TWISTED CRIMES a gripping detective mystery full of suspense

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

‘A whisper that the search team missed something.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Blythe hesitated, then said, ‘I can’t remember. Does it matter?’

  ‘No, not at all, particularly since I have total faith in the forensic search team. Do you have contact with an insider?’

  ‘No, no. Of course not. Maybe I misheard.’

  He’s just realised that he’s let the cat out of the bag, thought Sophie. Time to move on. ‘So you sit on the planning committee for big leisure developments?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied guardedly.

  ‘So Woodruff’s application for the conversion of one of his clubs into a casino complex would have come forward for scrutiny?’

  ‘Yes, I believe there was one a month or two ago.’

  ‘And was it ratified?’

  Blythe nodded, his eyes narrowing. His ruddy complexion had faded somewhat, and he looked ill at ease.

  ‘I understand you spoke quite eloquently in support of the application. You must have been pleased when it was approved by the committee. By a slim majority vote, wasn’t it?’

  Blythe nodded again. It was as if he didn’t trust himself to speak, in case he gave something else away.

  ‘I’d like to return to my first question, Councillor Blythe. The one that you haven’t yet answered. How do you come to know the Woodruffs so well? Would you care to answer it now?’

  ‘As I said, we were bound to meet. Our interests in the leisure industry overlap.’

  Sophie stared at him. ‘So the fact that your wife and Wayne Woodruff’s wife are twin sisters doesn’t come into it?’

  The ensuing silence seemed to last for minutes. Eventually Blythe said, ‘They don’t get on. They hate the sight of each other.’

  Sophie stood up. ‘This has been very useful, Councillor. I may want to speak to you again.’ She moved towards the door with Marsh following, but then turned to face Blythe. ‘You never made that call to the Chief Constable’s office complaining about my heavy-handed approach. Feel free to do it now.’

  The two detectives left the councillor’s office, passing the puzzled-looking couple, still waiting outside.

  ‘That was interesting, ma’am,’ Marsh said. ‘He blundered right into it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Give a fool enough rope. He’ll be on the phone right now, warning the whole lot of them. But it’s too bloody late for them to cover it up now. I think we’ve had all our suspicions confirmed, so it’s just a question of getting the evidence. It’ll have to be completely watertight. We’d better hang around here for a while. There’s a good chance that Blythe will head off somewhere interesting once he calms down and gathers his thoughts. Maybe a bit of tailing is called for.’

  ‘That could be a problem, ma’am. As well as this entrance, there’s a staff-only one that leads from the office area to an internal car park. Shall I take that one? I’ll try to find somewhere to wait that isn’t too obvious.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sophie replied. ‘I’ll wait here in the main parking area, but you can tail him if he does leave. I’ll need to pay a visit to the ACC at headquarters later this morning and time is ticking by. If he does come out, it’s more likely to be by car, so you’ll catch him. I’ll wait about twenty minutes.’

  * * *

  Marsh only had to wait fifteen minutes before a car appeared from the tunnel and slowed to a crawl as it approached the junction with the road. There was no mistaking Blythe’s angry face as his vehicle was forced to wait for a line of slow moving traffic. Marsh started his engine and pulled out behind the councillor’s car, keeping his distance along straight sections of road, but moving closer as the traffic approached junctions and roundabouts. They were heading north towards Winton, one of Bournemouth’s main residential areas. The traffic thinned for a while, so Marsh could afford to drop back further, but then it began to get busier as they approached the commercial centre of Winton. Blythe slowed and pulled into a parking bay. Marsh took a left into a quiet side street, parked his car and walked quickly to the corner. He watched as Blythe left his car, crossed the road and entered a coffee shop — the Priory Cafe. Wasn’t that one of the properties on the Woodruff list? Marsh bought a newspaper from a vendor and walked to a low wall that surrounded a nearby playground. It provided a near-perfect vantage point. Who could Blythe be meeting? One thing was for certain. This was no coincidence. His and Sophie’s visit had caused the councillor to panic, exactly what they had hoped for.

