Somebody Told Me

by Stephen Puleston

  Lydia interrupted me as I hummed along. ‘I thought you weren’t a fan of opera.’

  ‘I know all the important arias. Every Italian does, even one from Aberdare.’

  Lydia rolled her eyes.

  ‘How long have you enjoyed Italian opera?’

  ‘I had a boyfriend when I was at university. He studied music and he’d memorised all the words for most of the famous arias. I got to like the same music.’

  Sunshine caught against the surface of Lydia’s purple fingernails; her hands complemented her slim figure. Almost a year had passed since she’d been assigned to work with me.

  ‘Are you still together?’ I made it sound innocent enough. Lydia wasn’t my type, too serious, and there were protocols about officers having relationships with each other.

  ‘No, it was one of those university romances that didn’t last.’

  Not having been to university I couldn’t really comment.

  She parked about two hundred metres from the restaurant and takeaway owned by Mrs Walsh. In fact most of the businesses owned by Jimmy Walsh were in his wife’s name. And that made her a person of special interest. A few metal tables and chairs were set out on the pavement either side of the door like a scene from The Sopranos. I could imagine broad-shouldered Italian-looking thugs puffing on large cigars sitting around a table in a back room playing cards.

  But this was Grangetown, in Cardiff, and the restaurant sold fish and chips.

  There had been a collective sigh of relief audible throughout the police stations of Cardiff when Jimmy Walsh had been stopped in his Range Rover Sport in possession of enough class B drugs to make contesting a possession with intent to supply charge impossible. Relief had turned to despair when the expected five years in prison became three. Walsh had deep enough pockets to afford the best lawyers that money could buy.

  I left the car and walked over the road. Lydia was ahead of me; the discreet heels on her shoes and her well-pressed denims made the most of her legs that morning. I got distracted and a cyclist swore at me as he narrowly missed a collision.

  A smell of disinfectant and cleaning fluid and then stale chip-fat made an odd combination as we entered the café. A radio competed unsuccessfully with the sound of vacuuming from the rear so we wandered through and found a woman pushing a machine through the legs of plastic-topped tables. When she saw us she turned the machine off.

  ‘We’re looking for Mrs Walsh,’ I said.

  ‘In the office round the back, love.’ She nodded towards a door with a lopsided sign saying Office.

  Behind it a staircase led to the first floor and at the top I heard the sound of voices at the end of a corridor. I glanced over at Lydia before heading past a window. Outside in the car park were a Porsche Carrera and a gleaming Range Rover Evoque. I’d heard the Walsh family were good customers of the Range Rover dealers in Cardiff and realised then that the Porsche dealers must be doing okay too.

  The voices became louder as we reached a door at the end. I didn’t knock: we weren’t calling on civilised society where politeness and manners were valued. So I barged in despite the feeling that Lydia had been about to say something. Sunshine streamed through large windows. Sitting at a table was a woman in her mid-forties, tanned and slim, with perfect hair and so much bling on her fingers she must have been tired at the end of each day from the weight of hauling the stuff around.

  ‘Mrs Walsh?’ I said.

  She didn’t answer. But the man by her side did. ‘And who the fuck are you?’

  He stood up and drew himself up to his full height. He looked exactly like the photograph pinned to the Incident Room board. His powder-blue shirt followed the contours of his frame like a blanket covering a racehorse. A braided leather belt held up dark grey trousers. The thick neck and broad shoulders indicated a regular gym subscription.

  I pushed my warrant card towards him before moving it slowly so that Mrs Walsh could read it. ‘I’m Detective Inspector John Marco, Wales Police Service, and this is Detective Sergeant Flint.’ I kept my eye contact direct. Martin Kendall did the same. In fact he never even blinked. He had deep-set eyes, black and unreadable.

  On the table were two coffee cups, their tide marks evidence of recent refills. The smell of fish and chips had disappeared but now there was something else hanging in the air: expensive aftershave and perfume, no doubt.

  ‘What do you want?’ Kendall said.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  He scowled.

