associates and on occasion, a minder who accompanied him to building sites. This was a tall black guy Nolan called Mr Muscle, who looked as though he packed not only muscle but something else too, as sometimes there was an odd bulge in his jacket.
The lovers rose and walked out of the lounge. He imagined the time taken to exit the lounge and open the front door, which could be anything between one and five minutes, was not the time Harvey needed to button up his coat and tie his scarf. Judging by past episodes, when they’d both appeared at the door with dishevelled clothes and messed-up hair, they were indulging in a bit of last-minute fumbling.
For once, the coupling was brief, and with a tender touching of fingers, Templeton strode down the steps towards his car. Befitting a successful property developer, it was a convertible Jaguar F-Type. Nolan had made the mistake the previous week of borrowing his partner’s car, a Vauxhall Corsa. Despite Harvey not realising he was being followed, his mind still in his trousers, the simple act of pulling away from traffic lights or climbing a hill in the Corsa had left him floundering some way behind.
This time he had brought his own car, a Tesla Model S. Despite working in an old donkey jacket and jeans, and driving a ten-year-old VW Golf to work, his business was a money spinner. He kept his eye on building developments and was the first to approach owners and demolition managers at power and sub-stations, telephone exchanges, and factory sites with a proposal to remove old cable.
Elements like copper, the main constituent of electricity cables, and titanium, found in the catalytic converters of cars, were continually rising in price. In fact, an Openreach project around Newhaven to strip out copper telecommunications cables and replace them with fibre optic had, in effect, paid for the Tesla.
Templeton lived in the Dyke Road area, a smart part of Brighton and befitted a property man, in a villa which wouldn’t look out of place in the hills above Marbella: all white walls, large areas of glass, and the area in front of the house paved with decorative slabs. It was without question in the one-and-a-half to two-million bracket, way more than Nolan would ever be able to afford, no matter how many lengths of cable he managed to procure.
He turned down Elm Grove and when they reached the Lewes Road, took a left towards Brighton. At St Peter’s Church, he did a U-turn and joined London Road, now heading north. His next manoeuvre, if the previous times he’d followed him were anything to go by, would be to take a left at Trafalgar Street. This would lead him past Brighton Station, to Dyke Road, where his wife would be waiting. Instead, he drove past the junction and carried on driving north.
Once clear of the roundabout where the A27 from Lewes joined the A23, the Jaguar moved into the outside lane and Templeton gunned the big cat’s engine. The Tesla was no slouch and Nolan had no problem keeping up, but at a safe distance, while sticking to the inside lanes where possible to minimise the chances of detection.
He didn’t need to do this for long, as Templeton wasn’t going to London, or further north as he feared. Instead, he turned off at the Burgess Hill junction. Nolan knew this road well as a few metal dealers were located in the area. He also knew Burgess Hill was a reasonably large town, surrounded in the main by wooded countryside. What business Templeton had here at this hour of the night, he couldn’t guess.
They climbed Clayton Hill. When they passed Mill Lane, leading to the Jack and Jill Windmills, the left indicator of the Jaguar flashed. Nolan was a couple of cars back, so he had time to slow and make the turn, making sure Templeton’s car wasn’t directly in front of him. In fact, when he did, the Jaguar was nowhere to be seen. The reason soon became apparent: the narrow track was heavily wooded with a tight bend up ahead. Nolan committed the track’s layout to memory before killing the car’s main lights.
He drove down a wood-shrouded incline hoping there would be a place to turn at the bottom; he didn’t fancy having to reverse all the way up the narrow track to the main road. On a flat area about twenty metres from the bottom of the slope, he saw lights, and what looked like a farmhouse with a couple of barns, one behind the house and the other over to the right. He stopped the car and took in the scene.
Templeton’s car had come to a standstill beside the barn to the right, which Templeton was walking towards. Seconds later, a man came out of the house. Templeton stopped and waited for the other man to catch up. They greeted one another like old mates.
Nolan felt deflated. He’d hoped Templeton was heading to a rural property for a more solitary purpose, perhaps to visit an elderly or infirm parent. If so, he would have confronted him outside. The guy who joined Templeton looked like his minder, Mr Muscle.
