Night of Fire:

by Iain Cameron

  The Norfolk scenery passed by in a blur, a featureless landscape of huge fields dissolving into the distance by a cold, low mist. Little farming activity was going on now, most of the fields had been ploughed in late autumn and left fallow and bare, or strewn with the shredded stalks of harvested corn, slowly composting into the ground.

  Gresham Fresh Produce lay down a narrow B-road outside Newton Flotman, a large village about twenty miles south of the only city in the county of Norfolk, Norwich. The road was bordered on both sides by a row of tall straight trees, the only landmark on an otherwise featureless landscape.

  They turned into another narrow B-Road and after half a mile, she saw the sprawling complex of Gresham Fresh Produce. She’d looked the company up on the web and was impressed by some of the pictures at its size, but only by being there could she appreciate the scale. There were three huge barns, a sizeable car park with several lorries parked outside and a three-storey administration block. The complex was surrounded on all sides by fields, giving the impression they were in the middle of nowhere.

  They were led without much delay into the office of Managing Director, David Gresham. Aged around mid-fifties, he looked slim and athletic, if the way he bobbed up from his chair to greet them was anything to go by. He had grey slicked hair and a clean-shaven, healthy looking face, reminding her of an American TV evangelist.

  ‘Officers, good to meet you. I’m always happy to help the forces of law and order,’ he said as he shook their hands.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us, Mr Gresham.’

  ‘Before we start, can I get you anything? We do the usual teas and coffees but as we are also a major vegetable supplier, I can rustle up some great vegetable drinks. I love the carrot and orange but my p.a. swears by the beetroot and ginger. Are either of you tempted?’

  ‘At the risk of sounding rude, coffee for me,’ Walters said.

  ‘I’ll try the carrot and orange,’ Bentley said. ‘I’m trying to add more vegetables to my diet as I play rugby and I’ve been rubbish these last few weeks.’

  ‘Good man. I can’t guarantee it’ll make you run faster but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Back in a minute.’

  ‘Quite a place this,’ Walters said. ‘It stinks of money. A big fancy office like this, smart cars outside and did you see their trucks, all less than two years old?’

  ‘Not much to do at lunchtime though.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’re closer to nature out here. I bet the bugs are a nightmare in the summer.’

  Gresham breezed in a few minutes later and placed the drinks in front of them. ‘Sorry for the delay, I got waylaid; you know how it is. Now,’ he said, sitting down on the chair behind his desk, ‘how can I help you?’

  Walters explained about Marc Emerson’s murder and how a local person had become a suspect.

  ‘And you’re here because?’

  ‘The woman we’re interested in, Christine Sutherland, used to worked here.’

  ‘That she did,’ he said brushing his hand through his hair, a wistful expression creeping across his face.

  ‘A lovely girl she was. Always pleasant, nothing too much trouble and she improved the quality of the reports I receive a thousand-fold. I tell you this, it might look like a simple business: we bring in vegetables, clean, prepare and package them, but some of our customers are the largest supermarkets in the country. Make a mistake and you’re yesterday’s toast. When you go into Sainsbury’s in Cheltenham and pick up a broccoli or a pack of stir fry vegetables at Tesco in Basingstoke, chances are it came from here.’

  He went to quote the millions they made in turnover, the number of potatoes they sold each year and how the demand for products such as kale and quinoa could rocket when recommended by a popular magazine or celebrity chef.

  ‘In the past, I would never have been able to throw these statistics at you without the great work done by Christine. She revolutionised my management reporting system. Now, I get reports detailing sales for the previous week on a Monday while before then I had to wait two weeks, and my monthly accounting pack comes out on the fourth workday when it used to come out in the middle of the month.’

  ‘It sounds like she made a big difference to your business.’

  ‘Oh, she did, but I don’t think she’s the woman you’re talking about.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Christine Sutherland was murdered two years ago.’

