Walk On By: 'trouble of a serious kind' (Ted Darling crime series Book 8)

by L M Krier

  ‘Boss, I can do better than that. I found him on Facebook,’ Océane told him. ‘It’s an unusual name, so I was able to pin him down. There are some much better photos there. I’ll print them off. Not all his posts are public and he posts a lot in French, but luckily, with a French mother, that presents no problem for me. He hasn’t posted anything public in the last couple of months.’

  ‘Great, Océane, thank you. I know it’s not in your remit, but if we needed to speak to the French police and couldn’t immediately find an English speaker available at their end it would really help no end if you could interpret for us.’

  ‘No problem at all, boss. It’s my second language, so it’s nearly fluent.’

  ‘He doesn’t look much like an Arab,’ Maurice Brown, politically incorrect as ever, mused aloud.

  ‘His mother’s French, father is Algerian,’ Ted corrected him. ‘Dorian Bacha was born and educated in France, to a reasonable level, speaks fluent English, according to the information we have to date. From that point of view, well up to the job his uncle gave him. What we don’t know at this stage, if indeed he is the one who was involved, is why he lost it and knifed Mrs Ashworth.

  ‘Apparently he sometimes helps out in his father’s company, presumably because of his skills in English, and has no record, as far as we are aware. He’s studying law. It’s quite likely he’s visited England before, for the business, and of course, as a French citizen, he can travel freely with few checks on his comings and goings.

  ‘The question is, if it was him, where is he now? As he’s close family, it’s less likely that he will simply have been disposed of. More possibly, he will find himself packed off back to France in disgrace, as soon as they can get him safely out of the country. He may already have left, of course. But if not, we need to find him.’

  ‘So to sum up, boss, we’re looking for a suspect where we don’t even know if he’s in the country. He’s not got a record, so we don’t have his prints or DNA. That means nothing at all to link him to the crime scene if we do find him. We’ve no eyewitnesses to the crime and the only description we have matches him only because it’s a bloke. Sounds like a doddle to me,’ Maurice Brown said dryly.

  ‘It will be, Maurice. You’re a good team. You can do it. I’m counting on you.

  ‘Just one more thing. Our friend Clive Edwards. Morgane’s father. I think he may have been behind a couple of attempts to scare or intimidate me lately. Not personally, but using someone he paid. Running my car off the road last week, then, on Monday, a man with a knife, in a ginnel.

  ‘A passer-by came to help me with that one. I had to let the assailant go, because of the risk to a member of the public, so I’ve nothing at all by way of evidence. But I want him brought in and questioned under caution. Jo, that’s one for you, please. Just make sure he knows we’re on to him.’

  The team looked surprised, except for Maurice, who wisely kept quiet. They knew the boss was well up to handling a lone assailant with a knife so they couldn’t immediately understand why he’d let him go. Ted hated lying to them. He disliked being dishonest to anyone, but he was between a rock and a hard place on this one.

  His mobile was ringing. Green calling, identified now Ted had confirmed the number. He headed for his office to take the call.

  ‘Why is there some young girl sniffing round the house and knocking on the door?’ Green asked abruptly, without any form of greeting.

  ‘Young girl? I have no idea. What like?’

  ‘Mousy. Nosy.’

  ‘Did she see you?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t bloody see me. Unlike you, I stay alert. She’s gone. But I need to know who she was and if she might come back.’

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Sort it, Gayboy. Or I will.’

  Ted leaned back in his chair and sighed. He’d barely been in a couple of hours and things seemed already to be piling up to be dealt with, none of them advancing him far in his latest enquiry. He desperately wanted to phone Bill to see how he was, and to phone Jim to make his peace with him. But first he put through a call to the Chief Constable’s secretary to say he needed to talk to him.

  A text alert on Ted’s mobile showed him Marston had called another early briefing for the following morning at Central Park. At least that might mean he could probably get to the dojo that evening without being summoned. Ted relayed the information to the secretary and suggested he could see the Chief Constable after the briefing, if that was convenient.

