Worse Than Dead

by Stephen Puleston

  The drinks arrived and they stepped away from the bar. Drake took a mouthful of the black liquid, enjoying the warm, mellow flavour in his mouth. A man approaching them from the gambling area seemed familiar and Drake recognised Paul Maguire, despite the dinner jacket.

  ‘Hello, Mr Maguire,’ Drake said.

  Maguire stood rigid for moment, began blinking nervously, and then looked around as though he was searching for someone.

  ‘Gentlemen. Have a pleasant evening.’

  ‘What was that all about?’ O’Sullivan said.

  ‘Did you know that Maguire worked for Connors?’ Drake’s pulse beat in his neck.

  Before O’Sullivan could reply, Drake saw another face he recognised. He put the Guinness down on the nearest table. ‘We’re leaving. Now.’

  O’Sullivan opened his mouth to protest but Drake was already walking towards the door.

  Chapter 35

  By one a.m. Drake felt an ache in the small of his back, his mouth was dry and he could feel a headache developing all over his temples. And, after the nightclub, he needed to clean. He was convinced that the hand wipes he’d used had left a sticky residue over his hands. He’d finished the sudoku from The Irish Times, which he’d scanned unsuccessfully for photographs of Fergal Connors. The puzzle had been described as difficult, but Drake finished it in half an hour and wondered what the paper’s fiendish version would be like.

  He hated the feeling of not being in control. And the codes and numbers were still dominating everything and the fact that the battery on his mobile had run out earlier had put his nerves on edge.

  The call from Winder, before his mobile died, confirming that Church wasn’t on the ship and that in fact it was a completely different ferry, only made his edginess worse. The terminal lounge had uncomfortable, narrow, upright chairs. He thought about lying down to sleep, but worried he might sleep on and miss the ferry. He walked around. He stared blankly at the television high up on the wall playing the same music videos over and over. He watched the faces of the other passengers. Two students with backpacks and hiking poles were holding hands while watching a tablet computer. A handful of other passengers sat around the lounge, trying not to look bored, and others lay on the chairs or on the floor, arms tucked under the heads.

  After boarding, Drake hurried to the information desk on one of the upper decks, deciding that there might be cabins and that two hours’ sleep had to help. A woman behind the counter yawned at him and then nodded, telling him the cost, debiting his card and passing over a small key before pointing to a door across the hallway.

  He couldn’t remember falling asleep, but a sharp knock on the door and a shout woke him just before arriving at Holyhead. At first he couldn’t focus his eyes, and his mouth was still parched. He disembarked in a blur and found the Alfa where he’d parked it the night before. Fretting that he couldn’t stay awake long enough to drive home, he opened the window and suffered the cold air streaming over his face.

  He pulled into his drive just before seven and as he entered the house, he heard the alarm by the side of his bed.

  * * *

  ‘Martin Valencia.’

  Drake looked at the faces in the Incident Room. Caren’s eyes were piercing and Winder stood, his feet wide apart. Howick had his arms firmly threaded together. There was an edge of expectation that Drake hoped signalled that progress was being made.

  ‘Valencia is a known supplier. The WPS have been after him for years. Flashy bastard has a Range Rover and he wears white suits. But in the past every case against him has collapsed. He was sitting bold as brass in the Blue Parrot last night with Fergal Connors.’

  ‘Did he spot you?’ Caren said.

  ‘Don’t think so. I want to know everything about Valencia. And this goes no further than our team. Understood?’

  Drake looked at each of them in turn, knowing that soon he’d owe them an explanation. Once he had one from Lance. Drake turned to the board and tapped a sheet printed with one of the codes. ‘I had to go to Ireland to make sense of these.’

  He leant over and circled a section with a yellow marker. ‘The number is for the year. So 05 is 2005, etc. and then the letter or letters refers to the Irish county. So WW is Wexford and KK is Kilkenny.’

  ‘And I thought that was something to do with the Ku Klux Klan,’ Winder said.

  ‘You watch too many DVDs.’ Howick sounded serious.

  ‘The Garda were able to build a list of the vehicles and they all belong to a haulage company that’s owned by Fergal Connors. The police in Dublin have a complete unit looking into him. But what’s interesting for us is his link to Beltrami. The freight company they own carries freight regularly through Holyhead.’

  Drake turned to Winder. ‘Gareth, did you get hold of Mortlake?’

  ‘He was really pissed off. Doesn’t like you, boss.’

  Drake allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction as he thought about interrupting Mortlake’s domestic routine.

  ‘The lists you’re after only arrived about an hour ago. Dave and I are working on them at the moment.’

  ‘What about the rest of the codes?’ Caren asked.

  ‘Once we work that out, we’ll…’ Drake took a glimpse at the board, wondering whether the Garda had any chance of prosecuting Connors. ‘Tell me about the CCTV footage, Dave.’

  ‘The only two deck officers we could see that might be of interest are Robert James and Rhodri Owens. But it could take hours to build a complete picture of the movements of all the crew. There are so many cameras over the ship and all the crew had key cards to get access to everywhere. We need more bodies to do the job properly.’