  **

  Detective Sergeant Sandy Pendle didn’t offer them fancy vegetable drinks or smoothies, only the metallic tasting output from an old coffee machine at the end of the corridor. What he did offer was cooperation and Walters would trade that for a healthy vegetable smoothie any day.

  If David Gresham and Sandy Pendle were to be placed side by side, a casual onlooker would swear that Sandy was the vegetable farmer and not David. The Norfolk DS had a round ruddy face, untidy fair hair that couldn’t be tamed by a mere hairbrush and large, scarred hands that were a stand-in for spades. If he slapped a file on the desk, it would wake up anyone dozing within a three desk-radius.

  They were on the third floor of the central police station of Norfolk Police in a town called Wymondham on the outskirts of Norwich. In the same way that the Home Office had combined the serious crime directorates of Surrey and Sussex, it had happened here with Suffolk and Norfolk. Walters had seen the stats and believed that Surrey and Sussex were matched in terms of the quantity and seriousness of the crimes they investigated, but Norfolk looked to her more rural than their neighbour with few large conurbations, while Suffolk had several, and a number of working ports.

  ‘Before I let you see what we ’ave in ’ere,’ Pendle said, ‘tell me again what you said about the mixed up identities. I’m confused.’

  ‘It hasn’t been easy for us either, I assure you. We have a suspect in a murder case who calls herself Christine Sutherland. According to her CV, her last employer was Gresham’s in Newton Flotman. When we spoke to the Managing Director at Gresham’s, he assured us Christine Sutherland was once an employee there, but the woman he knew is dead; murdered two years ago. He told us a bit about the murder hunt, finding the body and the funeral but he didn’t know the status of the investigation.’

  ‘I’m still confused.’

  ‘Sandy,’ Walters said, hiding her exasperation from this obdurate man. ‘I know this isn’t easy so what I suggest we do is this. You tell us about your girl and we’ll tell you about ours. Maybe between the three of us we can make some sense.’

  A large shovel of a hand reached to open the folder but stopped. ‘Appreciate my problem here. We spent months looking for this killer. The last thing we want,’ he said nodding towards them, ‘is two detectives from down south telling us what idiots we are for missing some bloody obvious clue.’

  ‘Sandy believe me, it won’t happen. As far as I know, this is a case of mistaken identity. If we discover it’s more than that and our suspect is implicated in this woman’s murder, you will be the first to know.’

  He looked at her face, searching for the trace of lies or a hint of mistrust. Finding none, he opened the file.

  ‘Christine Sutherland, our Christine Sutherland, left the offices of Gresham Fresh Produce where she worked as Financial Director at seven in the evening on September 4th 2014. She never arrived home. Her husband reported her missing at 9:15pm that evening and when she didn’t turn up for work the following morning we started a search. We checked CCTV and spotted her car driving north along the A140 from Newton Flotman and then on the southern ring road.’

  ‘Where does that lead?’

  ‘South eastern parts of the city like Trowse, Thorpe, Whitlingham Country Park and then on to Great Yarmouth.’

  ‘Ok,’ she said. She’d heard of Great Yarmouth but none of the others.

  ‘We lost her soon after and never picked up her car again. Two days later, an early morning runner in Whitlingham Country Park reported seeing a body in some reeds at the side of the broad, I mean the lake. We recovered
it and found Christine Sutherland. She’d suffered serious head wounds and while still alive, her assailant had dumped her in the lake. The wounds received had been inflicted by a blunt object. If pushed, the pathologist thought something like a heavy spanner or a hammer.’

  ‘What about suspects?’

  ‘We interviewed her friends, her husband was a suspect for a spell, we talked to runners and fisherman at Whitlingham and we interviewed all her work colleagues. By all accounts she was a hard-working woman who socialised little and spent most of her time looking after her husband and two young kids.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit, there’s something I need to do for my boss in ten minutes. I can leave you with the file but I don’t want you taking anything away. Ok?’

  ‘No problem, Sandy,’ Walters said, pleased at gaining some thinking time.

