Worse Than Dead

by Stephen Puleston

  Returning to his office, he focused on what he had to say to Lance. Drake had replied to Sian’s text earlier, telling her not to expect him home until much later. He could never work out from her brief messages whether she was annoyed or just busy. He left his mobile on his desk and walked up to the senior management suite.

  Once he’d finished explaining to Lance about the recording, he paused, anticipating that Lance would respond.

  ‘I think we should arrest Valencia on suspicion of murder,’ Drake said, tired of waiting.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  Momentarily Drake was nonplussed. ‘But we know that Green and Mandy Beal have the same father. She’d been talking to her friends about tracing her family—’

  ‘How the hell is that going to help us?’ Lance said.

  Drake gathered his thoughts, hoping he could capture the clarity he needed. ‘Whoever killed Rosen was looking for something on the laptop. A piece of data. But what they don’t know is that we have that data. We just couldn’t work out what it could possibly be, not until the last couple of days.’

  ‘What. The trucks and planes?’

  ‘Yes. And one of Mandy’s friends said her old laptop was missing.’ Drake hesitated. ‘Valencia thought Mandy, as Rosen’s ex, may have had the information he needed, but she didn’t. So he killed her. Green finds out and there’s an argument in Green’s house. Valencia sees the opportunity to tidy everything up and bang. He kills Green and hopes everything is done.’

  Drake ran out of momentum and silence hung in the room for a few seconds.

  ‘MC is the only eyewitness we’ve got,’ Drake continued. ‘But we can’t trace him. Clearly we’ve got evidence to suggest that he may have been abducted, even killed by Valencia.’

  ‘I warned you about MC. If we take this to the Crown Prosecution Service they’d think we were mad,’ Lance said. ‘MC’ll turn up. Men like that always do.’

  Drake opened his mouth to reply, but knowing that if he said something, he’d regret it. So he kept quiet, clenching his jaw in annoyance, feeling, oddly, that MC deserved to be taken seriously. At least they had a confession of some sort to the murder of Green.

  ‘Keep focused on the codes and the connection to Loosemore and John Beltrami.’ Lance leant forward, staring at Drake. ‘Just imagine what evidence you’d use in any interview with Valencia.’

  Drake drew a hand over his mouth, reluctant to acknowledge that the superintendent was right.

  ‘What’s the motive, Ian? There always has to be a motive.’

  * * *

  Drake sat in the car for a few seconds after parking on his drive. There had been normal days during the investigation, but they seemed a long time ago. His thoughts were a jumble, and he knew that he couldn’t tell Sian about MC. A real sense of foreboding filled his mind as he recalled the image of Valencia pointing the gun at MC.

  Sian was lying across a sofa, flicking through some papers. A pile of folders from the surgery lay strewn over the reclaimed-oak coffee table. Her blonde hair brushed the tall collar of her bold-striped cotton blouse.

  ‘Busy day?’

  Drake should have picked up the signals from the insincerity in Sian’s voice, but he slumped on the sofa and then rubbed his palms over his eyes, realising how tired he felt.

  ‘Helen and Megan asked about you earlier.’ Sian made him sound like a distant uncle.

  ‘Things are a bit hectic.’

  ‘Tom rang as well.’

  ‘How is he?’ Drake felt a spasm of guilt that he hadn’t spoken to his father for several days. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, realising it was far too late to call.

  ‘He’s not very well. He’s feeling very tired, wretched.’

  ‘I’ll call in the morning.’

  ‘He asked about MC, called him Moelwyn of course. He said that Auntie Gwen had called him – she was worried.’

  All Drake could think about was the sight of Martin Valencia drawing a gun. The image kept repeating itself like an old-fashioned black-and-white film, replaying the same frame over and over.

  ‘We don’t know where he is,’ Drake said, getting up, wanting to avoid further conversation. He returned from the kitchen, half an inch of whisky swilling around the bottom of a glass.

  ‘How have you been coping?’

  Drake was accustomed to her tone that mixed concern with medical objectivity.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I think you should make more of an effort to see the girls. They’re not going to be young forever. And taking a couple of hours to see them in the evening isn’t going to ruin your investigation, surely. And it might do you good.’

  Drake waited for her to say work-life balance but she grabbed the papers on her lap and then tidied all the files on the table.

  ‘I’m going to bed.’

  Drake knew he had to sleep, but first he needed to eat and, spying the newspaper on the table, buried under Sian’s files, realised that he had no choice but to complete a sudoku puzzle.

  Chapter 39

  At a little after eight that morning Drake stood before the Incident Room board with Lance’s demand for them to establish a motive buzzing through his mind. Despite seven hours’ sleep he still felt weary. He had replayed the scenario that Rosen had been killed by Green and Green had been killed by Valencia, so often that he hadn’t thought about why. He had woken that morning knowing grudgingly that Lance was right.

  ‘We don’t know why?’ Drake said, ignoring the puzzled look on the faces in front of him.

  Howick was the first to contribute. ‘You were right about the aircraft registration details, sir.’

  Caren’s interest was piqued and she looked over at Howick. ‘What are the details?’

