by Paul Gitsham
‘Any theories about his involvement in the killing of the farm worker Emil, and Annie Vuković’s escape?’ asked Grayson.
Warren thought for a moment. ‘Limited, I would have thought, at least at the time. I can’t see why he would have been there the night that Emil tried to escape and was shot. I’ll bet they never even told him. I figure they will have thought that a few quid for turning a blind eye is one thing, but that whole cock-up wasn’t something they’d want a police officer involved in.’
‘Which makes sense,’ said Bergen. ‘Grimshaw wasn’t an idiot. The Cullens probably reckoned both Annie and the other farm worker escaped and so when they got scared off by the police helicopter flying over the A506, just let it go. Grimshaw would have never taken that chance. He’d have gone back in the woods and searched until he was satisfied that there were no embarrassing dead bodies lying around waiting to be stumbled over.’
‘He must have been as surprised as anyone when those bodies turned up,’ said Warren. ‘He couldn’t get inside the investigation to derail it, so the best he could probably do is go and tell Ray Dorridge to keep his mouth shut about what happened that night on his land.’
‘Which is probably just as well for Annie Vuković,’ said Grayson. ‘If Grimshaw knew that Wilson had started employing some young Serbian woman who appeared out of the blue, then it wouldn’t have taken too much detective work to put two and two together and realize that she was one of the escaped farm workers.’
‘Do you think Stevie Cullen would have recognized her in the massage parlour?’ asked Bergen.
‘Who knows?’ said Warren. ‘But from what we’ve pieced together so far, Annie didn’t usually work that late. She and Stevie’s paths wouldn’t ordinarily cross.’
‘Which does raise some questions concerning what really happened that day,’ said Grayson. ‘The story so far is that Stevie Cullen was forcing himself onto Biljana Dragić. What if Annie just happened to stumble across Cullen having a massage and decide to rid herself of a potential problem?’
‘So murder, rather than self-defence?’ said Warren, the words bitter in his mouth. As a detective, it was his duty to go where the evidence led him, not to hope for a particular outcome. However, the story of what had happened to Anica Vuković, and the workers kept in slavery by the Cullens, had moved him and his team. The rules on what constituted self-defence under law had recently been changed, but even so, stabbing a man without any immediate provocation would be a hard sell to a jury.
‘At least with Shaun dead, the witnesses have nothing to fear anymore. Let’s hope that they finally tell us what really happened that day,’ said Warren. The other two men agreed.
‘So why was Grimshaw killed then?’ asked Grayson.
‘I imagine that he knew too much,’ said Bergen. ‘If Paddy really did only receive that text message minutes before we raided, he must have panicked.’ He paused. ‘Well we know he panicked; he took a pot shot at an armed response unit as he tried to escape. That’s not the reasoning of a man with a plan. There’s nothing Shaun could have done to stop our investigation after we raided the farm, so he was just a loose end that needed tidying up.’
Grayson shook his head sadly. ‘He set up his own death. If he’d not tried to warn them, and then joined in the raid, presumably to help hide any evidence, then they would all have been arrested and he’d still be alive.’
The three men contemplated that thought for a while.
Poetic justice or a tragedy?
Warren wasn’t sure.
Chapter 59
‘From the moment that our investigation into the death of Stevie Cullen started, we have had problems with nobody being willing to tell us what really happened that day.’
Warren was addressing the entire investigation team in the main CID office.
‘One of those reasons was almost certainly the pressure placed on them by Shaun Grimshaw to keep quiet. Silvija Wilson employed illegal workers and wanted to protect herself, and them, from investigation by the Organized Crime Unit and the Home Office. Her nieces wanted to protect their friend Anica Vuković, who was herself an illegal immigrant, albeit one forced into working against her will. When she killed Stevie Cullen, they rallied around to protect her, both from prosecution for murder and to stop her from being deported. Now that we have her, and Grimshaw is gone, I’m hopeful that all four women will no longer feel that they need to keep quiet.’
‘What about the two nail technicians?’ asked Richardson.
