by Adam Croft
The man who answered the door appeared to be somewhere in his late eighties. He looked at Wendy and Ryan without saying anything.
‘Hello. I’m Detective Sergeant Wendy Knight and this is Detective Constable Ryan Mackenzie from Mildenheath CID. We’re looking to speak to Mr Ranjit Singh.’
‘Yes, that’s me. Come in,’ the man said, shuffling aside and waving them through.
The hallway had a large, ornate marble floor. Wendy could almost feel the cold through her shoes.
‘We can go in here,’ Mr Singh said, pushing open the large doors into what Wendy and Ryan could only assume was the dining room. Around the edge of the circular room was a wooden platform which went down two steps the whole way round, with an enormous table on a circular red carpet in the remaining pit. Wendy counted twenty chairs at the table.
‘It’s a very nice house you have here,’ Ryan said.
‘Thank you. We own a lot of properties, and have done for many years.’
‘We wanted to speak to you about one of them, if that’s alright?’ Wendy said.
‘Of course.’
‘Do you own a property on Alexandra Street?’
‘Yes. I’ve had that for, I think, more than twenty-five years. Perhaps thirty years.’
‘Wow. It must be worth quite a bit now, I imagine.’
‘Yes, probably. It’s leased out at the moment. I think the lease expires in around eight or nine years. By then hopefully my children will inherit my portfolio and they can sell them or do whatever they like.’
‘Do you mind me asking how old you are?’ Ryan said.
‘Not at all. I’m seventy-eight.’
Wendy smiled and nodded. Mr Singh certainly hadn’t aged well for seventy-eight. If asked, she would have put him down as nudging ninety.
‘You mentioned that the property is leased out. Can you tell me a bit more about it?’
‘It’s used as office space, I think. I don’t know — I tend to take a bit of a back seat nowadays. I’m getting too old to worry about things. The building needed some maintenance work doing to it — a new roof, some structural stuff. This was ten or fifteen years ago. I was thinking of selling it and cutting my losses, but a company — Millennium Holdings, I think they are called — wanted to lease the building and carry out the work. We negotiated a price for the lease and did a deal. It means the repair work gets done, doesn’t cost me anything and I can get the property back when the lease expires.’
‘How long was the lease?’ Ryan asked.
‘Twenty years, I think. It was a good move, because the price of property around there has gone up a lot.’
‘Didn’t it seem like a bit of an odd proposition to you? That this company wanted to take on the building, spend a load of money renovating it and pay you for the lease?’
‘Not especially, no. Lots of companies don’t want to rent office space because landlords or councils can chuck them out without much notice. They need more stability. It’s not ideal for companies to get mortgages on properties or to own them, so leasing works well for lots of them.’
‘All of the benefits without the ultimate responsibility,’ Wendy thought out loud.
‘Perhaps. It seemed to work well for everyone.’
‘And this company was called Millennium Holdings, you say?’ Ryan asked. ‘Where are they based, do you know? Are they local?’
‘No, they are overseas. In the Cayman Islands, I think. It’s something to do with financial services. I didn’t really ask. It isn’t my business.’
Wendy and Ryan looked at each other. The only reason UK-operating companies were based in the Cayman Islands tended to be because they could avoid tax and remain untraceable. If that was the case with this company, it begged the question as to why they didn’t want anyone to be able to trace them. It was all starting to add up in their minds.
‘Who did you deal with when it came to the lease? Do you remember the person’s name?’ Wendy asked
Mr Singh shook his head. ‘It was all done through a lawyer of some sort. Russian, I think he was. He just told me he was acting on behalf of some financial services company who wanted to use the property as office space.’
‘And he didn’t tell you his name?’
‘Of course he did. But it was ten or fifteen years ago. I don’t remember it. All the lease paperwork was between my company and Millennium Holdings. The lawyer just negotiated the price and the terms for them, that’s all. Tell me, can I ask what this is all about?’
‘We’re investigating a series of crimes that may have taken place on the premises. How often do you visit the property?’
‘Never. I’m seventy-eight, officer. I’m too old for all that. I have a letting agent and maintenance company who I use for all of that stuff. But the property you’re asking about was leased out, so I had even less involvement. The lessees took care of everything. It’s none of my business until the lease runs out.’
Wendy wasn’t entirely sure that was necessarily correct, but one thing she could be sure of was that Ranjit Singh genuinely had no idea what was going on inside his property.
41
Later that day, Steve and Frank had been in the stakeout house for almost two hours. The light was beginning to fade, and before long they’d have to switch from watching the camera footage on a screen in the upstairs bedroom and move to manual observation. They’d agreed that Frank would go first — or, rather, Frank had declared that there was ‘no bloody way’ he was going to wake up at two o’clock in the morning so they could swap.
The pair were more than used to sitting through hours of CCTV footage, but on most occasions it was a recording being replayed. They didn’t often sit in front of live footage, waiting for something to happen.
They’d both had a little grumble about Culverhouse, but nothing too excessive. He was usually right about these things and, in any case, they couldn’t know for sure that he hadn’t bugged the place. What if it was all one big ploy to catch them out? Frank knew that was a load of old bollocks, but Steve was a sucker for a conspiracy theory.
