by Ellis, Tim
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. He understands that sometimes you simply can’t sit in your ivory tower looking out on the world and ignore the injustices taking place beneath you. Sometimes, you have to climb down into the mud and blood and take up the banner yourself. This is one of those times, Perkins. Well?’
‘You give a stirring speech.’
She described the plan that she’d outlined to Strebler, and then waited while Perkins made sense of it all.
‘If I help you now, I’ll never be able to say no to you again. You’ll be able to blackmail me into helping you every time.’
‘Every time! You make it sound as though I spend all my time planting evidence to frame murderers. And not only that, I would never blackmail you into helping me – I’m not that type of person.’
‘Oh God!’
She could see he was wrestling with his conscience, as she herself had. For her the choice had been relatively easy. Having been the victim of rape herself it had all become very personal. But for Perkins, she was asking him to put his job, his life – everything he was – on the line to help her keep a rapist and murderer in prison.
‘It would be so much easier to let things run their course,’ she added, ‘but it wouldn’t be right, Perkins. It would be like saying, “I was only following orders”, and that has never been a defence.’
‘I know.’
‘So, you’ll help me?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘You’ve always had a choice.’
‘Morally, I’m between a rock and a hard place.’
‘We’re both crammed into that space, you know. We’ll keep each other company.’
‘So, what now?’
‘I need the analysis of those hairs yesterday, and then you can forget about them. No need to write anything down. Just make the comparison, let me know the results and throw the hairs away. You also need to find another sample of Haig’s DNA. When you do, let me know and we’ll work out how we’re going to put the jinn back in the bottle.’
‘It all sounds very simple.’
‘Except you know it never is. Keep your wits about you.’
He nodded.
‘What about Red Rum?’
‘I wish you’d stop calling her that. If she hears you she’ll go ballistic.’
‘Well?’
‘One of the four unused access cards had been activated.’
‘I was afraid of that.’
‘Which means that it wasn’t allocated to any one person.’
‘It does tell us that it was an inside job though.’
‘It tells us something else as well.’
‘Oh?’
‘I found a partial fingerprint on the card.’
‘Enough for a match?’
‘Yes and no, but I’m thinking that we don’t need a match that will stand up in a court of law because no one is ever going to be arrested for something that never took place.’
‘You’re already thinking like a criminal, Perkins.’
‘Oh God!’
‘We just need to do an ad hoc match, confront them, get them to tell us everything they know and force them to resign.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Do we know when the switch occurred?’
‘Yes. The 8th November. It was a Friday, a training day and all the staff were in the ESW. They closed the whole place down for the day.’
‘I’ll get Strebler to take everyone’s fingerprints. Matching the culprit to the partial shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘What about Mr Swash from the CCRC?’
‘Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. If we discover who switched the DNA, then they’ll tell us who asked them to do it if we offer them immunity from prosecution. We don’t need evidence that they did it, just that they conspired to do it.’
‘Ah, I see. So, we can say that it never actually happened.’
She nodded. ‘That’s right. And if anyone wants to check . . . Well, they’ll find everything is as it should be in the storage unit. The chain of evidence wasn’t compromised, nobody loses their job and the criminals are thwarted in their evil plans.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Does Colleen actually travel to all these places?’ he asked Laveen.
Holly brought him a mug of something she’d concocted in the kitchen and placed it on a coaster. ‘Sorry, if it’s not up to much.’
He took a sip. It tasted like primordial swamp water. ‘Thanks, it’s fine,’ he said, putting it back on the coaster and sliding it out of reach, sure that if he drank the rest of it he’d probably die an agonising death, shrivel up like a fossil and be blown away on the wind.
‘Rarely,’ Laveen answered him. ‘Sometimes she’ll get a freebie, but most of the time the articles are cobbled together from various sources, she calls people and picks their brains, video-conferencing and such like . . .’ She pointed towards the rear of the office. ‘We have a storeroom back there set up for video-links. You don’t really have to go anywhere these days, it’s all on the internet – virtual tours and so on.’
He’d skimmed a couple of Colleen’s articles. They contained interviews with wine and spirit producers from all over the world, judges in competitions, authors of books on a cornucopia of subjects from hand-crafted fused glass and silver wine stoppers to the craziest cocktail names people could imagine such as “A Night at Naughty Nikki’s” and a “Yum”.
There was a list of powerful people in the business of luxury wines and spirits who were shaping what people drank. Not just producers, but buyers, critics, judges, professional wine-tasters, celebrities and the wealthy. Kiri might have known some of the people, but he didn’t know any of them.
Colleen also described a whole host of beautiful places such as the Loire Valley in France, Wachau in Austria, Rioja in Spain, Friuli in Italy, Finger Lakes in New York and Baden in Germany to name just a few. It made him want to pack his rucksack, throw Kiri over his shoulder and gallop off to somewhere exotic for a month, a year, forever . . .
‘What was she working on for this month’s edition?’
