by Hayden, Mark
Khan clearly knew every detail of what Tom was telling him, but his self-restraint was back in place. The man wasn’t going to say anything until Tom posed a question.
‘However, when DS Griffin administered the test on the calibrated machine at the station, it blew negative, showing that only a small amount was in the driver’s system. He was released without charge. That driver was your younger brother, a local businessman. How do you account for that?’
‘I don’t need to account for it because it’s nothing to do with me. If you asked me to speculate, I would say that because Griffin was a detective not a traffic officer, he wasn’t used to the new roadside breathalysers we brought in, and that he administered it incorrectly.’
‘It’s the obvious implication,’ said Tom. ‘However, there’s something unusual about this case because I actually met Griffin before he was shot. I reckon that Griffin was too lazy to stop a vehicle unless it really was being driven erratically, especially that late at night. We now know that Griffin was bent, to use the common phrase, and it’s equally likely that when he tested your brother back at the station, Griffin blew into the machine himself.’
‘Even if he did, that’s still not my business.’
‘Not your brother’s keeper, eh?’
‘I won’t dignify that remark with a response. Nor will I answer any questions about my relative who also works in Earlsbury CID, unless you notify me in advance. He still has a career.’
‘Then I’ll cut to the chase, shall I? Did DS Griffin contact you at any point on the night that he stopped your brother?’
‘No.’
‘Did you attend Earlsbury police station on that night?’
‘Certainly not. As it happens, I was at home with my wife. I know this because my father called me in a state to say that my brother had been arrested. Before I could contact anyone, my brother himself turned up to explain things.’
‘Did DS Griffin contact you about the arrest at any time after your brother had been released?’
‘No. And I never contacted him.’
‘Never? Your brother is arrested, you are the ACC responsible for Griffin’s station and the subject is never mentioned?’
‘No. The next time I saw Griffin, I may have nodded to him to show I knew, but otherwise it would have been unprofessional of me.’
‘What did your brother say when he turned up? It must have been very late.’
‘It was. My wife had gone to bed, and I was up late reading reports when my father rang. My brother came round to see me because the reading at the station wasn’t zero. That means he had been drinking – something he promised our father that he would stop doing. Completely.’
Tom closed the file and looked at Hayes. She had been writing furiously and making asterisks next to some of her notes. Her ballpoint pen had bitten into the paper so much that she had been forced to skip some pages, so deep was the impression. Satisfied that she had all the details, she nodded for Tom to continue.
He brought up the budget strategy day, and Khan was much quicker to remember it than any of their other witnesses. Had he been tipped off? Was it a sign of guilt?
‘I left about fourth or fifth,’ said Khan. ‘Niall Brewer was out of the door before I’d stood up, and I think David was shortly after him. The chairman of the police authority and his secretary were next. I left with the other ACC. We were still arguing about whose area should bear the brunt of the cuts.’
‘Are you sure? About who you left with, and the order.’
‘About the order, no. About who I left with, definitely. We stood arguing in the car park until I saw Evelyn and the FD come out of reception. I didn’t want them to spot us, so we got in our cars.’
That was interesting. Very interesting.
‘One last question. How many people did you see actually driving away?’
‘I saw the Chief’s chauffeur-driven car at the front. I saw the HR manager leave. I saw the head of anti-terrorism leave. None of the others. They were either before me or after me.’
Tom wrapped up the interview, and ACC Khan left. Although he had answered all Tom’s questions, he had behaved as if the wall were three feet further to his right, and that Hayes was on the other side of it: he never looked at her once.
‘Could he have done it?’ asked Hayes.
‘Yes. All he had to do was sit in his car for a minute, pretending to be on the phone. It was dark, starting to rain, and it was late. No one would have noticed him. He could have just got back out and gone in through the fire door.’
‘So we’re no further forward.’
‘I think we are. We’ve established that both Khan and Nechells could have done it.’
Hayes coughed and played with the pages of her notebook. She flicked a glance at Tom and said, ‘Are you going to include his objection to me in his statement?’
‘Yes and no. I’ll offer him two versions, and he can choose.’
‘Thanks, Tom. That meant a lot to me. No one’s stood up for me in a long time.’
‘If your boss won’t stand up for you in public, he – or she – doesn’t deserve following. I reckon Khan will remember that soon, and he won’t sign up to that objection. Leonie’s coming up on Thursday to see how we’re doing.’
‘Are you worried that she won’t back you up?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the problem.’
The trouble with meeting in the library was that he had to take his hat off. Clarke had worried and fretted in the mirror for some time before deciding that his hair had grown out enough to be presentable. The short fuzz had been become something resembling a crew cut, and consequently his bald patch was becoming more visible.
He wandered among the shelves until he found a table with some space. He unpacked his ledgers and started to get to grips with them again. At half past nine, Mina walked up to the table and asked if the other seat was taken.