‘They can hear everything you say through the microphone on your mobile, you know,’ he’d told Frank. ‘Even if it’s switched off.’
‘Who can?’
‘They can. MI5 and all that.’
Frank looked at Steve, incredulous. ‘Why the fuck would MI5 want to listen to you? Even I don’t want to listen to you.’
‘No, but they can. And they can see through webcams and things, and the camera on the front of your phone. And if you get one of those speaker things in your house that you can talk to, they can listen in on your conversations and show you adverts based on what you talk about.’
Frank nodded. ‘Right. Get many adverts for manure, do you?’
‘No, but I did see an ad for a stairlift the other day, when I’d been watching a programme about one-hundred-year-old drivers a few hours earlier. Work that one out.’
‘Where was the ad?’ Frank asked.
‘In this magazine I was reading.’
Frank looked at Steve and shook his head slowly.
‘You’re unreal, Steve. You’re absolutely unreal.’
Steve grunted and stood up. ‘I need a wazz.’
‘Hang on,’ Frank said, grabbing Steve’s arm and pulling him back down into his seat. ‘Look.’
On the screen, they could see a set of car headlights, as a vehicle parked up just out of shot. A few seconds later, the lights went off and a man entered their view from the right-hand-side of the screen. Despite the warmth of the evening, he was wearing a baseball cap and a jacket with the collar turned up. He climbed the steps to the front of the brothel, knocked and a few seconds later the door opened and he entered.
Frank stood and went to the window. He peered through the curtains and looked at the car the man had come from. ‘Silver VW Polo. Index… Can’t quite make it out. I’ll go down and have a look.’
‘Bit risky, ain’t it?’ Steve said.
‘Don�
��t worry — I’ll go out the back and round the block. I’ll just walk past, left at the end of the road then come back in the same way.’
Frank was already halfway down the stairs before he’d finished speaking, which was unusually keen and energetic for him. Steve watched through the curtains as Frank appeared a little way down the road, having gone out through the back door and along the footpath that ran behind the houses and out onto the road further down. His colleague walked up past the house and carried on to the end of the road, as if he’d just been casually walking past.
A few minutes later, Frank was back upstairs. He grabbed the nearest notepad and pen and jotted down the car’s number plate, which he’d been repeating to himself the whole way back.
‘Right. Now we need to think of a way to get a PNC check on this,’ he said. The Police National Computer held details of more than fifty-five million vehicles, and was linked to the DVLA’s main database. By entering the car’s registration number, they’d be able to see who owned it. ‘Problem is, all searches will be logged. We’ll need to think about how to get round that.’
Steve stared at the paper in front of him.
‘There’s no need,’ he said. ‘I know exactly whose car that is.’
42
‘I was going to cook, but I got tied up at work and didn’t have time to sort everything out,’ Culverhouse said, only half lying.
Chrissie told him she really didn’t mind — she was happy with a takeaway.
‘Nice place you’ve got,’ she said. ‘You been here long?’
‘In a word, yes.’
‘Typical man’s house, though.’
He looked at her quizzically, waiting for her to continue.
‘No knick-knacks. No photos. Nothing sentimental. Classic sign of a man who lives alone.’
He’d told Emily to go out for a few hours, but he’d already agreed with himself that he wouldn’t lie about her existence. It was only fair that he told the truth.
‘I live with my daughter, actually,’ he said. ‘That’s only a fairly recent thing, though. It’s a long story.’
‘Ah. Mum not on the scene?’
‘No, she’s… She’s not around any more.’ He really didn’t want to get into explaining how Helen had a habit of cropping up when she wanted something. He didn’t have a clue where she was, or if she was even alive. One of the last times he saw her she was in a hospital in Denmark, having been found unconscious on a park bench in Copenhagen. Half of him was expecting a call to come at any moment to say she was dead.
‘Don’t worry about it. We’ve all got our pasts. I know I have. So, what’s her name?’
‘Who?’ Jack replied, half thinking she might be talking about Helen.
‘Your daughter.’
‘Ah. Emily.’
‘Nice name. How old is she?’
‘Not as old as she thinks she is. So. Chinese takeaway or Indian?’
Once the food had been ordered, the conversation started to flow. Jack always seemed to find it easy talking to Chrissie — far more than he did with most people — and he was especially pleased that the subject of work never came up for either of them. It was almost an unspoken truth that both had stressful jobs and neither wanted to discuss them in polite company.
‘So, tell me something interesting about Jack,’ Chrissie said. ‘I still feel like I know nothing about you.’
‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ Jack quipped.
‘Come on. Tell me something interesting. Something that’ll shock and surprise me.’
‘Shock and surprise you?’
‘A real secret. I won’t tell. Promise.’
Jack thought about this for a moment. He had plenty of things he could say right now. Many were things he’d never told anyone, and he wasn’t about to tell this virtual stranger — regardless of how well they got on and how easy she was to speak to.
‘I once did thirty-five miles an hour in a thirty.’
