The Cambroni Vendetta

by David George Clarke

  * * *

  Shortly after seven o’clock, Rosselli made his way back to his car, wondering whether to risk another stroll in the evening light along the footpath. He could go a short distance, see if the divers were still there, and if they were, turn back and try another approach.

  He was about to head off when he heard a vehicle approaching quite fast, given it was driving through a village. He looked up and saw a scruffy dark-blue Ford that was definitely exceeding the speed limit. He checked the number plate and immediately recognised it. The car belonged to one of the SCF detectives, the one that had brought Jennifer Cotton to the area that morning. Definitely worth following, especially as the detective was now on his own and, in the split second Rosselli saw him as the car passed, had the appearance of someone facing execution.

  Rosselli jumped into his car, quickly settled Goccia and followed the blue Ford. About a mile from the village, the car slowed and the driver pulled onto an area of compacted mud near a farm gateway. Rosselli slowed as he drove past, stealing a look. He was surprised to see the detective leaning forward with his arms wrapped round himself as he banged his head on the steering wheel.

  Has a body been found? thought Rosselli. Is he one of those wimpish types who faints at the sight of blood or a body? Or does his behaviour indicate something more significant? He pulled up at the next opportunity and waited as he watched the Ford in his rear-view mirror.

  After several minutes, the dark-blue Ford pulled away from the side of the road and made its way past him. Rosselli gave it a distance of about two hundred metres before he started to follow. He didn’t have to go far. About half a mile farther on, the car slowed and turned into the short drive of a large cottage. Rosselli drove straight past with hardly a glance, but in his mirror he saw the driver’s door open and the occupant stagger towards a door at the side of the house.

  Rosselli stopped, turned and drove slowly past the house, making a note of the number. It would be the work of only a few minutes to find this man’s name.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As the daylight faded on Wednesday evening, the huge squad of men and women who had gathered to search for Trisha McVie had found nothing to indicate she had been at the Rappington factory site, and neither was there any sign of her in the woods and farmland beyond. DCS Hawkins had dug deep into his own resources and those of neighbouring forces, all of whom had willingly sent extra officers and their own divers to speed up the search of the waterways, units from Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. The police were missing one of their own and nothing was too much trouble.

  By nine o’clock, most of the SCF team had returned to the office, reluctant to call it a day but hampered by the darkness. The divers were still searching since most of their work underwater was in darkness even in the daytime, but as their perimeter widened, the chances of Trisha McVie’s body being in any of the local waterways diminished.

  Only two of the SCF team of DCs were missing: Joe Barnes, whose wife had gone into labour that afternoon, had been sent off to the hospital by Jennifer, and Gus Brooke, who at about seven in the evening had pleaded that the bug that was messing with him still had the upper hand. Jennifer reluctantly sent him home with a lack of sympathy she immediately felt rather guilty about.

  “Get a good night’s sleep, DC Brooke. You look like an extra from The Walking Dead.”

  Jennifer was about to insist that everyone went home when Len Crawford marched into the operations office to summon them all to the incident room for a briefing from the DCS.

  * * *

  “Right, listen up, everyone.”

  Pete Hawkins was standing in front of a situation board that contained little information apart from a photograph of Trisha McVie and a large-scale map of the Rappington area.

  “I’ve just spoken to the lab and there’s nothing inside the factory to indicate that Superintendent McVie has ever been there. This is not exactly news since most of you here were involved in the search. She’s not there, and unless trace evidence from the lab shows different, she’s never been there at all. That’s the end of it.

  “There is also nothing, zilch, from the area outside the factory buildings or beyond the site, there’s nothing in the waterways and the thermal imaging search with the helicopter produced nothing of value.

  “But that’s one thing. The most puzzling part of this inquiry so far is that the lab has found evidence of only one car driving into the site, the red Golf. There were good tracks from the Golf leading from the gates towards the factory buildings, but nothing else. So we’re now assuming that whoever dumped the car must have left on foot, closed the gates and either walked away, which seems unlikely, or was picked up in the lane by an accomplice in another vehicle. There were no fingerprints on the gate, by the way.

