The Concrete Ceiling

by Peter Rowlands

  There were tears in her eyes again as we paused awkwardly at the door. She said, “So I’ll be seeing you in Cornwall – maybe at the end of the year? There are things to sort out. This isn’t goodbye forever.”

  “I know.”

  “Take care, then.” She hesitated. “Be happy.”

  I mumbled, “You too.”

  She leaned over and kissed me fleetingly. “We both deserve it.”

  Chapter 62

  Dave led the way as we climbed the stairs at the police station in north London. Detective Sergeant Andy Ratcliffe ushered us into a meeting room, and as I passed him he muttered, “Glad to see you brought your nursemaid along.”

  This had been part of the deal Dave had struck with him earlier in the day. I’d phoned him to tell him I would talk to Ratcliffe about Chico and Ellie, but only if he was on hand to ensure fair play. To my surprise he’d been happy to take up the challenge, and to do it during his working day. “If it’s a case of nailing a wrong’un, it’s part of the job.”

  The three of us sat down at a long table, and after a moment Ratcliffe’s partner Jay Baird joined us. Ratcliffe said, “So let me get this straight. You’re saying Ellie Openshaw killed her father after he was knocked down by Graham Bulwell.”

  “Pretty much, yes. She sneaked into the house over the back fence with her mate Chico. They found her father lying in the kitchen, and she laid into him instead of helping him. Then the two of them left the same way they’d come in. Later on, she turned up at the front door just as I was leaving, and pretended to be shocked when she discovered his body.” I thought about that. “She was very convincing.”

  “And this lad Chico will testify to all this?”

  “I think he will, providing he knows he won’t get into too much trouble himself.”

  “I can’t guarantee that. Matthews will back me up, won’t you?” He glanced at Dave for support. “You’re saying he knew Ellie killed her dad, yet he kept his head down and didn’t come forward. That makes him an accomplice in my book.”

  Dave said, “According to Mike, the lad didn’t actually know Ellie had killed him. Besides which, she told him she was calling an ambulance. All he knew was that a man had been injured and his daughter was dealing with it.”

  Ratcliffe frowned. “Look, either he did know Ellie killed her father, which makes him an accessory, or he didn’t know, in which case I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

  I said, “It’s not black and white. He might have known deep down that she killed him, but for all we know he only worked it out later. At the time he was just following his instinct.”

  “So why did he go into hiding?”

  “It’s not the first time. Apparently he heads off to some squat whenever things are going badly at home.”

  Ratcliffe said, “You’re forgetting that this lad provided Ellie with an alibi.”

  “No he didn’t. That was his sister.”

  “I don’t see that there’s much difference.”

  “Yes there is! You’re trying to make this into some kind of conspiracy. These were just kids doing what kids do: covering for each other.”

  Dave said, “Let’s not get distracted here. It’s looking very much as if it was Ellie who actually caused his death. She’s the one we should be going after. This lad Chico is just a side issue.”

  I jumped in with, “I’ve already told you about Ellie’s past – her volatility, her anger management issues. She’s the obvious candidate.”

  Dave said to him, “Why hound this lad when he simply wants to do the right thing?”

  Ratcliffe made a tetching sound. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  His refusal to compromise was infuriating. I said, “The whole point of this conversation is to establish how Chico will be treated if he comes to you of his own accord. If you insist on throwing the book at him, he won’t come forward at all.”

  Ratcliffe leaned back abruptly. “We don’t need your amazing negotiating skills to bring him in, Mr Stanhope. We’re quite capable of finding him on our own.” He turned to Baird. “We’ve got a car on its way to that squat in Chalk Farm, haven’t we?” Then back to me: “We could be picking him up even as we speak.”

  I could feel any good will I’d established with Chico draining away by the minute. I said, “But if you’d let me tell him something encouraging, you could save yourselves a lot of hassle, and he’d be a much more willing witness.”

  Dave said, “He’s got a point, Andy.”

  Ratcliffe glowered at us both. With obvious reluctance he said, “You’ve made some useful deductions about Ellie, Mr Stanhope. I have to give you credit for that. But now that you’ve made your point, you need to let us resolve the situation in our own way.”

  “I wouldn’t have come to you at all if I’d know this would be your attitude.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  “Then you’d have made yourself an accessory – and you would have left your friend Mr Bulwell facing a murder charge.”

  I sighed. “I’m just trying to establish a principle.”

  “Bulwell won’t get off scot free, you know. Even if this girl’s involvement is confirmed, we’ll still be holding him on an assault charge. For all we know, Openshaw suffered brain damage in that initial fall, and he caused it.”

  Dave said patiently, “You don’t know that.”

  “We’ll see, once we piece all this together.”

  * * *

  Dave and I made our way to the pub round the corner – the same one we’d visited the day he got me out of custody. “That went well,” I commented as we waited at the bar.

  “You can’t fault Andy Ratcliffe’s logic, but I can’t say I’m a big fan of his attitude.”

