Price to Pay, A

by Simms, Chris

  ‘Second team, under DCI Sullivan, will be covering aspects following on from the death of Eamon Heslin – principally, the recovery of evidence from the murder scene and all necessary actions arising from what’s found. You’ve also got the Teah Rice thing. A few of you may have noted the absence of DS Chadwick and DC Grant this afternoon. They are en route to Croydon to interview Teah Rice’s relatives and social worker. OK, that’s it. Report to your respective DCIs who will let you know exactly what you’ll be doing.’

  People started getting to their feet, conversations breaking out across the room.

  ‘Everyone!’ O’Dowd’s voice rang out above the din. ‘MI5 and MI6 are sniffing about – sorry, offering us every assistance. If we need it, we’ll take it. But let’s try not to. You lot all jumped through hoops to get into this unit. This is our chance to show everyone – including that lot down in London – how bloody good we are.’

  Iona started making for the door when O’Dowd spoke again. ‘DC Khan? One moment, please.’

  He started closing down his laptop as the room drained of people. Once they were alone, he nodded at the empty chair next to him.

  She sat down and said nothing. Did I do something wrong? Am I in trouble? Is this because of the comment about the girls’ lack of make-up?

  ‘How are you finding things, Iona?’

  She tried to conceal her surprise. It was the first time she’d ever spoken one-on-one with the super and now here he was using her Christian name. ‘Fine, sir. Good. No, not good. I love it.’

  He smiled briefly. ‘And being in Roebuck’s team?’

  Iona thought about her new boss, Peter Roebuck. She knew there were a few in the CTU who found his urbane manner irritating, she suspected because it hinted at a privileged life. In the preliminary meeting she’d had with him, he had been quick to mention that he’d been given a bursary to study at King’s School in Macclesfield. She knew the fact she’d won a sports scholarship to Manchester High School for Girls was on her file: it had been a slightly clumsy attempt on his part to find common ground. She looked O’Dowd in the eye. ‘No problem whatsoever.’

  ‘Good. Him and I go back a long way. He’s as straight-up as they come.’

  Iona understood the implications of the comment. Unlike the last person you worked under, was what he’d really said. DCI Paul Wallace had been a racist snake who had left Iona to confront a terror cell without any back-up.

  ‘Obviously, the way things ended with Wallace …’ O’Dowd looked uncomfortable for the first time. ‘He was a popular man in the unit. Charismatic. Even with all the facts laid out about what he did—’

  ‘Sir, I understand. There’ll always be people in the CTU who’ll wish he was still here and I wasn’t. They’ll never admit it, but we both know that’s what they’d prefer. I can live with that.’

  He gave her an approving look. ‘You’ll go far, Iona, trust me. Now, Peter has OK’d this. In the lounge downstairs, we have Philip Young – the student who brought in the laptop and carry case with the profiles.’

  The lounge, Iona thought. The pleasant interview room for members of the public not suspected of any terrorist crime.

  ‘Understandably, he’s feeling anxious about what he might have stumbled across. We need to make him feel at ease, but not complacent. It’s a tricky one. Me? I’m a fifty-four-year-old with a receding hairline. You are the closest thing this unit has got to someone his age. You’re a maths graduate, yes?’

  Iona nodded. My file really has been doing the rounds.

  ‘That’s also his subject. Where did you study?’

  ‘Newcastle.’

  ‘OK. Not sure what connections the city might have with Manchester. But you’ve got the maths. Now, he’s already been interviewed by uniforms. We need to sit down with him and see if there’s anything else in his head that’s useful. Are you OK with that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. And Iona? Just to be clear, he has no idea about the fate of Jade Cummings. Let’s keep it that way – for the time being, at least.’

  FOUR

  Philip Young looked up from the sofa on the far side of the room. He was holding a copy of that day’s Guardian. Iona guessed it had been bought specially for him; it wasn’t the kind of thing you normally found lying around the building. She spotted a waxed cup from a proper coffee shop on the table before him. Someone had done their best to make him feel at home.

