by Hayden, Mark
Her boss, Leach, ordered another scotch and started to play with the new iPad he’d insisted on buying at the airport. Kate wasn’t sure whether they’d catch on but quite a lot of the suits scattered around the lobby seemed to have these new tablet computers. They didn’t seem very secure to her.
The waiter returned with drinks and the house phone for her boss. He conducted a very brief conversation in English and hung up.
‘Slight change of plan. We’re to pick up the hardware in Hong Kong rather than Shanghai. Apparently it’s less risky on an internal flight.’
‘Any news on whether we’ve got an appointment with the suppliers?’
He shook his head, and Kate picked up her book.
Tom arrived at the Lambeth office on Friday afternoon in a sour mood. The news from the DNA results had delayed his departure, and he’d had to cope with the half term getaway before he could check in with his new employers. No one in CIPPS except Samuel Cohen had a clue who he was: when he arrived at the office, they wouldn’t let him in.
‘Assistant Director Cohen has got away early. There’s no record of you on the system.’
‘But I’ve been with CIPPS for a week. Surely there’s been a memo or something. See, I’ve even got my own business cards now.’
He handed one over, and the receptionist looked at it dubiously.
‘I suppose I could contact Human Resources at the Yard.’
What Tom really wanted to say was yes, I suppose you could if you thought that doing your job was a good idea, but if he were going to be with CIPPS for a while, he couldn’t afford to annoy the receptionist. Instead, he said, ‘That would be very kind of you.’ For all her flirting, his relationship with Elspeth Brown at City had been the shortcut to many favours. He’d never get any messages here if he got off on the wrong foot with the admin staff.
He retreated to the one chair designated for visitors and waited. Thankfully, there was someone at Scotland Yard who confirmed his new status and, after a close examination of his warrant card, she issued him with a temporary door pass.
‘Now I know who you are, I’ll organise a proper one. I suppose you’ll be wanting a desk, too.’
‘Let’s not get carried away,’ said Tom. ‘I’m expecting some documents. Where do you think they might be?’
‘Post Room’s third on the left.’
He thanked the woman, and found a young man locking the Post Room door. ‘Have you got anything for DI Morton in there?’
The lad examined his pass and warrant card, and then his face lit up. ‘I said it wasn’t a joke. Tracy wanted to send it back to the Yard, but I said no, it belongs here. Hang on.’
He unlocked the door and disappeared into a room full of photocopying and printing equipment. Thirty seconds later, Tom had an Authorisation for Seizure of Records on Griffin’s mobile phone. He took it back to reception where the woman was putting on her coat.
‘Sorry to bother you, but if I come back here tomorrow morning, will I be able to get in, and will I be able to use one of the terminals?’
‘You looked like someone who’d work weekends, so while you were gone I did these.’ She handed him a permanent security pass and a UserID for the CIPPS system.
Tom was fulsome in his thanks and made his way, finally, to Horsefair Court.
The next morning he returned to Lambeth and found himself alone in the office. He chose a desk at random and Sellotaped two A3 pieces of paper together while the computer was booting up. He logged on to the CIPPS system and accessed Griffin’s phone records. He started to write them on to the blank paper by time of call, by frequency, and by cross-checking against other records from service providers. He also included Griffin’s other phone, the police issue one. When he’d finished, he drew around two boxes in red: one of them was a group of calls that pointed towards a Pay As You Go number that probably belonged to Patrick Lynch. The other box was from the night of the shootings and had two calls listed.
Tom had identified the call that Griffin made to Hooper, exactly when Kelly said it was made. The other call was an incoming one which Griffin had received two minutes earlier. It was from a landline registered to a hotel in Birmingham, and it was the call that sent Griffin to his death.
The Authorisation for Seizure had been arranged by Cohen who had pinned a handwritten note to it. The note gave him another deadline: You can have three more days in Earlsbury, and unless you make an arrest, I’ve got something else for you.
