SECRET CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of suspense

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  Sophie had chosen to wear a grey jacket in soft leather and grey knee boots. ‘A black outfit can be too severe,’ she’d said. ‘But grey or blue outfits look formal without the starkness. Grey’s quite sexy really, according to my husband. And it’s funny how appearance can charm a woman just as much as a man. I suppose you could call it the psychology of power flirting.’

  Sophie smiled again at Karen Fleming, widening her eyes slightly. ‘Paul Derek,’ she said. ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He’s a good worker with a proper sense of responsibility, and a nice bloke,’ she replied. ‘He’s worked here for a little over five years. He impressed me when he came for interview and I haven’t had cause to change my mind since.’

  ‘What about his people skills? IT staff can be a bit prickly and sometimes don’t understand the problems ordinary workers have with systems they’re unused to.’

  So smoothly done, thought Rae. The DCI had given away no hint that the subject of their conversation was currently lying lifeless on a trolley in the pathology department at Dorchester hospital.

  ‘He’s fine. He has an approachable manner and is conscientious about his job. Though most of the staff contact work is done by his assistant, Melissa Taylor. He’s more back-room.’

  ‘Can we see his file, please? I know my DC had a brief look yesterday, but I’d like to have a closer look.’

  The file was ready and Karen Fleming pushed it across the table. The first page gave a summary of his personal details and employment record, along with a photograph. It was the man they knew as Derek, found dead under Burton Cliffs the previous day. Sophie nodded slightly at Rae.

  ‘I’d like a copy of everything in this file please, Mrs Fleming. I’d also like to know about his family circumstances.’ Again the smile, lips a little apart.

  ‘He’s divorced. It happened about two years ago.’

  ‘Was the divorce amicable do you know?’

  ‘I’d guess not, but you’ll have to speak to him about that. To his credit, he’s never let it get in the way of his work.’

  Are there any children?’

  ‘Yes, two teenage sons. They live with their mother, Pamela Derek, as far as I know. Paul saw them some weekends.’

  ‘Do you think Mrs Sheldon might have been involved with him at the time of his marriage breakdown?’

  ‘Officially, of course, I wouldn’t know. But I’d guess they were an item even then. I told your man yesterday about her applying for the job here on Paul’s recommendation. But she turned out to be an asset. She was a bright, intelligent worker who did her job really well. That’s why we were considering her for promotion. The news of her death has come as a real shock to us. I’m concerned about how it will affect Paul. Can you tell me how he is?’

  Rae kept her head well down.

  ‘No, sorry. Could you show me her file as well, Mrs Fleming?’

  Karen Fleming pushed a second, thinner folder across the table. Sophie looked quickly through it. Jimmy Melsom had missed nothing of importance.

  ‘I’d like this copied too, if you’d be so kind.’

  Karen Fleming nodded.

  ‘I’d also like to see a complete record of their holiday dates, from when they each started working here. Would that be possible? Also any conferences they went on, training courses, that kind of thing. Could they have attended any courses together?’

  ‘Unlikely. Paul’s were all technical in nature, and would have been totally unsuitable for an administrative operative like Sarah. But I will cross-check for you.’

  ‘Thank you. Social functions, work parties and the like? Did they attend any together?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. The couple of events they did attend, they stuck with their own colleagues, as far as I remember. You could ask their workmates, but I think they kept their relationship quiet.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘But why would they need to bother? They were both divorced, weren’t they? I’m assuming it wouldn’t have been a problem for the company if their relationship came to light. They were working in completely different roles and departments. Didn’t you ever wonder?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Karen. ‘And you’re right. There would have been no conflict of interest because of their jobs, so it wouldn’t have been a problem for us. I never asked them about it nor told anyone else of my suspicions, because it was irrelevant. But their reasons for keeping it secret . . . that intrigued me. I can’t help you, though. I’ve never settled on a satisfactory explanation. At times I’ve even thought that maybe it was all just a big coincidence and I misheard that conversation I told your colleague about.’

  She looked at Sophie expectantly, but there was no reaction. Rae had finished taking notes. Her boss leaned back in her chair and looked at the personnel manager. She gave a slight twitch of the lips.

