by Tim Ellis
‘That’s an interesting theory, Pecker.’
Stick said, ‘Are there any keys on Martin Boyd?’
Pecker checked the pockets of Boyd’s jacket and trousers. ‘No.’
‘The killer could have helped himself to Boyd’s keys, gone back to the farm, used the keys to gain access, come back here, shot and buried Boyd, and then left in the Land Rover.’
Xena thought about the possibilities. ‘That’s another interesting theory. It certainly makes sense and follows the timeline.’
Stick added, ‘Once the killer was in the Land Rover and driving off, anyone that saw it would naturally assume it was Martin Boyd in the vehicle.’
‘It still leaves us with one problem,’ Xena said.
‘Oh?’
‘Who the fuck was the killer, and what was his motive?’
‘That’s two problems.’
‘Have I mentioned your pedantry lately?’
‘I don’t think so.’
***
As it turned out, they did go back to the office.
He needed time to think, but think about what? Paige Belmont had disappeared of her own free will. Her husband – Lester – wasn’t involved in her disappearance, he was far too busy making babies. She hadn’t told anyone that she’d been planning to leave, not even her business partner Jenny Bates. She hadn’t even said goodbye to her son, Harry. She’d left her birth certificate and passport – why? Maybe Bronwyn was right – she didn’t need them anymore. Maybe they were false. It would be worth knowing. He called Harry and was diverted to voicemail.
‘Harry, it’s Mr Kowalski. Can you bring your mother’s birth certificate and passport to the office after school, we need to get them checked out – thanks.’
He ended the call.
‘I know someone called Lizard,’ Bronwyn said.
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘I have no idea. Anyway, Lizard will be able to tell us if they’re genuine or not.’
‘That’s who you got your ID documents from, isn’t it?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Okay, so Paige drove away from her house followed by a Colombian and MI5 – where did she go?’
‘I’m trying to track her, but . . . Shit!’
‘What?’
‘I’m an idiot.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, but there are issues . . .’
‘A new Mercedes will have an integral GPS tracking device hidden inside it with VHF technology. It’ll take me a few minutes to hack into the Tracker website, but I should be able to locate Paige Belmont’s car.’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘It’s thirsty work. You could make me a coffee.’
He walked into the kitchen, switched the kettle on and began spooning the sugar and coffee into an Abacus Investigations mug. If Bronwyn did find Paige Belmont’s car what would it mean? He’d certainly been keen to locate it. Was she already dead? Stuffed into the boot of her own car? Why were MI5 involved? And where did a Colombian businessman enter into it all? What had a married woman with a teenage son got herself involved in?
‘Found it,’ Bronwyn said when he took her coffee in.
‘And?’
‘Moscow Road in London, not far from Bayswater Station.’
‘What’s it doing there?’
‘Not moving.’
‘I suppose I’d better go down there . . .’
‘That’s not very bright.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s say that you get there at about three o’clock – then what?’
‘Well, I’ll . . .’
‘I can’t tell exactly where it is, but let’s say it’s in a locked garage – what will you do then?’
‘Force it open.’
‘In broad daylight with people walking by? And let’s say you get into the garage and the car is there, but it’s locked and the alarm has been set. What will you do – stare at it? Do you have any experience of disabling a Mercedes alarm and getting inside the car? And then, of course, there’s the satnav. Can you hack into the GPS computer . . .?’
‘Okay, I get the idea. I suppose you have a plan?’
‘It’s funny you should ask that . . .’
His phone vibrated.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jerry told DI Lucy Tripp about Beecher Berkley, Morton Gillespie, the hit-and-run, Greta Ross and Lisa Porterfield.
‘You have been busy.’
‘We like to check the facts when we’re given a case to write a paper on, don’t we boys?’
Joe nodded. ‘We’re in it up to our necks, Mrs K.’
Tripp took a swallow of coffee. ‘I don’t know if George Hill told you, but I had a problem with him and the investigation.’
‘He said that you thought the investigative focus should have been on Helen Veldkamp.’
‘It was a bit more than that. I was young and foolish. I didn’t realise that when it came down to it, nobody had my back. It was a hard lesson to learn. I threatened to go above his head with my concerns about the way the investigation was being run. I’ve not long been back from the frozen wastes of Siberia.’
‘I didn’t know we had police officers in Siberia,’ Joe said.
‘Metaphorically speaking.’
‘Oh!’
‘The bastard made sure my career was put in the freezer. I was being fast-tracked – fat lot of good that did me. I would have been a senior officer by now if I’d kept my mouth shut, but I’ve never been keen on silence. So, for the past nineteen years, Hill has made sure nobody would employ me.’
Jerry took a sip of her black, sugarless coffee. She wasn’t really a coffee drinker. ‘Police incompetence has been our impression of the investigation since we found out about the janitor.’
‘Before I became an untouchable, Hill let me do my own thing. I can only assume he thought I was too green and wouldn’t find anything. What do you know about Helen Veldkamp?’
‘Not much – only what’s in the file.’