  ‘There were twenty lists of codes. Like the one on the board. I’ve stripped away the codes relating to the vehicles from Ireland. Gareth has done work on matching the lorries to various manifests and journeys.’

  Winder nodded seriously.

  ‘All aircraft in the UK have a registration made up of an initial letter G, which we’ve got on fourteen of the twenty codes, followed by four letters. Perhaps it’s no surprise that two of the twelve aircraft are registered to either John Beltrami or Tim Loosemore.’

  ‘And what about the others?’ Drake said.

  ‘The prefix with an EI refers to planes registered in Ireland. The N prefix refers to the two aircraft initially registered in the US and the other two are from France.’

  There was a nodding of heads once the interpretation was apparent.

  ‘I’m waiting for confirmation about the ownership details.’

  Drake knew it was progress, but wasn’t certain exactly where it was taking them. ‘Your turn, Gareth,’ he said, still staring at the board.

  Winder stood up and stepped around his desk, holding various sheets of paper in his hand.

  ‘All the trucks that we identified from the codes in Rosen’s computer have travelled across in the last twelve months on a regular basis. They all carry freight for various companies, but it’s the haulage company that owns the vehicles which is of interest. It’s owned jointly by Beltrami and Connors.’

  ‘So it’s giving us a link between Beltrami and Connors. It still doesn’t explain the motives behind the deaths.’ Drake said.

  ‘Rosen must have been blackmailing Beltrami and Connors and Loosemore, and the whole fucking lot of them,’ Winder added, sounding exasperated.

  ‘You don’t blackmail somebody like Beltrami or Connors, unless you’ve got insurance,’ Drake said. ‘And we’ve got these lists of letters and numbers.’

  Winder raised a hand, waving the papers in the air. ‘But we’ve got the evidence to demonstrate a connection. This is his insurance: he was keeping a record of all the lorries that came through the port with drugs or illegal immigrants or…’

  Drake began pacing in front of the board. Winder had run out of steam because there was nothing to link the codes to specific offences. Without t
he evidence, there was nothing they could achieve.

  ‘If we are right that Rosen was killed by Green, then why was Green killed?’

  ‘He knew too much,’ Caren said.

  Drake was the first to break the brief moment of silence that followed. ‘That would certainly match Valencia’s personality. But there’s the connection to Mandy Beal. What if Valencia killed her and Green found out and…’

  ‘Maybe she knew too much?’ Winder said.

  Drake was pulling the tip of his nose, trying to work out what exactly would have been the motive for killing Mandy Beal. ‘They were looking for something. Rhodri Owens was told to look for the laptop and a data stick. They must have thought she had it.’

  ‘Who’s ‘they’, sir?’ Caren asked.

  Drake rolled his eyes just as the telephone rang in his office. He hurried over and snatched up the receiver. The desk was tidy and the floor and bin reassuringly clean.

  He recognised the gruff voice of Malachy O’Sullivan. ‘Have you seen your emails yet?’

  ‘No. Give me a minute…’ Drake reached for the switch on the computer.

  ‘We found the body of Paul Maguire face down in the Liffey yesterday.’

  ‘Christ Almighty. How?’

  The screensaver appeared on the monitor and Drake clicked through to his inbox.

  ‘Shot in the head. And knee-capped for good measure.’

  ‘What? Like the IRA did years ago?’

  ‘That’s right. Jesus, Ian, have you had that email?’

  Drake clicked on O’Sullivan’s message and saw the attachment.

  ‘There’s no message – just an attachment…’

  ‘Open it. Maguire’s sister flew in last night. Wanted an armed escort from the airport.’

  ‘What for?’

  The image was finally opening.

  ‘She’s got enough evidence to put Fergal Connors away for a thousand years. And she’s got material you’ll want to see.’

  Drake heard O’Sullivan but didn’t reply. He just stared at the screen.

  * * *

  Caren had secretly been pleased to have Drake out of the way with the door to his office firmly closed and instructions that he not be disturbed. It meant she could interview Robert James in her own time without the inspector’s inevitable rudeness, but in the end she’d returned to headquarters frustrated that she’d wasted valuable time. Caren had guessed that Vicky had acquired the skills of manipulating inexperienced men from her mother. James had been saddled with a mountain of debt from regular holidays, refurbishing and redecorating Vicky’s house, as well as buying her a new car. He had believed her protestations of undying love and when she had unceremoniously dumped him in favour of Frank Rosen, he had become incapable of clear thought.

  The telephone rang just as Caren returned from a ten-minute lunch, where she’d bolted down a cheese sandwich that sat heavily in her stomach.

  ‘There’s someone in reception about that girl, Mandy Beal.’

  Caren finished the glass of water on her desk, hoping it might help to settle her indigestion, before finding a notepad and a biro.

  The receptionist pointed to a man sitting with a camera bag by his feet. Immediately he stood up and stretched out a hand.

  ‘George Abbott,’ he said, giving Caren a brief smile.

  Abbott had the remains of acne under a wispy beard that was intended to make him look older but that succeeded only in accentuating his youthfulness. Caren guessed eighteen, maybe twenty at the most.

