by Conrad Jones
‘So, what happened?’ Bob asked. Lottie looked confused. ‘When he called you a liar. What happened?’
‘Nothing much,’ Lottie said. ‘I expect he was embarrassed that he had come here making wild accusations about us trading without a licence only to find the chairman of the committee had granted permission months ago. He must have been very embarrassed, poor man. I think his pride took a knock.’ Lottie paused. ‘You know what they say about pride coming before a fall. That’s so true, don’t you think?’
‘All that is interesting but can you tell us what happened?’ April asked. She could sense Bob was losing his cool. It didn’t take much to annoy him.
‘I told you. Nothing. He seemed like such a nice chap really. Some people are spoiled by a bit of power, aren’t they?’ Lottie shrugged and smiled. ‘So, we discussed the licence but he wasn’t happy at all with my explanation. I told him we were terribly busy as we were getting ready to open. Then he took a funny turn, so I asked some of my employees to escort him from the pitch.’
‘What do you mean by a funny turn?’ Bob asked.
‘He was sweating and breathing heavily and holding his chest,’ Lottie said, putting her hand on her own chest to demonstrate. ‘The poor man must have a heart condition. Anyway, at no point was he punched.’
‘He says he was jostled and punched,’ April said.
‘He’s mistaken. I’m certain I can gather a dozen or so witnesses who will be willing to verify my version of events over the version from a man who was clearly poorly and confused.’ She smiled a winning smile, forever the showgirl. ‘That is if you need me to?’
‘Oh, I’m sure you can gather witnesses. So, you saw him leave the fairground?’ Bob asked.
‘Not personally,’ Lottie said. ‘As I said, we were getting ready to open. There’s a lot to do, I’m sure you can imagine. This is a big operation with a lot of moving parts and over a hundred employees. The setup is vital to the smooth running of the operation.’
‘Mr Orange has had a scan and he has an injury to the back of his skull,’ April said. ‘And he told his wife he was punched, possibly by a clown.’
‘Was he completely lucid when he made this accusation or under the influence of medication?’ Lottie asked. The police officers looked at each other. ‘I didn’t think so. He was probably barely conscious and confused. Possibly punched by a clown, really?’ Lottie smiled and shook her head. ‘We have over twenty clown performers. It certainly wouldn’t stand up in court, would it?’
‘We need to investigate regardless,’ Bob said.
‘He has heart problems,’ Lottie said. ‘My father suffered with a bad heart. I recognise the signs. Collapsed all the time at the most inopportune moments. He could have fallen and banged his head near the toilets. There are a lot of stone walls and railings there, aren’t there?’
‘He says a clown called Hugo punched him,’ Bob said. ‘A big clown.’
‘Hugo is my older brother,’ Lottie said. ‘He’s a gentle giant and wouldn’t punch anybody. He also has a twin called Boris. They’re identical,’ she added. ‘I asked Hugo to escort him because he’s strong and could support him. I wonder if he has named Hugo because I said his name and that’s the only name he can remember?’
‘So, Hugo escorted him alone or did he have help?’
‘Boris helped him. I wonder if Mr Orange would be able to distinguish between them. I mean, could he identify which twin was which?’
‘I’m not following,’ April said.
‘The devil is in the detail,’ Lottie said, shrugging. ‘If he was punched from behind, how does he know who punched him from behind? Unless he has eyes in the back of his head, he’s speculating at best, about an incident which didn’t happen, I might add.’ Lottie shrugged. ‘The twins were either side of him. I think Mr Orange is confused. He’s miffed he made a fool of himself and is trying to cause us problems.’
‘We will need to speak to Hugo and Boris ourselves,’ Bob said. ‘Just to clarify things.’
‘Not a chance. We have a show starting at eight o’clock and the twins are integral to the show,’ Lottie said. ‘Enough is enough. I’ve been cooperative and I’ve answered your questions, sergeant. If you want to ask me or any of my employees any further questions about this or anything else, get a warrant and we’ll come to the station with our solicitor.’ She smiled again. ‘Let’s do things properly, shall we?’
