by Rob Sinclair
‘Mr Welter? I’m DI Stephens,’ Dani said, releasing his clammy hand. ‘Sorry I’m a bit late.’
‘Actually, I was a little early,’ he said, his voice nasal, capping off his geeky appearance perfectly.
‘Shall we go inside?’
He nodded and they headed in and Dani bought them both a drink – a black coffee for her and a skinny latte for him. They took a table in the front, by the window looking out onto a fountain which looked bedraggled and sorry for itself, all drained of water for the winter.
‘I recognised your name,’ Welter said as he took a sip from his milky drink. ‘I remember your brother.’
Dani nodded but didn’t say anything to that.
‘He was so… normal.’ Welter’s cheeks reddened at his lacklustre description.
‘How long have you worked at Ellis Associates?’ Dani asked.
‘Oh, many years. Since 2002.’
Which would place him at about forty, if he’d been a graduate then. He didn’t look a day over thirty, his hair was neat and thick and full of colour, his skin blemish free. Perhaps some newfangled diet kept him thin as a rake. Dani ought to try it.
‘What do you remember of James Alden?’ she asked.
Welter looked quizzical. Dani could tell from the shake of his torso that his foot was tapping furiously. Nerves or just a curious habit?
‘James was an interesting character,’ he said. ‘I get a sense of people very quickly.’ He said this as though it made him infinitely profound. ‘I might be seen as something of an introvert, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand others. James was a very intriguing proposition.’
‘Intriguing how?’
‘Ellis is a big company, we get all sorts, from super intellectuals to – for want of a better phrase – wide boys. The strange thing is that to some extent, both ends of that spectrum fit perfectly well with consultancy. But with James… the best way to describe it is that he didn’t fit. He didn’t fit in the sense that I don’t think he really wanted to be here. I worked with him closely on Reflow, and it wasn’t that he wasn’t capable. He was smart and everything else, but he just didn’t seem to need to be here. If that makes sense?’
‘Not massively.’
‘Like it was all a play for something else.’
Dani thought back to what she knew of Liam Dunne. The inheritance windfall. Did that explain what Welter was saying?
‘Do you know why James left Ellis Associates?’ Dani asked.
Welter looked confused. ‘Of course. Don’t you?’
‘Perhaps you could explain what you know.’
‘It was because he lied. Simple as that. He lied about his CV. About everything. His education, his past employment. I was part of the disciplinary investigation.’
‘And what did you find? About who he really was? Why he lied?’
He shook his head. ‘We found nothing. We contacted his school, university, his past employers. No one had ever heard of him, had ever seen his picture even. But he never said a word to us about any of it. We never got an explanation. It was all very bizarre. We did notify HMRC of this, too, obviously, because we were paying taxes for him but God knows if he was even properly registered.’
‘You never found that out?’
‘That wasn’t something I was involved in, to be honest.’
‘Do you know how the disciplinary even started?’ Dani asked. ‘Obviously his CV wasn’t checked when he came into the business otherwise he never would have got the job? So what happened?’
‘We had a tip-off.’
‘A tip-off? From inside the firm or outside?’
Welter looked uncomfortable now. He clearly knew the answer.
‘I’m really not sure I can say, it was a confidential matter.’
Dani huffed, shook her head as though she’d never heard anything so ridiculous in her whole life.
‘You do realise this is a murder investigation,’ Dani said, as hard as she could. ‘I’m sure a man as intelligent as you can understand the repercussions of withholding evidence.’
The combination of both attack and flattery seemed to do the trick.
‘OK, I mean I’m sure there’s no real harm in me saying this to you now, given events since.’
Dani frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, the tip-off we had, about James Alden lying, about him not being who he said he was. It came from within the team. It came from your brother.’
Chapter 33
‘Ben?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who did he report this to?’
‘To me, actually. And I immediately went to Rottweiler… I mean, Harvey. Mr Forster.’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘Mr Forster?’
‘No, Ben. To you.’
‘Exactly? You’d have to check the personnel records. You have those, don’t you?’
Dani avoided an eye-roll. ‘They’re on the way, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, right. Well, let me think. Now, don’t take this as verbatim, but it was along the lines of, did you know Alden is lying to us all? He’s not even who he says he is. Everything on his CV is a lie. He shouldn’t be here. Something like that, I think. It’s been a while, though it was quite a revelation.’
‘Ben said this? To you?’
Welter nodded. He looked even more nervous now than before.
‘Do you know what prompted that?’
‘What prompted it? As in, how did Ben know? Or why did he choose to tell us at that point?’
‘Isn’t that the same thing? He chose to tell you because he knew, surely.’
Welter looked really uneasy now. Like they were skirting around something and he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be talking about it or not.
‘Sorry,’ Dani said. ‘Let’s take a step back. Why do you think Ben chose to tell you?’
‘I thought… there’d been an incident.’
‘Between Ben and James?’
Welter nodded. ‘Over a girl. A woman, a woman.’