‘We have identified the two young women who worked in Silvija Wilson’s massage parlour, and we are hopeful that they might have seen or heard something that day which can help us.’
‘Why did they head back to the Cullen farm after they escaped from the massage parlour?’ asked Ruskin. ‘Stevie Cullen was dead; they were free.’
‘It’s not uncommon in these cases,’ said Pymm. ‘They become so institutionalized, they don’t know any other type of existence. They can’t imagine any other life. Besides which, they don’t speak any English, probably had no money, no passports and were working here illegally. I bet when we interview them, we’ll find out that they are even more terrified about being sent to a detention centre and deported back to wherever they came from, than staying with the Cullens.’
‘They had the opportunity to escape every day,’ Hutchinson reminded them. ‘Stevie Cullen dropped them off every morning, and picked them up that evening, with no problems at all.’
‘Poor bastards,’ said Ruskin. ‘I can’t get my head around that level of control.’
Like everyone, he had seen the photographs of the locked shipping containers that the Cullens had housed the workers in. Lit by a single bulb, with no natural light, the workers had used a small gas stove to both cook on and heat their prison. A hole cut in the side of the metal container for ventilation was the only reason that the workers hadn’t suffocated or died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Sanitary facilities were limited to little more than a bucket, with water coming from the standpipe outside. In the container used by the women, someone had managed to rig up a dirty bed sheet to provide at least the illusion of privacy. Clothes were washed using the cold water from outside. The only exception to this was the nail technicians’ uniforms, a couple of which were found in a laundry basket in the farmhouse’s kitchen – presumably the stained, torn garments worn by the farmhands and the car washers weren’t suitable for such work.
‘At least they didn’t say anything about Annie to the Cullens,’ said Ruskin.
‘She must have been terrified when she realized who they were,’ said Pymm. ‘I’m amazed she stuck around.’
‘I think she had completely run out of options, by that point,’ said Warren. ‘I don’t think Ray Dorridge has been entirely open with us either,’ he continued. ‘We’ll get him back in as well. With the whole Cullen family out of the picture, and no Grimshaw to threaten him, there are no reprisals for him to worry about.’
‘What have the Cullens got to say for themselves?’ asked Richardson.
‘Nothing so far,’ said Bergen. ‘The parents, Rosie and Seamus, are not commenting, and neither Paddy nor Frankie is in any fit state to be interviewed. The surgeons reckon Frankie might never wake up. Saffron and her husband are refusing to admit to knowing anything about the illegal workers, or Grimshaw’s involvement.’
‘They lived on site, so that’s hardly going to wash with a jury,’ said Warren.
‘They’re a hard-faced lot,’ admitted Bergen, ‘but we knew that going in. Lavender, their eldest daughter, has hired a lawyer, and has released a statement claiming that she knew nothing of her family’s business dealings, since she left home years go. I don’t believe her for one second, so we’ll start building a case against her, for conspiracy if nothing else.’
‘What about the other workers?’ asked Hutchinson.
‘Nothing yet – they’re scared and confused,’ said Bergen. ‘We’ve got the translators and the counse
llors in, but it’s plain to see how vulnerable they are. Two appear to have significant learning difficulties, and a number have serious alcohol dependency issues.’ His mouth twisted in disgust. ‘It’s one of the ways the bastards controlled them.’
‘Have we identified the man found dead in the woods yet?’ asked Richardson.
Pymm shook her head. ‘Nothing yet. Annie only ever knew his first name. Immigration are going through their records to see if they can work out when he arrived in this country. All Annie knew was that he had been with the Cullens longer than she had. He was kind to her when she first arrived, which is why they fell in love.’
The team went silent.
The whole affair was a tragedy, but the fate of Emil seemed especially poignant. Whatever his story, at least one person had loved him. After all that had happened, to bury him without even his full name seemed a cruel twist.
Especially if the only person who truly knew him, and the mother of his child, would never be able to visit his grave.
Warren had called a late-afternoon briefing to go over the new interviews that had been conducted with the principal witnesses and suspects after Grimshaw’s death.