‘You’re clearly a very clever lady,’ Bob said. ‘I get the impression you have had to shield your employees from the police before.’ Lottie smiled but didn’t reply. ‘We’ll leave it at that for now. Thanks for your time.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ Lottie said. ‘If you want tickets for the show, you’d better be quick. They’re selling like hot cakes.’ She opened the door and gestured towards it. The officers walked out, shoulders hunched and a little dejected. Bob was fuming but they’d been woefully unprepared to confront Lottie Edwards. ‘Take care and thanks for calling,’ Lottie said, closing the door. ‘Or as my old grandad Sidney used to say, “go and fuck yourself”, god rest his evil soul,’ she said to herself. It began to rain, further dampening Bob’s spirit.
‘Well, we had our pants pulled down there,’ April said as they walked towards the rides. The lights strobed and searched the night sky. ‘Good and proper.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Bob said, fastening his jacket against the rain. ‘That young lady thinks we’re the clowns. I feel like I’ve had my pants pulled down and been spanked with a cricket bat.’
‘That’s an image I didn’t need in my head,’ April said. ‘Back to the station?’
‘Back to the station,’ Bob agreed.
Chapter 13
Alan watched the CSI team set about their work. Pamela Stone was on her way, delayed by a case in Liverpool. Kim had finished speaking to the young women, who were being held captive. They had been in the room for three days, although they weren’t a hundred percent sure. The darkness and stress had confused them. Some of the women wouldn’t speak and some wouldn’t shut up. Alan felt it best they were interviewed briefly by the female officers. It was more than likely their captors had been male. He listened from a safe distance and picked up that all except one of the women were from Syria. The other was from Iraq. She was Kurdish. They had travelled across Turkey, through Europe as far as Calais. Two of them had walked the entire way to France. The others had taken trains, buses, hitchhiked, stolen bicycles and hidden underneath lorries to get there. Each one of them had a different tragic story of their journey. None of them had known the others before reaching France and they had all set off from their homeland with their husbands or boyfriends and extended families, including children. The fact there were no children with them now, summed up their plight. Each one had become separated from their families by tragic circumstances, some of the men were arrested, some were drowned crossing the Mediterranean, some were tricked by pirates and some were murdered by fellow travellers for what little they had.
At Calais, the women had begged and scavenged, sold themselves and been raped to get enough food and bedding to survive until they were approached individually by a man and woman from Ghana. The couple were very plausible and convinced them that if they could get money sent to them from their families electronically, they could arrange passage across the Channel, visas and employment in Ireland. They had arrived in the UK in the back of an articulated lorry bound for Ireland, hidden in a container load of fruit. The women had no idea where they were or why they had been taken to the house. Their English wasn’t good enough to explain Wales wasn’t England. The traffickers had swindled each and every one of them. Again.
‘Pamela Stone is here,’ Kim said.
‘Good. I need a laugh,’ Alan said. Kim frowned. ‘I’m not saying you’re not a laugh.’ He paused. ‘Just that she’s more of a laugh. Especially when it comes to cause of death. What do you think she will say Mary Adams died of?’
‘The sudden stop?’
‘It was all sadly predictable, to be honest. People fucking over other people for a profit. Nothing of any use,’ Kim said, shaking her head. ‘They were told if they paid a deposit, they would be given jobs when they got to Ireland and that they could pay off the remainder of their debt for carriage into the UK. Twenty-grand each. They had to pay ten in advance in France.’
‘Bargain,’ Alan said. ‘Things at Holyhead port are vastly different since Brexit. Most hauliers are drowning in paperwork at the docks and the inspections are thorough. Customs are checking loads they didn’t have to check before. Smuggling is going to be much more difficult from now on. I reckon the driver bottled it and unloaded them here. That or the traffickers got wind of something and pulled the plug at the last minute. They dumped them here until they could work out what to do with them.’