  She didn’t think it had worked very well. There was a slightly queasy look on his face, like he was about to sit an important exam or be interviewed for a coveted job.

  Appearance-wise, he was meticulously plain. Absolutely nothing made him stand out. Loose-fitting jeans and a baggy top. Drab blues and grey. A pair of black Adidas trainers. His hair – brown and straight – was parted at the side. Iona guessed Philip was aiming to get through his time as a student without attracting attention and then land a steady job and have a nice, quiet, respectable life. Shame he hadn’t been able to resist an unbelievably cheap laptop.

  ‘Mr Young,’ O’Dowd announced as they crossed the room. ‘Sorry to keep you. This is my colleague, Detective Constable Iona Khan.’

  ‘Hi.’ Iona smiled. As they’d come in, he’d looked surprised at the sight of her. She deliberately didn’t hold eye contact so he could continue his appraisal, aware that a petite female in her mid-twenties was far removed from the burly male officers who’d no doubt been dealing with him so far.

  ‘We appreciate you giving us your time, Philip,’ O’Dowd said, taking one of the seats opposite him.

  The student glanced at Iona again as she settled into the other chair.

  O’Dowd pointed at the small camera mounted in the ceiling above them. ‘I’ll need to record this conversation, I hope that’s all right.’

  Philip glanced up. ‘Um … yes. I signed a statement for the officers at the other station already—’

  ‘I know. I have it here.’ O’Dowd nodded.

  His eyes went to Iona yet again. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘But you look really like the photo of that girl …’

  Of course, Iona realized. That’s why he keeps giving me the eye. ‘Yes, sorry if that threw you. You’re not the first person to notice.’

  He was frowning. ‘Are you going to be doing one of those reconstruction things? Playing her part in it?’

  She wondered if he realized where he was: detectives in the Counter Terrorism Unit would never appear on the telly. ‘No, a professional actress would probably be recruited for that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  O’Dowd sat forward. ‘We’d just like to talk you through a couple of things. I realize it might seem like you’re being taken over the same old ground.’

  As Philip folded the paper over, Iona could see its corners were trembling. He’d been having a go at the Sudoku puzzle. She reached out and rotated the paper round. The bottom row was partly filled in, as was the right-hand corner. She stared at the numbers, feeling her brain starting to whirr. It had always been this way for her with numbers; they were like a language she had always been able to speak. ‘Is that a five you need? Third from the left.’

  He cocked his head. ‘Five? I don’t know, is it?’

  ‘I reckon, because that means the one four across is an eight, so then you can put a three in the corner box.’

  He spent a few seconds checking Iona’s calculations. While his head was bowed, Iona gave O’Dowd a quick wink.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Philip looked at her with a mixture of awe and intrigue. ‘Are you … like a technician or something?’

  ‘No, just a normal detective. Old habits die hard – we always did the puzzles in my student house.’

  He leaned back a bit. ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Newcastle. Maths.’

  ‘Maths? Me, too.’

  ‘Yeah, my boss mentioned. And you’re a third year?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Which modules have you gone for?’

  ‘I
want to be an actuary. Mainly, I’m doing stats. A bit of Option Pricing Theory.’

  Iona couldn’t imagine applying the beauty of maths to something so boring as finance. ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? I just stuck with pure maths – number theory was a favourite.’

  ‘So, how do you end up in the police with a maths degree?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll take anyone,’ she smiled.

  ‘I can tell you, Iona here is a rising star. A real asset.’ O’Dowd’s clunky interjection brought the conversation’s flow to a stop.

  Iona saw Philip blink uneasily. ‘So, this laptop.’ She waved a hand at the sheets O’Dowd had placed on the coffee table. ‘Very nice bit of kit. With an Intel i7 processor, too.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Philip sounded wistful. ‘Top notch. I suppose it’s in bits now?’

  O’Dowd crossed his legs. ‘I’m not sure. They won’t be using a hammer on it, though.’

  ‘You mean, I might get it back?’

  ‘Well, no. Not if it’s stolen property.’

  He sighed. ‘Which – let’s face it – it probably is.’