  Blythe left the cafe some fifteen minutes later, still looking angry. Marsh wondered whether to follow him further or make an attempt to identify the person he’d met. Clearly the councillor hadn’t got his own way, so it would be useful to find out who he’d talked to. Marsh made his way across the road to the cafe. It was clean and a welcoming aroma of hot food emanated from the warming cabinet of pasties and pies. He sat at a table near the door and waited for the waitress to take his order for coffee. He resumed his study of the newspaper, taking out his pen and making a start on the crossword. Several other tables were occupied, but he doubted that it was any of these people that Blythe had met. They all looked to be shoppers having a welcome rest.

  The waitress arrived to take his order and he complimented her on the cafe’s welcoming atmosphere. She recommended the flapjack and he took a slice with his coffee. When she returned with his order, she began telling him about the business side of the cafe chain. While they were talking, a middle-aged man emerged from the back of the premises and headed out into the street, looking preoccupied. He was one of the three men who’d been at the Rising Moon pub the previous week, having lunch with Sorrento and Woodruff.

  The waitress told him what he wanted to know. ‘That’s Mr Griffiths, one of the company owners. He’s really nice.’

  Barry thought back to the list of senior personnel in the Woodruff business. Following the death of Sorrento, Justin Griffiths was now second-in-command, according to DS Stu Blackman’s findings the previous day. Pete Armitage had also mentioned the name as the originator of the decorating contracts. Presumably he’d been here to meet Blythe. Things were falling into place nicely. The problem was, although they now had the links between most of the major players in the business and some idea of the factors that had led to the Armitages’ murders, there wasn’t enough evidence to make any arrests yet. And Marsh had no idea where that evidence would come from. They really needed help from an insider, and how likely was that?

  * * *

  Sophie Allen was lost in thought as she made her way out of county police headquarters at Winfrith. The meeting with Jim Metcalfe, the ACC, had provided her with some unexpected information. She’d reported her suspicions about the police mole, the insider who’d been leaking information to the Woodruffs, and played him Rae’s recording from the pub garden. There had always been a possibility that the bent cop wasn’t really bent, but was working undercover. Sophie didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed when Jim Metcalfe had denied it.

  ‘I’d have known,’ he’d said. ‘No, we have a rotten apple. There’s no one working undercover inside this Woodruff lot. How could there be? We didn’t even know about them till this case.’

  It was his second piece of information that had caused her to worry. ‘He was a firearms officer some years ago,’ the ACC had reported. ‘So you need to tread carefully, and keep me fully in the picture. No action without full backup from an armed unit. I’ll get Greg Buller’s squad primed, so contact him as soon as you’re ready. What you don’t know, and we’ve kept under wraps for a couple of years, is that one of our handguns went missing four years ago. It’s never been found. He was one of the suspects at the time. Be extra careful, Sophie. We don’t want anything to go wrong when he’s lifted.’

  Sophie looked up as a familiar vehicle pulled into the parking space beside hers. She gave Matt Silver, her boss, a wave and walked to his car.

  ‘Well, surprise, surprise. You didn’t tell me you’d be here this morning. I’d have rescheduled if I’
d known,’ he said.

  ‘It was just a quick visit to see the ACC,’ she replied. ‘A few developments over the weekend.’

  He waited but Sophie did not elaborate.

  ‘Am I out of the loop for this one?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Sorry, Matt.’ She paused. ‘You were in the firearms unit here some years ago, weren’t you? How easily could a gun have gone missing?’

  ‘Oh, that old story. I’ve never been sure how reliable that was. The booking-out procedures are watertight and always have been. It could be that the number of handguns was entered wrongly when we changed the recording system in the armoury. The data from the old system had to be entered again by hand when we started the new system. It was easy for something to be entered twice.’

  ‘But with different serial numbers? How likely is that?’

  ‘As far as I know, it was all a bit manic at the time.’

  ‘Okay. But if it was, it provided an ideal opportunity for one to be filched.’

  ‘Why the worry now?’

  ‘If one did go missing, I’m wondering where it might have ended up. And what it might be used for.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll catch up with you soon, okay?’