When the two men had disappeared inside the barn, he coasted the car down the remainder of the incline and into the clearing, and turned. Due to the Tesla’s quiet operation, he had no fear of Templeton coming out to investigate the sound of a strange car. He parked it as close as possible to the access road, under the shade of some trees, hoping its presence wouldn’t be too obvious. He also made sure the front of the car was pointing towards the main road, just in case he needed to make a swift exit.
He was undecided about what to do next. He couldn’t confront Templeton with Mr Muscle present, unless he wanted to end up broken into little pieces, or on a mortuary slab. On the other hand, the rural location, the time of night, and the presence of the two men, piqued his interest. What was the conniving rat up to now: growing weed, making skunk, printing phoney credit cards?
Nolan kept his eye on the farmhouse windows for a few minutes to see if Mr Muscle was living there alone, or if others were in the house. He saw no movement: no shadows, no lights switching on and off, and with the car window down, no sounds of music or a television playing. He switched off the interior light of the car before opening the door and stepping out into the cold night. Crouching, he ran towards the barn, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at the farmhouse, making sure no one had spotted him or was trying to outflank him.
Reaching the barn, light flooded out from the part-closed entrance. He disappeared into the darkness at the side. From the spots and shafts of light spilling out from broken or warped wood panels, he could tell it was an old and badly maintained barn.
If this was a property owned by Templeton it hadn’t been in his stable for long, as, in common with many property developers he knew, they had no regard for anything old or traditional. When he got round to it, this barn would be razed and replaced with a gleaming new one, or a small block of exclusive rural apartments.
Using the torch on his phone, he checked his footing to make sure he wouldn’t slip, before positioning himself in front of a decent-sized crack in the wood panelling. The barn didn’t contain much inside, save for a few bits of dilapidated farm equipment and a small stack of hay bales. In the centre and tied to one of the support posts, was a man. He was side-on to Nolan and he could see his face was a bloody mess; he looked barely conscious.
Templeton was asking the tied man questions. When he didn’t like the answer, Mr Muscle stepped forward and gave him a smack. Nolan couldn’t hear the Q&A as he was too far away, but he looked hard at his face when the head of the man flopped to one side. He realised he knew him. It was his number two at the scrapyard, Pedro.
SIXTEEN
The alarm sounded at six-thirty. Not exactly an alarm but the unbelievably cheery voice of the morning DJ on Heart Sussex. Carol Walters had always been a terrible riser and for this reason the volume was set loud.
‘What the fuck’s that racket?’ Nick Something groaned be
side her. At least she thought it was him, but she couldn’t be sure; as all that was visible was a tousled mangle of hair. His voice sounded strange too, all raspy and rough, having lost much of its Dublin twang on account of having to shout over the loud music in the Kerrang! Club last night.
She reached over to the radio-alarm clock and reduced the volume, but didn’t turn it off. To do so would be fatal. Suffering from a hangover and walking around a cold flat looking for clothes was no match for a warm bed and a hunky man to cuddle.
She worked up the courage to get out of bed, but her resolve almost melted when Nick Something’s arm snaked over her stomach and his hand moved between her legs. Almost. She put his arm back where it belonged, got out of bed, and headed into the shower. She turned up the heat and soaped herself until the base of the unit was foaming with suds, then reached for the heating control again and this time turned it cold. She stood there shivering, counting down from sixty.
She stepped out of the shower gasping. It never failed as a wake-up cure. Sometimes it wouldn’t manage to cut through her hangover if she’d drunk too much, but while last night she had been merry and in the mood for a good time, she had tried to be sensible. The team were in the middle of a murder investigation, after all, and she needed to keep a clear head.
She was so busy rubbing herself with the towel, trying to warm up, she didn’t notice Nick was standing there until she felt a hand on her shoulder. He pulled her towards him and they kissed.
‘We were good last night, you and me,’ he said in a husky voice.
‘We were,’ she said. A few seconds later, she broke free. ‘Now, I have to get to work.’
‘Why so early, and on a weekend?’
‘I told you last night, I’m involved in a murder investigation.’
‘Oh yeah, a cop. I never realised you had to start so early, but I suppose it’s all shifts and rotas. Me, I can usually go in more or less when I like.’