Marius

by Laurence Todd

  The car heading north then crashed into the other vehicle, travelling at some speed and hitting the southbound car at an angle of about forty-five degrees, with what he described as a sickening crunching sound of metal being churned. Then, to the utter amazement of Dick and Emma, a huge explosion had occurred. He described the sky as being lit up and said that, even from where they were, about a half-mile away, it had still sounded loud.

  He’d been asked if he was sure about what the car heading north was doing, because he was making it sound as though the crash was intentional. He confirmed that, from where he was, it definitely looked intentional as the northbound vehicle had swerved across the lanes and driven straight at the other car.

  He’d then told police that, after the initial shock at what he’d seen had worn off, he’d driven to a pub he knew, a mile or so away, and called the emergency services from a phone box outside the pub; he hadn’t wanted to use his mobile and be traced through it, and he hadn’t given a name. He drove back and waited until he saw the flashing lights and heard the sirens of two fire engines and an ambulance arriving, then he and Emma’d left the scene quickly. In all the confusion of the crash and its aftermath, he didn’t see what happened to the person who’d exited from the car.

  Asked why he’d left, he’d replied he had done his duty by reporting what he’d seen, but didn’t want to give an oral statement to police as he was having an affair with a work colleague’s wife. His reticence then became almost understandable.

  Apparently, Dick had been easy to locate as he worked for Dorset police, based in Sherborne, in a civilian capacity, and Emma was the wife of a serving officer. The officer concerned had gone after Dick when he’d learned of his wife’s indiscretion, and the resulting ruction, with Dick receiving a few slaps, had reached the ears of Geoffrey Saddler, who had a source at the police station in Sherborne. That explained how he’d found Dick. But, for whatever reason, despite being a witness to the crash, Dick had never been asked to make a formal statement.

  So, if Dick was to be believed – and he had no reason to lie – Cormac McGreely had deliberately driven his Citroën straight into a vehicle containing butane gas, causing the conflagration. The two occupants in the other vehicle, an innocent Welsh couple on their way to catch a ferry, hadn’t stood a chance. Looked at objectively, this almost sounded like an act of altruistic suicide. I remembered once hearing Harry Ferguson talking about suicide bombers, and he’d described their willingness to sacrifice their lives for a higher good as a kind of altruistic suicide, where the needs and wishes of the group take precedence over the individual’s own needs.

  But why would McGreely want to kill himself and his family? He’d only have been in his mid-forties when he’d died, with his wife not that much younger and his son only around seven. What had they done to deserve being taken out like this?

  *

  Smitherman was still at his desk. Before I began speaking he said, following what I’d asked a couple of days ago, it was unlikely Simon Addley would be given permission to have his brother visit him. Home Office regulations clearly stated Category A prisoners couldn’t receive visits from anyone known to have a terrorist connection, and officially, even though he’d been Smitherman’s informer, Colin Addley fell into that category.

  I then asked him if he could find out whether, on any occasion when Cormac McGreely had been held in custody in Northern Ireland, any of the house shrinks in the security service had ever carried out any psychological evaluation on him, and, if so, what the outcome was. I explained why I wanted this. He agreed he’d ask a few questions for me. He also said the grave containing the charred remains of those involved in the explosion had been located and was going to be exhumed within the hour.

  “Amazing what the words national security can achieve, eh? A judge has agreed this is necessary, and Dorset police are on their way to wherever it is now.” He was almost smiling now. “You’ve never been at an exhumation, have you?”

  I said I hadn’t.

  “I’ll just say this: you don’t usually feel like eating too much afterwards, especially if the body being exhumed’s only recently been buried, a couple of weeks or so.” He grinned widely. “There’s usually all kinds of good stuff crawling in and out of it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll add this to my bucket list.”

  *

  Taylor was cooking when I arrived at the flat just after seven, but she came out of the kitchen to greet me. She’d changed from her work clothes and was now wearing a pair of dark, misshapen tracksuit bottoms that had seen better days, a white T-shirt with a picture of someone I didn’t recognise on the front (being honest, I wasn’t even sure of the gender), and bright pink and green spotted fluffy socks, with her uncombed mop of hair flowing past her shoulders. She was wearing glasses instead of contact lenses, which made her look more stunning. Even dressed in what she called her casual scruff clothes, clothes she’d die not to be seen in outside the flat, she was a vision.

  She leaned into me and I held her close, which felt wonderful. She was nearly five-eight tall and, as I was a tad over six foot, she fitted perfectly under my arms. She’d had a shower and whatever scent she was wearing was doing an exquisite number on my nasal senses. If I took a blood pressure test right now, the readings would be off the scale, and I’d be considered a likely candidate for a coronary.

  Spending my life with Sally Taylor was like discovering on Christmas morning I’d won the lottery. She filled the empty spaces in my life. I’d once read something along the lines of when you’re with the right person, in the right relationship, every day is Valentine’s Day. I now knew what it meant.

  She smiled demurely, kissed me deeply for several seconds, and then went back into the kitchen. I followed her, opened a Grolsch, took a long sip and leant back against the counter, watching Taylor cook and just enjoying looking at her.