The first to give feedback were Mags Richardson and Moray Ruskin, who had visited the two sisters on the remand wing of the Mount Prison first thing.
‘There was a mixed response at first,’ said Richardson. ‘When I told Malina that Annie had admitted to killing Stevie Cullen to protect Biljana from his sexual assault, she no commented again. But when I told her that the Cullens were all in custody, she asked to speak to her lawyer. She has now admitted that the sequence of events, as told by Annie and Wilson, was what she believed happened, although she didn’t see the assault directly. She entered as Annie was wrestling with Stevie for the knife. Biljana was on the floor, trying to get away from them, her top undone. She insists that the stabbing was an accident.’
‘Did Biljana confirm that?’ asked Warren.
‘Eventually. At first she didn’t believe us when I said that her aunt and sister had told us what they believed had happened, but as agreed in the interview strategy meeting I revealed that we knew that Annie had stabbed Stevie and that there was no longer any point in trying to defend her. Like her sister, it was the arrest of the Cullens that convinced her it was safe to tell us what had happened.’
‘What was her version of events?’ asked Warren.
‘Consistent with what we had already been told. After many months of sexual approaches from Cullen, he finally attacked her, threatening her with a knife that he removed from his back pocket. The description of the knife matches the one retrieved from the riverbank.’
‘So, he brought the weapon with him,’ said Warren, ‘which weakens the case for premeditation. What happened next?’
‘He already had his trousers down,’ continued Richardson. ‘Biljana called out once, but he pressed the knife against her throat. She thought she would have to give Cullen oral sex, but her cry for help must have been loud enough to alert Annie, who was next door doing laundry. She burst in a few seconds later.’
‘And the stabbing?’ asked Warren.
‘Cullen was holding her by her hair in his right hand and holding the knife to her throat with the left,’ said Richardson.
‘We know he was left-handed,’ interjected Hutchinson.
‘When Annie came in, he let go of her hair and removed the knife from her throat. Biljana scrambled away, and so she didn’t see how Annie tackled Cullen. When she turned back, Annie and Cullen were wrestling over the knife. Cullen’s penis was exposed, and his boxer shorts were down around his ankles, so he was off balance. Cullen fell backwards, and that was when he was stabbed.’
‘That largely fits with what Annie told us,’ said Warren, ‘but the sisters and Wilson were alone with Annie for a considerable amount of time before she caught the train to Manchester. They could have concocted that story between them. We need an independent witness.’
‘That’s where we might get lucky,’ said Ruskin, with a smile. ‘Biljana thinks that Malina might not have been the first on the scene after Annie tackled Stevie.’
‘One of the nail technicians?’ asked Warren.
‘She thinks so. She’s sure that she saw a glimpse of a face at the door as she scrambled to get away from Cullen.’
Warren felt his pulse rate rise. Could this be the final piece of independent evidence necessary to support or destroy Annie and Biljana’s account of events?
According to Silvija Wilson, and customers to the shop, the two resident nail technicians were Vietnamese, and unable to speak English. Warren thought it questionable that they could speak Serbian either. Either way, it seemed doubtful that they would have been able to concoct a shared narrative in the few moments before they disappeared out the back door.
‘Have we confirmed that the Vietnamese women rescued from the Cullens’ farm were the nail technicians we are looking for?’ asked Hutchinson.
‘Hopefully we’ll know soon enough. It’s one of the first things that they will be asked once the counsellors are satisfied that they are fit to be interviewed,’ said Warren.
The next part of the interview left a bad taste in Warren’s mouth, but it had to be asked.
‘How did they react to the news that Shaun Grimshaw is dead? Were they willing to identify him as Northern Man and explain his role in the operation?’
‘That’s where it gets a bit weird,’ said Richardson.
By the end of the day, the follow-up interviews with all of those involved in the death of Stevie Cullen had been completed. Warren sat in Grayson’s office, feeding back to him the day’s progress.
‘All of the stories are consistent with each other,’ said Warren. The last couple of days had come after an already hard few weeks, and he was grateful for Grayson’s ‘special’ blend of coffee. What it lacked in smoothness and flavour, it more than made up for in caffeine. The buzz Warren was feeling explained why the DSI kept those pods in his desk drawer, rather than next to his coffee machine.
