Worse Than Dead

by Stephen Puleston

  ‘In what sort of investigation?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to…’

  ‘Financial irregularities, fraud, perhaps?’

  Caren noted down the precise words used by Speed.

  ‘Lyfon Pharmaceuticals was given favourable treatment and generous grants.’

  ‘I thought that sort of thing was against the regulations. European directives.’

  ‘You must be joking. There is one rule for most of us and another for people who are friends with Richard Class.’

  ‘Why were you interested in Tim Loosemore’s company?’

  ‘I’m a financial journalist. A reliable source told me there was a story to be written. Once I began to do background checks and research, Loosemore and his cronies threatened to bring the world down on top of me.’

  ‘Is there any material you could send me?’

  ‘You need to talk to Detective Superintendent Adams in Cardiff. He might be more of a help.’

  * * *

  Drake called Ellis-Pugh but the answer machine had clicked on. The accent still sounded like a voice-over from a 1960s black-and-white documentary. Drake stumbled over the right thing to say until eventually he left a message, telling Ellis-Pugh he’d be calling at the flying club later that morning.

  Then he telephoned the hospital in Bangor and after some initial confusion about which ward Tom Vigo had been admitted into the receptionist put him through. A sharp voice answered: ‘Intensive care.’

  ‘Has Tom Vigo regained consciousness?’

  ‘Not yet. Can you try again later?’

  ‘How long?’ Drake said.

  ‘I can’t tell you. It’s impossible to say.’

  Drake sat in the car outside the shop where he stopped every morning, the newspaper on the passenger seat open at the usual page. Frustrated at the possibility that his morning might be wasted, he decided to call at the flying club first. It was a clear, crisp morning, the temperatures were rising and the forecasters on the radio promised the first of several fine days. As he drove along the A55, he couldn’t help but think about the session with Halpin and the fact that he hadn’t made any notes. He’d even bought a small Moleskine notepad from a stationers but it was languishing unopened in his jacket pocket.

  After forty minutes, he turned into the car park at the flying club and saw the old Ford parked alongside a sign that said ‘Club Chairman’ and from the plates he quickly calculated that the car must have been ten years old.

  In the distance two RAF fire engines stood in the corner of the runaway and Drake saw activity in the modern control tower nearby. He drew up outside the old buildings and almost immediately the door opened and Ellis-Pugh strode out and then stopped, the surprise evident in his face.

  ‘I didn’t expect you so soon,’ Ellis-Pugh said.

  ‘I need some more details from you. It won’t take long.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ellis-Pugh turned and led Drake into the building.

  Drake heard the sound of a jet aircraft in the air.

  ‘Training sessions,’ Ellis-Pugh explained, looking at the sky.

  Drake could smell the faint odour of furniture polish in the small room which had ‘Admin- Private’ screwed to the door.

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘I need the records of all the flights that Frank Rosen made in the last two years.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Ellis-Pugh started opening filing cabinets and reaching for folders tucked tidily into the suspension files. One wall was lined with photographs of what Drake guessed were club members smiling at the camera. He noticed a large group, all in black tie, glasses raised as a toast. John Beltrami was smiling broadly alongside his family. Two other men, both in their sixties, stood alongside Ellis-Pugh.

  ‘Special event?’ Drake said.

  ‘That’s Lewis Aylford and Ed Parry. Both are in the syndicate. The next photographs are of the wing walkers when they came to an air show we attended last year. Hairy stuff, I can tell you. Wouldn’t catch me doing that.’

  By the time Drake had looked at every photograph, Ellis-Pugh was sitting at his desk with various files in front of him. Drake guessed he’d need more time to assemble a complete list, so he sat down on a stiff metal chair to wait.

  ‘Damned regulations. Health and Safety’ll be the death of me,’ he said, grinning at his own joke.

  Ellis-Pugh pulled a sheaf of papers from a folder and handed them to Drake who was impressed by how quickly Ellis-Pugh had found the documents.