  ‘Could you just hold one moment please, Chief Inspector?’

  The line went silent while the secretary presumably checked with her boss about his availability, then came back on the line.

  ‘Sir? The Chief says he’ll drop in at the briefing then talk to you afterwards, if that suits you?’

  Ted couldn’t resist a silent air punch as he thanked her, then rang off. The sight of the Chief Constable in person turning up just to speak to Ted would certainly ruffle Marston’s feathers. Especially as Marston clearly liked to be called Chief himself. That wasn’t going to happen, not with the real Big Chief in attendance.

  Ted found he was looking forward to the next day’s briefing. He’d need to tell his Super he’d take his own car, so he didn’t delay her, not knowing how long his meeting with the Chief Constable was likely to last.

  He picked up the first of his paperwork but had barely begun before his desk phone rang with a call being put through.

  ‘Chief Inspector? It’s Penny.’

  Hearing his slight hesitation, she said, ‘Penny Hunter. From the paper? I wondered if you had any time when I could talk to you? Just for ten minutes? Today, perhaps?’

  ‘I’ve got a pretty full day, Penny. You might be better talking to the Press Office, if it’s urgent?’

  ‘It’s you I really need to talk to.’

  Realisation hit him. The young woman at his mother’s house. Mousy and nosy. It must have been the reporter. He needed to deal with this, and soon. And preferably not in the nick.

  ‘The coffee shop, round the corner, in ten minutes? Is that any good to you?’

  Jo had already left in search of Clive Edwards, taking Virgil with him. Mike Hallam was holding the fort. Ted told him he’d be gone a quarter of an hour or so, but didn’t tell him where he was going or why. The DS looked at him quizzically. It wasn’t like the boss to be secretive, but Mike decided it might be wiser to say nothing.

  Ted bumped into the journalist outside the coffee shop, each approaching from a different direction. He stood aside to allow her to go in first. He’d been properly brought up by his father, the old-fashioned way, and old habits died hard.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. Let me get you a coffee.’

  Ted shook his head and got his wallet out.

  ‘If I accept a drink off you, I have to fill in forms to declare it. It’s much simpler if I just buy the drink. What would you like?’

  He went up to the counter to order and pay for the herbal tea she requested. He was just about to ask for a cappuccino when he decided it was a day for Maurice Brown’s cure-all – a hot chocolate.

  He put the drinks on the table in front of them then sat down opposite her.

  ‘So, what can I do for you? I should warn you at the outset, I never say anything to the press without clearing it at higher level first. But if there’s something I can help you with, I’ll try to find out the information for you.’

  ‘It’s about the assault in Marple last Thursday. I’m trying to get in touch with the victim, a Mrs Angharad Jones. I’ve been led to believe by a neighbour that she’s your mother. I wondered if you could tell me where she is at the moment? I’ve been to the house but I didn’t find her at home and the same neighbour told me she thinks she’s gone away.’

  The use of his mother’s full name sounded odd to Ted. She’d only ever been Annie, all the time he’d known her. That meant the reporter had got her information from an official source. He took
a drink of his chocolate, trying to gather his thoughts before he replied.

  ‘I’m afraid I have no comment at all to make on that. I would certainly not disclose any information relating to the victim of a crime. You must appreciate that. What makes you think I’m related to this Mrs Jones?’

  ‘The neighbour was very helpful. She told me Mrs Jones has a son who is a high-ranking police officer. She didn’t know his name, she said, but she told me he was short and always polite. Although I don’t know you well, the description reminded me of you.’

  She’d done a good job of digging, he conceded to himself. Now he felt himself backed into a corner, a position he always hated. He couldn’t deny outright any connection to the victim but the last thing he needed was her going back to the house while Green was there. He measured his words carefully before he spoke.