Chrissie laughed, her eyes scrunched up as she chuckled. ‘No, come on. Seriously now. I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me one.’
The look in Chrissie’s eyes as she said that was strangely becoming.
‘Alright,’ Jack said. ‘You first.’
‘Ah, no. That’s not the game. That’s not how it’s played.’
‘It’s the way I play it. My house, my rules.’
Chrissie smiled and leant in closer to him. ‘Alright. My secret is… After a glass of red wine and a spare twenty minutes, I can leave a man writhing on the bed like a quivering wreck. By my reckoning the food’s due in twenty-five. And,’ she said, before downing the contents of her glass, ‘Whoops. There goes the wine.’
Jack looked at her for a moment, trying to quell the stirrings he was now feeling within himself. What was the harm? he thought to himself. He could smell Chrissie’s perfume, and leant in towards her. With their lips barely an inch apart, they were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut, before Emily walked through into the living room.
‘Hi Dad. Sorry, I forgot to take my— Oh, Jesus Christ. It’s you.’
Chrissie smiled awkwardly. ‘Hi Emily.’
43
‘Sorry, am I missing something here?’ Jack said, detecting a definite shift in the atmosphere.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Emily asked.
‘Uh, you invited her,’ Jack said.
Chrissie looked at him. ‘She invited me?’
‘It’s a long story. Look, is one of you going to tell me what’s going on here?’
Emily was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. Chrissie decided to put Jack out of his misery.
‘I’m Emily’s headteacher. I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t know any of that until she walked in just now. If I’d known, well…’
‘Well what? You wouldn’t have come over tonight? You wouldn’t have started speaking to me in the first place?’
‘No, don’t be silly. That’s not what I mean. It’s just… It changes things, doesn’t it? There’s got to be a rule against it somewhere.’
‘Didn’t stop Miss Thompson shagging the caretaker in the stationery store,’ Emily said.
‘Emily, that’s a vicious rumour and you know it,’ Chrissie said, before looking at Jack. ‘Sorry. Your house, your rules.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Miss Thompson sounds like my kind of girl.’
‘Dad!’
‘Look, maybe I should just go,’ Chrissie said, standing up. ‘We can sort all this out another time, once all the emotion has died down.’
‘Hang on a second,’ Jack said. ‘What emotion? So you’re Emily’s headteacher. So what?’
Chrissie drew a deep breath. ‘We haven’t exactly had the best teacher-student relationship, have we, Emily?’
Emily said nothing, and just stared at Chrissie.
Before Jack could ask one of them to elaborate, his mobile phone started ringing. He went and fetched it from the coffee table and answered it. It was Steve Wing’s mobile number.
‘Steve. What is it?’
His colleague’s voice sounded serious. ‘We’ve found something. Or, rather, we’ve found someone. Going into the brothel. You might want to come and see this.’
‘Look, can’t you just tell me?’
‘Probably best I don’t. Not over the phone. Can you meet us here at the house?’
Jack thought about this for a moment. ‘No. Too risky.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Meet me at the Prince Albert in ten minutes.’
‘Will do. Do you want both of us there?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me. How serious is this? Will one of you need to keep watching the place?’
Steve’s answer told Jack all he needed to know.
‘I think it would be best if we were both there.’
44
The Prince Albert was humming with locals in the middle of their evening out, but Jack was feeling anything but merry. He had no idea what was going on in his personal life,
and he had even less idea what was going on with work. Steve had been keen not to give him any details over the phone, and he was at a complete loss to even guess what bad blood there was between Emily and Chrissie.
All he wanted was answers, and he was determined to get them all tonight.
He arrived at the pub a few minutes before Steve and Frank, and ordered three beers before sitting down at a quiet table in the corner. He didn’t want to waste time while the pair of them sauntered up to the bar and sampled each of the beers before finally deciding which one they wanted.
When they did arrive, they came and sat straight down at the table.
‘Come on, then,’ Jack said, almost before their backsides had touched their chairs. ‘Spit it out.’
Steve and Frank looked at each other for a moment before Steve spoke.
‘We were watching the place opposite, like you said, on the monitor. This car pulled up and a bloke got out. It was proper weird, because the guy was wearing a baseball cap and a jacket with the collar up, in this weather. We knew the second he got out the car where he was going. He looked well shifty. Anyway, Frank got up and went to the window to get a better look. He could see the car properly from there, but couldn’t read the number plate, so he went outside to get it.’
‘Look, will you get to the point?’ Culverhouse barked.
‘I recognised the number plate,’ Steve said. ‘I see it on his driveway every night on my way past his house. I think it’s his wife’s car.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Steve. Who?’
Steve looked at Frank and swallowed, before answering Jack.
‘Martin Cummings.’
45
Wendy had been in two minds about whether or not to invite Xav over again. She was tempted to leave it a few nights, especially after his reaction when she’d told him she wanted to take things to the next stage. It had taken her enough courage to actually come out and say it, only for him to effectively throw it back in her face. On the other hand, though, she knew she couldn’t keep on in this limbo, and needed to put things straight once and for all.