  “Unfortunately, there are no traffic cameras in the nearby village of Rappington and neither are there any at either end of the Rappington road. So it’s possible to leave that site unrecorded, head either towards Nottingham or towards the new Rappington bypass and the M1, and merge into the general traffic. We’ve looked at the footage showing the Golf leaving the motorway last night and there’s nothing to indicate another vehicle at that stage. And from what can be seen and from the statements of the staff at Watford Gap services, Superintendent McVie was alone.

  “So whatever happened to her happened after she left the M1 at 21:16 and 10:32 this morning when the traffic helicopter spotted her car at the factory.

  “We’ve also contacted a Mr Steven Hawthorn who has been in America for the last week or so and is still there. Superintendent McVie is currently in a relationship with Mr Hawthorn and he admits that last night they had several heated telephone conversations while Superintendent McVie was driving up the M1 in the storm. Mr Hawthorn also said that at the end of the last conversation, which we know was while Superintendent McVie was at Watford Gap services, he was cut off. The time on his phone, he tells us, coincides with the time at which Superintendent McVie’s phone was switched off. Presumably she’d had enough and didn’t want to be distracted anymore.

  “Another unexplained fact is that Superintendent McVie’s overnight bag was in her car, along with her jacket and shoes, which were slightly damp. Inside her bag, as well as clothes that we think she would have planned to wear today and tomorrow, was a cosmetic bag and a small handbag containing her warrant card, credit cards, cash and other cards. Nothing appears to be missing and the overnight bag doesn’t appear to have been rifled through. However, the lab is still checking it.”

  He paused and looked around the room. “Any questions so far?”

  Neil Bottomley raised a hand and immediately began to speak.

  “Do we know what she was wearing last night, sir? Either from the CCTV or witnesses at the motorway services?”

  “Yes, Neil, I was coming to that. Watford Gap have come up with a CCTV recording that briefly shows her entering the shopping area at 19:38. There’s also one that is less clear, but appears to show her leaving several minutes later carrying what looks like a coffee. Both recordings show she was dressed casually in jeans and what appears to be the coat found in her car over a loose jumper. Her shoes are definitely shoes rather than trainers, they have low heels and appear to agree with the shoes found in her car.”

  He looked around again. “Anything else?”

  “Where do we go from here, sir?” asked Jennifer.

  “There’s a number of things in hand, even though at this moment we are dealing with a missing person. This is not, as yet, a kidnapping or a murder enquiry. But from the information we have, and DS Cotton has given a statement of her recent conversations with Superintendent McVie, as have several of her colleagues in the Met, there is nothing to indicate that she has gone AWOL, flipped, done a bunk or anything of that nature. She has shown no abnormal behaviour and has given every sign that she was looking forward to joining us at the SCF.

  “So, what’s next? Firstly, although I t
hink we’ve covered the factory and the area immediately around it, I’m organising a different team of uniforms to search again tomorrow. Just in case. But after that, I’ll be calling off any further searches at the site and the surrounding area. By tomorrow evening, it will have been more than thoroughly combed, thanks to all the extra hands generously provided by neighbouring forces and I’m already convinced there’s nothing. It would be a waste of resources to continue there. The owners have been contacted and they will be installing a new padlock on the gates so that vehicular access at least is prevented once we hand over the site tomorrow evening, assuming nothing has been found. They are not interested in increasing other security, so it’s still possible for someone to climb over the fence, but frankly, I’m not convinced the car being there has much to do with wherever Superintendent McVie is now.