  “The man’s a moron. I go to all this trouble to set up Chico to talk to them, and he tramples over my efforts.”

  Dave chuckled. “You shouldn’t beat yourself up. You’ve succeeded in pointing them in a new direction. It was obvious that Ratcliffe was taking your theory about Ellie seriously.”

  “It’s not a theory! It’s what happened. If you’d talked to Chico, you would see that.”

  “Well, whether or not they get Chico to point the finger at her, you’ve pretty much taken yourself out of the reckoning. And hopefully they’ll reduce the charge against your mate Graham. I call that a result.”

  “All the same, I feel I’ve broken my trust with Chico. I told him I would get him a fair hearing.”

  “You can’t make everybody happy all the time. You should have learned that by now.”

  “Huh.”

  We stood at the bar in silence. Finally I said, “I broke up with Ashley this morning.”

  Dave turned to me with surprised concern in his eyes. “I thought she was in America.”

  “She’s over here on a flying visit. I think part of her reason for coming over was to finish things between us.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, mate.”

  “She said we broke up a year ago, but we hadn’t admitted it. She’s right. I should have accepted it.”

  “It’s never easy.”

  Another long silence. An image of Ashley floated into my mind, standing at the door to the flat, preparing to leave. It was going to haunt me for a long time.

  Then abruptly a different thought about the front door came to me. I said, “It was Baird!”

  “What was?”

  “Weeks ago now, someone broke into my flat. Did I tell you about it at the time?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “My neighbour from upstairs buzzed him in, but I don’t know how he got into the flat itself. The point is, she remembered his voice because of his accent. Then when the police came round to seize my computers, she heard them talking, and she swears that one of them was the same guy. She’s absolutely certain of it.”

  “You’re saying it was a policeman who broke into your flat?”

  “It must have been. And now I’m certain it was J
ay Baird. It has to be. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but he has a strong Nottingham accent, and that’s what Amanda heard.”

  I could see that Dave was doing some fast thinking. He said, “The police found incriminating emails on one of your computers, didn’t they? Are you saying they planted them?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t thought this through. I suppose if they wanted to do that, they could have done it after they’d taken the computers. Why risk breaking in if they didn’t have to?”

  He shrugged. “It would have been much more difficult once there was a chain of custody.”

  “So you agree that it’s possible?”

  “Now that I’m getting to know those guys, I’m ready to believe anything.”

  I gave him a searching look. “So what can we do about this?”

  Chapter 63

  Ashley had left a scarf behind. I found it on the floor under the table – a textured silk thing in purples and blues. I folded it dejectedly and put it on the table. No doubt there would be other moments like this.

  It hadn’t escaped me that until Ashley had made her unexpected appearance I’d been fantasising that I might persuade Samantha to stay the night. I refused to see this as a contradiction. You couldn’t just switch emotions on and off like a light bulb. Ashley and I had a history. She’d had a massive impact on my life. In my heart I’d already known we’d split up, but finally acknowledging it couldn’t cancel out the past.

  To take my mind off these reflections I thought back over my conversation with Dave. It had occurred to me that if I could prove the police had interfered with those emails, I would have something to bargain with. I might even be able to persuade them to treat Chico better, assuming they hadn’t already found him. But Noel hadn’t come back to me with his report on the emails. I sent him a short text message asking if he’d had time to look at them.

  Half an hour later his reply pinged in. “Sorry mate, been tied up. Those emails are fakes. No, scrub that, they’re real, but someone has fiddled with the headers. It was done by a tecchie, but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. No time for details, but hope that helps.”

  So there it was – expert opinion about those emails. It didn’t point the finger of blame at anyone specific, but it was a start. I should be able to prove I hadn’t sent them myself.

  I glanced at my watch: seven thirty. Not too late to bother Amanda upstairs. I took the steps two at a time.

  I could see candles flickering over her shoulder in her lounge. “I was just about to start a meditation session,” she told me.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you. It’s about that man who broke into my flat. I just wondered how certain you were that he was the same guy who came back with the police.”

  “Completely. It wasn’t just the accent, it was the pitch of his voice – everything. I’m very good with voices.”

  I nodded encouragingly. “So would you be prepared to tell that to the police if you had to?”

  She gave me a slightly bewildered look. “I don’t know. I suppose so. Why?”

  “There’s something a bit weird about this. I’m still not sure what to make of it, but I might need to report it.”

  “Well, let me know when you decide what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks. I’ll leave you to it.” Then as an afterthought I said, “It’s a shame you never actually saw the intruder in the flesh.”

  “I know.” She shrugged. “And the door phone camera is quite fuzzy. You only get the gist of what people look like.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. “Camera?” There was no video on the entry phone in my own flat, and I’d assumed they all worked on the same system. “Are you saying you have a working entry phone camera? You actually saw the guy who broke in?”

  “Oh yes. Well, I saw a blurry black and white close-up of him from a funny angle. That’s the best you get.”