  ‘Mrs Jones is my mother. She has currently gone to stay with a friend while she recovers from the attack. I’m not prepared to give you her contact details. I can appreciate that you may want to talk to her about the assault, but I would just ask you, please, to give her some space for the time being.

  ‘I can tell you, although I suspect you already know, that a man has been arrested and charged in connection with the offence. The best I can do is to promise to let you know as soon as I hear when his first court date will be. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.’

  ‘Could you at least ask your mother, when you speak to her, if she would be willing to talk to me? I really would like to get her story of what happened to her. It’s a terrible sign of the times, when things like this happen. Our readers would be interested. And she will, I presume, be coming back for the court hearing? Depending on whether the attacker pleads guilty or not guilty? She’ll be called as a witness, of course.’

  Ted still hadn’t explained to his mother that she would have to testify, if the defendant pleaded not guilty. She would be called as a prosecution witness, and might not know until the day of the hearing what his plea would be. Ted should have talked her through it all, before she left, but it was yet another thing he’d been too busy to do. He’d call her, as soon as he could, to explain the situation to her in full. Perhaps they could Skype, now Trev had set it up for her. He just had to find the time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Is it sorted?’

  ‘It’s sorted,’ Ted told Green when he called him back later in the day. ‘She’ll not be coming round bothering you again.’

  ‘She’d better not. So in exchange, I have something for you. Your lad Bacha is in the UK. Has been for about a month now. He flew in from Marseilles to Manchester. The intelligence is reliable, but what I can’t tell you is why. I’ve got feelers out, though, and I’m owed a few favours. That should buy you a bit of R&R time from your delightful prick-in-chief, so sort me out at this club of yours. And you need to come too. You’re even more in need of a training session than I am.’

  He gave Ted the flight details before he rang off. Ted knew the information would be accurate. He didn’t know who Green’s sources were, and was probably better off not knowing, but it would certainly be safe enough to follow up and to pass on to Marston.

  He went out to the main office and handed it on to Steve, who was the only one in, other than Océane. It was a reliable lead but a cold one. Their chances of finding anything on CCTV from the airport for a month ago were not great, but better than nothing. He asked him to check to see if he could trace Bacha returning to France on any flights in the days following the killing, then the intervening dates from there.

  Jo was back in his office and Ted was anxious to know how his formal interview with Clive Edwards had gone.

  ‘He denies everything and blames it all on you, boss, basically,’ Jo told him. ‘Wasn’t him, he had nothing to do with it, but whoever is trying to do you harm has his blessing and he’d like to buy them a pint or two. You’re just another crooked copper trying to fit up his poor innocent daughter, and so on and so forth. Like a broken record.

  ‘I can’t guarantee we’ve exactly warned him off. It could go either way, I reckon. He might stop, or he might just up his game and bring in someone more professional. I think you need to watch your back very carefully, boss.’

  Not just from Edwards, Ted thought to himself, as he sat down to email his latest lead through to Marston. He’d made a bad enemy in him, too, although he didn’t regret for a minute having stood up to him in the past. If he hadn’t done so, Marston’s arrogance and ignorance could have got some of Ted’s team killed.

  His mobile showed him an incoming call from Rob O’Connell who was over at Wilmslow with Sal, still trying to find any reliable eyewitnesses.

  ‘A glimmer, at least, boss. I talked to the person who saw Mrs Ashworth’s car pulling out of the car park, the one who’d given a vague description of the driver. I had someone show him a few photos, all reasonably similar. The only one he picked out was our suspect, Bacha. He was hesitant, but he didn’t reckon any of the others.’

  ‘Excellent, Rob. Good news, and good work.’

  ‘There’s a bit more, too, boss. Inspector Pierson’s officers have been checking traffic cameras for any more sightings of a dark blue Peugeot. We’ve got one on the A538 heading for the M56. The timing is right for it being Mrs Ashworth’s car, and there’s enough time for the number plates to have been switched somewhere. And they have been, by that point. It’s on cloned plates, same make and model, but from a different car. Single male occupant. That’s all we have.’