‘No idea. Colleen was always so secretive about what she was working on – liked to surprise everybody at the last minute.’
‘Have you had a look on her computer?’
‘Part of her paranoia was having a password on her computer. None of us have passwords. These are work computers and anybody should be able to use them. We told her, but she wouldn’t listen. Now look – a computer nobody can freakin’ use.’
‘Is it connected to the internet?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know someone who should be able to open it up for you.’
‘If they can, that would be great.’
He switched on Colleen’s computer and rang Ruby.
‘I’m still asleep.’
‘I have something you can do in your sleep.’
Yawn. ‘Go on?’
‘There’s a password protected computer at Oyster Wines and Spirits that I need to get into.’
No sooner had he finished speaking than he was watching a password sniffer program running in the centre of the screen and then he was in.
‘Jimmy01,’ Ruby said. ‘Can I go back to sleep now?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was having this dirty dream about . . . ‘
He ended the call.
‘There, that didn’t take long,’ he said.
Laveen’s eyes opened wide. ‘What, you’re in already?’
‘Yes. For people who know about computers they can work magic in their sleep.’
‘So it would seem.’ She got up and leaned over him. ‘We use Adobe InDesign to construct our magazine.’ She took the mouse off him and navigated into the software.
He could smell a mixture of perfume, brandy, wine and after-eight mints.
‘There you go. I’ve sent what she was working on to the shared printer.’ She stood up, went to collect the pages from the other side of the room
and put them on the desk next to him.
He picked the unfinished article up and began reading.
Annoyingly, Laveen stood behind him reading the article as well.
‘Uh oh!’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Are you reading what I’m reading?’
‘I’m trying to.’
‘It looks like she’s uncovered a nest of vipers.’ Laveen stood up straight and placed her hands on her hips. ‘This is exactly what I was talking about. Wasn’t it, Holly?’
Holly looked up. ‘Excuse em moi?’
Laveen ignored her. ‘Colleen should have passed that article to Hilary Hudson on News and Features. Instead, she’s trying to get a scoop. I keep telling her that we don’t do scoops in wine journalism. The bitch thinks she’s Kate Adie with a chainsaw.’
‘I take it Colleen was not meant to be writing about wine fraud?’
‘You take it right, Mister. People & Places is her bag, not Crime and Criminals. She’s obviously discovered a scam . . .’ She leaned over him again. ‘Yes, there it is. Three wine investment companies have persuaded seven people with more money than sense to invest £2.5 million each in a non-existent wine called Chateau Nenin - Côtes de Castillon, 1982.’
‘What does that mean exactly? How did she discover something . . . ?’
‘She probably had a tip-off from someone.’
‘That’s £17.5 million.’
‘Exactly what I said. Wasn’t it, Holly?’
‘Huh?’
Holly was certainly looking the worse for wear. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but she appeared to be deteriorating fast.
‘Wine and spirits is big business,’ Laveen continued. ‘People like to drink. The rich especially like to drink – the more expensive the tipple the better.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘You don’t think this is why she’s disappeared do . . . ? Good heavens! They might have killed her.’
‘£17.5 million is certainly a powerful motive for murder.’ He peered at the article. ‘There are no names mentioned here.’
‘No, there wouldn’t be. We’re very wary about being sued for libel. But she had the names of the investment companies: Antigua Vintners Ltd, Cambridge Wine Commodities Company and International Wine Trading Ltd.’
He brought up Google on Colleen’s computer and did a quick search for all three companies. There were no exact matches.
‘Is it possible she might have written the names down somewhere?’
‘Could be. If you want me to help you, you’ll have to stand up, so that the dog can see the rabbit.’
He stood up and moved away from the desk.
The hectic nature of the morning had obviously affected Holly. She had fallen asleep with her head resting on the computer keyboard, and strange bubbling and wheezing sounds were emanating from her nose and mouth.
The top of Colleen’s desk was clear. Laveen began opening the three drawers on the right of the desk, but the upper one was locked. ‘Good lordy. What she has to hide is anybody’s guess. Do you know someone who can get into that drawer as well?’
He smiled. ‘You’re looking at him. Ex-copper.’
‘I thought the police were meant to arrest burglars not join them.’
‘If you can’t beat them . . .’
Laveen moved out of the way.
He crouched down. It was a wafer tumbler lock – typical of office desks. He pulled out his lock pick set that he always kept with his wallet and jiggled his way into the drawer within ten seconds. He was getting slow – old age had obviously taken its toll.
‘There we are.’
‘Amazing.’ Laveen pulled the drawer open. ‘That’s what I’m looking for – Colleen’s office diary.’ She took the black page-per-day diary out of the drawer and riffled through it. When she reached Tuesday 27th November she passed it to Randall. ‘There.’
He sat back on the chair and looked at the page. The three wine investment companies had been written down together with six sets of initials on the right side of the page: GN, DT, MF, GF, JD and JW.
