The Cambroni Vendetta

by David George Clarke

  Derek persisted. “It’s just that your eyes look like two piss holes in the snow. Heavy night?”

  He grinned knowingly, trying to encourage a response.

  “Couldn’t sleep, is all,” grunted Gus.

  Derek straightened in his chair and looked over to Jennifer, shrugging as he silently mouthed, ‘Wanker’.

  Jennifer shook her head, suppressing a giggle.

  The usual quiet buzz of conversation was missing as the team waited, knowing the DCS would also be waiting. He had sent Len Crawford to the Old Nottingham to pick up Trisha McVie and those who had a view into the corridor expected to see the pair of them pass in the direction of Hawkins’ office at any moment.

  Jennifer picked up her mobile, wondering if Trisha had left a message in response to the several calls she had made to her, some the previous evening and more that morning. On each occasion Trisha’s number had been unobtainable, which was more than strange given Trisha’s insistence on keeping communication channels open at all times. She called the number again with the same result.

  As she put the phone back down on her desk, the door at the end of the room opened and Hawkins’ secretary, Maureen, looked in.

  “DS Cotton,” she called. “Mr Hawkins would like a word.”

  Jennifer got up and followed the mousey fifty-year-old into the corridor, her senses on alert. Maureen almost never called her anything but Jennifer. Hawkins must have barked at her.

  “Morning, sir,” she said, as breezily as she could when she saw the storm cloud on Hawkins’ face. She waited, standing in front of his desk.

  Hawkins was staring at his mobile as if it were some kind of alien object, the lines on his forehead knotted in a frown.

  “You heard from Superintendent McVie at all, DS Cotton?” he growled.

  “No, sir, I haven’t. I’ve been trying but—”

  “Crawford just called from her hotel. They said she hasn’t checked in.”

  “Hasn’t checked—”

  “Don’t stand there repeating what I’ve just said, Cotton.”

  “Sorry, sir. It’s just that I’m rather shocked. It’s not like her.”

  “I should hope not. Not an auspicious start. When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “Monday, sir.”

  “Before I announced it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I assume she told you. About the transfer, I mean.”

  “Er, yes, sir, she did. In strictest confidence, of course. She was very excited about it.”

  “Hmm.” The grunt spoke volumes about Hawkins’ disapproval. But Hawkins also knew that it wasn’t Jennifer’s fault she had been told.

  “And she said she was coming up here yesterday?”

  “Late afternoon, sir, yes. Of course, the weather was foul, but if she’d been delayed, she would have called.”

  “What kind of car does she drive?”

  “A Golf, a red one. It’s not new but it’s perfectly roadworthy. And Tr … Superintendent McVie’s an excellent driver.”

  “You don’t know the registration number, by any chance, do you?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “Sorry, sir, I don’t.”

  “Maureen’s calling the Yard now to find out. Just thought you might. Once I’ve got it, we’ll get onto traffic to see what accidents there were.”

  “From the news I heard on the radio this morning coming in, sir, the M1 remained remarkably incident-free. There were no reports of anything major.”

  “Would she have definitely come that way?”

  “From where she lives, yes, it’s the obvious route. And we discussed it a bit on the phone. I told her to take junction twenty-five.”

  There was a tap on the door and Maureen put her head round.

  “I have the registration number, Mr Hawkins.”

  “Thank you, Maureen. Pass it to DS Cotton. Jennifer, follow it up, will you? Get on to Traffic Control from here to London and find out if McVie’s car was involved in anything. Anything at all.”

  “What shall I tell the team, sir?”

  “Tell them there’s been a delay.”

  * * *

  All heads in the squad room looked up as Jennifer came through the door. Apart from one.

  “Where’s Gus?” asked Jennifer, addressing no one in particular.

  It was Derek who answered.

  “Gone to the bathroom. Said he wasn’t feeling well.”

