by Iain Cameron
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Jackson Markham is what happened. He’s taking over on Monday and I’m out. He now controls Mathew’s shares and has decided to cancel the sale. My consortium no longer has a purpose and I imagine will be disbanded.’
This is wrong, thought Henderson. If Lawton killed him, why would he do such a thing and walk away without a fight? His own well-reasoned arguments were falling away before his eyes, like a child’s sandcastle on the incoming tide. He was missing something, but what? Something Jamil said to him, popped into his head.
‘If not the bidders, who else would benefit from a falling share price or by killing Sir Mathew?’
Lawton blew out a long blast of air from his lips. ‘I don’t know. None of the staff, as they have share options and need a rising share price to profit, ditto our investors. The financial press are well pissed off as it makes a mockery of all their predictions, and our competitors are laughing their heads off at our apparent fall from grace. So in summary, there’s nobody I can think of.’
‘Let me rephrase,’ he said, his anger bubbling up to the surface once again. ‘Who else would want to see Mathew Markham dead? Who else had a grudge against him, against you, David Young or Markham Microprocessors?’
‘You think David’s involved in this too? Why? I thought it was an accident.’
He slumped back in the seat but Henderson gave him no time to feel comfortable as he towered over him, ready to grab his throat if no answers were forthcoming. The answer was here, somewhere in this room.
‘David could be a bit rude at times and he could be abrasive, but who doesn’t when the pressure’s on? I mean, he often fell out with Paul Davis, but then he’s a rough northerner, so what would you expect? Sorry, no offence Inspector.’
‘None taken.’
‘Then there’s Mathew, genial old Mathew. He got on with everybody but he hasn’t been a regular in this office for over eighteen months and for a couple of years before then, he spent most of his time on the golf course or playing tennis.’
‘What about in the early days, when you were trouncing competitors and beating up suppliers? Could any of them be gunning for you now? Maybe you had, I don’t know, copyright disputes, patent infringements, court cases.’
His face darkened. ‘There is one person we haven’t mentioned in all of this and now I think about it, he is perfectly capable of doing something like this.’
‘Who?’
‘Gary Larner. Before you ask, he used to work here and the reason his name hasn’t come up before, is because he’s a non person around Markham. The reason for saying this should become obvious when you hear the story, but not a word of what I’m about to tell you must leave this room. Am I being clear?’
‘Do I need to reiterate, Mr Lawton? This is a murder enquiry. If you have any pertinent information, I want to hear it and only then will I decide how to use it.’
Lawton stared at him. ‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough as I need to know none of this will end up in the public domain. This is sensitive stuff.’
Henderson was getting fed up with this little game and was tempted to charge him with obstructing an inquiry; but no, he decided to keep him on his side.
‘What if I say, I won’t discuss anything you tell me with anyone else except where it has a material impact on this murder investigation. If it does, I’ll talk to you or your successor first. How about that? It’s the best I can do.’
‘I suppose it’ll have to do. Sit down, you’re making me feel uncomfortable.’
Henderson took the seat vacated by the Texan at the side of Lawton’s desk, which provided him with a good view to determine if he was lying, and his face would be within easy reach of his fists if he was.
‘The story starts here in this building. The people upstairs are at the moment working on a product which will change the world of electronics as we know it. We call it Kratos, after a Greek myth symbolising strength and power. You won’t see anything about this in the press yet, as we don’t want our Asian cousins catching wind of it and copying it before we’ve recovered our substantial development costs.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Kratos is a brand-new technology and will revolutionise the way mobile devices work. You see, it sucks in radio waves from the atmosphere and doing this will keep the batteries of mobile devices topped up forever. Since you don’t work in the industry, I can’t expect you to understand what an enormous step forward this is for phones, laptops, tablets, radios and all the rest, but from a business perspective, this company will make millions. Nobody has this product except us and in my view, it will double or treble the size of Markham and any members of staff holding shares, which I reckon is most of the people in this building, will become millionaires.’
‘It’s that big?’
Lawton nodded.
He explained this in a cool, neutral way as if he was talking about someone else’s product and not a development that he had obviously worked on for many years. He was such a devious sod, Henderson wouldn’t put it past him to have the designs in his back pocket on the day he walked out of here for the last time.
‘Two quite brilliant engineers, Marta Stevenson and Sanjay Singh are currently leading the project. However, the basic idea and some of the groundwork was done by a maverick engineer called Gary Larner, a genius with radio transmissions. He, and the person working with him, James Nash were sacked eighteen months ago for gross misconduct after a security guard caught them having sex with a couple of girls and snorting coke, in the development studio we have at the back of our warehouse in Burgess Hill.’
‘An ignominious end to a promising career, and all captured on CCTV, no doubt.’
‘Quite, and the footage would have appeared on the web if David Young hadn’t grabbed it first. It was my fault. I was so enthused by this as I thought it was such a brilliant idea, I gave them free reign to come and go as they pleased and spend whatever money they needed. In the end, they abused the privilege.’