  Drake couldn’t tell how Lance would react to a request for more resources, but he could easily imagine the pained look Superintendent Price would have given him, before letting off steam about the bean counters in finance. So Drake ignored Howick and stared at the board, hoping for more inspiration, and the prospect of a meeting with Lance later that morning preying on his mind.

  ‘Did you find Vicky Church?’

  ‘Wasn’t at home last night.’

  Caren said out loud to no one in particular. ‘I’ll talk to her family.’

  Drake hesitated. ‘We need to find MC and I want all the statements and house-to-house inquiries around Green’s property looked at again.’

  The earlier anticipation of progress had mellowed into a realisation of the scale of the work they needed to get through.

  ‘Are we any further forward, sir?’ Caren said, a frown on her face.

  * * *

  ‘We need additional resources to work on establishing where all the crew were at the time of Rosen’s death.’

  Lance stared at Drake without interrupting, but now Drake noticed his raised eyebrows. He persevered until he’d explained how many cameras there were on the ship. Drake even managed to dredge from his memory comments made by Mortlake and Captain Seymour about the different levels of security they worked to when the ship sailed.

  ‘Interview Owens and James initially. Then we’ll review.’

  ‘The Garda have a lot of background on Fergal Connors and his involvement in organised crime. There’s a connection to Beltrami and there’s a real possibility that they’re moving drugs through the port.’

  Lance was nodding now.

  ‘And shouldn’t we be bringing in the drug squad and Special Branch for this, sir. This is developing into a major organised-crime investigation.’

  It had troubled Drake before that Lance wanted to keep this operation under his direct control. There were protocols about team working and shared objectives that Lance was ignoring and Drake hoped that none of this was going to impact on his own career. He tried to decipher the look in Lance’s eyes, to interpret what was going on, but, as always, he struggled.

  ‘I will liaise with Special Branch in Cardiff. But murder is always top priority.’ Lance was staring at Drake now, his jaw clenched. ‘I don’t want you making contact with any other de
partment. And that includes drug squad.’

  Drake thought about requesting confirmation in writing, but knew that within an hour Lance would have sent him a formal memo.

  ‘But there are—’

  ‘And that goes for your team as well. Make certain they all understand it. We’re talking about three murders here.’

  Drake thought about the practicalities. ‘I know, sir, but—’

  ‘It’s a direct order, Inspector.’

  Chapter 36

  Drake hoped he could quell his frustration with Lance. He slammed closed the door to his room, ignoring the puzzled looks on the faces of his team.

  A light drizzle fell on the window. It would only be a matter of time before the lack of sleep would affect him. Something was very wrong, but trying to rationalise the thoughts that were competing against his rituals only made him more anxious. He had to make some progress and he had to get the team to make progress.

  He marched out to the Incident Room and over towards Winder.

  ‘Gareth, have you finished cross-referencing the ship’s manifests against the registration plates of the lorries?’

  ‘Should be finished later.’

  ‘Come on. Get on with it. We’ve got three murders to solve.’

  ‘I spoke to some of Mandy’s friends,’ Caren said. Drake gave her one of his troubled expressions. ‘They said she’d been talking about moving to somewhere warm.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Drake said.

  ‘Bournemouth, probably,’ Howick chipped in.

  Caren ignore the comments. ‘One of them said that Mandy had an old laptop. But there was no sign of it in the house.’

  Drake nodded.

  Winder had more to say. ‘We’ve been digging into Rhodri James.’

  Drake raised his eyebrows, hoping that whatever Winder looked so pleased about wasn’t another dead end.

  ‘Until ten months ago Rhodri Owens owed a shed load on his credit cards.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty grand.’

  ‘And?’ Drake realised Winder had more to say.

  ‘All of it has been paid off in varying amounts. And now he’s only got a couple of thousand left. Apparently his marriage fell apart a few years ago. He took it badly, especially when his wife took the children to live in Florida. Every chance he gets he goes to see them. But it’s expensive.’

  ‘We’ll have to interview him.’ Drake looked at the smiling faces of Howick and Winder. ‘Get on to it right away.’

  He turned and left without looking at the face of either officer. In his office he sat down and clenched his hands together. His eyes burnt. His shoulders were heavy. The need to follow his usual rituals tugged at his mind until he thought about Halpin and he reached for the notebook in the top left-hand drawer and opened a new sheet – always a clean page for every new entry. He wrote sudoku and desk-tidying before scribbling how do I stop myself?

  Slowly he unclenched his fingers.

  He cleared his desk and found the codes from Rosen’s computer. He opened an Excel spreadsheet and copied the data into three columns before printing the single sheet, which he placed in the middle of his desk. He placed the fingers of each hand against his forehead, as though, by applying pressure, his concentration would increase. He stared at the numbers and letters.

  06

  10

  8

  G

  N

  G

  LK

  WX

  D

  1589

  3985

  15146

  0630

  0524

  0218

  351

  1652

  2568

  He deleted the data that related to the Irish vehicles and stared at the bare details with the empty cells.