  ‘I’ve not seen it up close,’ Iona said. ‘Were there any markings on it?’

  ‘A label at the front had been removed. The casing was all scratched where it had been scraped off with a blade. The guy – the one who was selling – said it had probably come from a bank.’

  ‘And this person, Eamon Heslin, had you any previous dealings with him?’ O’Dowd asked.

  ‘No. I’d spotted PCs To Go before. It’s along Oxford Road from the student union as you go towards the Aquatics Centre. But I’d never been in. Poky-looking place.’

  ‘On the day in question, he was in the student union itself?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But not as an official seller – as part of any shop or stall in the building?’

  ‘No, he was there … you know … just asking people as they went past.’

  ‘Asking what?’

  ‘If you wanted a cheap laptop. I know I shouldn’t have got one, but when I saw how much he was asking – and for a Latitude.’

  ‘A Latitude with a few extra bits thrown in,’ O’Dowd added pointedly. ‘Keyboard, mouse and a proper leather carry case.’

  Iona shifted in her seat; her boss’s tone was more like that of a school teacher. ‘He asks,’ she cut in breezily, ‘if you’d be interested in a cheap laptop. And, for two hundred and seventy-five pounds, who wouldn’t?’

  He glanced at her with something like gratitude. ‘Yeah.’

  She smiled briefly. ‘Did you buy it there and then?’

  ‘No – I hung to the side and listened to what the deal was.’

  ‘He had a crowd?’

  ‘No – just this girl. She paid three hundred for hers, with just a carry case that wasn’t even leather. I bargained a bit and got the other stuff thrown in. And for twenty-five pounds less.’

  Iona glanced at her senior officer. Seeing that he was consulting his notes, she said, ‘Another laptop was purchased?’

  ‘Yeah – he sold the one he had to her. I asked if he had any more. He said yes and we went back to his shop.’

  ‘How many of these Dells was he selling?’ Iona asked, keeping her voice relaxed.

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘But you think he had others?’

  He considered her question. ‘Well, he didn’t say I was lucky or anything. You know, that it was his last one and I’d been just in time.’

  Iona narrowed her eyes, like he was the most fascinating person she’d ever spoken to. ‘Try and remember if you can: did he say there were others for sale? As in he’d taken delivery of a batch of them.’

  ‘A batch?’ Philip shook his head. ‘I don’t remember him saying that.’

  O’Dowd finally looked up. ‘What was that about a batch?’

  Iona turned to him. ‘I was trying to ascertain if Eamon Heslin had any more of these particular Dells for sale.’

  O’Dowd looked at the student. ‘And did he?’

  ‘I don’t remember him saying.’

  ‘The girl who bought one before you,’ Iona said. ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘I don’t know. Normal.’

  Normal, Iona thought. Not the most helpful of descriptions. ‘Normal height, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So, five foot eight – somewhere round that?’

  ‘I’d say five ten.’

  So, Iona thought, she was actually quite tall for a female. ‘And what colour hair did she have?’

  His eyes closed for a second as he dredged his memory. ‘Black. Really black, like it had been dyed. And it was tied back in a ponytail.’

  ‘Good,’ Iona encouraged. ‘Anything about what she was wearing stand out?’

  ‘She had this purple duffel coat thing. Fur on the hood. It was long, knee length. And she had black leggings on underneath with high top trainers. I think they were probably Converse – they were an unusual colour. Green or maybe orange.’

  Iona sent him an appreciative glance. ‘I wish everyone who comes in here was as observant as you. Now, going to his shop: what happened there?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did he have the laptop on a shelf, in view? Or did you wait while he fetched it from some other part of the premises?’

  ‘Oh, right. I waited at the counter while he fetched it from a back room. That’s when I saw he had other stuff – peripherals – so I decided to try and haggle a better deal.’

  O’Dowd tapped his pen against his knee. ‘At what point did you find the sheets of paper in the carry case?’

  Philip raised his chin a moment. ‘When I got home. After I took the laptop out, I went through it to see how many compartments and pockets there were. They were in this zipped inner part. Nearly missed them. It was when I saw the girl’s face on the Manchester Evening Chronicle’s website …’ His words faded.