A lead at last. Could this be the reason Colleen and Jim had disappeared? £17.5 million was certainly reason enough to make two people disappear.
‘Any ideas?’ He said to Laveen.
‘None, and needless to say we will not be including the scoop of the century in this month’s edition.’
‘Do you think she would have contacted the police?’
‘Knowing Colleen as I do, I doubt it.’
‘How would . . . ?’
‘I’m beginning to get a headache. I know nothing of what she was doing. I think Holly has got the right idea.’
She went back to her desk, took a hip flask out of her handbag, unscrewed the cap and took a swallow of something a bit more substantial than wine.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Talking of ideas – he had one of his own.
He took out the stack of paper from his bag and extracted Colleen’s mobile telephone report, found the calls she’d made and received on Tuesday 27th November, and began scrutinising each line detail and Ruby’s comments.
She’d made six calls and received four. The telephone numbers, and who they belonged to, didn’t help him. Colleen could have got the tip from someone she had rung, or from someone who had rung her. Also, the call might have been made or received from her office phone.
The only way he would know who had given her the tip was to ring each number, but there would be no guarantee that the person at the other end would admit to anything. Keeping quiet after the person you’d told had disappeared was a prudent course of action. Not only that, Colleen might have obtained the information from another source.
At least he had something. Maybe Ruby – again – could find something out about the investment companies. Were the initials related? Being on the same diary page he guessed they were, but he only had six sets of initials – not seven. Were they victims of the scam, or the perpetrators? £2.5 million was a lot of money to lose, but not if you were worth billions. Would the victims own up to being taken for a ride?
It didn’t look as though he was going to get much more help at Oyster Wines & Spirits. Laveen had crashed and burned onto her desk. She and Holly were like two snoring bookends.
After packing everything into his bag, he made a note of Colleen’s password on a piece of paper and left it on the desk. Then he quietly let himself out like an unwanted guest.
The hooded man was waiting for him outside and picked up his tail again as he headed back towards the station.
Chapter Twenty-One
Her mobile vibrated as she walked down the stairs to the cells.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Strebler.’
‘Hello.’
‘Sergeant Cooke is on board.’
‘Good.’
‘And everyone else has been informed that yesterday was a security exercise.’
‘Excellent.’ She was being non-committal in case anyone could overhear her – the stairwell was like an ear trumpet.
‘How are things at your end?’ Strebler asked.
‘The DNA in the bag belongs to a Boxer dog.’
‘That’s not good.’
‘My forensic guy has agreed to help. We’re looking for another sample of Haig’s DNA, so that we can put everything back as it was.’
‘Okay.’
‘We’ve discovered that one of the inactive access cards was used on the training day of 7th November.’
‘Everyone was in that day.’
‘Exactly, but we’ve found a partial print.’
‘Will it stand up in a court . . .’
‘It doesn’t need to. Remember, nothing happened.’
‘Of course.’
She told him what she’d told Perkins.
‘So you want me to get everyone’s fingerprints?’
‘Yes.’
‘Leave it with me, but it’ll take a couple of days.’
‘By the end of the day the press will ha
ve got hold of it. We need to nail everything down by then.’
‘Okay. I’ll call everybody in – a continuation of the exercise. Who’s your forensic guy?’
‘Perkins.’ She gave him the number.
‘I’ll liaise with him about the DNA and the prints, if that’s all right with you?’
‘That would be great. I’ve got a murder investigation that seems to be slipping through my fingers like sand.’
‘Yeah, I saw you on the television earlier. It was good to put a face to the name. If I wasn’t married with . . .’
‘Let’s not go there.’
‘Yeah, best not. When I know anything I’ll give you a call.’
‘Thanks.’
The call ended.
Was she really doing what she was doing? Not long ago she’d been whiter than Snow White. Now, she was blacker than the Black Queen.
The Custody Sergeant had changed gender with the day shift. Calum Hayton – a giant of a man who seemed to be all arms and legs – was on duty now.
‘Hello, Ma’am.’
‘Morning, Sergeant Hayton. I want to look in on George Swash.’
‘He’s been hollering to see a solicitor since he woke up.’
‘Accompany me.’
They walked through into the cells.
‘About time,’ Swash said when Hayton opened the cell door. ‘You can’t keep me locked up like this.’
The corner of her mouth went up. ‘Hello, Mr Swash. Unfortunately, I’m tied up with a murder investigation at the moment, but I do plan to interview you later today. And as you very well know, I can keep you locked up like this for twenty-four hours, which doesn’t expire until . . .’ She glanced at Sergeant Hayton.
‘Six twenty-four, Ma’am.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ She didn’t bother mentioning the request to extend his stay to ninety-six hours. He’d find out soon enough if it was granted. ‘At around five o’clock my plan is to interview you. At that time, we’ll arrange for the duty solicitor to be in attendance.’
‘You’ll never get away with this, Inspector Stone.’