  We were talking about whatever it was whilst she cooked, mainly her day with her sister, who was not a happy bunny; neither were two women in her office, it appeared, and she was saying relationships everywhere appeared to be dissolving. But I was relaxed and very happy leaning against the counter, looking at and listening to Taylor, sipping a beer and thinking everything was good, when the world intruded on my reverie. My police radio crackled into life. Being in Special Branch meant I had to be contactable twenty-four-seven. Much as I wanted to ignore it, I had to take the call.

  “Rob, you’re needed back here.” Smitherman was insistent. “We’ve had a break in the case.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.” He rang off. Fuck.

  “It’s okay, really,” she said softly. She came across and gave me a light kiss. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  Taylor then kissed me again, this time with much more intensity, and for longer. It was an effort to leave.

  *

  I drove back to the office. Smitherman was at his desk. I sat down.

  “Apologies for this, DS McGraw, but we’ve had a break. The car at Regent’s Park? It was seen last Thursday. Somebody’s come forward and told police about an incident involving their car, and the number plate we’re looking for came up.”

  “Oh yeah? Where was this?”

  “Bluewater, North Kent. A couple from Blackheath saw it. So don’t get too comfortable in that chair. Here’s their address. Get down there, find out everything you can.”

  I looked at the address. Kidbrooke Gardens, Blackheath.

  “Sorry to call you in like this, Rob, but we gotta nail these bastards before they do some real damage. You didn’t have anything special planned for tonight, did you?”

  What, you mean other than spending quality time with Sally Taylor, having dinner with her, curling up on the settee with her and then, later on, a night of great sex with her? was what I wanted to say. But I simply said, “No, not really.”

  *

  I hit the siren and made it to Blackheath in seven minutes. The couple I was
going to visit had been told by police to expect someone from the security service, and they were waiting when I arrived.

  Keith and Pauline Vernon were sitting nervously on the couch, uncomfortable about having to talk to police again. I’d been admitted by their daughter, who I guessed was around twelve. She’d shown me into the lounge, where her parents were waiting. I identified myself as a Special Branch detective and sat opposite. I quickly glanced round the room and, from the tasteful décor and furnishings, plus yesterday’s Sunday Times on the coffee table, I guessed they were a professional couple, but I had no evidence for this. They could just as easily be counter employees at KFC for all I knew.

  After declining the offer of a lemon and ginger tea, I explained that Special Branch had an interest in the car they’d seen, then asked them to tell me what they knew.

  “It was last Thursday afternoon,” Pauline Vernon began, “probably around four o’clock. We’d gone to Bluewater to do some last-minute shopping. We bumped into a couple of friends there and were having a drink with them. We walked across the car park with them, as they were parked right near to us, as they’d recognised our car.”

  She spoke very fast. I was pleased I didn’t have to take notes as she spoke.

  “We’d just said goodbye to our friends and were walking towards our car when another car, a Citroën, trying to reverse into the empty space next to where we’d parked, reversed too widely and pranged the back of our car.”

  “What do you mean, pranged?” I asked.

  “He hit the back of us, dented the back of the car.”

  “It was accidental, bloke just reversed too wide,” Keith Vernon put in.

  “So what happened next?”

  Keith took over. “The driver gets out the car, looks at the damage and apologises unreservedly for what he’s done, says it was an accident and his insurance’ll take care of everything. So we swap addresses and phone numbers, he shows us his driver’s licence, and the address on it matched the one he’d written down. We swapped registration numbers for the insurance claim. He apologises profusely again, assures us everything’ll be taken care of, and then he drives away. There was no arguing about whose fault it was and no animosity at all.” He shrugged. “It was all very civilised and reasonable.”

  “But you didn’t report this immediately, did you?” I’d glanced at the notes I had.

  “No,” Pauline Vernon said. “We were going to Norfolk for the weekend, to a relative’s wedding, and we were leaving early next day, Friday. So, as there wasn’t any major damage, car just had a dent in the back, and we didn’t fancy being delayed by spending all morning talking to an insurance company, we decided we’ll report it Monday, after we got back from being away.”

  “And that’s when the problems began,” I said.

  “We contacted our insurance company this morning.” Keith Vernon again. “I contacted them, reported the accident and gave them the particulars this man’d given us. After this bloke had admitted liability, I thought it’d all be straightforward. But, after a while, the insurance man came back and said he’d been on to the other insurance company, and he’d found the person concerned doesn’t have a policy with that firm. They’d no record of anyone with that name.”

  Pauline nodded. “So then we report the matter to local police, explaining what the insurance man’d said. They checked and found there was no such address listed for this person. Police also checked with DVLA in Swansea, and no licence had ever been issued to anyone with that name and address.”

  “He’d shown you a licence, though, hadn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did,” she said.

  “And the picture matched the guy you could see.”

  “Yes, it was definitely the same man.”

  “What was the name and address given?”

  “This.” Keith produced a folded piece of paper from his wallet with a name and address neatly written.

  “Adam Redlands, 9 Applefarm Close, West Dulwich, SE22. That’s it?”

  “Yes, and he doesn’t seem to exist. Neither does that address.” Pauline Vernon sounded most indignant, almost like how dare he screw us about like this?