‘They had an argument?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who was the woman?’ Dani fished in her pocket, took out her phone and found the photo she’d taken of the picture of Liam and the blonde woman. ‘Her?’
‘I’ve never seen her before.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. But James was something of a ladies man. You know the type?’
‘Try me.’
‘OK, look, back in the day, I was younger back then—’
‘I think we all were.’
‘Believe it or not I was a bit of a party animal, at times—’
Dani didn’t believe it in the slightest, but she didn’t bother to say it.
‘—and we were a close-knit team. Friday nights in the pubs and clubs, sometimes during the week too if we had something to celebrate. James, he had more than one woman come out with him. Tina. Emma.’ He looked up as if racking his brain. ‘I think those were the names anyway. Maybe others. They came and went.’
‘And this was over the course of what? Ten, eleven months?’
‘I know, right? That’s the way he was. Except this one time, we were having a leaving party. He came alone that night. It was literally the following Monday that Ben came to me. I had to take what happened that night into consideration for the disciplinary, you see?’
Dani couldn’t care less about the disciplinary. ‘What happened?’
‘There was a bit of a… ruckus.’
‘Ben and James.’
‘Ben and James to start with. A few others got involved too. We all got turfed out of the bar… Gino’s or something. About ten of us.’
‘But what were they fighting about?’
‘You can’t just take my word for it, because I was drunk. We all were. And James denied it. Denied it strongly. But…’ He scratched his head and frowned as though he couldn’t quite recollect properly. ‘I saw it. I think. And Ben… we thought we’d lost him for the night, bu
t he reappeared out of nowhere, all in a rage. Not at James, not to start with at least, but at her.’
‘Her?’
Welter looked really confused now. As though he couldn’t understand why Dani still didn’t get it.
‘They were all over each other. Her and James. Not just kissing, but I mean, really hands on. Up her skirt, over her bra. On the dancefloor. James and—’
Shit. Now Dani got it.
‘Gemma?’
Chapter 34
Dani stormed through the Christmas market, which was far busier now than just a short while earlier. She bumped and jostled past the punters too slow to get out of her way. Her phone was plastered to her ear as she went. She’d called Easton two more times since leaving Welter. No answer. Had called Gemma five times now. No answer.
Finally, she did pick up.
‘You lied,’ Dani said.
‘Dani? What’s going on?’
‘Why the fuck would you do that? You lied to me. Why? To protect Ben?’
‘How dare you—’
‘Just tell me why. What, were you so embarrassed because you had some guy with his hands all over you on a dancefloor? Was that it?’
Gemma hung up.
‘Idiot.’
Dani gritted her teeth in anger. She’d catch up with her sister-in-law soon enough. And maybe it was better if she was calmer when that happened. Yet she still couldn’t understand why Gemma had lied to her about not knowing Liam Dunne – or James Alden or whoever the hell he’d been called that week. He and Gemma had kissed. Ben and Liam had got into a fight over her. Did she not realise how serious this investigation was? It was far more important than saving face because of a drunken escapade six years ago, and despite what Dani had initially said to Gemma, it was surely far more likely that that was the reason why she’d lied, than because she was trying to protect Ben.
Ben. Dani needed to see him now. As soon as possible. Ever since she’d first laid eyes on that picture at Clara’s house of the Project Reflow team, the picture with Ben in it, Dani had wondered whether his knowing Liam Dunne was more than just coincidence.
She dialled Easton’s phone again. Straight to voicemail. Dani growled under her breath. Of all the days for him to do this…
Her phone vibrated in her hand. She fully expected it to be Easton and was ready to give him a piece of her mind. No, it was HQ.
‘DI Stephens?’ she said as she answered.
‘It’s Claire.’ DC Grayling. ‘I managed to get the reports from the night-shift surveillance.’
‘Thank you,’ Dani said, even if she didn’t really sound thankful, but that wasn’t Grayling’s fault. Much.
‘It’s not… I don’t know if this is a problem or not. But Ana Crisan never arrived home last night.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The car that she and Nistor and Stelea left the warehouse in, it did turn up last night, back at Nistor’s house. About ten p.m. But Ana wasn’t with them. And she hasn’t been seen since.’
Dani felt an ominous lump in her throat. The startling news was all she needed to help push her anger aside. An unwelcome tonic. ‘We need to find her. Get whatever help you need. Find out where that car went after leaving the warehouse.’
‘I’m on it.’
‘I’ll be back with you in a couple of minutes.’
Dani ended the call. From what she knew of Ana and Victor, this was seriously bad news. They had to find Ana.
She turned onto Colmore Row. HQ was just the other end of the road. Her phone vibrated again. Easton, finally.
‘About bloody time,’ she said to herself before she answered. ‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Erm, is this DI Stephens?’ came a nervy-sounding male voice she didn’t recognise.
That same ominous lump in her throat was back, although this time it was almost choking.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m afraid there’s been an incident. With DS Easton. You need to get here right away.’
Chapter 35
There’s been an incident… you need to get here right away.
Every day of her working life – and many days in her private life too – Dani dealt with violence, with death, sometimes with the macabre. So what was she supposed to think when she heard those words?