‘Self-defence?’ asked Grayson.
‘Defence of Biljana certainly and given that Annie and Cullen ended up wrestling for the knife, there’s probably a good case to argue that she acted lawfully. I’m awaiting guidance from the CPS as to whether we drop the murder charges, although I suspect they’ll reserve judgement until we can interview the nail technician who might have witnessed the altercation.’
Grayson drained his cup, grimacing at the bitter taste. ‘I have another meeting with Professional Standard’s Anti-Corruption Unit first thing tomorrow morning. As you can imagine, the Shaun Grimshaw debacle has opened a whole new can of worms. They have agreed that we need to complete our murder investigation before they come in and start in earnest, but they are watching our progress with interest.’
The combined buzz from a largely completed investigation and Grayson’s super-charged coffee was already receding, and Warren felt a wave of exhaustion pass over him. He was too experienced to think for one moment that all the hard work on the case was completed, now that they knew what probably happened. However, the thought that an anti-corruption inquiry would be running in parallel to their preparation for trial was acutely depressing. Warren had been the subject of Professional Standards inquiries in the past, most recently into the decisions his team had made during the murders at Middlesbury Abbey, and before that into the death of Gary Hastings. The experiences had been stressful to say the least.
Grayson saw the look on his face. ‘Warren, they are not investigating you or us. Shaun Grimshaw made his choices long before he joined Middlesbury.’ He pulled a face. ‘They’re just going to use us to help shovel the shit onto SOC and Ian Bergen and his team.’
Serious Organized Crime and Warren’s murder team had butted heads before when investigations had overlapped. Nevertheless, Warren had grown to like Ian Bergen and he was relieved that he had turned out not to be Northern Man. But the man would still be subject to an anti-corrupt
ion investigation. Yet again, Warren was reminded how much he hated the way that corrupt police officers ruined the lives of so many others. If Bergen and his team were judged to have been sloppy, or even negligent, in their oversight of Grimshaw and the flow of restricted information between team members, the consequences were likely career-ending.
‘With that in mind,’ continued Grayson, ‘what have the witnesses told us about Grimshaw’s involvement? How hands-on was he?’
Warren exhaled in frustration. ‘That’s where we’re drawing a blank. Everyone we’ve interviewed gave a sigh of relief when we told them that the Cullens were all under arrest, and they needn’t fear reprisals. But they are still refusing to name or even identify Grimshaw. Even Silvija Wilson, who is now desperate to unravel the mess her nieces have got themselves into, has refused to acknowledge the existence of Grimshaw, even though we have eyewitnesses placing him at the scene in the immediate aftermath of the murder, and dozens of calls to that mobile phone. Annie Vuković burst into tears when she was shown a headshot of him and told he is dead; she hasn’t spoken since.
‘Ray Dorridge claimed not to recognize any of the photographs that we showed him, but he looked frightened. I also have concerns about a black eye he’s sporting, which he claims came from a fall.’
‘What a bloody mess,’ observed Grayson. He looked at his watch and stood up. ‘Well, that’s not our concern. Let Professional Standards unravel Grimshaw’s lies and figure out how he scared everyone so much they won’t even implicate him now he’s dead. In the meantime, I’m going home, and so are you.’ He raised a hand to quell Warren’s protest. ‘That’s an order.’
Thursday 26 November
Chapter 60
It had been four days since the unmasking of Shaun Grimshaw as ‘Northern Man’, and the arrest of the Cullens. Nevertheless, CID was still busy, as the team gathered the necessary evidence for the eventual court cases and inquests. This part of the job was at least as important as the initial phase of the investigation, since any errors or shortcomings would be pounced upon by the Cullens’ legal teams. Warren was also acutely aware that the future of Annie Vuković was far from certain. The CPS still hadn’t decided whether to continue pursuing a conviction for murder, and Warren needed to know that he had given her every chance. A police officer’s duty was first and foremost to find the truth. He knew his team felt the same way.