  CHAPTER 31: Skate Park

  Late Tuesday Morning, Week 3

  Why was the whole world against him?

  Phil McCluskie felt isolated and aggrieved. Even Stu, his partner of the last two years, was starting to give him the cold shoulder. He’d obviously fallen for everything that witch had said. It was transparently obvious that she was just manipulating them. Those pathetic little jobs she’d asked them to do! Stupid Stu had fallen for it, lock, stock and barrel. Sucker. One look from those big green eyes and Blackman rolled onto his back, like a spaniel asking to be tickled. Well, fuck that for a game of soldiers. He, Phil, wasn’t so easily impressed.

  He yawned and stretched. What was she up to? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that there was something bubbling away below the surface. He’d seen those little chats with that amorphous cow with size nine feet, Rae Gregson. He’d also spotted that the DS, Marsh, had been deliberately excluded from these conversations, and that whatever Gregson was doing, it was hush hush. Something was going on separate to the murder cases. It had to be a leak, or some kind of cover-up. Nothing else made sense. But who or what? Maybe he should visit a few mates from the old days and pick their brains. Someone might know.

  Blackman was nowhere to be seen. He’d gone out to chase up a couple of documents. McCluskie pulled his aging leather jacket from the back of his chair and made for the door. On Tuesday lunchtimes a group of ex-cops met for lunch and a chinwag at a pub in Poole. He might learn a thing or two there if he played his cards right.

  * * *

  ‘Well, would you believe it! It’s that well-known teetotaller from Blandford. How are you, Phil?’

  ‘Good. I had a couple of hours spare, so I thought I’d pop down to see you lot.’ He looked down at the four men seated round a table. ‘Drink, anyone?’

  He took the order to the bar and added a pint for himself. Better leave out his usual whisky chaser, he needed to keep a clear head. He returned to the table with the tray of drinks and sat down.

  ‘We really pity you, Phil. We pity anyone still working.’ The speaker, who’d issued the earlier greeting, was a retired traffic cop, thick-set with short, grizzled hair. ‘I mean, a woman chief constable? What’s the fucking world coming to?’

  McCluskie sipped his lager. ‘They’re all over the place, Mickey, in every nook and cranny. And they’re all so serious. Targets, clear-up rates, interfacing with the public. What has all that got to do with nabbing low-lifes? That’s what I ask myself.’

  ‘University degrees. What’s that all about?’ Mickey went on. ‘How’s that gonna help? Is being able to quote Hamlet or do some fancy maths any use when you’re chasing a skanky drug dealer? Where will eye-of-fucking-newt get you then?’

  ‘That’s from Macbeth, Mickey. If you’re going to quote Shakespeare, you could at least get the right play,’ chipped in Charlie, a former custody officer. ‘You’re a couple of misogynists you are, always complaining about women. I mean, what planet are you from? I’ve got three daughters, all grown up now. They worked really hard at school and college, and they’re all in good jobs. Debbie, my youngest, is a cop in Brighton and she’s aiming for promotion. She’ll probably get further up the scale than I ever did, and good for her. She deserves it.’ He bent his head to his drink, and the other two men nodded. Mickey scowled.

  Phil changed the subject. ‘Listen, did any of you ever come across the Woodruff family? Owns a chain of pubs, hotels and cafes across the area? Been going for well over ten years?’

  ‘They own a pub down the road here,’ Charlie said. ‘They’re legit, aren’t they? They never came up on my radar.’

  ‘Was anyone keeping an eye on them? From inside our lot, I mean.’

  Everyone looked blank. McCluskie sighed. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. ‘I’m getting a sandwich. Anyone else for grub? Not that I’m paying, mind.’

  An hour later, just as McCluskie was about to leave, his phone signalled an incoming text message. He looked at the screen but didn’t recognise the number. ‘Woodruff. Be at the Quayside in half an hour. At the skate park.’

  * * *

  A crowd had gathered, drawn by the flashing blue lights of the ambulance and the police cars. The victim was a middle-aged man, now being loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher. He had an oxygen mask over his face, but there were bloodstains on his sallow skin. The police were talking to a teenage boy holding a skateboard. He wasn’t proving to be very helpful, judging by his shrugs and vague hand gestures.