  ‘It pays to be organised,’ Ellis-Pugh said.

  They shook hands and Drake left, feeling the chill of the spring morning on his face when he stood by the car. A training hawk was landing; its tyres screeched, watched by a fire engine and ground crew. In the distance Drake saw the mountains, perhaps even the remains of a snow flurry from the cold snap the week before.

  * * *

  A monitor standing alongside the bed beeped occasionally, its LED display flashing various numbers. A drip was attached to the arm of the man lying on the bed in front of Drake. A message asking him to call Glyn Newman urgently had been left unanswered. The night staff at the hospital had warned Drake that Tom Vigo might not recover enough to provide a reliable witness statement. A part of Drake knew that MC could have assaulted Vigo, but he wanted to dismiss the possibility until there was evidence. Real, hard, concrete evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service would sign off without hesitation.

  A nurse entered the room and Drake took a step back as she moved towards the bed.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said, her back to Drake. ‘He’s not going to be fit to interview for days.’

  Drake drew a hand over his mouth, tightening his jaw. Drake knew that MC had a temper, but he’d never assaulted anybody. MC never had to: the prospect of crossing him was enough to stop most people.

  ‘What does the doctor say?’ Drake said, staring at the nurse.

  She turned and gave him a defiant look, daring him to question her professional judgement.

  ‘Same,’ she said, through clenched teeth.

  A sudden raft of sunshine poured through the window and Drake looked down at Vigo, thinking about the man’s previous convictions, which stretched over two pages of a Police National Computer printout. Vigo was a person known to the police as a fixer, the sort of low-level toe-rag that would push the drugs around the pubs for suppliers who wanted to keep a clean profile.

  ‘You’ll need to leave soon,’ the nurse said, hardening her eyes.

  Reluctantly, Drake buttoned his jacket and left the ward, after extracting confirmation from the nurse that if Vigo regained consciousness she would contact him immediately. He’d put as much menace into his voice as he thought appropriate but it had little effect on her.

  As he turned out of the corridor, he came face to face with Glyn Newman and Jeff Wallace.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Newman said.

  ‘I could ask the same about you,’ Drake said. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘This is our case,’ Wallace said, through a mouthful of gum.

  ‘And why is the drugs squad involved with a simple assault?’

  ‘This is my case.’ Newman moved past Drake towards the ward. ‘Don’t interfere. And make no mistake, MC is going down for this.’

  Outside Drake walked over to his car, a worry working its way into his head that MC was becoming a danger. If there was enough evidence to justify prosecution, questions might be asked about why he had been at the hospital. And why his recent contacts with MC had not been properly recorded. He tried MC’s number again, but it rang out.

  After cleaning his hands vigorously with an alcohol gel he kept in the glove compartment – he was never happy using the hand pumps on the wards – he drove away from the hospital and then on impulse turned towards Llanberis. Talking to MC’s mother would give him the opportunity to find out what else was going on in MC’s life. After turning left by the long boundary wall of the Vaynol estate, once the h
ome of the slate owners that had employed thousands of men in the quarries of North Wales, he powered the Alfa Romeo up the hill. The mountains of Snowdonia appeared in front of him as he negotiated various roundabouts until he reached the turning for Llanberis. A thin veil of grey cloud hung over the summits, promising dampness, even rain, to those hardy enough to be walking on the hills.

  He parked by the kerb in a small estate of bungalows. He strode over the road and pressed the front doorbell. The chiming stopped after a few seconds and he heard a shout from the rear of the property. A couple of minutes passed before Gwen Hughes answered the door.

  ‘Hello, Auntie Gwen.’

  She looked older than Drake remembered. And thinner too. A brief moment passed before she recognised Drake.

  ‘Ian, I didn’t recognise you, cariad.’

  She turned and led him through into a small back kitchen that smelt musty. Then he noticed the dog hair over all the chairs and an overweight Labrador sitting at the far corner, barely able to raise its head when it noticed a stranger in the house.