  ‘I want all of Paul Derek’s personal possessions collected from his office. Rae here will supervise that. I want all of his emails, personal computer files, flash drives, company phones, diaries and notebooks identified and assembled together. I want his phone record for the past three months, showing all his calls. Six months if it’s available. I presume he had a work laptop. I want that. His online schedule and record books. Any confidential records the company has on him that are not already in his file. I want the contents of any staff locker that he had. Anything on a coat hook in a cloakroom, if there is such a thing. And anything else that your Melissa identifies as being his. Don’t worry, Karen, it won’t add to your staff’s workload. A team of forensic experts will be arriving shortly.’ She looked at her watch. ‘In five minutes, to be precise. They’ll be gone within a couple of hours, although we’ll be leaving a network specialist to work with Melissa going through your servers to look for any other items that Mr Derek may have stored. And there are a couple of other things. Firstly, I don’t want the subject matter of this conversation discussed with anyone at the moment, not even your own bosses. I’ll explain the situation to the executive manager myself. Secondly, a recommendation. I think you should look to appoint a temporary replacement for Mr Derek from this moment on.’

  ‘But he’ll be back next week. We’ve already organised it so Melissa can cope on her own.’

  ‘Trust my judgement, Karen. That’s all I can say at the moment.’ Sophie stood up and moved towards the door. Then she stopped and turned. ‘Possibly, in the long term, you might be looking for a permanent replacement. And that really is for your ears only.’

  The personnel manager stood open-mouthed as they walked out.

  The computer forensic team had arrived on schedule and were now in charge. Sophie had spoken briefly to the executive manager and the two detectives were heading for the car.

  ‘That was very impressive, ma’am,’ Rae said.

  ‘The benefits of rank and experience, Rae. It’s like a chess game really. The trick is to work out in advance which opening gambit to play. It’s also important to have a second plan ready to use if you’ve misjudged your initial approach. But now comes the difficult bit. I have to speak to Paul Derek’s ex-wife. We need to find out how old the sons are, and decide who the next of kin is, in order to get the body identified. Maybe he has parents still alive. I’ll do that while you supervise things here. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can, then we’ll pay a quick visit to his home now we have his address.’

  * * *

  Paul Derek’s ex-wife looked harassed and careworn. Her hair was a tangled mess and her face was lined and blotchy. Sophie showed her warrant card and explained to Pamela that she was calling about her ex-husband.

  ‘What the fuck’s he been up to now?’ snarled the woman.

  ‘I’d like to come in, please, Mrs Derek. We really can’t talk about this on the doorstep.’

  Sophie followed her through a dingy hallway into an untidy sitting room. She stood while magazines and half-empty chocolate boxes were cleared from the sofa. Pamela turned down the volume on the television but left it on. Sophie waited until the wom
an was seated and then broke the news of her ex-husband’s death. Pamela’s reaction was surprisingly emotional, and she sobbed for several minutes.

  ‘This has been hard for you, Pamela. I know that your marriage ended a couple of years ago, and I’d guess that the split was a difficult one. Is there anything you feel you can tell me right now?’

  ‘It was that fucking woman,’ Pamela said. ‘She got him hooked on all that group-sex rubbish. The mucky bitch. She got him trapped. He wanted me to do it as well, but there’s a limit, isn’t there?’ She took a breath and appeared to calm down. ‘Sorry. It just came as such a shock. You’ll be thinking I still loved him or something, but I don’t. That all finished well before he walked out on me. In the end I gave him a choice and he chose her. In a way I was glad, cos I just couldn’t handle it. And there were no feelings left, just memories. That’s why I cried when you told me. It was the memories.’

  ‘Did he ever use Derek as a first name, rather than Paul?’

  ‘Yes. He’d been called it when he was a teenager. You know how boys call each other by their surname sometimes. Then, when he started using those websites to look for sex partners, he’d use Derek rather than Paul. I hated it. I’m thinking of changing my surname back to my maiden name. The name Derek makes me feel dirty.’

  ‘How old are your boys?’

  ‘Andy’s nineteen and Kenny’s seventeen.’

  ‘Now I have to tell you the hard part, Pamela. Paul’s body was found on the shoreline in Dorset. It looks as though he fell from the nearby cliffs. At the moment we’re treating it as a suspicious death. We’ll need Andy to identify his father’s body, and I’ll have to arrange that for some time in the next day or two.’