  ‘It’s a lot more than we did have, so that’s a good thing. Right, we’ll need to search anywhere between the incident and where the vehicle was clocked to see if there is any trace of where the plates might have been changed. Ask Inspector Pierson what officers he can make available and if you need more, ask Inspector Turner if he can spare any, since it’s partly coming under our remit.

  He’ll complain and say he hasn’t got enough to go round so I’ll go and have a quick word with him now, just to prepare the ground.

  ‘Excellent work, Rob, you and Sal both. We need a break now, a witness who saw plates being changed or anything suspicious like that. Of course, on the telly, we’d find a stray screw with the killer’s DNA on it. We also need to find out somehow who the other person was, who helped with changing the plates, and find out whether it was them or Bacha who drove off in the Peugeot to deliver it wherever it was going.’

  ‘Boss, we also need to know at what point the rest of the gang found out that Mrs Ashworth had been killed. Because if Bacha handed her Peugeot over and took the second vehicle, the one whoever had the false plates for him was presumably driving, he could be anywhere by now and we don’t even know what car he drove off in.’

  ‘Spare officers for a search? I’ve got bloody dozens of them, Ted. All aged under eleven. So you can have them for a half-hour slot between when they finish school and before they start their homework.’

  Inspector Kevin Turner went into rant mode as soon as Ted went downstairs to ask him.

  ‘Honestly, bloody Mini Police? It’s great PR, a good community initiative. But what I need is grown-ups, to do proper policing. But they cost money, which is being cut back all the time. I don’t have enough officers to send to even the most serious crimes, half the time. And we get plenty of that. We’ve just had a shout, as it goes. I’m passing it over to your lot. Suspicious death. And get this, initial reports at the scene say it was a couple rowing over assembling flat-pack furniture. Looks like she’s lost it, grabbed the screwdriver and stuck it in his neck. Are you going to take it yourself?’

  Ted shook his head.

  ‘More than enough on just now. I’ll call one of the team to pick it up. Give me the address, though, and if I get chance, I’ll swing by. I’ve got to get to the dojo this evening. I’ve got Jezza out looking for happy slappers and that’s our meet-up place.’

  Ted knew that DC Jezza Vine was an expert at blending in and looking nothing like a copper. Even so, he was impress
ed when he saw her at the dojo. If he hadn’t known she was a police officer in her twenties, he would easily have taken her for a teenager, and a stroppy one at that.

  Her spiky hair was once again bright pink, and several of her piercings were back in place, just as when he’d first encountered her, the worse for drink and spoiling for a fight, shortly before she joined the team.

  Ted had sworn Trev to secrecy and told him not to show any recognition for Jezza, whom he’d met at the annual Christmas drinks. He just hoped he could trust him to keep a straight face. Trev was notorious for collapsing in mirth at inappropriate moments.

  Ted and Trev had already changed into their judogis and were starting stretching exercises as the young members of their self-defence club began arriving. Seeing Jezza, Trev turned away to do hamstring stretches, clearly worried about keeping it serious at the sight of her. She was playing the part to perfection.

  Jezza looked around her, her expression arrogant, her gaze falling on Ted as if seeing him for the first time. Clearly senior in years, he was still shorter than some of the teenagers present.

  ‘Who’s in charge?’

  ‘Trev and I run the club. I’m Ted. And you are?’

  ‘Jas,’ she told him, her accent different to her usual one. ‘Jas Vaughan. I want to learn this stuff.’

  The simplest cover was always closest to the truth. Jezza Vine, Jas Vaughan. Easy to remember, and with the same initials.

  ‘There are some forms we need to fill in first before I can let you start. And I’m afraid you’ll have to take your piercings out before you go on the mat.’

  Some of the others were watching the newcomer with interest. Many of them had appeared as aggressive as she did when they first started at the club. The bravado was to hide the fear many of them had known in being bullied. Jezza’s cover couldn’t have been more perfect.