‘They were both very bitter,’ Lawton continued, ‘and claimed we kicked them out just to get our hands on the project. In reality, it was a blessing in disguise as they had done little beyond a basic drafting of the idea. If it hadn’t been for the brilliance of the current development team, who took the rough drawings, concepts and the little bit of code they’d written and brought it up to the stage it is now, we would never have the working prototype we have today.’
‘How was their bitterness expressed?’
‘In every possible way. It started with letters, aggressive emails, Marta and Sanjay were hassled in the street, silent phone calls, rubbish being sent through the post; you name it. It only stopped about nine months ago after our lawyers threatened to take them to court. It was a calculated bluff on our part as they could have used the court case as a soap box to gain publicity for their grievances and blow the lid on Kratos. I suspect they had run out of money and the prospect of a long and complicated legal battle put the wind up their sails.’
‘Where are they now? Working for a competitor on a similar idea?’
With a sigh, Lawton reached into a drawer at the bottom of his desk, unlocked it, and pulled out two files. ‘No, they did nothing of the sort, Inspector, because they had nothing to sell.’ He opened both folders and spread them out in front of him.
‘I’ll get Jules to make copies for you, but the last time we heard, Nash was living with his parents in Burgess Hill and Larner on his own, in a house in Haywards Heath.’
‘You think one of them might have killed Sir Mathew?’
‘James Nash, no, he’s really a follower. On the other hand, Gary Larner is so odd and his behaviour at times could only be described as volatile, I wouldn’t put something like this beyond him. When he worked here, most people would have called him eccentric and a touch unpredictable but when he left, I don’t know if it was due to drugs, alcohol, or simple bitterness, but he seemed to become unhinged and just the sort of guy
you would cross the road to avoid. Definitely a man you should be talking to.’
Henderson walked away from Markham House a troubled man. He long suspected the hand of Lawton was behind the murders of Sir Mathew Markham and David Young but his arguments had been demolished with the skill of a fine poker player in possession of a superior hand.
What disturbed him more than Lawton’s clever wriggling, was that he, a rational, logical and dispassionate copper, was about to stake this case, his reputation and perhaps his career, on the guilt of two disgruntled ex-employees, neither of whom he knew much about. He started the car and pointed it in the direction of Burgess Hill.
THIRTY-SIX
James Nash’s house in Potters Lane, Burgess Hill was of modern brick construction, semi-detached with white wood cladding. The small garden looked neat and tidy with mature bushes along one edge but the carport at the side of the house had a plastic roof, which in his experience deafened all those living nearby during a heavy downpour.
It was early evening in late spring, and even though streetlights were on, it was not yet dark. It felt good to be moving into summer, as he hated winter with its short days and dull, dappled light, a haven for crooks who could set about their business without impediment and a bind for people like him who never saw daylight, except when working. He rang the doorbell.
A diminutive middle-aged woman with auburn-coloured hair answered. Dressed in an old cardigan and loose fitting tracksuit bottoms that did nothing to flatter her slim figure, and only reinforcing his view that she had not been expecting visitors. He did not explain his reasons for being there, instead calling it a routine enquiry and asked to speak to her son.
‘You better come in, I suppose,’ she said.
She stood at the foot of the stairs and hollered, ‘James! There’s someone here to see you!’ For such a diminutive person, she had a loud voice, no doubt the result of living with a son, as they all seemed to go through a ‘deaf’ phase, particularly in their teenage years. She turned to Henderson. ‘He spends all his time in his room, doing God-knows what but nothing to interest you lot, he’s a good boy.’
A bedroom door upstairs opened and another voice said, ‘yeah what is it?’
‘He’s awake at least.’ she said. ‘Go on up if you like.’
Henderson climbed the stairs as Nash’s mother walked back into the living room. Seated inside he could see a bald-headed man watching a crime drama on a widescreen television. If either of them took the trouble to come upstairs, they could have a dose of the real thing in their son’s bedroom, although he suspected the interview with James would involve a lot less action than what appeared on their television screens.
A tousled haired young man wearing jeans and t-shirt stood on the landing, his face bland and impassive. From the DOB on his personnel record at Markham, Henderson knew he was 23 but he looked as fresh-faced as any 17-year-old he had ever come across.
‘Hello James, I’m Detective Inspector Angus Henderson from Sussex Police, I would like to have a word with you.’
‘Is it about my mountain bike?’
‘What happened to it?’
‘It got nicked outside Costa Coffee in town.’
Henderson shook his head. ‘No, I’m not here about the bike. This is something more serious.’
He shrugged his shoulders in a ‘what the hell,’ gesture and walked into his bedroom.
There were two chairs, a low-set, fabric-covered recliner and a leather swivel chair in front of a desk. In order not to intimidate him, as some of his colleagues might be tempted to do, Henderson ignored the swivel chair beside the desk and opted for the ugly recliner, which proved to be surprisingly comfortable.
The room was square and small, much as he would expect in a modern house, but tidy. On the wall, there were no pictures of sexy models, Star Wars characters, or the music industry’s latest sensation, unless a poster of U2 at Glastonbury could be included.