  ‘I’ve been away on holiday in Malta with my parents. We live a couple of doors down from Mandy Beal. We heard that she’d been killed when we got back yesterday. Terrible, really terrible. She was so nice. Only, I know this might be nothing, but I saw her a couple of times with this guy.’

  Caren led Abbott into an adjacent interview room. He put the camera equipment bag onto the table. He was wearing a short-sleeved grey shirt under a blue gilet of heavily quilted material, its collar lined with leather.

  ‘I saw him leave the house with her one morning.’

  ‘Can you give me a description?’

  ‘I saw him again with her a couple of days later.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘In that fancy supermarket in Menai Bridge.’

  ‘What, inside?’

  ‘No, I was outside in the car park.’

  ‘In your car?’

  ‘Yes. I was working.’

  ‘Working?’

  ‘I’m training to be paparazzi.’

  Caren knew that by now Drake would have been drumming his fingers on the desk, wanting to tell this time-waster to leave.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m doing a photographic course. And I want to go and take photographs of celebrities and important people. Really great pictures can earn a lot of money in the glossy magazines.’

  Caren hoped that Abbott hadn’t heard the gurgling sound from her stomach, so she decided it was time to stop humouring him and bring the interview to an end.

  ‘Who were you hoping to photograph?’

  ‘I know one of the staff there and they told me they were expecting a royal visitor.’

  Caren nodded.

  ‘And did you see Mandy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll get one of the detective constables to come and take a statement from you.’

  Caren stood up.

  ‘But don’t you want to see the photographs?’ Abbott said reaching for his case.

  * * *

  Drake had downloaded the large file onto his computer and began reading through the papers that Maguire had taken a long time to collect. There were statements and memoranda that should have been destroyed years before and Drake realised that this had been his attempt at a posthumous revenge. People like Connors didn’t respond to threats and Drake doubted whether Maguire had even tried to blackmail his boss, an act which would probably have meant something worse than death.

  Emails with references to Richard Class had been highlighted in yellow and, from what Drake could recollect, they tied into the dates of the activity involved with Lyfon Pharmaceuticals. Superintendent Adams would salivate at the prospect of threading all these emails into his papers. Perhaps there would be a realistic prospect of the CPS authorising a prosecution. There were dates of regular ‘shipments’ through Holyhead. Drake tried focusing on the evidence. He had three murders to solve. Three deaths that needed evidence to satisfy the prosecutors. Valencia was the killer of course, but without MC he just couldn’t prove anything. Everything else was guesswork. There had to be a motive.

  Drake tilted his head to one side as he began looking through the various photographs of Richard Class. In the first, a tall, thin girl with small breasts and erect nipples sat naked over Richard Class’s buttocks. Drake could see the hairs on his chest and the outline of a paunch taking shape. His hands were on the girl’s thighs. In the final couple of photographs, Drake could only guess that Class was still enjoying himself, as he couldn’t see the politician’s face, which was buried between the legs of a shorter Chinese girl.

  By the end of the morning Drake had read enough and called Mallin.

  ‘How did she get all this material?’ Drake asked.

  ‘Maguire sent her copies of everything he could get his hands on. He worked for Connors for five years in the club. Nobody noticed him. He was the sort of semi-invisible person the likes of Connors take for granted.’

  ‘Where were the photographs taken?’ Drake said.

  ‘We can’t tell. But we think it was at a nightclub years ago. The girls are all part of a Chinese prostitute ring that was active in the city years ago. They targeted Americans mostly, here on business or on golfing holidays.’

  ‘So what’s happening now?’

  ‘Garda Commissioner’s happy. And the DPP. Both so fucking happy.’

  ‘What changed?’ Drake said. It had been on his mind all morning as he’d read the papers.

  ‘What do
you mean?’ There was uncertainty in Mallin’s voice.

  ‘What changed that made Connors have to kill Maguire?’

  ‘Who knows? Who cares? He’s going down for years.’

  Drake still had a nagging sense that there was something he’d missed.

  Chapter 40

  Caren barged into Drake’s room, Winder and Howick following in her slipstream.

  Drake looked up from his desk: there was tiredness in his eyes that Caren hadn’t seen before.

  ‘We’ve got an eyewitness,’ she said. ‘I’ve got photographs.’

  She held up the camera’s memory card.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve just interviewed a geek who takes photographs. He wants to be paparazzi when he qualifies. I’ll show you.’ She turned on her heels and pushed past Winder and Howick, before almost knocking over an office chair. She pressed the memory stick into her computer and clicked until the first image appeared on the screen.

  Drake stood behind her, Winder and Howick to one side. Pictures of expensive cars and high-value SUVs filled the screen.

  ‘Where were these taken?’ Drake said.

  ‘At that pricey supermarket in Menai Bridge on Anglesey. He was waiting to take photographs of the royals. Apparently he’s friends with one of the staff who tips him off when they’re likely to arrive. The manager always knows in advance, because the Royal Protection officers contact him. And they clear a parking space right next to the door.’

  Caren scrolled through the images.

  ‘Jesus, how many pictures does this guy need?’ Winder said.