  ‘When you actually paid for the laptop,’ Iona said, steering the conversation away from the girl, ‘did you use a card?’

  Philip’s head shook. ‘He wanted cash. I stopped at a hole-in-the-wall on the way to his shop.’

  ‘Did he give you any kind of receipt?’

  ‘No – but he said I could bring it back if it started playing up within the first three months.’

  ‘Did he not make any kind of note of the date? What about your contact details for his email list?’

  ‘Yes, he took them.’

  ‘How about the girl in the duffel coat who also bought one?’

  ‘Yeah, he jotted hers down.’

  Good, Iona thought. ‘When you say jotted, he wrote this stuff down?’

  ‘Not mine. He entered my details into his computer. By the till. The other student’s, he jotted them down in a little booklet thing.’

  ‘What details did he take from you? Name, email and phone number?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Home address?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Erm, no. That was it.’

  ‘OK, you’ve been a massive help, Philip,’ O’Dowd suddenly announced.

  ‘Is that it?’

  The super skimmed through the remaining parts of Philip’s statement. ‘It would seem so, for now. A car will take you back into town.’ He got to his feet and extended a hand. ‘Thanks for your assistance.’

  Philip reached up, and somewhat awkwardly, shook. ‘Do you think there’s a link between the fire and the profiles from that laptop?’

  ‘We need to find that out,’ O’Dowd replied, looking down at the younger man.

  Philip spread his hands. ‘Am I in any kind of danger?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ O’Dowd replied in a reassuring tone. ‘But we’ll give you a number. If you have any cause to feel unsafe, call it and a patrol car will be with you in no time. OK?’

  He nodded uncertainly.

  Iona held up a hand. ‘Thanks, Philip.
See you about.’

  Once they were out of the room, O’Dowd started to speak in a low voice. ‘Good work there, Iona. You did well. Our officers at the scene need to prioritise finding the computer Heslin had by his till. If he took details of his customers, he probably took details of his suppliers: I doubt the two laptops came from a legit source.’

  ‘If they were stolen, would he even put the details on his system?’ Iona responded, hurrying to keep up with O’Dowd’s longer stride.

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ He shouldered his way through some double doors, a hand holding one open for Iona.

  ‘Sir, if there was incriminating evidence found with one laptop, couldn’t there be stuff on the one the girl in the duffel coat bought, too? What if there are other laptops out there? We could end up having to track all of them down.’

  ‘You’re assuming the laptop that girl purchased came from the same place as the one Philip Young bought.’

  ‘They were both Dell Latitudes, sir. Heslin wasn’t selling any other type that day in the student union.’

  As they started up the stairs, O’Dowd grunted in agreement. ‘I’ll get some resources allocated for tracing the girl in the duffel coat and any other purchasers.’

  Iona saw an opportunity. Grab it, girl, a voice in her head urged. Once this investigation kicks in properly, you’ll probably never get the chance to speak directly to the super again. ‘I could do it, sir.’

  He looked back at her. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Organize the tracing of the duffel-coat girl – and any other students who may have bought a laptop. Assuming they’re students, I’d be well suited, you know, with my age. And I’m female. We know the other laptop was purchased by a female …’ She wondered whether she’d overdone it, enthusiasm tipping over into grasping ambition.

  His step slowed. ‘I’m happy with that, if DCI Roebuck is. I’ll let you have a word.’

  She kept the smile off her face. ‘No problem, sir. Do you think Philip could be in danger?’

  O’Dowd considered the comment as they reached a landing, turned back on themselves and started climbing again. ‘I don’t think so. There’s a decent chance Eamon Heslin was killed for taking what was probably stolen property. But I think it stops there. What’s more important is finding where Philip Young’s laptop came from. That and the whereabouts of the other two girls in those profiles.’ He stopped at the top step, now almost talking to himself. ‘Because if they’ve already been spirited out of this country, God forbid it’s for the same purpose as Jade Cummings.’