  ‘We’ll all come. Andy can do the official bit, but Kenny and I should be there to support him.’

  ‘It’s your choice, Pamela, and I really respect you for it. It’s a very thoughtful gesture.’

  ‘That’s all that’s left now, isn’t it? Gestures. What else is there?’ She paused. ‘Dorset? Isn’t that where that woman’s body was found at the weekend? I don’t read the papers or listen to the news much.’

  Sophie nodded. Pamela’s eyes suddenly came alive.

  ‘Was it her? Fucking Sarah Sheldon? It was, wasn’t it? Well, all I can say is, he did the right thing after all. Even if he did top himself afterwards. If it was him killed her then well done, my Paul. Good on you. The only decent thing you’ve done in years.’

  * * *

  Once more DC Phil Barber from the local unit accompanied the two detectives. Paul Derek had lived in a small flat in north Portsmouth. They found little out of the ordinary in the small, rather bare apartment. They brought a couple of address books and a laptop back with them for further forensic investigation. When they arrived back at Swanage, a message from the pathologist was waiting, giving the time for the post-mortem examination on Paul Derek.

  ‘Just enough time for a coffee and biscuit, Rae. Would you like to come to the PM? Though I only go to the first part, the external examination. When I was a young and over-keen DC in the Met, I steeled myself to stay for the whole of my first post-mortem. I ended up unconscious on the theatre floor. I was badly concussed from the fall and they kept me in overnight for observation. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Apparently as I fell my skirt caught on something and ripped, and my bright purple knickers were on show to everyone in the room. You can guess what the rest of the unit had to say when I got back to work two days later.’

  Rae was rather taken aback by this. ‘Yes, I’d like to go, ma’am. And I won’t tell anyone that story.’

  Sophie laughed. ‘I think they know. I gave up trying to be discreet years ago. It just doesn’t work for me.’

  * * *

  ‘Severe bruising to the head in three places, rear left, front right and top. Deep gash rear left. Broken nose, torn left ear.’ An assistant trained spotlights on each probe of the senior pathologist. A second assistant was noting his observations on a form even though he talked into a recording device as he proceeded.

  ‘Several teeth missing or loose. Dirt and grit in the mouth and nostrils. Cuts and grazes over the facial skin, some fairly deep. You’ll notice, Sophie, that there are far fewer skin abrasions on the limbs and torso, where the tissue would have been protected by his clothing. But there are still injuries.’

  He probed the chest area and upper limbs. ‘Several broken ribs and some severe bruising. A fracture of the left arm just below the elbow. Some minor abrasions of the skin tissue on his hands. One broken finger on his right hand, the middle finger, and a bruise to the neighbouring finger.’

  Benny Goodall examined the legs. ‘Similar to the upper limbs, with bruising and some abrasions. We’ve X-rayed already, and there’s a fracture to the right fibula and damage to the right hip joint.’

  He stopped and looked at Sophie. ‘No significant tearing of the nails, and no grit under them. I ordered a blood test when we got him here yesterday. Benzodiazepine in significant residual amounts.’

  ‘Ah, so he was heavily sedated?’

  ‘Probably unconscious.’

  ‘And his injuries are consistent with a tumble down that cliff-face?’

  ‘I would say so.’

  ‘And the condition of his fingers and nails tends to reinforce the idea that he wasn’t conscious at the time?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you say so? Most people falling down a cliff would try to grab hold of the surface, almost instinctively I would have thought. The head and limb injuries are not consistent with a free-fall, with a crashing stop at the bottom. They look to be in line with a tumble, catching on those ledges and outcrops. Normally we’d expect significant finger and nail damage. There’s nothing of that here.’

  ‘Well, it helps me to picture what might have happened, Benny. Very helpful. Anything else I need to know at the moment?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not with this one. I’ll get the details emailed across to you as soon as I can and I’ll call you if we spot anything unusual. But something interesting has cropped up with the head wound in the first body. We found microscopic traces of wax in the skin.’

  ‘What kind of wax?’

  ‘Shoe polish.’ He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘So it was caused by a kick after all? It cropped up in conversation earlier, but we were only speculating. It seemed such a deep wound. Heavy boots of some kind? Is that what you’re thinking?’

  Benny Goodall nodded.