  “And it was the police who spotted the registration number, wasn’t it?” I said.

  “Yes,” Keith replied. “An officer looked at the form we’d just completed, told us to wait a minute and went off someplace. He came back and told us to come with him. We went to an interview room and a detective asked us to repeat our story, asked us to describe the driver and then told us the car which’d hit us had been used in a bombing twelve hours later.”

  “That’s correct, it was,” I said. “Sorry to ask you to repeat yourself, but could you describe the man you spoke to? Start with him getting out of his car.”

  They looked at each other and nodded. Keith began.

  “He got out the car, looked at what’d occurred and, when he saw us coming over, said something like, Oh, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault. I’ll take the blame. My insurance’ll cover the cost of repairs. He was so reasonable about the whole thing. And that’s when we wrote out that name and address there.” He nodded to the scrap of paper he’d given to me. “As I said, the damage wasn’t too much and he was very cooperative about everything.”

  “What’d he look like?” I asked.

  Keith breathed out. “About my height, wasn’t fat. Wearing a suit and tie, looked like a businessman. I remember he was wearing some kind of homburg hat.”

  “What about facially? You get a full-on look at this guy’s face?”

  “Actually, now I think about it, I don’t think I actually ever did see him fully face-on.” He sounded guilty.

  “He had glasses and a bit of a moustache, I believe,” Pauline chipped in.

  “Did he speak with an accent of any kind?”

  “Thought I detected a trace of an Irish accent, but other than that he sounded like he was from somewhere in the home counties.”

  “Was he on his own?”

  “No,” Pauline said. “There was a woman in the front passenger seat of the car, but she didn’t get out.”

  “Did you get a look at her face?”

  “No. She looked straight ahead the whole time.”

  “You think you’d recognise him or her again, either of you?”

  “I’m not too sure about that,” Keith said, hesitatingly. His wife nodded her agreement.

  “Well, someone’ll be here very shortly to show you our computerised rogues’ gallery, so think hard about what this guy looked like. Anything at all you can remember. It’s very important we find this guy, and quickly. The car which hit you was indeed used in a bombing early last Friday morning.” I rose from my seat. “Thanks for your help.” There were some interesting-looking hardback books on their shelves, including a large collection of books by Charles Dickens, but I didn’t have time to browse through them.

  I contacted the Branch office, requesting someone to visit the Vernons ASAP and show them all the mugshots we now had on computer, and to inform me of the outcome.

  *

  Returning to the office, I thought about what I’d heard. It was the classic scam. Adam Redlands, or whoever he was, had played an almost perfect game of hide in plain sight and had won because he’d outplayed the other participants in the game. Time and again it’s been proven that, in potential conflict situations, someone is more likely to remember the person who’s aggressive, the one who gets up in your face and becomes belligerent. Something about a snarling, angry face usually imprints itself on the psyche of the victim, particularly if they’re scared. But, by defusing the whole situation, the mystery driver had ensured the Vernons would be more concerned with the damage to their car than with the person in front of them. They’d not concentrated on his face. And Adam Redlands had walked away knowing he was quite likely in the clear. He’d played the game well.

  At least we had a name and an address. They were both seemingly fictitious, but it was a place to start.

 
; Back in the office I fed the name and address into the Special Branch database, which predictably drew a blank. No such address.

  I then fed the name into the electoral register for the country and asked for any Adam Redlands listed. There were sixteen. I checked their addresses. Only five lived in the South-East. The others were scattered across the country. I requested pictures of the five. None matched the description given by the Vernons, and the only connection any of them had with the law was either jury service or a parking ticket. I searched a while longer but drew blanks everywhere I looked.

  I put in a request for the CCTV images at whatever car park the Vernons had used on Thursday last to be scanned to isolate the incident, and to see if a workable image of Adam Redlands could be obtained. I then received a message informing me the Vernons hadn’t identified anyone in the computerised rogues’ gallery they’d just spent forty-five minutes looking through. It somehow seemed to sum up my evening.

  *

  Taylor was asleep when I returned just past eleven forty-five. I’d been really looking forward to spending this evening with her, and was feeling somewhat dejected at missing out on it. I was also hungry as I’d missed dinner, but it was too late to make anything to eat, so I brushed my teeth, got undressed and slid into bed next to her. A few moments later she turned over towards me, shuffled across and wrapped herself tightly around me.

  “Oh God, McGraw, I really hope we stay together,” she whispered in her sleep. I kissed the top of her head. What had brought that on?

  F I V E

  Tuesday

  THE CCTV IMAGES from Bluewater had arrived, and the section of the car park where the Vernons had parked, and the time of the accident, had been isolated. I fast-forwarded the pictures to three fifty and began watching. I then saw the slightly grainy images of a Citroën backing into the Vernons’ VW Golf, and a man exiting the Citroën. The man spent the next couple of minutes talking to the Vernons, and they’d told it correctly. It’d all been extremely civilised; no histrionics, no frantic gesticulating. I saw him showing something to the Vernons I assumed to be his driver’s licence and then, a few moments later, he got back into his car and drove away. Everything occurred exactly as the Vernons said it had.