‘A lot of the stuff I found out never made it into the file. Hill said Veldkamp’s DNA wasn’t relevant to the investigation. He and his cronies concluded that, because she’d been dead for three weeks, the only way Veldkamp’s DNA could have got under Emily Hobson’s fingernails was if someone on the medical staff had accidentally transferred it, even though that had been discounted.’
Jerry nodded. ‘George said the same thing. My husband – who used to be a DCI at Hoddesdon in Essex until recently – took a look at the file. He said that if we found the person who had transferred Helen Veldkamp’s DNA to Emily Hobson, then we’d be much closer to finding out what really happened that night. He thought Emily Hobson was raped to cover up the real crime.’
‘If your husband had been in charge of the investigation instead of that clown Hill, we might have solved the case. Anyway, Helen Veldkamp was a Swedish au pair working for a Dr and Mrs Pearson in Queen’s Park. He wasn’t a medical doctor, he had a PhD in fish or something like that. Anyway, he was away doing some fish research in the Arctic. Mrs Pearson was looking after her own two children, and had given Helen the night off to celebrate her birthday with friends – she was twenty-one . . .’
‘You’re right,’ Jerry said. ‘None of that is in the file.’
‘There’s a reason for that. Have you ever heard of the Birthday Girl Murder?’
‘No.’
‘Annie Frost was murdered on January 3, 1997 – six months before Helen Veldkamp was killed. It was Annie’s twenty-first birthday. There was a whole group of them out celebrating in the Mustique Club in Kensington. Annie went outside on her own to get some fresh air, and while she was out there somebody cut her throat . . .’
‘Just like Helen Veldkamp?’ Joe said.
‘Yes, just like her. The media called it the Birthday Girl Murder for obvious reasons. Anyway, Annie’s boyfriend was arrested, tried and convicted of her murder. He was sentenced to life in prison
, but he only lasted seven months before another inmate killed him in a dispute over a dirty magazine. Of course, he said he didn’t murder Annie, but then aren’t most killers innocent? The only DNA found on Annie was his, and he was covered in her blood because he said he’d tried to stop the bleeding. They found a flick-knife on him, but it wasn’t the murder weapon. That didn’t seem to matter to the police or the jury – they convicted him anyway. The two crimes were nearly identical. Helen Veldkamp was out celebrating her twenty-first birthday with both English and Swedish friends at the Red Dragon pub in Queen’s Park, which isn’t there anymore – it made way for a supermarket in 2001. Helen went outside for whatever reason and somebody cut her throat. Of course, the murders of Veldkamp and Frost weren’t part of our investigation, and as soon as I suggested that there might be a link to Emily Hobson’s murder, all hell broke loose. I was ordered to stop wasting my time investigating murders that had nothing to do with me, and within a week I was transferred to a police station on the border with Scotland that had one man and a dog – I was the dog. The man was a Sergeant who made his tea with whisky.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Shakin’ said. ‘Why didn’t George take any notice of your theory?’
‘Because the person who solved Annie Frost’s murder by putting her innocent boyfriend behind bars and getting him killed was DCI Michael Lannister, who is now Assistant Commissioner at the Met in charge of Specialist Crime and Operations. He and George were like conjoined twins. They knew each other from the good old days, were drinking buddies, had risen up through the ranks together, screwed each other’s wives - whatever. I never had any evidence of a secret handshake at the time, but it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. Anyway, there was no way in Hell that George would let me tell anyone that Lannister had locked up the wrong man, so it got buried and I became a non-person.’
‘And they left the murderer out there?’ Joe said.
‘Yes. But what’s worse, is that the killer murdered another three Birthday Girls between 1997 and 1999 – Beverley Manning, Charmaine Muldoon and Claire Saxby.’
Shakin’ scratched his head. ‘Surely someone must have connected all five murders by now?’
‘Yes, me.’
‘Or at least the last three?’ Joe said.
DI Tripp half-laughed. ‘These are senior people in the force. They’re all members of the same secret society. A photograph was published by the Guardian in January 1997 of the Manor of St James’ Freemason Lodge. Have a guess who was on that photograph?’
‘George Hill?’ Joe suggested.
‘And?’
‘Michael Lannister?’ Shakin’ offered.
‘Standing next to each other. In fact, I’d say that ninety percent of the serving male officers now in the Met were in that photograph. Of course, women aren’t permitted into the Worshipful Company. Not only that, there are masons in key positions elsewhere in the judicial system. There have been two secret police reports produced: Operation Tiberius in 2002, and Project Riverside in 2008. What they found would make you lose all faith and confidence in a fair and impartial legal system. So, going public with what I know would mean Lannister admitting that he’d arrested the wrong man in 1997. If he did that, evidence would soon leak out that measures had been put in place to suppress the truth and pervert the course of justice. In the end, the whole fucking mess has become a three-headed monster. I’ve just got back onto the career ladder, and they know that I know what really happened. So, as long as they treat me right, I’m not going to rock the boat.’
‘But there’s a murderer still out there,’ Joe said.