  ‘Simple question,’ I added. ‘What’s so difficult about telling me your name Mr Kendall?’

  Now he glared at me. I sat down at the table, nodding for Lydia to do the same.

  ‘What do you want?’ Kendall said again. I took against him as soon as I heard the Scottish accent.

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of Felix Bevard.’ Kendall glanced at Bernie Walsh who told him with a raise of an eyebrow to sit down.

  ‘How can we help, Inspector?’ Bernie managed a narrow smile.

  ‘Felix was a business associate of your husband. So I was wondering if you had any recent contact with him?’ Bernie looked away and she feigned disinterest with a lazy shrug.

  ‘Felix Bevard was found killed in Roath Park café.’ Lydia had an irritated edge to her voice.

  ‘I’d heard. Very sad,’ Kendall said, making an effort to keep his voice flat.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Felix Bevard?’

  ‘I can’t recall.’ Bernie leant over to Kendall. ‘Can you remember Martin?’

  He shook his head while staring at me.

  ‘It must have been several years ago. But come to think of it I saw him going into that flash Indonesian restaurant in the Bay, a week after Jimmy went down.’

  There was more nodding now from Kendall’s direction.

  ‘What makes you think he was a business associate of Jimmy’s?’ Bernie asked.

  I was prepared for that one. ‘I thought they’d been involved in that night club in Newport.’

  ‘Of course,’ Bernie said as though it had slipped her mind.

  ‘And I understand they were involved in a property development in Bridgend. The one involving Mr Oakley.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Mr Oakley,’ Bernie said as though he were a long lost friend instead of a dead adversary.

  ‘The original complaint states that Bevard and Jimmy had bullied and harassed Mr Oakley.’

  Bernie purred. ‘My Jimmy would never bully anyone.’

  I wanted to snort out loud. Jimmy probably thought that harassment and bullying should be included in the national curriculum and taught in schools.

  ‘Where were you on the night Felix Bevard was killed?’ I said.

  The atmosphere changed: silence invaded the space between us. Was she thinking how to respond? I half expected some righteous indignation. I guessed wrong.

  ‘I was with a crowd of girls that night. We went out to the cinema: and before you ask we watched Fifty Shades of Grey. Then we went out to that new French restaurant in the brewery quarter. It was after midnight when we left. Then we went to the nightclub near the Boulevard de Nantes. We stayed there until after three. I’d drunk far too much by then, and I got a taxi home.’

  ‘I’ll need the names of your friends and their contact details.’

  ‘Of course.’ She reached for her handbag and fished out her mobile.

  I turned to Kendall. ‘And—’

  ‘I played golf in the afternoon and then we all had a few drinks in the club.’

  Lydia jotted down the details in her notebook as he talked.

  ‘Once we’d finished – don’t ask me the time – we left and got a taxi into town where we started a pub crawl. We have this challenge, me and my mates in the golf club, to visit sixteen pubs in the middle of the city and have a pint in each one. And our last is in one of the clubs in the Bay.’

  He leant over the table. ‘So by the end of the night I was shit-faced.’ I could almost smell Brains best bitter on his breath
.

  ‘We’ll need the names of all your friends, too.’

  ‘No problem,’ he grinned.

  ‘To eliminate you from the inquiry, of course.’

  He couldn’t hide the smirk on his face.

  Kendall made an exaggerated gesture of checking his mobile for the names and contact details of the men who were with him. Again Lydia jotted down the details.

  ‘Was there anything else, Inspector?’ Bernie said casually.

  ‘You must be looking forward to Jimmy’s release from prison?’

  ‘Of course.’ A broader smile this time.

  She pushed over a card with her name and title printed in large letters: ‘Bernie Walsh Director’ – below the name of a limited company.

  I stared at the business card for a good couple of seconds, imagining Bernie Walsh in a business meeting with her bank manager.

  So, Mrs Walsh, how is business?

  Good thanks, we’ve just killed a competitor who wanted to grass up my Jimmy.