  ‘How are you?’ Drake said.

  ‘My knees aren’t so good.’

  ‘Are you managing okay?’

  She nodded weakly and sat down by the table. ‘Do you want tea or something?’

  Drake shook his head; the prospect of instant from a mug covered with dog hairs extinguished his need for coffee.

  ‘I saw Moelwyn recently.’

  A dark cloud passed over Gwen’s eyes. ‘How’s your father?’

  Drake hesitated. He could imagine the anguish she must have felt, the embarrassed glances in the shop and the awkward looks in the chapel on a Sunday morning.

  ‘He’s not very well.’

  ‘I’d heard. And Mair?’

  ‘Mam’s coping,’ Drake said. ‘I need to see Moelwyn. I’ve tried his mobile and I need to contact him. I don’t have his new address.’

  Gwen gave him a vacant, almost surprised, look.

  ‘You haven’t heard then?’

  ‘Sorry. What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s had a stroke.’

  Drake could guess what had happened and he could guess how MC would react. ‘Do you mean…?’

  ‘Sylvie was very sick,’ Gwen said, looking into the middle distance through the window. ‘There was nothing of her. Thin as a… what has the world come to…?’

  ‘What’s Moelwyn’s new address?’

  She got up from the seat and heaved herself over towards a dresser by the wall. She fumbled through a couple of drawers until she found a battered address book and read out the details.

  Drake stood up and made to leave.

  ‘But he’s probably at her house,’ Gwen said, reading out a second address, before negotiating her way back to the chair by the table.

  Drake left Gwen in the kitchen, thanking her for her help, promising to call again. Outside the spring morning had a cold tinge to the air. The mountains above the small town were grey and bleak in the morning sunshine. To his right, high up the mountain, he saw the outline of the gaping hole made by the Penrhyn quarry.

  He suppressed a guilty feeling that he’d only called because he needed something. He wondered what Gwen was going to do for the rest of the day and then he remembered that he had to call his mother and find out how his father was.

  But first he needed to find MC.

  Chapter 17

  ‘I’m early.’

  Hannah gave Drake a weak smile. ‘I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.’

  She reached for the telephone as Drake sat on one of the visitor chairs, the comfortable variety with padded armrests, and a significant improvement from the plastic chairs in the Incident Room. Hannah didn’t seem too disappointed with the absence of Wyndham Price, despite the rumours about their close working relationship. Two well-thumbed editions of a popular walking magazine were lying on a table beside a publication from a major supermarket chain featuring their latest baking recipes.

  After a couple of minutes – it felt longer – the telephone rang and Hannah swivelled in her chair. Drake noticed her slender legs and as he stepped towards the door into Lance’s office he admired her neat and tidy desk. Had he been seeing Wyndham Price she might have smiled, but now she kept her comments brief.

  ‘He’ll see you now.’ She darted her eyes towards the door before returning to stare at the computer screen on her desk.

  Lance was sitting by the conference table in the middle of the room, a formality that Wyndham Price kept for important meetings.

  ‘Please sit,’ Lance said, nodding towards the chairs at the end of the table.

  Drake did as he was told. Lance had a long, thin head and a pronounced chin, as though stretched by some invisible weights, but what Drake hadn’t noticed on their first meeting was how dark the superintendent’s eyebrows were, and that one was higher than the other. A pair of cufflinks with a Welsh dragon emblem made a tapping sound as Lance moved his hands across the table, turning over the pages of the report in front of him. Drake tried to guess the superintendent’s age – it was difficult to tell: his hair was greying, crow’s feet clustered around his eyes and there was a hint of flabbiness under his chin.

  ‘You think there might be a drug connection?’ Lance said.

  ‘There’s sufficient residue on Rosen’s clothing to justify that assumption. And I’ve spoken— ’

  ‘Yes, I know. Inspector Newman kept me in the loop.’