  ‘What’s happened?’ an elderly lady asked, as she joined the watchers.

  ‘Don’t really know,’ replied her neighbour. ‘He was lying by that car. No one saw nowt. The only person around was that lad, but we don’t know whether he arrived later. Maybe he got out of his car and fainted or sommat. Someone said they smelt booze on his breath. We don’t think he’s dead.’

  Sophie Allen arrived with Rae Gregson, quickly followed by Stu Blackman in a second car. They looked up at a train passing close by the scene. It was a well-chosen spot for an assault, only a few hundred yards from the busy Poole Quay, but hidden from view by a railway embankment and clumps of bushy shrubs. It could be seen from a skate park off to one side, but it was a school day and this would have been quiet.

  They walked to the ambulance, which was closed and ready to leave. The paramedics reported that McCluskie had serious head injuries. They watched as the vehicle accelerated away from the car park.

  ‘He’ll be in A and E in five minutes,’ Rae said.

  Sophie turned to Blackman. ‘What was he doing here? Why was he in Poole?’

  Blackman looked stricken. ‘No idea. I went out of our office for ten minutes to collect some more information about the Woodruffs. He was gone when I got back. No message.’

  ‘Could it have been a lead of some kind?’ Rae asked. Blackman shrugged.

  Sophie shook her head. ‘He’s a maverick, always has been. But he’s also pretty shrewd. Why didn’t he do what I said and tell us first? I should have guessed he’d go it alone. Jesus. I just hope he pulls through.’ She looked at Blackman. ‘You stay here. We’ll have a chat with that lad.’

  She and Rae walked across to where the teenager stood with a uniformed officer. Sophie introduced herself and led him to the skate park, where they sat on a low bench. He must only be about fourteen, she thought. No wonder he’s scared.

  ‘I know you’ve already talked to the officers that got here first, but I’m the senior detective and my job is to find out what happened. Let’s start with when you arrived. What time do you think it was?’

  ‘About half one, I s’pose.’ The teenager, who was called Wayne, looked anxious.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ Sophie asked gen
tly.

  ‘Yeah. I bunked off double French.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll explain that you’re helping us, then you won’t get into trouble. But in exchange, you’ve got to tell me everything you saw. Is that a deal?’

  He nodded. ‘But I didn’t see everything. I was on the ramps and didn’t take much notice at first. There were a few cars there, then that guy drove in, the one that got hurt. He came in kind of slow. I didn’t see what happened next but I heard a bump. When I got up to the top of the ramp the other guy looked over and saw me. He got into a car and drove away, fast like.’

  ‘Did you see what he looked like?’

  ‘Nah, not really. Too far. He was bigger than the guy that was hit, but that was all.’

  ‘What car was he in? The one who drove away?’

  ‘Blue Audi. He went out quick. His tyres skidded.’ The boy looked pale and scared. ‘Am I in danger? He could’ve seen me. Me mum’ll kill me.’

  ‘Is your school local?’ Sophie asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘In that case, we’ll go there first. Then I’ll take you home if there’s someone there.’

  He shook his head. ‘Mum won’t be back till six.’

  ‘Do you have someone else? Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?’

  He nodded. ‘Me gran lives close.’

  She walked back to the other two detectives. ‘Rae, can you stay here and deal with forensics when they arrive? I’ll pick you up when I’ve finished with young Wayne here. Stu, you get to the hospital and see how Phil is. If he can talk, see what he has to say but don’t push it. If he’s got serious head injuries it may be hours or days before we can expect anything from him. Keep me posted, will you? We’ll join you later.’

  She took Rae aside. ‘I think it was our rotten apple, Rae. The boy’s description of the car matches. Barry’s probably still in Bournemouth. Phone him and get him to come across but whatever you do, don’t tell him what we think. The real question is, what was McCluskie doing here? Could he have been involved somehow?’ She shook her head. ‘What a bloody can of worms.’