  “From his colour, I should say that’s the understatement of the year,” said Jennifer. “OK, everyone, this morning’s meet and greet has been, er, delayed. Detective Superintendent McVie didn’t arrive at her hotel last night and her phone’s giving an unobtainable signal. Has been since last night. I know that ’cause I’ve been trying to call her. I’m about to chase up traffic in case she’s been involved in an accident, and Terry,” — she caught the eye of one of the younger DCs, Terry Purchase — “get in touch with the tech people. Find out when her phone was last on and where she was.”

  She grabbed a pad from the nearest desk and scribbled on it. “Here’s her number.”

  The answer from Traffic came back quickly. There had been no accidents nor any other incidents involving Trisha McVie’s car.

  Jennifer had just put the receiver back on her desk phone after receiving the report when Gus Brooke rushed back into the room. He stopped at the door, a look of confusion on his face.

  “Sorry, er, sarge,” he called to Jennifer. “I didn’t think I’d been very long. I haven’t missed the meeting, have I?”

  “No, Gus, you haven’t. It’s been postponed. And if I were you, I’d sit down before I fell down.”

  “Sorry, yes, I will. It’s just a headache. I’ve taken some paracetamol. I’ll be fine.”

  Jennifer gave him a Hawkins-like ‘hmm’.

  A phone rang and Terry Purchase answered it. He scribbled on a pad as he nodded rapidly.

  “Thanks, mate,” he said, and put the phone down.

  “Well?” said Jennifer.

  DC Purchase stared at the pad and blew out his cheeks.

  “Bit odd, sarge. They’ve traced the phone. It was switched off at 19:48 yesterday evening at Watford Gap services.”

  “That’s it?” said Jennifer. “Nothing else since?”

  “No, sarge, nothing.”

  “Right, call the control room at Watford Gap and get them to look in the car park, see if her car is there. Perhaps she’s been taken ill and is in the car as we speak. Although I can’t imagine why she’d turn off her phone.”

  In fact, she had a good idea why, but she wasn’t about to share Trisha’s personal life, not at this moment. Steven. Trisha had predicted he’d be difficult about her move. Perhaps they’d been rowing about it, him on the phone from the States, her in the car driving in foul weather. If Trisha hadn’t been feeling well, the only way to shut him up would be to switch off the phone.

  “Tell them to make it snappy, Terry. She might need medical assistance.”

  * * *

  Gus had been listening to the conversation with only half an ear. He knew he looked terrible but it wasn’t the remains of the headache that was weighing him down, draining his colour. Insistent visions of his blood-soaked bathroom with the body of Emma Carrington lying in the middle of it kept flashing across his mind. A body that was still there, stiff and cold, a body he needed to deal with. It wasn’t the fact she had died there; that wasn’t his fault. It was the consequences that kept squeezing his guts, twisting and tearing at them, the awful sequence of events he had now set in motion and from which there was no turning back. If he came clean now, there would likely be a murder charge, and even if there weren’t, he would lose his job, his wife and his house. Actually, her house. Mo had bought it and it was in her name. That was one of the problems. He would walk away with nothing. If he managed to walk away.

  He took a deep breath and tried to focus. He leaned across to the next desk.

  “What’s going on, Jeff?” he said t
o the DC who was tapping on his keyboard.

  “The new super’s gone AWOL. Disappeared.”

  “What? When?”

  “Didn’t turn up at her hotel last night and Terry’s just found out that her phone was switched off early evening at Watford Gap services.”

  A deep, funereal alarm tolled in Gus’s head.

  “Watford Gap?” he repeated. “What was she doing there?”

  “Driving up from London. Her car’s gone missing too, unless Traffic find it in the car park. Can’t see that happening though.”

  “Missing?” Gus felt as if his head was going to explode.

  “Yeah, sounds like it. It hasn’t been in an accident.”

  Although he was terrified of the answer, Gus had to ask the question.

  “What … what type of car is it?”

  The DC stopped typing and turned his head towards Gus.

  “I heard the sarge talking to traffic about it. It’s a Golf,” he said, “a red Golf.”

