by Mike Holden
“Dropped two hundred feet down the cliff and hasn’t moved since”
“Tell Jimmy to make himself scarce. I don’t want him with you when the ambulance men arrive” Davies pressed the button to end the call. From his viewpoint in his car, he could see all the next events unfolding in front of him, and whilst he was watching he made another phone call
“Paul?” The answer was obviously in the affirmative. “I want you to get yourself right now to the Lake District, to a village called Coniston and when you get here, ring me straight away”
Davies terminated the conversation. Paul Ellwood knew better than to do anything other than obey. He was in his car within five minutes of the call.
CHAPTER 30
Kingsly explained to Kim and Ned that it was necessary to go to the local police station to make a statement, but this was routine and they had no cause to worry. They were ushered towards a police car. Ned pointed out that they had their own car there but he was informed that a constable would drive it to the station.
Once they had been driven away, Kingsly made his way down the track to his own car but was confronted by two people whom he was surprised to see. Hannah Beaumont and Howard Parker had been keeping an eye on events ever since they arrived which was too late to witness the procession of Mancunians go their various ways up the mountain, but allowed them sufficient time to clock the cars in the car park. After confirming some details with Alan Payne, they had found three interesting cars, a hired Ford Focus, rented to Ned White, a unmarked police Ford Mondeo, allocated to Terry Kingsly, they knew that anyway, and a battered blue Mercedes belonging to Neil Haslam, an interesting cocktail. Therefore, they too, sat back and waited for their opportunity to arrive. They waited for what seemed to be an eternity before spotting Kingsly, Chen and White descending the mountain. Hannah moved as if to get out of the car, but Parker bade her to hold back.
“I’m assuming that Kingsly’s companions are our Miss Chen and Mr White.” Hannah confirmed it by nodding.
“Then we were right this morning and Kingsly was able to track them once they had left their cottage. The three of them seem to be quite friendly with each other. Could they have come to some sort of agreement up that mountain to split the loot between them? Hannah, you’re good at theories. What do you make of that?”
She thought for a moment and then replied,
“We need more information, but I don’t think that they’re in it together. Chen and White seem quite naïve and I still think that they are innocent parties. Terry could be trying to con them.”
Parker murmured to himself. They watched Kim and Ned get into a marked police car and drive off, before they made their way to where Kingsly was standing. Parker spoke first.
“I think you have some explaining to do, Terry,” Kingsly was about to speak. “Not here but at the local nick”
It was Hannah’s turn to speak.
“We’ve seen Chen and White being driven off. You are here so all that is left is Haslam. Where is he?”
They obviously did not know and therefore must not have been in contact with the local police. He could use this to his advantage.
“He’s dead. One of Vic Davies’ men, Brian Slater pushed him over a cliff after he threw the money over it. I’m assuming of course, that you are aware that some of Vic Davies’ men are up here as well”
This news confirmed to both Hannah and Parker what they had suspected last evening when they eyeballed the two characters in the hotel. They glanced at each other, and although it was barely imperceptible, Kingsly noticed through his trained eyes. He continued,
“I think that Davies is in this up to his neck and that he and Haslam have planned the robbery. The only two outstanding matters as far as I can see, is proving it and getting either White or Chen to tell us how they are involved.”
“And why you shot up here without telling anybody” added Parker. Kingsly just stared at him. Parker said to him
“There are a lot of questions that need to be answered and I expect you to co-operate even though I am telling you that you are officially off the case.”
Kingsly expected this and nodded his agreement. Parker told him that he would accompany him in his car to the local nick. Both Kingsly and Parker hoped that the police station would be quite large, as there appeared to be many people heading there. They did not anticipate the extra person following them to be included in the numbers. Vic Davies had obviously decided that Kingsly had still to be followed. On the way, he made a call to Ben Cresswell. Jimmy Reed could look after himself.
*
The police station was not really that large and was located in the small town of Ambleside, some eight miles away. Three rooms had been prepared at Parker’s request one each for Kim and Ned who would be making their statements separately and one for Terry Kingsly who would eventually be interviewed formally by Inspector Parker. Kim and Ned were the first ones to arrive and they were placed in each of the rooms, accompanied by an apparently sympathetic officer. Once they had arrived, Parker and Hannah interviewed Kim and Ned separately, with Kim being the first. Parker thought that it was unusually quiet for a police station, presumably because crime around here was still relatively rare. He would think seriously about putting in for a transfer to this part of the world.
They were asked to give a statement of events from the time when they began to climb the mountain to the time they were back in the car park, which the respective constables accurately wrote down as they were speaking. The statements were read out to them and they were duly signed with Kim adding a codicil that she felt there was insufficient time between the incidents for her to fully recover. She told the female constable who was her “guard” that she was a solicitor and she hoped that this would not turn out to be a problem in the future. Parker decided he wanted a quick word with Kim and Ned together. He took Ned into the second interview room and invited him to sit next to Kim. He dismissed the other policemen from the room.