Chapter12
Earlsbury
Monday
1 November
Tom made good time on Monday morning and was early enough to collect Hayes from her mother’s house. ‘Did you get a result at the weekend?’
‘You don’t strike me as a footballer, sir.’
‘Never played, except on the beach. Mine was a rugby school. And cricket in the summer – proper game, that.’
‘We lost. I could tell you about the failings of our midfield and their inability to make a tackle, but if you don’t know your 4-4-2 from your 4-3-3, I won’t bother.’
‘What about you? Striker or defender?’
‘Right back.’
They queued at the roundabout, and Tom told her what he’d discovered from the phone records. ‘I’ve got to go to a briefing this morning about something new that’s come up. The phone number belongs to a big place near where I used to live in Edgbaston – The Victoria Hotel. I’d like you to go out there and find out, if you can, what was happening at the hotel on the night of the shootings. Find out what sort of telephone system they’ve got. Push them a bit, but don’t get aggressive or threaten. We can always get a warrant later if they won’t volunteer the information. Oh, and don’t put this into HOLMES 2 until I tell you.’
‘Do you really think that there’s someone in the MCPS who’s helping out?’
‘Yes. Someone on the force is watching us. As soon as they realised we were following the golfing angle, they high-tailed it round to Griffin’s house to remove any evidence from his golf bag. We would have tracked him down to Earlsbury Park eventually, but I’ll bet there was a score card in that bag with someone’s name on it. All we know is that it wasn’t Hooper.’
‘Okay. Can I take your car?’
‘No problem. I know you’ll take care of it.’
There was a line of cars heading into BCSS, and Tom parked near the entrance. He handed the keys to Hayes along with a printout of Griffin’s phone records. She drove off cautiously, and he had to remind himself that she didn’t own a vehicle of her own. Ah well, never mind.
The same group of senior officers that had met John Lake on Friday was gathered in the same conference room and sitting in the same seats. Had he actually gone home for the weekend? The only differences were that Evelyn Andrews was missing, and that Winters took the chair.
‘I’m pleased to say that Lancashire & Westmorland have been very supportive about this. They’re willing to provide a surveillance team for a week to support our investigation.’
That was good news. With England’s many separate constabularies, co-operation was always a tricky issue. There were forty three separate police forces, and with Britain’s extensive motorway network, it was normal for suspects to come from a different force area. The rule of thumb stated that the force where a crime was committed took the lead in the investigation and, subject to notification and agreement, the force where the criminal lived would provide support.
Winters continued, ‘We will be sending a team of six up there to conduct the enquiry, led by our DI.’ He nodded towards the other Inspector, and Tom felt the ground pulled away from underneath him. He had no authority to demand a place on the team, and it looked like he was being cut out. Winters confirmed it.
‘DI Morton has been given another three days to wrap up the charges against Patrick Lynch and will be based here. Tom, do you think you might be able to give us a verdict on Ian Hooper by then?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Good man. This s
tage of the operation is on a strictly need-to-know basis, and of course,’ he nodded towards Brewer, ‘we need a complete media blackout.’
It was a struggle for Tom not to rush from the room and beat the wall in frustration. He waited until the top brass left and followed in their wake. He was so angry that he left the building and walked all the way to the burger van in the lay-by to buy himself a cup of tea and some thinking time.
It was going to go wrong again. He knew it. No matter how secretively the operation in Blackpool was carried out, their target would get wind of it and go to ground like a fox who hears the hounds on its tail. Except that in this case, there was no huntsman to stop the earths or dig it out when the quarry was cornered.
He ran through the last week since he had forced Patrick Lynch to confess: he already had more than enough material against him for a strong case of money laundering and for bribing Griffin. Lynch would go to jail for that, but the ebullient Irishman didn’t seem too bothered. Granted, Tom had already established that his family home was untouchable, but Lynch was a not a well man. His heart condition could easily deteriorate in prison and he would have no assets afterwards except the home: he had given up everything in exchange for his daughter’s freedom. Why?