  It took all that was left of Gus’s self-control not to bend over and beat his head on his desk until he collapsed unconscious.

  His problem, enormous and fraught with danger for him though it was, had just got a million times worse. Waves of nausea tore through him as he said the words to himself in his head. The body in his bathroom wasn’t Emma Carrington, Emma Carrington didn’t exist, not in his life, anyway. The body in his bathroom, the fatally injured, bloodstained and naked body, was that of his new boss, Trisha McVie. He had seduced and screwed his new boss, and then she had died in his bathroom from terrible injuries. He had dumped her car and he was now planning to dump her body. The boss. The boss who would now never be the boss. The detective superintendent. A senior police officer. She had died from unnatural causes in his cottage and he was intending to throw her away like so much trash.

  “Gus.” His name coalesced from the whirl of thoughts blocking him from the reality of the office around him. “DC Brooke!” It was Jennifer’s voice. He looked up; she was holding the handset of her phone.

  “Are you up to speed with what’s going on or are you still daydreaming?”

  “No. Yes. I’m fine, sarge. Sorry.”

  “Good, because I want you to do something.”

  “Yes, sarge.”

  “I want you to contact the traffic control rooms for the M1 from Watford Gap north to … let’s say junction 30. That’s way beyond Nottingham so we’ll see what that turns up. We’ll stick to the M1 for the moment. I want them to run all the CCTV from yesterday evening for any sighting of Superintendent McVie’s car. I want to know where it went and what time it went there.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  While the SCF team waited for the M1 traffic control to come back with results from the traffic cameras, details of Trisha McVie’s car were also circulated to all the East Midlands forces to report any sightings.

  The first results back were from Watford Gap services where the red Golf was recorded entering the service area on the northbound side at 19:35 and leaving at 19:51.

  Jennifer stared at the figures on the printout Gus Brooke handed her.

  “Any record of her in the car park?”

  Brooke shook his head. “Not so far, sarge. I’ll get back to them.”

  “So,” mused Jennifer, “she arrives there at 19:35 and presumably drives into the car park. Maybe she visits the loo and gets a cup of coffee. At that stage her phone is still switched on and—”

  “She was on the phone almost until it was turned off, sarge,” called out DC Purchase.

  “How long was the call?”

  “That last one was three minutes and six seconds.”

  “Do we know who it was from?”

  “It was a WhatsApp call, sarge. It’ll take a little longer to find out who the other party was.”

  “Pound to a penny it was her current partner calling from the US,” said Jennifer. “They probably had a row and she switched off the phone. OK, Doug, get back to Traffic at Watford Gap. We need to know whether she bought petrol there between 19:35 and 19:51 last night. It’s a narrow window, so the petrol station should be able to find the record. See if there’s any CCTV and get them to speak to whoever was on duty. Find out if she was alone.”

  Twenty minutes later, Gus Brooke was pretending to search through the road maps of the area, but in reality, his mind was elsewhere. The shrill of his phone snapped him back to life. Jennifer watched him as he listened and wrote on a piece of paper. Ringing off, he said nothing, much to Jennifer’s frustration.

  “Well!” she yelled at him.

  His eyes slowly lifted to hers, but to Jennifer they didn’t seem to be focussed.

  “DC Brooke?” she called.

  “Er, yes, sorry, sarge, I was working out the times in my head,” he lied. “That was Traffic again. They have a record of the Golf leaving the M1 at junction twenty-four at 21:16.”

  “Do they know which way it went?”

  “No, but it was in the right-hand lane on the slip road, so she was probably going round the roundabout to head towards Nottingham on the new road.”

  “I wonder why she chose that route,” said Jennifer, puzzled. “I told her to take number twenty-five.”

  Derek looked across from his monitor. “If she was using a satnav, it would probably bring her off at twenty-four if she just programmed in Nottingham,” he said. “It’s a shorter distance, especially with the new road.”

  Jennifer nodded. “She would have been using her satnav for sure; she’s got no sense of direction. Perhaps in the rain and the dark she decided to just let it take her the way it chose. Bloody things.”