“Miss Chen, Mr White, I just wanted to talk to you off the record. You seem to have gone through a lot in the last three or four days”
“You’re not kidding” replied Kim somewhat sarcastically. He ignored the comment.
“If you want my personal opinion, I think you are both the innocent and injured parties in this whole sorry affair and I shall be treating you as such. Whilst I don’t want an answer now, I shall still have to ask you about the money and it would be better now, in view what has happened if you both will come clean. I shall want to speak with you again in more detail but it’s getting late today. What are your plans tomorrow?”
Ned said “We are planning on returning to Manchester so we can draw a line under this whole business”
“I don’t blame you but it would be better if we could talk to you up here, particularly as a serious crime has been committed here and you two are the main witnesses. Can we reconvene here at ten o’clock?”
Kim and Ned reluctantly agreed. Outside the police station, Kim turned round to Ned and said
“After all that you’ve put me through today, the least you can for me now is to buy me those fish and chips in Coniston.”
CHAPTER 31
Parker and Hannah sat alone in the office, now vacated by Kim and Ned and mused over the day’s events as it was told to them. He decided that he would not be as easy with Terry Kingsley as he had with Ned. Like his superintendent, he was very unsympathetic with fellow officers who were transgressing their unwritten code but he knew that he would be scuppered if Kingsly demanded to be represented by the Federation. Parker was considering how he should approach the interview when a rather large and rotund person entered the room and interrupted his thoughts. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Dan Bishop. He had a strong Geordie accent.
“I thought that I would update you on developments. As you know Detective Sergeant Terence K
ingsly is here waiting to be seen by yourselves. We have not spoken to him about his involvement on the mountain but we would very much like to, when you are finished with him. We have found a body at the foot of a crag. Formal identification needs to be undertaken at the mortuary in Kendal, where it has been taken. However, from documents on the person, it could be a Mr Neil Haslam. A man by the name of Brian Slater is also in hospital in Kendal suffering from a gunshot wound in his leg. He was found on the ridge above the area where Haslam was found, and as Haslam’s death is being treated as suspicious, we have put a guard on Slater and will question him in the morning. The phone call, informing us of the whereabouts of these two people was made by your Mr White.”
He paused and was about to make an exit, when he said
“Oh, and by the way, we found quite a lot of pieces of paper near to where Haslam’s body was found, deliberately cut into sizes to resemble bank notes but no money at all was found there.”
*
When Bishop had left, Parker asked Hannah her views on the developments.
“White still has the money and he has hidden it. It doesn’t make him as innocent as perhaps we thought he was.”
“Could Haslam have thrown the paper hoping to lead a false trail?”
“It’s possible but why would he go to all that effort to throw it off the top of a mountain?”
“Why would Slater kill Haslam?”
“There’s no easy answer to that”
They were pondering on that last question when a young constable brought some documents into the office and handed them to Parker. He read them intently in silence and handed them to Hannah. She, too, read them in silence. Parker spoke eventually
“According the Mr White and Miss Chen, it looks like Slater caused Haslam to fall over the cliff but what was Slater, Haslam and Kingsly doing on that mountain in the first place?”
“Terry was up the mountain because he was following Chen and White” said Hannah. “We can only now speculate as to why Haslam was there. Obviously, either Terry or Vic Davies tipped him off. Perhaps one or the other or both expected him to get the money for them.”
“Or Chen-stroke-White arranged to meet him there. It all boils down to the fact that they were after the money. They all knew that Chen and White were up that mountain and they had the money with them or they were convinced that they knew where the money was. The situation is that we do not have very much on Kingsly and at worst, he will be reprimanded. Do we tell him about the phantom money and see his reaction. He may revert.”
“I think we should and also, we should keep an eye on him”
“Okay then, bring him in”
Hannah left the room and returned very quickly with Kingsly. When confronted with his two colleagues Kingsly was very tempted to make a sarcastic comment about more Manchester coppers being in the Lake District than in Manchester, but as he wanted to ingratiate himself, he confined his actions to a smile. He was offered a seat on the opposite side of the table to which Parker and Hannah were sitting.
“Good evening, Detective Sergeant Kingsly” said Howard Parker somewhat officiously
“Evening, sir”
“Perhaps you will tell us why you left very suddenly yesterday morning without informing anyone, and deliberately giving misleading information to avoid telling anyone that you were heading this way.”
“As you know, sir, I have been on this case where a large amount of money had been stolen from Sapphire Computers Limited. It was my belief_ “He paused. “It was our belief” emphasising the “our” and looking straight at Hannah, “that the perpritator of the crime was Mr Haslam who was in league with Miss Chen and Mr White although we could not find any direct link between them. I got a call from an informant that all three people were heading in this direction. I felt that I had to act quickly as the trail had gone cold on us the day before.”