His old boss, Pete Fulton, had a mantra for any crime involving cash – Follow the Money and Find the Felon. During the PiCAASA investigation, Tom had discovered this wasn’t true. He had followed the money around London and Essex for some time and got nowhere. Now that he was a DI himself (albeit a rather specialised one), Tom had decided he needed his own mantra. He sipped his tea and rolled the words around in his head. Eventually he came up with the Proof is in the Paperwork, but the Answer is in the Person. Not brilliant, but it would do as a start.
He headed back to BCSS and took out his sketch of Lynch’s operation. All that Lynch had confessed to so far was money laundering, but he hadn’t said much about where the money came from. Tom knew that the counterfeit money was quite recent, but Lynch must have been breaking the law for years. He checked back and found that there was unaccounted income going back at least five years. The source of this had been identified as Dermot Lynch – who was quite young when he died, and according to his record, he had been in jail for some of the time.
Even if Dermot was running things, Patrick must have set them up, must know where all the bases were. He went into the video archive of HOLMES 2 and brought up the interview tapes where the other DI (the one going to Blackpool) had questioned Lynch about the Wrekin Road fire.
The DI had begun by showing Lynch pictures of his cremated nephew. The Irishman winced with unfeigned pain.
‘We know you didn’t shoot Dermot or Robert,’ said the DI, ‘but what happened at the workshop? Why did you burn their bodies rather than leave them for us to find?’
‘How could I do that to my nephew – or Hope’s brother, come to that? I know nothing about any Wrekin Road or any fire. I’ve never been there.’
‘There was a substantial quantity of counterfeit goods in that workshop – cigarettes and vodka. You were dealing in these goods.’
‘Not directly. That was Dermot’s operation. I’ve never been there in my life. You can check CCTV for miles around – no sign of my Jaguar anywhere. I was at home with an angina attack, brought on by the worry.’
That was it. The DI wasn’t expecting it, so he hadn’t noticed it, but Dermot Lynch had just overplayed his hand. No sign of my Jaguar anywhere. So he must have used another car.
The dedicated bank of computer monitors had gone, but all the CCTV footage was still online. Tom picked the streets nearest to Wrekin Road and started looking for a car matching the description of Francesca Lynch’s vehicle. It took him an hour, but he found it.
Hayes telephoned and said she had some news. She sounded worried but Tom wasn’t bothered about that. ‘Meet me at the Lynch house,’ he said, ‘I’ll get a lift from uniform.’
Apart from the sense of owning a little piece of England, another benefit of Sir Stephen’s woodland was that it harboured foxes. A keen huntsman in his youth, Jennings was determined that he should do his bit to keep the way of life going that had shaped so much of the countryside around where he lived. The season would be starting in a couple of weeks, and with the clocks going back last night, the foxes were looking for their winter lairs. Not that the foxes took notice of the clocks, of course.
He walked the woods at dawn, looking for tracks, fresh earth or bones. Satisfied that one or two might have moved in, he returned to St Andrew’s Hall for breakfast. There was a message waiting for him on the mobile phone he had reactivated.
Since the disturbing news from their Green investor, he had decided to reopen a channel of communication. This morning’s situation update said that all activity should cease because there was about to be a joint police operation crawling all over Blackpool. When Jennings read the name of the target, he sat up with a jolt: that name brought bad enough memories for him; what would it do to Offlea?
Sir Stephen told his wife that something had come up and drove towards Oxford, where he lost himself in the suburbs to avoid leaving too much mobile data near his home in the sparsely populated countryside. He sent a text message to Offlea and waited for the call.
When it came, he gave Will a concise summary of the information about Adaire. As he had feared, there was an ominous silence at the other end. Jennings waited.