  ‘He told me that Rosen has no links whatsoever to any known drug supplier,’ Drake said.

  ‘I’m worried about the allocation of resources. If you take this investigation over budget the finance department won’t be pleased.’

  ‘I appreciate that, sir.’ Drake could recall the memoranda that choked his inbox from the accountants when his last investigation went over budget. He wanted someone to tell the criminals to be considerate enough to allow the Wales Police Service to carry out its investigations on time and within budget. Drake had always been impressed how inventive the accountants could be in setting budgets when no one could tell how long a case might take. ‘We’re looking at all the passengers and crew. And then we’ll look at Rosen’s associates and friends.’

  ‘I know. I know. I’ve seen the references to Beltrami. From the little I’ve read about him you need to be careful.’

  A fragment of gossip from another DI over lunch the previous day had told Drake that Lance had spent two periods in the Professional Standards department in Newport – policing the policemen, although Drake knew that usually one posting to that department was enough to help any career.

  ‘I had some intelligence that suggested there was a drug connection,’ Drake said.

  ‘Is that from your source MC Hughes?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  Lance propped his chin on steepled hands before giving Drake a steely glare. ‘I know that Superintendent Wyndham Price allowed you a certain flexibility in the way you dealt with informants. You won’t find me so generous. If he’s an intelligence source everything has to be recorded properly, no matter what. Otherwise it could be a disciplinary matter. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Lance pulled out a red folder and examined the sheets as though he were looking for a highlighted section. ‘Was your trip to Dublin essential?’

  Despite the innocent-sounding question Drake sensed that Lance had something more specific on his mind.

  ‘In my judgement.’ Drake summoned as much legal jargon as he could manage. ‘It was important for me to establish the basic facts. Rosen had a substantial sum of money in a bank account. Scant attention was given to the money-laundering regulations.’

  Lance looked up from the papers and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What did the Garda say to that?’

  ‘Not a great deal.’

  Lance pursed his lips, Drake could see his mind working; Price would have picked up the phone and complained like hell to an officer of a similar rank in the Garda
. But he could see that Lance was going to ponder, consider the angles, weigh up the options.

  ‘They were cash deposits. Which suggests a connection to drugs,’ Drake said.

  A silence hung around the table. ‘Everything being equal, Inspector, I still think a junior officer could have visited Ireland.’

  Drake wasn’t certain what to say. Lance started clicking the top of a chrome biro, and the sound filled the void over the desk.

  ‘From now on I shall assume the role of SIO. You’ll be my deputy.’

  Drake could feel his shirt contracting round his neck. Lance stared at him. Drake wanted to blink as he thought how to react. It was his case. Had been his case.

  ‘And any contacts with other departments all come through my office,’ Lance continued.

  Drake sensed grime on his fingers and he desperately wanted to wipe away the grease he was sure lay along his hairline. Lance had returned to shuffling his papers.

  ‘Mandy Beal,’ Lance said eventually.

  Drake didn’t reply, uncertain whether he needed to say anything, relieved when Lance continued.

  ‘We haven’t had a post mortem report?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I’ll chase the pathologist.’ Lance scribbled on a yellow pad. ‘Is there any question that it wasn’t suicide?’

  ‘No forced entry, no sign of a struggle. And nothing missing, so far as we can tell.’

  ‘What’s your gut feeling?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You know, your immediate gut reaction. You must get them.’ Lance peered towards Drake.

  ‘Of course. It’s…’

  ‘Too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘I suppose…’

  ‘And it looks too neat.’

  ‘The evidence we’ve gathered so far all suggests that Mandy wasn’t the suicide type.’

  ‘And what sort is that?’

  Drake knew there was no simple answer; there wasn’t a standard description and typical characteristics of a person likely to commit suicide.

  ‘She didn’t have any problems. Didn’t complain to anybody. She broke up with Rosen, was upset but she got on with life.’

  Lance tidied the papers which Drake took as a signal that the meeting was over.