  That’s grand. Tell me about the latest turnover figures.

  I clutched the card in my right hand and beamed at her and then at Kendall. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  We drew the door closed behind us and I memorised the number plates of both cars as I passed the window.

  The woman in the café gave us a tired look as we walked out. I sat down in the passenger seat and thumped the dashboard.

  ‘Ever had the feeling that you’ve been set up and taken as a complete fool?’

  ‘Sorry, boss?’

  ‘They knew we were coming.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘They had all their alibis ready and rehearsed.’

  Lydia scanned the names in her pocketbook.

  ‘They knew we were coming,’ I repeated. ‘And now we’ve got to spend hours and hours checking out all the details of their alibis and you know what, they’ll prove absolutely bullet proof.’

  Just then Kendall drove out of the car park in the Porsche. He looked over and I could have sworn he grinned. I yanked at the safety belt and clicked it into place.

  Now I knew that Jimmy Walsh was responsible for Bevard’s death.

  All I had to do was prove it.

  Chapter 7

  I stood by the entrance to Roath Park and looked up and down Lake Road West. The properties were comfortable, semi-detached homes in a desirable part of Cardiff. I stared down towards the middle of the city towards the side street where Felix Bevard’s car had been discovered, neatly parked. Had the killer arranged to meet Bevard, I pondered? If he had, Bevard must have known him and even agreed willingly to see him.

  I tried to picture in my mind the circumstances that led to Bevard’s killing. It helped me dispel the image of Bernie Walsh and Martin Kendall smugly telling me the precise details of their movements on the night Felix Bevard was killed. I knew it was pointless even contemplating asking Jimmy Walsh about his movements. I left Lydia talking to the uniformed officers staffing the mobile incident room and walked to the other entrance on the eastern side passing the Captain Scott Memorial. On the lake itself there were couples boating leisurely, the sound of muffled laughter and conversation floating to the shore. The killer must have parked somewhere close by. I retraced my steps to the café wondering if Bevard had been dragged unconscious into the storeroom or if he had walked there unaided. The preliminary reports from the crime scene investigators had described how the storeroom doors had been forced, suggesting perpetrators with a specific reason for wanting to kill Bevard in the café storeroom.

  I joined Lydia as she finished her conversation with a tall, gangly officer who looked as though he should still be in school.

  ‘There have been lots of people complaining at the lack of policing in the neighbourhood,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Is there anything significant?’

  She shook her head.

  It was still early in the investigation and the presence of the mobile incident room would reassure the local population.

  ‘Let’s go and find Jack Ledley,’ I said, heading for my Mondeo.

  Lydia gave the pebbles and assorted grit in the foot well of my car a quizzical look as though she were examining some rare fossil as an extra in a David Attenborough documentary. Then she gave me a weak smile. I made a mental note to clean the car – next week maybe.

  Jack Ledley was a self-employed property consultant but Gloria Bevard had been hazy about what he did exactly. And all she had was a mobile telephone number with no address so we had to rely on one of the staff in the Lemon Grove giving us an address in Birchgrove, a suburb to the north of the city.

  After ringing the bell of his property, peering into the living room through the front window and then talking to various neighbours, all we had established was that Jack Ledley hadn’t been home for at least a week. None of his neighbours even knew if he was married or not.

  We returned to Queen Street as Wyn returned to the Incident Room carrying a tray of coffee mugs. I took one and headed for my office where I booted up my computer. Alvine had sent me another forensics report that confirmed the details of various fingerprint samples taken from the café. She had checked each against the Police National Computer and I scanned the results. Most had no criminal records but half a dozen stood out. Each would have to be checked in turn. I left my office and sat at one of the desks in the Incident Room.

  ‘So how did Jimmy Walsh discover that Bevard was about to sign a supergrass deal?’

  Lydia made the question sound routine. Wyn stopped munching his way through a chocolate bar and exchanged a worried glance with Jane, neither able to decide whether they should reply.