  * * *

  Another two hours passed while they waited for any further sightings, but there were none. Then a call from the Watford Gap Traffic Unit informed them there was no record of a Golf with McVie’s registration number filling up with petrol.

  Jennifer was drumming her fingers on her desk, frustrated and wanting instant answers. More than anything she was increasingly worried that something had happened to Trisha.

  “Gus,” she called. “Get onto City and see what’s keeping them. Given that she was heading for the Old Nottingham, we know the route her satnav would have taken her, don’t we? There must be some further record of her car.”

  “Shall I drive out to the roundabout at junction twenty-four and get my satnav to guide me to the hotel?” suggested Derek. “Just in case there’s a possible alternative route and the car’s in a ditch somewhere.”

  Jennifer glared at him, not wanting to hear that possibility. But she saw it made sense.

  “OK, Derek. Good idea. Take Coulson with you.”

  As Derek walked back to his desk to fetch his jacket, the phone on Doug Coulson’s desk rang. He picked it up and listened, his eyes widening in disbelief.

  “Sarge,” he called. “There’s a possible sighting.”

  “What do you mean, ‘possible’?” snapped Jennifer. “Surely it’s positive or it isn’t. They have the registration number, don’t they?”

  Coulson was shaking his head. “No, I doubt they do. That was a report from the traffic helicopter patrol. There was an accident this morning between junctions twenty-four and twenty-five, nothing to do with the super’s car, and the helicopter’s been patrolling the motorway, checking conditions. On their way back to base, they flew over a disused industrial site near Rappington called the factory. You wouldn’t know the case, sarge, but a few months ago, we were keeping eyes on the place following reports of it possibly being used as a drug manufacturing centre, or even a location for making porn films. It didn’t come to anything and the DCS closed the operation down. Traffic were briefed at the time to check the place out from the air for any activity whenever they passed by. Anyway, they took that route this morning and called in to say they’d spotted a car parked in the middle of an open space at the factory that they are sure wasn’t there yesterday and wondered if we were still interested.”

  He paused, unnerved
by Jennifer’s obvious agitation at his long-winded explanation.

  “And?” said Jennifer.

  “The car’s red and could be a Golf.”

  Before Coulson had time to say any more, Jennifer was on her feet and heading for the door.

  “Brooke,” she called. “You come with me. DC Thyme, forget the satnav thing and follow me with DC Coulson in your car. And someone call uniform, get the nearest patrol car to check the report. But tell them to do it from a distance, only close enough to see the registration number. Tell them not to touch anything and to keep an eye out for tyre prints.”

  “Jen,” said Derek, quietly.

  “What?” she snapped.

  Derek tilted his head towards the DCI’s office.

  “Shit,” muttered Jennifer and swerved towards the other door. “I’ll brief the bosses; see if they want to come. Gus, I’ll catch you up downstairs.”

  * * *

  Their blue lights flashing and sirens whooping, the two cars sped along the dual carriageway taking them south of the city. Five minutes into the journey, Jennifer’s phone rang. It was Terry Purchase.

  “Sarge. Just had confirmation from a uniform patrol who were in the Rappington area. The Golf’s registration matches Superintendent McVie’s car. They followed your instructions, but one PC moved in close to check if there’s anyone in the car. As far as he can see, it’s empty.”

  “OK, tell them we’ll be there in …” She paused and turned to Gus Brooke, expecting him to tell her the answer, but his eyes were fixed on the road.

  “DC Brooke!” she shouted, rather more loudly than she intended.

  His head shot round towards her, his expression radiating incomprehension.

  “How long?” demanded Jennifer.

  “Sarge?” asked Gus, still not understanding.

  “For Christ’s sake, man. How long until we get to the factory?”

  Gus looked along the road, as if seeing it for the first time.

  “Er, um, another five to ten minutes, sarge.”

  “Terry,” said Jennifer into her phone. “We’ll be there in five.”