Had Victor attacked? Had Curtis somehow escaped his secure hospital and restarted his vengeful rampage?
Was Ben somehow behind whatever had happened?
Dani couldn’t bear the thought of any of those scenarios. Easton wasn’t just a colleague, he was the closest thing to a friend she had, and on hearing those words come through the phone, from Easton’s number, she’d fully expected the worst. Her legs had gone weak. She’d barely been able to speak.
Thankfully, at least the officer using Easton’s phone was more with it, and had succinctly explained the situation as best he could before the call ended.
Still, Dani had immediately rushed for her car and blasted down the Aston Expressway towards Sutton Coldfield. Thankfully she was already feeling less distressed when she turned on to Easton’s street to see the flashing blue lights of two police cars outside his house, and a small number of curious bystanders, as ever when there were emergency vehicles on call.
Dani parked her car at the bumper of one of the patrol cars and an officer came to greet her as she stepped out.
‘DI Stephens?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She held out her hand to him.
‘PC Banks. We spoke on the phone.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Easton? Or the other one?’
‘Both.’
‘Easton’s in the back of my car, over there. The other guy, Wesley or something, has already been shipped off to A&E.’
‘Let me speak to Easton.’
Banks didn’t look too sure about that. ‘I don’t know how this should work. I mean, I called you because he kept insisting, and I know who you are and everything, but right now he’s under caution for—’
‘Then I’ll speak to him under caution.’
Dani didn’t wait for another response. She strode over to the car. She could see Easton, sullen-faced, head down, in the back seat. Another officer was standing guard on the outside. Dani moved around to the far side and indicated for Banks to unlock the car. Dani opened the door and sank down into the seat next to her colleague.
He wouldn’t meet her eye. His head remained bowed, his hands cuffed behind him.
‘Some mess,’ Dani said.
Easton huffed.
‘Give it to me straight. No bullshit.’
‘She can go fuck herself. I’m done with her.’
‘Sod your feelings towards your sister, Easton, just tell me what happened, so I can see if I can sort this crap out.’
He glanced at her briefly before looking out of his window. His left eye was swollen and turning black, and there was blood caked in his nostrils.
‘She’s in there now. Lording it as though it’s her place. As though she has some right to it. She thinks she can do what she wants.’
‘Are you going to tell me or not?’ Dani’s impatience was clear.
‘You know what it’s been like,’ Easton said, looking back to her. ‘I’ve pretty much been Dad to those kids the last few months while she’s out living some sort of party-hard Z-list celebrity fantasy life.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why you’re sitting in the back of a patrol car with your hands cuffed and your face smashed up.’
‘She brought this bloke home. Night before last.’
‘Wesley?’
He looked a little surprised that Dani knew the name. ‘She’s known him for years. Wouldn’t even surprise me if he’s the dad to one of those kids. Not that he’d give a damn about that.’ He paused. ‘It’s my house, Dani. I’m not going to have my house, my life turned upside down by people like that.’
‘You got in a fight with him?’
‘He was shouting at Jasmin. Screaming at her for taking to
o long in the bathroom. That’s what kicked it off. Emily took his side. Can you believe it? Both of them having a go at an eleven-year-old girl, nearly frothing at the mouth. This was last night. I told them both to leave. They did. Then they turned up drunk, falling all over the place this morning. About seven a.m. Woke me and the kids up. They were arguing with each other.’
He shook his head in disgust.
‘And then?’
‘The shouting, the screaming, the swearing, got worse and worse. When I came down he had his hands around Em’s throat. So I grabbed him and turfed him out. Spent the next two hours – in between getting the kids to school – trying to console her, trying to tell her it was all right, that she needed to ditch arseholes like that. Obviously she’s having none of it, thinks I overreacted, that I shouldn’t interfere. Then Wesley comes back, banging on the door. Demanding to see her. And…’ He shrugged. ‘That’s when it happened.’
‘What happened, exactly?’
‘She opened the door to him. He stormed in, all in a rage again. He grabbed her again. I went to get him off her. And… it’s my house, Dani.’
‘You beat the crap out of him.’
He humphed. ‘He hit me first. Even if no one else believes me, that’s the way it was.’
Dani held his gaze for a few moments now. Yes, she did believe him.
‘Let me go and see what I can do,’ Dani said.
She stepped back out and after a brief interlude with Banks she headed inside to see Easton’s sister, who was on the sofa being consoled by a female PC. Dani introduced herself as a detective but didn’t make a point of saying she was Easton’s colleague, then spent a few minutes getting Emily’s version of events.
Which was much like Easton’s, except for the fact that she was a bit more cagey about Wesley’s role in the whole thing. No mention of him ranting and raging. No mention of him grabbing her by the throat, although her neck was definitely reddened. No mention of Wesley returning and storming in. Just that the two men had got into a fight. But she didn’t throw Easton under the bus completely. Perhaps because she knew if she did, then Easton would turf her out for good. She couldn’t afford to ruin the good thing she had going living here rent-free.