  “But what the lab is looking at tomorrow, along with help from us, is to narrow down where the car went. It’s a bit of a long shot since we know she didn’t buy fuel on the motorway. From what DS Cotton has told us, it is Superintendent McVie’s habit not to fill her car every time she buys petrol, rather she just buys twenty or thirty quid’s worth at a time. From her credit card records, it looks as if the last time she bought petrol was three days ago. Of course she could have bought some since then and paid cash, which doesn’t help. However, by measuring how much is left in the Golf’s tank and looking at average consumption figures, they are going to see what they can do. I don’t wish to appear negative, but it looks like a non-starter to me in that we’ll end up with a huge possible circle of where the car might have gone before it was dumped.

  “There’s another point about the car that forensics found which in my opinion could be more significant. The spare in the boot is in a mess, with severe damage to both the wheel itself and the tyre. And the damage is fresh. They reckon that the tyre probably had a slow puncture and overheated as it ran close to flat. The lab says that from the condition of the wheel, the rim must have come into forceful contact with the road surface. This is more likely to have happened if Superintendent McVie hit the brakes hard at some point, especially on a corner, when the car would lean heavily on the wheel with the flat tyre. When this occurred there’s a strong chance the driver would lose control of the car.

  All the CCTV footage of the car on and leaving the M1 show no sign that the car is behaving oddly, so it looks as if the incident with the flat occurred after Superintendent McVie left the motorway. The lab people will be making a search of the road from the motorway to the factory in Rappington for any damage to the road surface. In addition, there is going to be a press release tomorrow morning calling for any eye witnesses who might have seen the car stopped by the roadside in the Rappington area last night. It will be repeated tomorrow evening unless there’s any progress. As you know, it was a filthy night. Maybe someone stopped to help her. We don’t know, but we’ll have pictures of the car and of Trisha McVie.

  “Frustratingly, the present nearside rear tyre now on the car, which was the spare, is quite worn, which means it presumably must have been one of the car’s regular tyres in the past. So even if we find that the puncture or whatever it was happened in the Rappington area, the condition of the car’s tyres tell us nothing about how far or where the car went after the change of wheel and the car being dumped at the factory. We can’t assume that just because the two might be close that the car didn’t go elsewhere in the hours in between. Which is why CCTV footage will have to be searched from a potentially wide area.

  “Now, once we release this, the press are going to be all over us, local and national. It’s not every day that a senior police officer disappears off the face of the earth. There will be speculation of all kinds and I’ve no doubt all of you will be contacted in one way or another. What I want is for all enquiries, and I can’t emphasise that strongly enough, all enquiries, to be referred to DCI Crawford. I don’t want statements from anyone else and I don’t want to read about information from anonymous sources. Are we all clear about that?”

  A rumble of agreement rolled around the room.

  “Good. DS Cotton, I’m aware that DCs Barnes and Brooke are not here tonight. Will you please make sure everything I’ve just said gets to them first thing tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  Hawkins drew in a deep breath. “OK, all of you. Go home, get a good night’s sleep and come in refreshed tomorrow. Unless there’s some kind of national emergency, from now on until we find Superintendent McVie, this enquiry takes precedence over everything.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Gus Brooke was less than half a mile from his cottage when a fit of uncontrollable shaking racked his body. Gasping for air, he hit the brakes and pulled the car to a halt.

  He wrapped his arms around himself, his fists clenching and unclenching, his jaw set as he leaned forward and banged his head rhythmically on the steering wheel. His heart was beating so hard he felt it was about to burst through his chest and desert him in disgust.

  Slowly, as he regained control of his limbs, with his teeth grinding and his fists in a ball, he began to calm, his breathing returning closer to normal.

  He couldn’t believe his bad luck. The old Rappington factory site should have been perfect; no one ever went there. He was stupid to have left the car in the middle of the yard; he should have left it in one of the loading bays where the police officer in the helicopter wouldn’t have been able to see it. Helicopter? It hadn’t even occurred to him that a police helicopter would fly over the place. But it had and he had to live with it.