‘He’s been inactive for twenty years now. My guess is that he’s either in prison, or dead. Either way, justice eventually has been served, but I keep my eyes open for any other Birthday Girl murders just in case.’
‘Why?’ Jerry said. You’re part of the problem and conspiracy now. Even if you did find another Birthday Girl murder, you couldn’t do or say anything.’
DI Tripp shrugged. ‘If you can’t beat them . . . And I couldn’t. So, there it is. Anything else you want to know?’
‘Did you have any suspects?’ Shakin’ asked.
‘Not a one.’
‘So, let me see if I’ve got this right,’ Jerry said. ‘Someone killed Annie Frost outside the Mustique Club on January 3, 1997?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Her boyfriend was arrested, tried and convicted of her murder, and seven months into a life sentence he was killed by another inmate in Wormwood Scrubs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Six months after Annie Frost was murdered, Helen Veldkamp was also murdered in exactly the same circumstances.’
‘Correct.’
Joe interrupted. ‘Excuse me, and correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you lot have computers that link all these things together?’
‘It’s an intelligence database called Crimint. It was created in 1994 by Memorex, and now has over ten million pieces of information. The trouble is, if the information was never input into the database in the first place . . .’
‘Now we are talking about a conspiracy,’ Jerry said. ‘So, any new murders by the same killer can’t be cross-referenced?’
‘No.’
‘Gunga Din!’ Shakin’ said.
‘So, the Birthday Girl killer has murdered five women who were celebrating their twenty-first birthdays, and I’m assuming he murdered Emily Hobson and Morton Gillespie as well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which means that there’s a serial killer nobody . . . Well, apart from you, us and a handful of senior serving and retired police officers, knows anything about and was never caught?’
‘Correct. Of course, we never had this conversation, and we never drank these coffees. If you try to quote me I’ll deny everything, have you arrested and sue you for slander. Also, I now have the complete backing of people in senior positions throughout the police, judiciary and political establishment who are all members of the same secret society, so your guilt is already assured.’ Tripp stood up. ‘I’ll escort you out.’
They followed DI Tripp back along the corridor to the security door. ‘It was nice seeing you all.’ She passed Shakin’ a business card. ‘Call me.’
He grinned. ‘You bet.’
The door banged shut behind them.
‘You’re not going to call her are you, Shakin’?’ Joe asked.
‘Let’s not confuse work with pleasure, Joe. Pleasure always takes legal precedence.’
‘Of course it does,’ Joe said. ‘What am I thinking?’
Shakin’ kissed the card and slipped it into his wallet. ‘What now, Mrs K?’
‘We have a serial killer to find.’
‘That doesn’t sound like any kind of pleasure I’m familiar with,’ Joe said.
Jerry took out her phone and called Ray.
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Are you free this afternoon?’
‘It’s funny you should ask that, love of my life. I’ve just been informed that I have to work tonight, so my boss has given me the afternoon off.’
‘You have a very generous boss.’
‘Both at work and at home.’
‘I can vouch for your boss at home.’
‘So, is it to do with the case you’ve been working on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, my boss informs me that I have to be in London tonight, so I could come up there now and meet you?’
‘That would work. Where do you have to be?’
‘Moscow Road, which is near Bayswater station.’
‘The boys and I are at Kentish Town now, and you’re where?’
‘In the office.’
‘Okay. Let’s meet in the middle at Liverpool Street underneath the arrivals and departures board in the main station?’
‘See you in about half an hour, darling.’
She ended the call.
‘Are you ready, boys?’
‘Where you lead we’ll fol
low, Mrs K,’ Shakin’ said. ‘Isn’t that true, Joe?’
‘The Gospel According to Joe and Shakin’, Joe said.’
‘No, Joe. I think you mean the Gospel According to Shakin’ and Joe, don’t you?’
‘I don’t see why your name . . .’
***
‘How did the briefing go?’ Richards asked as they made their way down the stairs to the car park.
‘I hate deceiving them.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t lie! You love deceiving them.’
‘Maybe just a little.’
‘Maybe a lot.’
‘Did you give DS Kingfisher everything we had on Abel Winter?’
‘It wasn’t much.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you think the SECD will take the case on?’
‘I’m not holding my breath.’
‘But if they say no, what then?’
‘I don’t know. He used to do work for the fraud squad, maybe they’d take it on, but let’s wait and see, shall we?’
It took them fifteen minutes to reach the Eros Club on the corner of Bell Lane and Broxbourne High Road. Of course, because it was a nightclub, it was closed during the day and all the doors were locked. After getting no response from banging on the front door, they went around the back and banged on the rear door. Just as they were about to give up, the door opened and a woman in her early thirties wearing a baggy white tank top that revealed most of her breasts, black spiky hair, piercings in her nose and lips, and tattoos on her neck and ears stuck her head out through the gap. ‘We’re closed.’
Richards held up her Warrant Card as if it was a silver cross and might just protect her against the undead legions – one of which was standing in the doorway and preventing her gaining access to the Eros Club. ‘Police. I’m DC Richards, and this is DI Parish. We’d like to come in and talk to the manager.’