The room was dominated by the biggest desk possible within the space available, and upon it sat two computer screens and several pale cream boxes, glowing with green and red lights. From his vantage position in the low seat, Henderson could see a myriad of black cables underneath as they curled and twisted like a bowl of spaghetti, with a bundle leading over to a small storage unit in the corner, housing a laser printer and sound system, through which James Blunt or Jack Johnston played.
‘You've got an impressive pile of kit there. What do you use it for?’
‘I’m a freelance software designer,’ he said sitting down.
‘What does that mean to a layman like me?’
‘It means I work for myself designing whatever software is needed by small businesses and individuals.’
‘Such as?’
‘I get involved in website design, software installation, modification of computer code, sorting out pc problems, the works. I’ve just designed a web site for a hardware shop in Brighton. They’ve been going for a hundred and twenty years and only now, if you can believe it, have they decided to join the world of on-line commerce. It involved a fair amount of training as well.’
‘It sounds like interesting work.’
‘Not really.’
‘Is it not that challenging?’
‘It has its moments.’
‘You’re a fan of the Seagulls, I see,’ he said nodding towards a neat pile of football programmes, lying close to the window.
‘Yeah, I’ve got a season ticket and I go to some away matches as well. Do you follow football?’
‘Yes. I sometimes get to a match but more often than not I’m working Saturdays and so I don’t get over there as much as I’d like.’
‘Bad luck because they’ve been good to watch these last few weeks. I'm mean, we had a terrible start when a pub team could have beaten us and I thought we were certainties for relegation, but they turned it around and there’s been some cracking games these last few weeks.’
‘So I’ve heard. The reason I’m here, James is because as you’re probably aware, Sir Mathew Markham was murdered in April and I’m in charge of the investigation into his death.’
To his surprise, the inevitable, ‘I thought the carjackers did it,’ didn’t come.
Nash nodded. ‘Yeah, I remember hearing about it, but I didn’t follow the story. You probably know that I used to work there and left in what might be called acrimonious circumstances and so I don’t go out of my way to find out what’s going on.’
‘Yes, I knew that you did. Tell me what happened when you were there.’
He swivelled in the chair from side to side as if dealing with difficult memories. ‘I wasn’t long out of university and this was my first job so I was hot on the theory but light on the practicalities. In a way, I was a glorified gopher for Gary, he was the brains of the outfit.’
‘How far did you take it? The idea, I mean.’
‘You’ve heard about it?’
‘Yep.’
‘Did they got it to work?’
Henderson hesitated, remembering his promise to Lawton but Nash of all people, deserved to know. ‘I’m told they now have a working prototype.’
‘Bloody hell, I’m amazed but I knew it would work in the end.’
‘Tell me about you and Gary.’
‘Gary’s a good computer programmer but a genius with radio and like many geniuses, he’s great at generating ideas but crap at implementing them. He couldn’t even be bothered doing a mock-up to show the bosses what we had achieved and given that they paid for it all, it really pissed them off.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Half the time, I didn’t have a clue what he was on about and so in the end, when I thought we were close and we could save our jobs by demonstrating how smart we were, it was a shock to find we didn’t even get to base camp.’
‘Did your sacking come as a surprise? Do you think it was fair?’
He smiled weakly and shrugged. ‘Define fair. In legal terms, I suppose it was, as Lawton had the b
est lawyers behind him, but morally it wasn’t. At the time, I felt bitter and cheated, we both did, particularly at the way Lawton handled it. We thought he was trying to keep all our ideas for himself.’
‘What do you think about it now?’
‘Ha. It was stupid. I suppose we were behaving like a couple of Billy Bunter’s, let loose in our own sweet shop and starting to piss-off the rest of the staff. In a way, it was Lawton’s fault for giving us so much rope and Gary’s for demanding it, when what we needed was more direction. Gary, you see, was too much of an obsessive to ask for help and too disorganised to use it.’
‘What’s he like as a person?’
‘What, Gary or Lawton?’
‘Gary.’
‘He can be bold, imaginative and clever but when something doesn’t please him, he starts mouthing off like an ancient Roman emperor and demanding everything. He annoyed a good number of people at the company, including the chairman’s son, Jackson and so when the dope and women thing went down, there was no more slack in the rope and out the door we went.’
‘Did you keep copies of the designs?’
He shot Henderson a look.
‘Don’t worry I won’t tell the lawyers.’
‘I don’t know why I’m bothered being so secretive as they’re obsolete now. We weren’t supposed to keep copies but we did, and me and Gary tried to build a prototype. Despite blowing a load of our severance cash on computers, testing gear, circuit designing software, and spending three solid months cooped up in a rented workshop,’ he said shaking his head, ‘we still couldn’t get the thing to work. You’d think because we were using our own money, we would be better organised and focused but no, if anything Gary was worse. It was a bad time for me, for both of us and I’m glad to be out and doing something more mundane.’
‘What did you mean when you said Gary got worse?’
‘Well you know, when it wouldn’t work it made him more morose and somehow it added to the feeling that he’d been cheated. He was supposed to take medicine for a bi-polar condition but he stopped and started doing more dope instead, so his mood swings were,’ he sighed, ‘at times volcanic.’