  He knew he had behaved like an idiot in front of his team. They weren’t the easiest of colleagues at the best of times, but today …

  An image of DS Cotton flashed into his mind. She had made no attempt to hide how pissed off she was with him. If ever the finger of suspicion were pointed at him, they would remember how he’d been. But why should it? There had been nothing so far.

  But he had to get rid of the body and all traces of it from his cottage.

  He clenched his jaw as he tried to combat another fit of shaking that was rocking his frame.

  How was he going to do it? His eyes flickered from side to side as he thought through what he needed to do in the house.

  At least, he thought, her body is in the bathroom. All tiles and easy to hose down. Mercifully, they didn’t have those stupid fluffy mats in front of the loo and bath.

  He looked up through the windscreen. He had stopped shaking and felt calmer. With another deep breath, he slipped the car into gear and drove the remaining distance to the cottage, parking the car as close to the kitchen door as he could.

  Evidence, he thought, as he staggered into the cottage. Forensic evidence. Evidence to link McVie with him and the cottage. Fingerprints, body fluids, DNA, fibres. He shook his head; the list was endless and the chances of him removing everything horribly remote. But he had to try. Had to clean up the body, clean up the bathroom and the rest of the cottage, and once that was done, get rid of the body.

  How the hell was he going to do that? He thought, briefly, of cutting it up and dumping bits of it in rubbish bins across a wide area. But firstly that would take too much time and secondly he didn’t think he had the stomach to cut a body into small pieces. He hated postmortems, even from a safe distance; the very thought of getting hands-on revolted him.

  No, he had to think of somewhere to dump it, somewhere it wouldn’t be found for a long time.

  Burying it seemed an obvious choice, but where? If he dug a big hole in the garden, Mo would ask questions. She was far too keen on her garden not to notice.

  Shit, he thought, first things first. I’ve got to deal with the mess in the bathroom. After that, I’ll worry about what to do with the body.

  The first thing he saw when he walked into the bedroom was the crumpled mess of bedsheets from the previous night. He snatched them from the bed, together with the pillowcases and the mattress protector.

  “Fuck it,
there’ll be body fluids everywhere,” he spat through clenched teeth. “Plus traces of whatever perfume she was wearing. Mo’s got a sense of smell like a bloodhound; all women have. Gotta get some fresh air into the place.”

  He knew that taking the bedding down to the utility room and loading up the washer was a delaying tactic, a few extra minutes before facing up to what was waiting in the bathroom. But the washing needed to be done; he might as well get it going. He would put it through three cycles, just to be sure.

  Back in the bedroom, he eyed the mattress. There was nothing to be seen, no stains, but just in case, he would turn it. Mo wouldn’t suspect anything since they turned it regularly. And if there were a forensic examination, there was a good chance they wouldn’t think of spraying their damn reagents on the underside. Wasn’t there?

  He pushed open the bathroom door and stood in the entrance, steeling himself to look at the scene of sheer horror in front of him. The blood had mainly dried, although closer to the body it still looked wet. OK, first things first. The body. Need to get it into the bath. No, that wouldn’t work; there was no hand shower. It would be better to drag it into the large shower cubicle where in addition to the tropical shower head, there was a detachable shower head with a long hose.

  He took a step into the room and stopped. However he cleaned up the body, he was going to get wet and bloodstained himself. Better not to be wearing anything either. And he would need detergents, disinfectant and a scrubbing brush. He ran a hand through his hair. There was so much to do. At least he had plenty of time.

  A trip to the utility room armed him with the cleaning materials he thought he would need. He stripped off as far as his boxers and stopped. Although, given what he was about to do, it made sense to strip off completely, he couldn’t. It just seemed too weird. He would bin the boxers along with McVie’s clothes, the ones he had washed and dried last night, but not in the same place. There was an array of bins he knew of behind a parade of shops in Beeston, totally anonymous. He’d use those for the superintendent’s clothes, all bagged in black bin liners, and some other bins near the road in Lenton for his boxers. A simple detour on the way into the SCF in the morning and he’d be rid of them.