‘I think you could be right.’ Kim held up her phone. It had a profile picture on the screen. ‘Who do you think that is?’ she asked.
‘Vaguely familiar,’ Alan said. ‘I haven’t got my glasses. Help me out.’
‘That is the Linkedin profile for Doctor Gerard Telford,’ Kim said.
‘The owner?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you get that from?’
‘I ran a Google search and this is the only photograph of him online. That is a much older Doctor Telford over there.’ Alan walked over to the bodies. He looked from the phone to the corpse.
‘He looks better on that photograph and about fifteen years younger,’ Alan said. He looked at the dead man and studied his face. ‘That is him,’ he agreed. ‘No wonder we can’t find them. They’re here. We need to assume that is Elisha Telford for now.’
‘I agree. There are no photographs of her online which is unusual,’ Kim said. ‘They deleted their online footprint for a reason.’
‘Not for any good reason,’ Alan said. ‘The older couple are probably relations?’
‘Probably,’ Kim said. ‘Parents maybe.’
‘It’s not a coincidence there were nine women in that room,’ Alan said. ‘This is a holding point for the port. It’s part of a trafficking operation, which means, organised criminals. And if I’m right about that, Doctor Telford and his wife knew about it or turned a blind eye to people using their house for trafficking.’
‘They turned a blind eye for a load of cash. Makes sense,’ Kim said. ‘Trafficking is a dangerous game to play.’
‘Exactly. The penalties for screwing up are severe,’ Alan said. ‘Or if they decided they didn’t want to play anymore. That’s not an option open to most people and they may have found out the hard way.’ He stood up straight, stiffening up. ‘It still begs the question, who is Mary Adams and who pushed her through the window?’
‘We can’t ask them and the Syrian women didn’t have any contact with any females after they left France,’ Kim said. ‘Do you want me to call the NCA and see if they’re aware of the late doctor and his wife?’
‘It can’t hurt,’ Alan said, nodding. ‘The National Crime Agency will have them on a watch list if they’ve been linked to an operation somehow.’ His mobile rang. ‘DI Williams,’ he answered.
‘Alan. This is Anne Parry from Matrix.’
‘Hello, Anne. What do I owe the pleasure?’ Alan asked. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘I am calling out of courtesy,’ Anne said. ‘My DI and I are on the way to a place called, Newry Beach.’
‘Holyhead?’ he said, smiling. ‘Why would Matrix be going to the Newry?’
‘It’s a long story. Five years ago, a young couple went missing from our patch. The last place they were seen alive was at a fairground. They’d been to see a circus.’
‘The Circus of Nightmares. It’s caused quite a stir on the island already,’ Alan said. ‘They have pulled a few publicity stunts and frightened the life out of the locals in Llangefni. My sons are huge fans of it. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be paying for all of us to go and see it live. What is taking you there?’
‘To cut a long story short, we have recovered the remains of the missing couple stuffed in a metal drum. It was at the bottom of a pond, which was drained during a construction project.’
‘Okay,’ Alan said. ‘It’s a long way to go and it’s an awfully long time ago. Who are you going to speak to?’
‘Locally, this is a high-profile case,’ Anne said. ‘Leo Jobson is the son of a local villain. The guy is a bit of folk hero, so there’s a lot of media interest. The jungle drums are beating and I want to get to the circus before it’s all over the television. It was a dead end when we first picked up the case and it’s still a dead end but we’ve got two families who want answers.’
‘Tell me why Matrix is on this?’
‘Initially, it was thought Leo Jobson might have been kidnapped for a ransom but when it became clear they weren’t coming back rumours were he was killed as payback against his father, hence our involvement.’
‘In case of any retaliation?’
‘Exactly. Finding the bodies has fired up our critics and we need to be seen to be doing something. You know how it is. The last place they were seen was in the bar at the fairground and the drum they were put into was used to store the type of axle grease used on heavy machinery.’
‘Like a fairground ride?’