‘My God,’ said Offlea, ‘I never expected to hear that name again.’ To hear him speak, you would think he’d never left Belfast. ‘And to think I’ve been doing business with that murdering bastard. I’m going to take a wee sabbatical, sir, if that’s all right with you. Don’t worry, I’ll get myself well out of Red Flag first.’
‘What about Morton and Lonsdale?’
‘Leave him to me. Where’s his cousin?’
‘Hong Kong with Leach. They’re on their way to Shanghai.’
‘I can sort that as well. I’ll be in touch.’
Hayes was waiting for him down the road from Patrick and Francesca Lynch’s house. He couldn’t help himself – he gave his BMW a quick once-over. No damage. Hayes got out. She had a worried look on her face.
‘I’ve got them.’ said Tom.
‘Sir, there’s something…’
‘I can connect them to Wrekin Road. I’m sure of it. Come on, Kris, I was nicey-nicey to them on the phone, but they said they’re going out soon. I want to get into their house before anyone at BCSS starts following my tracks.’
He accepted the car keys from Hayes and walked up to Lynch’s house. ‘I want you to look in the garage at Francesca’s car. Check the number plates carefully for any sign that they’ve been removed and look in the drawers or cupboards for false plates. It’s a long shot, but if we don’t check, we’ll never know.’
He rang the bell, and Patrick answered. He didn’t invite them inside but he stood back to allow them past him. Through the kitchen door, Tom could see Francesca giving lunch to their youngest daughter. Of course, it was half term. Even better.
‘Sorry to trouble you,’ said Tom. ‘I’ll be as quick as possible. You have been arrested in connection with money laundering and Conspiracy to Commit Misconduct in Public Office.’ Patrick nodded. ‘You gave us permission to search this property in connection with those offences. There are a couple of areas I’d like to look at again. Do I still have your permission?’
‘What are you looking for? You went through everything yourself last week.’
‘Not quite everything. In fact, not much at all. I don’t want to do an invasive search – floorboards and plasterboard – I just want to look in a couple of places.’
‘And you promise you’ll be quick?’
‘If I don’t find anything, yes.’
‘If you must.’
Patrick went through to the kitchen, and Tom followed. ‘Do you need to look in here?’ said Francesca with a frown. ‘We’ll go next door if you want.’
‘Could DC Hayes have the k
ey to the garage? I’d like to do an accompanied search of Elizabeth’s room.’
Patrick looked alarmed, but Tom couldn’t tell whether it was because of the garage of Elizabeth’s room. ‘Do you think I’d put anything in my own daughter’s bedroom. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what sort of a father do you think I am?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Hayes’ nostrils flare at the use of the Holy Family for an oath. He noticed that Lynch hadn’t commented on the search of the garage. The outrage could be genuine or not. ‘Perhaps you’d like to accompany my colleague outside, and your wife and daughter can come with me.’
‘No,’ said Francesca. ‘Elizabeth doesn’t need to be involved in this.’
Tom looked at Elizabeth. She was thin and pale, but her eyes had been flicking around the conversation intently. She looked worried but she wasn’t looking worried in his direction. Tom addressed his comments to her. ‘My younger sister got arrested once, you know. She was only just older than you. When the police came to search her room, she was more worried about what our mother would see than what the cops might discover. I think you should come with us, then you can open the drawers and stuff, and your mother can watch from the doorway.’
Elizabeth flicked her eyes to Francesca and then back to him. She nodded and pulled her long hair back behind her head. She took a scrunchy from her pocket and pinned it in place, then led the adults upstairs. The way that Francesca protected the young girl made it unlikely she would allow her husband to hide things in Elizabeth’s bedroom, but that was only part of his aim. He wanted to split them up, and show that he was willing to stick his nose anywhere.
Elizabeth started in the wardrobe, pulling her clothes aside and lifting out shoes to show there was nothing to hide. Hanging at the right hand end were several white shirts, a skirt and a green blazer with Gothic lettering on the breast pocket. ‘Which school do you go to?’ asked Tom.
‘St Mod’s.’