  G

  N

  G

  1589

  3985

  15146

  0630

  0524

  0218

  He ignored the letters. The numbers would be easier. He began constructing a spreadsheet of possible alternative scenarios. And, realising that he’d wasted an hour before recognising that the letters and numbers had to be taken together, he headed for the kitchen, knowing that he would be comforted by the repetition of his usual routine.

  Rejuvenated by the bittersweet taste of the coffee from Columbian beans coating his mouth, he opened another spreadsheet and entered the entire alphabet down one side, guessing that Rosen may have converted letters into numbers. He chose the letters that corresponded to the number and filled out the spreadsheet, including the possible variations for the five-digit entry.

  1589

  3985

  15146

  AEHI

  CIHE

  AEADF

  OANF - 15,1,4,6

  AENF - 1,5,14,6

  0630

  0524

  0218

  FC?

  EBD - 5,2,4

  BR - 2,18

  EX - 5,24

  BAH - 2,1,8

  He looked blankly at the result of this exercise, thinking that there was something familiar about the second line with the four letters. But the final number had three permutations and none seemed to help him. The line of letters under the second row of numbers filled him with even less enthusiasm than the first set of four letters. He remembered a training session with a management consultant who’d referred to the preponderance of TLAs in every walk of life. It took a while for Drake to realise he was referring to Three Letter Abbreviations.

  0630

  0524

  0218

  3006

  2405

  1802

  He ran a brief experiment.

  FC?

  Football Club?

  EBD

  English Bottling Department

  BR?

  British Rail

  BAH

  British Aerospace Hospital

  There could be endless possibilities and the prospect that they’d never find an explanation filled him with dread.

  It occurred to him to divide the last set of numbers into pairs and reverse them – he even considered the possibility of matching pairs from different columns. As he read the second line of digits an excitement grew at the possibility that dates were emerging. And, if he was right, then what had motivated Rosen to keep this record?

  ‘Gareth,’ he shouted.

  Moments later Winder appeared at the door.

  ‘I need that list of all the dates of the flights from RAF Mona.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Drake could hear the rustling of papers and the twanging of lever-arch files. Then Winder stood at the other side of the desk and slipped over the sheets he’d asked for. He could feel the anticipation that something had to add up from all the hard work.

  His pulse quickened as he read that Rosen had flown on the thirtieth of June and on the eighteenth of February, but disappointment that no flight had been recorded on the twenty-fourth of May. Drake searched for the names of the plane’s passengers but then realised that he had been given a list of the flights only.

  ‘Gareth,’ he shouted. ‘I need the details of the passengers on this list.’

  Winder stood at Drake’s door. ‘We’ve never had that, boss.’

  Drake stared at Winder, realising that there was a piece of the jigsaw missing. He wondered why the names of the passengers hadn’t been provided. He picked up the telephone and dialled a man who could help.

  * * *

  Miranda Church was a perfect size ten, Caren concluded. And the well-pressed denims complemented her long, slim legs. It had taken all of Caren’s motivation to unwrap herself from the warmth of Alun’s body that morning and the next opportunity for a morning away from the investigation seemed a forlorn hope.

  Miranda glided around the kitchen making coffee, then offering lunch, which Caren refused.

  ‘I am so desperately worried.’ Miranda flicked her blonde hair. ‘Vicky has nev
er done anything like this before.’

  ‘When did you see her last?’ Caren said, sipping coffee from a bone china mug.

  ‘It was before she went to work on her last shift. But we speak every day.’

  ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘There was somebody on the ship, but it was never serious. I never wanted her to work there.’ Miranda made it sound like a leper colony.

  ‘Have you spoken to her friends? Maybe she’s gone away from a few days. Is she due a holiday?’

  ‘Look, I know this may sound old-fashioned but I know my daughter, sergeant,’ Miranda said, managing to inject Caren’s rank with maximum condescension. ‘Her mobile phone is dead, and the landline wasn’t answered all of last night.’

  ‘Do you have a key to her house?’

  ‘Of course,’ Miranda said, shocked by the implication that she might not.

  ‘And.’

  ‘She’s not there, of course.’

  ‘Perhaps we should take a look.’

  Caren followed Miranda out to a gleaming silver sports car. They turned west along the narrow lanes behind the town of Beaumaris, Caren in the passenger seat, who was gradually deciding that being Miranda’s daughter would have driven any sane person to escape. Caren had heard the details about the annual sailing club ball, Vicky’s favourite restaurant, how she had always been such a success at school and that now she was waiting to hear about a job opportunity in the Caribbean. The car slowed and Miranda pulled into a narrow driveway.

  ‘It’s just down this path.’ Miranda pointed towards a narrow gate.

  At the bottom of a narrow path of cream-and-custard-coloured slabs Caren saw the front of the two-storey farmhouse. It was sort of image Caren saw in glossy magazines at the hairdressers. Miranda pushed the key into the front door and Caren followed her inside. As she closed the door behind her, there was a sound of moving furniture from the first floor.