“Why did you deliberately mislead Constable Beaumont by saying you were off-duty and that you were visiting a supermarket?”
“Well, sir, firstly I knew that there were important leads still to follow up in Manchester and that she would be better employed doing that and I know that if I had told her what I was doing she would have wanted to accompany me which I did not feel that this was usefully deploying recourses on what may have been a “wild goose chase” he lied.
“You seem to have contradicted yourself, Sergeant, why would you have expected Constable Beaumont to have followed up important leads in Manchester if the trail had already gone cold the day before?”
“It wasn’t exactly cold and there were issues that needed to be clarified”
Parker thought, he has peed on his chips with that question.
“So tell me, Sergeant, everything that has happened since that report”
“When I arrived in Kendal, I learnt from a telephone conversation with a local constable that Mr White had hired a car and I was given details of that car. I also ascertained from a local holiday letting agency where Mr White had rented a cottage”
A lie, thought Hannah, the lazy bugger had simply let them do the leg-work and had followed them. Still it would be interesting to hear his explanation of how he managed to find them on top of a mountain. Kingsly continued
“I made my way to their cottage and as I was about to turn into the lane where the cottage was, they drove out of that lane and headed north. I followed them and we ended up in Coniston, well, actually on the dirt track that leads up to the mountain. I decided to speak with them when I suddenly spotted that well-known villain, Brian Slater. I then held back and watched him following Miss Chen and Mr White up the mountain. He wasn’t going up their just to get lungs full of clean air so I followed them from what I thought was a very safe distance. The path does twist and turn a bit but as there is no chance of wandering off it I wasn’t unduly worried. Then all hell let loose up there. Slater appeared to have Miss Chen in a vice-like grip with White on the ground, and suddenly Neil Haslam appears from nowhere heading towards Slater and White as though he was their long-lost brother. Brotherly love did not last and soon Haslam and Slater were having a barney with Haslam producing a gun and firing it at Slater, hitting him in the leg, a somewhat foolhardy thing to do, considering Slater’s reputation. It appeared the aggro was over a largish black package that was in White’s backpack. Both Haslam and Slater began to fight over the package and it appeared to me that Haslam threw it over the rock face. Slater was so infuriated by this that he managed to sling Haslam over the side with it even though his leg was injured. I made my way to Miss Chen and Mr White who both seemed quite shocked at what they saw and accompanied them down the mountain to where you were waiting. That’s about it, sir” Kingsly concluded.
“Did Haslam fall over the cliff side accidentally or was he deliberately pushed?” asked Parker.
“Definitely a deliberate push by Slater. No doubt about it.”
“What did Chen and White say to you as you walked down the mountain? I presume that this was the first time you saw them since they were in Manchester?”
“It was and they didn’t say anything apart from wanting to call an ambulance. I didn’t press them because they were in a state of shock.”
Another lie, thought Hannah. Parker again contemplated the situation before he spoke.
“There will be another interview with you in Manchester in a day or so, so I suggest that you leave straight away and go back home”
“Yes, sir” said Kingsly and rose from the chair. As he got up, Parker said to him, in a quite matter-of-fact manner,
“By the way, the money was not lost over the mountain. What has been recovered, have been blank pieces of paper cut to note size. It’s still missing”
CHAPTER 32
As soon as Kingsly left the building, Parker and Hannah followed him. It was still daylight and they were able to keep a good di
stance between them. They watched him walk into a pub.
“Where’s his car?” asked Parker
“Still in the nick’s car park, as far as I am aware” Hannah replied
“He’s not going to go anywhere without his car. Let’s wait for him there”
*
This now altered everything again for Kingsly. After leaving the station he went to a nearby pub, sufficiently away from it so that he would not encounter his colleagues should they fancy a drink. He bought a pint of bitter to drink while he pondered. So White had deliberately hidden the money and now he had made it look as though it had been lost, even though he was not the actual person who threw the money over the cliff. It was easy to conclude that White still had the money. He was formulating a plan to recover that money again for himself but this time his next drinks were limited to non-alcoholic ones so he could keep a clear head. It did not take too long to work out the plan, but before returning for his car, he decided to have a look around the town, to ensure that he would not be followed, and that he would not be when driving out of the town.
*
Vic Davies was sitting in yet another pub in the small town and had been joined by Reed and Ellwood. He pontificated. “It seems that the money may not be lost after all. Brian still thinks that it is in a box in a bank accessed by a key or at least some of it is. It can only be accessed by the bloke going to the bank himself. I have devised a plan that will get us this money” He described the plan leaving out some details that he expected Reed and Ellwood to improvise. Whilst he was no stranger to violence and positively encouraged it as the desired results for people to fear him, he was quite happy to allow his men to undertake their own preferred methods. Then he could not be accused of anything if investigations should lead to him. Discussions ensued between all three before the plan was finalised. It had hardly changed from Davies’ original one as both Reed and Ellwood knew better than to criticise any of their boss’s ideas.