  Sophie and Rae made their way back to the car.

  ‘He was very helpful,’ Rae said. ‘I thought that pathologists were generally more guarded than that.’

  ‘He’s a close friend, Rae. He knows I won’t misquote him, we have an understanding about it. Look, we haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and I’m famished. How about a late lunch in one of the local cafés? There’s a really good one in the town centre. It has an interesting history. Its main room is reputedly the one used by Judge Jeffreys when he held the Bloody Assize in the town.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I’ve got an engineering background. I know nothing about history.’

  ‘All the better, then. I can tell you about it while we’re shovelling our food down. We don’t have too much time.’

  * * *

  Back in Swanage, Barry Marsh and Jimmy Melsom were discussing the man who’d gone missing from the hotel after Saturday night.

  ‘So there’s been no sight of John Renton since then?’ Marsh asked.

  ‘No. Tom Rose did some double-checking at the hotel, but nothing has come out of the booking details. It was an internet booking made with a credit card. It was fully paid for in advance, so the hotel had no reason to query the reservation. The address given at the time of the booking matches the one for the credit card account. Phil Barber from Portsmouth called in to say that he’d visited the address, but that there was no one in. The neighbours say that he’s in the army and at the moment he’s in the middle of a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. So
it couldn’t have been him at the hotel, could it, Sarge?’

  ‘No, but if it wasn’t him at the hotel, who was it? And how did he get hold of Renton’s credit card details?’

  ‘Not that hard, is it? I give mine out all the time when I’m doing a phone booking for a concert or a holiday.’

  ‘You mean we assume the person on the other end of the phone is only recording it on the official system, but they could be making a quick note for their own use?’

  ‘Yeah. We’re all so trusting, aren’t we? But the person taking the details could reuse them, maybe after waiting a few weeks. As long as it’s for nothing outrageous it might not even be noticed when the account holder checks their statement. Does anyone go through their statement item by item? I don’t. I just trust that everything’s as it should be and the total is about what I expect. But maybe it’s not even that. It could be someone else who knows Renton’s details legitimately. You know, a close friend or someone in the family.’

  ‘What does the bank say?’

  ‘There’s nothing odd in the pattern of spending. Just normal sorts of things. And it’s consistent. There’s been no recent change in the kind of stuff on the statement, according to the bank.’

  Marsh thought for a while. ‘Get the past couple of years’ statements for the account. Get on to the MoD and find out Renton’s unit and where they’ve been stationed for the last three years. I want the two compared. Okay?’

  Chapter 12: Glamour Shots

  Wednesday afternoon

  Lydia Pillay was unhappy. The previous day’s unexpected encounter with Sophie had set off a cascade of unexpected emotional responses. She’d already realised that she’d made a mistake when she’d walked out on her Dorset job to join the unit in Bath. The feeling had been growing for weeks, but she’d managed to push the thoughts away. The visit from Sophie had brought all her concerns back into her mind and she was finding it difficult to ignore them. The fact was, she really didn’t like her new boss. She’d met him on a course and he’d talked about the financial crime unit he was running. She’d been impressed by him and by the job as he’d described it. But the reality was quite different. She found herself as the junior in the team, forced to spend a large proportion of her working days on menial tasks. She was given little responsibility, was not making any use of the experience she’d gained from her training and her years in Dorset and was wondering whether she’d merely been appointed as some kind of token ethnic minority officer. Moreover, she now realised that financial crime just wasn’t for her. Why hadn’t she seen this before? She knew why. She just hadn’t bothered to think through the full implications of the new job. It had been staring her in the face, but she’d chosen to ignore it. Lydia was a “people person.” She enjoyed working out the intricacies of human interaction, and that’s why she’d loved her job with Sophie Allen so much. She sighed. And as if all that wasn’t enough, there was her new boss. He was shallow, only interested in his own career path and those investigations that would raise his own profile. It was very apparent now, but why hadn’t she seen this at the interviews? She realised now that she had, but deliberately chose to ignore what had been staring her in the face. It was all because of her stupid desire to get away from a boss she adored but whose apparent actions had caused her so much anxiety. So here she was, stuck in a job that didn’t, and couldn’t, make use of the skills she had, in a team that gave her menial jobs to do, and working for a boss who preened and postured his way through his working life.