Wearing the long pullover he had bought her, she looked even younger than twenty-seven. He wondered again how she could want to be with him now that she was no longer married to a man she didn’t love, and no longer a pariah because of her disfigurement. He tried to cling on to Kelly Kirkham’s words when they had finished their shopping trip last week: I can stop you looking middle-aged, Conrad, but I can’t make you a teenager again. In the end, she either wants you or she doesn’t. He looked into her eyes, and she mouthed a kiss at him. So far, so good.
‘Are you alone?’ he said. She nodded. ‘Good. The librarians here make so much noise talking to pensioners and children that they can’t object to polite conversation. How are you?’
‘Okay, considering that I’ve got a three hour appointment with the dentist. What are you up to?’
‘Trying to figure out how to lose £240,000 at the bookmakers.’
‘Really?’
‘Sort-of. That’s my new job. Money laundering via the racecourse.’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Conrad, I thought you were going straight after last time. I don’t want to come out of prison just to attend your trial for passing counterfeit currency.’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘No counterfeiting this time. Just basic bookkeeping. Except that’s one of the things they didn’t cover in pilot school.’
She had put her hand on the table as she leaned forward to talk to him. He stretched out and covered it with his. He massaged her fingers and felt her foot make contact with his leg. His good one, fortunately. She slipped her foot up, but the table was too wide for her to get past his knee. With a cough, she withdrew her hand and sat back. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to get me excited before seeing Luke, the hot dentist. I might not be able to keep my hands off him.’
‘I’ve got a solution for that.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Have a look at my books. That’ll calm you down.’
She snorted with laughter and had to put her hand in her mouth. When she came up for air, she brushed her hair aside and smile
d at him. He knew at that moment he would never see anyone more beautiful in his life. Ever.
‘Leave them with me,’ she said. ‘There’s a one hour gap in my treatment, and they’re not picking me up until two o’clock. You can collect them from the dentist’s reception. Now go, before one of the off-duty prison officers comes in and sees me.’
He stood up and slid the books across to her. Bending down to pick up his bag, he kissed the top of her head and said, ‘I love you.’
She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. ‘Me, too.’
He left the library on cloud nine and went for a coffee, taking an outside seat so he could enjoy a cigarette.
With his cravings for nicotine and caffeine satisfied, he went into the bank. ‘Could I speak to someone about opening a business account, please? I’m sorry, but I don’t have an appointment.’
‘No problem, sir. We’re quiet today. I’ll give Miss Sheriden a buzz, and she’ll be with you shortly.’
He took a seat and nearly fell off it when Miss Sheriden emerged. He had never met her before, but he knew her picture and he could tell from the scars on her face that it was the same person. She introduced herself as Tanya, and that sealed it.
‘We can fill in some of the paperwork today,’ she said, as she led him through to a private room at the back, ‘but we might not be able to open the account if you haven’t got the right ID on you. It’s the money laundering regulations.’
Clarke coughed. ‘Do you get a lot of problems with that? Really?’
‘You’d be surprised. It doesn’t happen much, but I had a bad run-in with it a while ago.’
She could say that again. Tanya Sheriden had been the girl who pulled the thread that started to unravel Sir Stephen’s whole operation. She had brought Morton and Lonsdale down on their backs, and her innocent report had started a chain reaction, leading to seven deaths already. And she’d been beaten up by Croxton. Clarke decided that whatever rate of interest he was offered, Praed’s bank would not be the best place to start his new business. And then he realised: if Tanya hadn’t spotted the irregularity, he would never have met Mina.
It was clearly an omen of some sort, but he couldn’t decide whether it was good or bad … the bank could have his money after all.
‘Hello, Tom. I’m Leonie. What’s your idea of a good night out?’
He stared at her aghast. She had repeated the first line from his speed dating encounter with Elspeth as soon as she walked into the office. And she had done so in front of Hayes.
Leonie looked at his DC. ‘Hasn’t he told you yet, Kris? Your boss had a close encounter a couple of weekends ago.’
At least Hayes had the decency to look appalled rather than laugh, though he wasn’t sure what she was appalled about — Leonie’s indiscretion or the idea of her boss going to a speed dating event.
Tom hated to be po-faced. His mother had accused him of it a lot when he was a teenager, and he’d developed his sense of humour partly as a defence against that, but he couldn’t help himself today. ‘I had rather hoped that would have remained a private matter,’ he said to Leonie.
‘Too late for that, Tom. Didn’t you notice Number Eight looking at you in a funny way? She’s a junior at Bridcutt Chambers, and she knows me of old. She recognised your picture from the paper, and she told me over a drink. Even as we speak, the news is making its way up the M40. I’m surprised that Kris hasn’t heard already.’
Tom gave Hayes a hard stare, and she started rummaging in her bag. He suspected she was trying not to laugh.
‘Okay, down to business,’ said Leonie. ‘I’ve come up here to get a full report and see where we’re going with this. Let’s have it.’
Tom laid it out for her. Their discoveries about Griffin’s involvement with three of the suspects, their interviews, the possible timeline for the phone call and his conclusions about where further evidence might be found. The only things he omitted were the dirt on Niall Brewer and Khan’s attitude to Hayes’s presence in the interview room.