  “You never said that before.”

  “Nobody asked me. I would have told the police if you’d reported it to them, but you never did.”

  “So you’re saying you would recognise that man again?”

  “I might do – especially if I heard him speak as well.”

  Back in my own flat I phoned Dave and told him what I’d learned.

  “You’re determined to put me in conflict with our friends in north London, aren’t you?” I could feel the reluctance in his tone.

  “You said you could believe anything of them.”

  He sighed. “I know I did. And I’m hearing you.” He paused to think. “Look, my mate Pat Evans is due back there in a day or two. I’ll run all this past him, and we’ll see where we get to with this.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  * * *

  A text message from Sam’s friend Jess came in at ten o’clock that evening. It read, “Free for a quick word?”

  I phoned her back straight away. Without preamble she said, “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I thought you might want to know that Sam has split up with Nick. She told him this evening that the wedding was off.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Hard to know. Sam says he just went quiet. I’ve seen him in that mood. It could mean he accepts it, or it could mean he’s building up to some sort of explosion.”

  “And how is Sam feeling now?”

  “Relieved, if you ask me. So am I.”

  I said, “It’s good of you to be telling me this.”

  “She told me she saw you yesterday – and your girlfriend turned up while she was there. Sam felt a bit foolish, I think. She’s not about to bring you the glad tidings herself, but under the circumstances I felt you might want to know.”

  “Yesterday was a screw-up. I didn’t even realise Ashley was in the country.”

  “So you’re saying that while the cat’s away … ”

  “God, no, of course not.” I hesitated. “Ashley and I broke up. That’s really why she came over from America – so we could resolve things once and for all. It’s been on the cards for months.”

  “You’re kidding me! Are you seriously telling me you broke up with your girlfriend on the same day that Sam broke up with her fiancé? If that isn’t serendipity, I don’t know what is.”

  I wondered. It would be so simple if Sam and I could just fall gratefully into each other’s arms. I had a suspicion that life was more complicated than that.

  I said, “What’s Sam doing now? Is she going back to live at her father’s place?”

  “Not yet, no. I asked her that, but she’s not ready to face him and Norah. She doesn’t want to go to Ronnie’s either. I think she wants to get her head together first. Nick’s moved back to his flat in Banbury, and Sam is going to stay on for a while in the cottage. I suppose she’ll go back to her dad’s in the end.”

  “I didn’t know Nick had a flat.”

  “Nor did I – but he’s in property, isn’t he? He probably knows how to get these things cheap.”

  Chapter 64

  “Michael! How the hell are you?”

  It was Rick Ashton, the chair of Vantage Express, and the sound of his Australian tones immediately reminded me that I still hadn’t made any progress with my story about his company and its upstart rival, Antler Logistics. I hadn’t given it a thought for weeks.

  I was sitting at my desk in Camden Town. I was overdue a day’s work in the Smart Headings office at London Bridge, but after yesterday’s excitement I’d decided I needed a day of relative calm. However, this phone call already threatened to disrupt it.

  In an effort to pick up on his positive tone I said, “You’re sounding very cheerful today.”

  “I’ve just clinched another contract. It won’t quite make up for the one Antler pinched, but it sets our logistics division off in the right direction.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, we’re pleased.”

  “But if you’re going to ask me about Antler, I’m afraid I don’t have much to report. I think I know what happene
d and who was responsible, but I don’t really have any proof.”

  “Seriously?” He paused. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound sceptical, but I got the impression you weren’t all that interested.”

  “O ye of little faith.”

  “So go on, tell me about it in confidence. Not a word will pass my lips.”

  “I think it was all down to someone senior at the property agency that looks after that warehouse. This person picked up confidential information from meetings between you and the client, and then passed it on to the boss of Antler Logistics. You might be able to guess who it is, but I’d rather not name names, if that’s all right with you.”

  “You’re talking about Cavenham Risby, so you must mean Dan – the bloke who died.”

  “If I ever get any evidence, I’ll let you know.”

  “Well, I’ve got a different story for you, but it’s linked to the old story.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “OK. Well, we were looking for a warehouse for this new contract – the one I just told you about – and it occurred to me that the one we earmarked for the other job would be perfect. It was about the right size, and the word on the street was that no one else had taken up the lease, so it was still available.”

  “But?”

  “It’s not available after all. Far from it. I contacted Cavenhams, and this time they told us the owners had taken it off the market altogether. Unofficially I’m told they’re going to demolish it.”

  My mind was racing to catch up with this. I said, “Remind me where exactly this warehouse is. Does it have a name?”

  “It’s here in Rugby. I can almost see if from where I’m standing. It’s called Casement Rise. It adjoins that unit where Backer Logistics have a soft drinks contract.”

  Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle were dropping into place. I said, “Rick, you’re a marvel. I really do think there’s a story in this, but you’ll have to leave it with me for now.”

  “OK, well keep me posted, will you?”