  The file was thick, the result of a large police investigation and she suspected not the only one, but it would do for now. She divided the pile between her and Bentley and, trying to keep it in the same order as the Norfolk detectives, sifted through the contents. The murder had made a splash locally, hitting the front pages of the Eastern Daily Press and later in the week, a double-page spread when the body was found.

  It made her sad to see pictures of Christine’s two young children, one six and the other four. On the anniversary of their mother’s death, they would have to endure speculation from some newspapers that seemed to delight in making up motives for unsolved murders: did she come down to Whitlingham to meet a lover, or could she have been involved in a high-level business fraud?

  The interviews conducted with work colleagues interested her, having now seen the Gresham operation. The HR department had supplied Norfolk Police with organisation charts and bios of everyone in the dead woman’s team, with a helpful one-page print of mini-photographs copied from their personnel files.

  She glanced down the list of serious faces to see if she recognised anyone from this morning’s visit. Tucked in the middle she spotted a face she did recognise. The name of this woman was Melanie Lewis, but if Walters was not to be misled by the dark hair and the short bob style, so different from the way she looked now, it was the face of the woman she knew now as Christine Sutherland.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Henderson rose from his chair and walked to the window. His office overlooked the numerous buildings that made up the Malling House complex in Lewes, the hills of the South Downs rising in the distance. It looked a grey, featureless day with thick clouds dulling the light, coupled with a sharp northern wind that encouraged those outside to button up their coats and jackets as soon as they left the sanctuary of the building.

  He turned to face DS Walters, seated at the table with an expectant expression on her face, a predator in sight of her prey. ‘Let me take this in. Our Christine Sutherland who might be called Melanie Lewis, but we don’t know, was once the work colleague of someone called Christine Sutherland, the Financial Director of Gresham Fresh Produce in Norfolk?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘The real Christine Sutherland was murdered by person or persons unknown, also for reasons unknown as the Norfolk Police couldn’t find anything in her past, present or in any of her relationships that looked dodgy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you believe the woman who is the current Financial Director at Quinlan’s in Brighton has taken her name?’

  ‘More than the name, boss, she’s added all of Christine’s experience to her CV. In essence, she’s adopted her identity.’

  Henderson retook his seat, the day kicking off more complex and confusing than his morning brain could handle. Of course, the couple of glasses of wine and the one, or was it two, bottles of beer last night didn’t help.

  ‘I checked the Quinlan FD’s CV and the experience and dates match up to the one Gresham gave me for their Christine Sutherland.’

  ‘I’m with you now. What job did Melanie Lewis do at Gresham’s?’

  ‘She was a financial analyst in Christine Sutherland’s department. She didn’t have much in the way of experience and, a key omission, she didn’t have any accountancy qualifications.’

  ‘And yet,’ he said warming to the story as his brain seemed to have finally woken up, ‘according to the CV of the FD at Quinlan’s, she’s a qualified accountant with a business degree from Exeter University.’

  ‘Precisely, which are the exact qualifications of Christine Sutherland, the murdered woman in Norfolk.’

  ‘We can assume, therefore that the woman at Quinlan’s, let’s call her Melanie Lewis to save confusion, is guilty of assuming another woman’s identity.’

  ‘Right, plus faking her CV and making up her qualifications.’

  ‘I don’t want to curb your obvious enthusiasm, DS Walters, God knows we could use more of it around here, but identity fraud is hardly something to interest a Serious Crime Unit like this one. Yes, it’s illegal, but it’s way, way down the list of misdemeanours handled by the High Court.’

  She sighed. ‘I do realise it doesn’t sound much but it’s enough to haul her in for questioning again, don’t you think? Cindy Summer is still missing and now we’ve got this murder in Norfolk to consider.’

  ‘Hold on, you’re getting ahead of yourself. We’ve no evidence of her involvement in Cindy’s disappearance or in the murder in Norfolk. If I remember correctly, Norfolk detectives pulled out all the stops on this one. They interviewed our Melanie Lewis and she gave them a good alibi.’