Leonie had been making notes using a mind map, and at the end of Tom’s report she underlined a few things, then looked at him.
‘This is good work, Tom. And you, Kris. You’ve discovered a lot and made no waves. I haven’t had a single complaint about you from the Chief. In our game, that counts for a lot. When Ogden gave you this job, I wasn’t convinced, but I am now. I completely agree with you that someone from the MCPS senior team made that call to Griffin.’
She doodled again. ‘I’m eighty per cent in agreement with you about it being either Nechells or Khan, but that’s not enough. The only way you’ll get definitive proof is to do a full-on assault of those two: phone records, financial records, family interviews, surveillance – the lot. Trouble is … it will completely destabilise the Command Team here. And there’s still a twenty per cent chance that it’s someone else entirely. That’s not good enough. I can’t support deeper enquiries on the basis of this evidence.’
‘Are you closing us down?’
‘No, Tom, you’re misunderstanding me. I said I couldn’t support deeper enquiries, not further enquiries. I won’t authorise you to interview either of these men again. You can have a bit longer to dig around the issue. See what you can come up with.’
‘And if we can’t find anything?’
She sighed. ‘This is the bit I really hate. Nechells and Khan are both good coppers in their own way. We know that one of them is probably corrupt, but we can’t do anything about it. Our only option is to make sure that we whisper in a few ears if they try for promotion. Otherwise, we have no option but to let them carry on doing their jobs. Don’t tell me it stinks: I know that already.’
It was Tom’s turn to doodle. She was right in many ways. If Kris had suggested a one-woman crusade against Khan, he would have vetoed it, too.
‘How long?’ he said eventually.
‘End of next week. It’ll be nearly Christmas by then. You’ve had no leave since being nearly blown up. Finish off this case and go home to Yorkshire until the New Year.’
‘What about you? Where are you going to be if something breaks and I need authority to act?’
She pulled a face. ‘I only got out of Sussex on the back of a farmer’s tractor last week, and they’re sending me to finish the job. There are still hundreds of homes without power, apparently. I’ll be staying in a proper hotel this time.’
She put on a smile. ‘I’m off back down the motorway. I’ll leave you to tell Kris all about the speed dating.’
When Leonie had breezed out of their office, he turned to Hayes and said, ‘Don’t. Just don’t say a word. Not until later.’
‘Me? I wasn’t going to say anything. Much.’
Kate sat back and listened to the editorial meeting taking place six floors above her.
‘… and I’m telling you that there’s no way I’ll let Shakira get killed off at the end of the second act.’
‘Face facts. She’s a liability. There’s no romantic interest, and the voice acting is terrible. Partly because the lines are awful. This isn’t the nineties, you know. Even if women aren’t our target audience, they still expect female characters to sound like women, not adolescent fantasies.’
‘Adolescent fantasies are what we are selling.’
‘I agree, but adolescents are a lot more sophisticated now…’
The argument rumbled on. The designer who had it in for Shakira was top of Kate’s list for being the leaker. Any second now, and he’d dig himself a hole.
‘Look. You’ve read the comments from the first build, and every single one that mentions Shakira is negative. She’s got to go.’
Gotcha. Kate rang the Chief Exec and told him the name of the person who had leaked their precious game.
‘What? Surely to God, no. He’s been with this game since the beginning. He lives and breathes this world.’
‘And that’s why he leaked it. He was so furious about the storyline that he wanted it out in the open, to force yo
u into making changes.’
‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
‘Actually, he’s got a point. I’ve played it a few times, and I agree with him completely.’
‘I wouldn’t say you’re typical of our customers, but thanks. I need to think about this and get back to you. I might need you to help me with the interview.’
‘Fine.’
Kate shut down her surveillance system, and was about to start writing her final report when something stopped her. Before she left, there was one piece of hacking she needed to do.
She fired up the special programs that the CIS in-house expert had given her and searched the internet until she found Earlsbury Jaguar Ltd. Surely Patrick Lynch would have bought his car here – it was legitimate, after all. Slowly and carefully, she examined the garage’s servers until she found the customer database. The actual contact details were well encrypted, but the vehicle details were almost wide open.
In seconds, she had found the record of Patrick’s purchase. Clearly, the number plates would have been changed within hours of his death, but you can’t change the VIN. She made a note of the number and logged out.
The chief exec rang back. ‘You get him to confess and scare the crap out of him, then I’ll let him grovel to keep his job. He can give back some of his share options.’
‘Are you sure? If it’s known that he got away with it, others might be tempted next time.’
‘I know. The trouble is that if we sack him, he’ll take half a dozen of my best people with him and start a rival house of his own.’
‘You’re the boss.’
The west of Britain was due to get a respite over the weekend with some milder Atlantic air, and everyone was looking forward to it. Especially the retailers who had seen their pre-Christmas trade fall through the floor with the bad weather. So were the hospitals, which had seen their business rocket upwards.
Tom and Kris were sitting in A&E because his skin graft was hurting so much, and he was worried that it might be infected. Kris was there partly because she might need to drive the car afterwards, and partly because they could talk there as well as anywhere else.