  ‘And who did Jimmy Walsh get to kill him?’ I paused. ‘I’ll chase Inspector Ackroyd for the dedicated source unit file. I know that it’s unpalatable to contemplate that police officers or Crown prosecutors may have leaked the information, but our task is to find who killed Bevard. And our number one suspect was safely locked up in jail. Which means we look elsewhere.’

  I stood up and walked towards the board.

  ‘Wyn.’ He looked startled again. ‘We need to check out Kendall’s and Bernie Walsh’s alibis.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ve already started, boss. I’m checking out Kendall’s alibi tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And I’m doing the same for Bernie Walsh,’ Jane added.

  Lydia distributed a single sheet of A4 paper. ‘We’ve had a list of Jimmy Walsh’s known associates. People that were connected to him through various businesses implicated in criminal activity.’

  I read through the list. My eyes focused on one name in particular.

  ‘Owen Norcross,’ I said. ‘I’ve read his name in a list that Alvine sent me of people who match fingerprint samples from the café at Roath Park.’

  I sensed three sets of eyes boring into me.

  ‘Let’s get a full PNC check done on him immediately.’

  It took Wyn no more than twenty minutes to get all the details displayed on his screen.

  ‘Get his photograph up,’ I said.

  Wyn hit the print button without me asking him. The machine hummed and then spewed out a single colour image which filled the page. Lydia pinned it under the faces of Kendall and Bernie Walsh.

  ‘I wonder whether he has an alibi?’ Lydia said.

  ‘Tomorrow morning we find out,’ I said.

  * * *

  Tracy was pottering in the kitchen of my flat when I got home that evening. In the weeks before I had left for my holiday in Lucca I had sensed that our relationship had lost its initial intensity and I wasn’t certain how things would develop. It must have been awkward for her working as a crime scene investigator knowing that her colleagues and the officers in the Wales Police Service all knew about her brother’s conviction for abducting a police officer, an offence linked to various high profile murders. At the height of the publicity reporters had been camped outside Tracy’s parents’ home in Bournemouth until they became yesterday’s news but the impact
still lingered and since the court case Tracy visited her parents regularly.

  The averted glances and muffled remarks were taking its toll on Tracy and our relationship. She had kept her own flat, making clear she wanted her own space. And my holiday with Dean had made me realise that perhaps I wasn’t ready to make a commitment that might disrupt my relationship with him.

  She smiled but her face didn’t light up. Her lips grazed mine.

  ‘Making progress?’

  I shrugged, pulled a carton of juice from the fridge and filled two glasses. Tracy continued. ‘The murder of Felix Bevard has been all over the newspapers.’

  ‘I know. And with Superintendent Cornock on sabbatical I’ve got Dave Hobbs breathing down my neck.’

  ‘Nobody seems to like him.’

  I shrugged. ‘He makes you think that he doesn’t trust you. And he is very ambitious.’

  ‘I don’t think Alvine likes him very much either.’

  We sat at opposite ends of the sofa and Tracy curled her legs up taking a mouthful from her glass. My shoulders ached and tomorrow, instead of a leisurely Saturday morning, I would be back at Queen Street aiming to make progress. I heard about Tracy’s week; there was a tinge of regret in her voice that she hadn’t been on Alvine’s team on the morning Bevard’s body had been found. A burglary in a house near Bridgend meant she had spent two days dusting and gathering evidence.

  ‘The place was disgusting. It stank to high heaven. I had to stand in the shower for half an hour when I got home.’

  After an hour, we decided to get a Chinese so we ambled down into the Bay. It was bustling; couples hand-in-hand jostled with families choosing a restaurant and older couples out for an evening stroll. We managed more small talk but Tracy’s mind was far away.

  ‘Are you going to come with me to see my parents tomorrow night?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m going to go down to Bournemouth in the morning. Dad isn’t well.’

  We found a restaurant and spent a couple of hours eating and talking about nothing of importance. After paying, I took her hand as we walked back to my flat but she was uncharacteristically silent. She stopped by the entrance to my apartment block.