  ‘No doubt attending another one of those seminars that she can walk out of whenever she wants.’

  ‘You should check.’

  ‘I will.’

  Henderson paused, thinking. ‘Melanie Lewis feels like a cut-and-run merchant to me. We approach her with identify theft charges and she’ll be out on bail before you know it, then poof! She’ll be gone never to be seen again.’

  ‘Why would she? She’s scored a good job, albeit illegally and no doubt earns good money; much more than me, I might add.’

  ‘Yes, but knowing she gained the job under false pretences means she will have a back door in case things go pear-shaped. If in time a couple of uniforms turn up at Quinlan’s offices, she would be down the back stairs and out to her car in a flash. A job she can leave behind, as well as the car, the house, everything.’

  ‘I think what you’re saying is we need more?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘Don’t forget the dug-over vegetable patch. We could get ground-penetrating radar to–’

  ‘Don’t go there. To justify radar and the operator and the diggers that go with it, we require more evidence than a nicely dug piece of garden. What if they find vegetable seeds?’

  ‘I guess.’

  He went quiet for thirty seconds, doodling on a pad. ‘What’s the upside if we arrest Melanie Lewis for identity fraud? Providing we catch her before she scarpers, we could charge her and hopefully keep her in custody. When she comes up for a hearing, we would ask the judge not to grant bail as she’s a flight risk, and with a bit of luck, she might remain in jail. Now the maximum sentence under the Fraud Act is ten years, but for forging a CV, sentences as high as six months are rare. Chances are, she wouldn’t get more than community service.’

  ‘It’s not much if she’s the killer of Christine Sutherland, Marc Emerson and Cindy Summer.’

  ‘No, but with her in custody, maybe Edwards would authorise the use of ground-penetrating radar or at least a dig in her vegetable plot. I’d get forensics to crawl over her house and if they found any evidence to indicate that Cindy Summer has been there, we would be in a much stronger position.’

  ‘It’s throw your cards on the table time, or take a gamble. What’s it to be, boss?’

  **

  Henderson didn’t say much as they drove over to Quinlan Fine Foods. There didn’t seem anything to add to the case that hadn’t been said, it was now time for action. He wondered if Melanie Lewis was the woman Walters believed her to be, a callous, murdering psychopath
. If so, she might have a trick up her sleeve to evade them when cornered.

  They drove into the car park at eleven o’ clock. Today was Thursday, three weeks before Christmas and while he was sure after his meeting with Francis Quinlan earlier in the week that all the work to stock up supermarkets had been completed, the car park looked to be as busy as before.

  In Reception, he asked to see Francis Quinlan as he wanted the approach to Melanie Lewis to be as low-key as possible. If they arrested her in front of her staff, it could cause an altercation and perhaps leave Lewis uncooperative when questioned.

  ‘I’m sorry but Mr Quinlan is not around,’ the receptionist said. ‘He left about fifteen minutes ago with our Financial Director, Christine Sutherland.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t keep his diary but his secretary, Juliet Mathews should know. Would you like to speak to her?’

  Henderson walked towards the thick carpeted area surrounding Francis Quinlan’s office, now becoming familiar after his second visit of the week.

  ‘Good morning, Detective Inspector Henderson, Sergeant Walters,’ Quinlan’s secretary said. ‘I’m surprised to see you back here so soon. Did you come here to see Francis?’

  ‘Yes, we did. I understand he’s out.’

  ‘Yes he is. Our Financial Director Christine Sutherland went in to see him about something, and the next minute he put on his jacket and left with her.’

  ‘Did he tell you where they were going?’

  ‘No, and there’s nothing in his diary.’

  ‘Have they done this before, nipped out unannounced in the morning for an hour or two?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Detective Inspector, but Francis isn’t like that. He’s been happily married to the same woman for over twenty years.’