‘Exactly. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence they were last seen at the fairground and then found in a barrel of grease that would be used there. I have the owner listed as Lottie Edwards. She’s not returning my calls, which is why we’re going tonight.’
‘The element of surprise,’ Alan said.
‘It’s all we’ve got at the moment. The circus has been in the same family for generations. I’m hoping she might be able to give me some names. People who worked around that time. People she may have had concerns about. You know the score.’
‘I see,’ Alan said. ‘Fill your boots. If you need anything from me, you have my number. Are you staying over?’
‘We’re not allowed to,’ Anne said. ‘Budget restraints after covid-19 are biting every department. We can’t buy a pencil without permission. A hotel in Trearddur Bay would be nice but beyond our reach.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘What are you working on?’ Anne asked.
‘I’m in a lovely little seaside town called, Rhosneiger. We have a dead woman who was thrown off a balcony, a cellar full of dead doctors and nine Syrian women who were on their way to Ireland but only made it this far and were left in a cellar with a bucket and three bottles of water.’
‘That sounds like a fucked-up situation,’ Anne said, laughing. ‘Trafficking is on the rise. People are worth more than heroin nowadays and if they get caught, the gangsters serve less time for moving humans than brown.’ She paused. ‘I might be able to help with a few names in the trafficking business.’
‘You’ll be top of my list when I have some details,’ Alan said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a couple called Telford. Both doctors working in Dubai?’
‘No. That doesn’t ring a bell but I can tell you working in Dubai is the new Cayman Islands. Having a business there is a great way to launder cash.’
‘How does that work?’ Alan asked.
‘The Caymans were a tax haven but the government changed the rules and closed the loopholes but if you work in Dubai and you’re out of the country most of the year, you don’t pay tax in the UK,’ Anne said. ‘We’ve found a couple last year setting up dentist surgeries over there and writing off all their tax, laundering drug money for a local outfit by the millions and charging them forty-pence on the pound to clean it.’
‘Forty percent,’ Alan said, surprised.
‘Everything is about the cash. It has to be clean or we’ll
take it off them. They are getting smart and smart costs more,’ Anne said. ‘Further investigation showed the surgeries were pieces of desert with planning permission on them and nothing more. The surgeries didn’t exist.’
‘I’ll do some digging at the Dubai end,’ Alan said. ‘This place is full of wine. Hundreds and hundreds of bottles.’
‘It’s another sign of laundering, Alan. They’re using wine, classic cars and coins as stock to hide bundles of cash they can’t account for. Some of the vintage wine in our last raid was worth ten grand a bottle.’
‘How big is a ten-grand bottle of wine?’ Alan asked.
‘Fucking massive if it’s the dishwater you drink,’ Anne joked. ‘I remember the red vinegar you ordered after that course in London.’
‘Dishwater?’ Alan disagreed. ‘That was the best rioja they had. It cost me fifteen quid.’
‘Philistine,’ Anne said. ‘Look into it. You’ll probably find your dead doctors are laundering money for some dangerous people.’
‘That’s food for thought,’ Alan said. ‘Good luck at the fair. I’ll be in touch.’
Chapter 14
Len Jobson opened the window and let the fresh air in. It cleared the cigarette smoke from the Jeep. He coughed and flicked the stub into the night. It landed on the carriageway and bright red sparks flew into the air, burning bright for a second before being snuffed out by the rain. Just like a life. One minute we burn bright, the next we’re gone, nothing but a memory, which fades in time and is eventually lost as our descendants grow old and die and the memory of us dies with them. Some people will remain only as a name carved into a headstone, others may be ashes blown into the wind, scattered by a grieving loved one. His son, Leo was neither of those things. He was a newspaper story long forgotten by most but not by his father. Not ever. Len had scoured the planet searching for Leo. He was convinced he’d been murdered and he’d been right. Someone killed his son and stuffed him into a barrel. They were close, closer than most fathers and sons get to be. Leo left a huge hole in his life.