by Iain Cameron
‘Nah, as long as they pay the rent on time and they’re not noisy or smelly. Short-term lets mainly. I never wanted to sign it away on a long-term deal in case I need the space for us, like now. So I won’t re-let it now that lot in there have gone.’
‘How do you find the tenants?’ Walters asked, ‘Do you use an agency?’
‘Nah, never. I’ve got contacts.’
‘Who are, or were, the current tenants?’
‘A couple of young guys working on a contract for a financial services company. They sent out mail shots, stuffed envelopes, that sort of thing. Always paid their rent on time, they never bothered us and we never heard a dickey-bird from them.’
‘Their names?’
‘Let me think.’ He turned to look at the girly calendar on the wall with the name of an engineering business in Ashford underneath. ‘Laurie Scott and Phil Taylor.’
Henderson didn’t know much about many sports, but in pub quizzes he usually got the football questions right. If he wasn’t mistaken, Laurie Scott and Phil Taylor played in the same England team as Sir Stanley Mathews.
‘Have you got their details? How can they be contacted?’
‘I’ve got their number in the office somewhere.’ Henderson looked at the morass of paper on Bennett’s desk. Even if he really wanted to search for their details, which he doubted, he would have no chance in such a messy heap. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ Bennett said. ‘Ach, I’ll look for it later.’
‘How long have they been renting?’
‘About four months.’
‘Can I have a copy of the tenancy agreement?’
‘We don’t bother with those, too expensive. Cash only, short-term lets, right?’
Henderson sighed at the man’s barefaced cheek. It was obviously a lie and they both knew it.
‘I see you’re involved in the transport of wine,’ Walters said. ‘Is it a big part of your business?’
‘All these cases with the pink writing are bound for the Café de Paris. Me and a couple of associates own a vineyard in France and we’ve a big order to supply them with our wine; it’s their house red,’ he said with obvious pride.
Henderson had eaten there, a good lunchtime venue for a tasty baguette or a salad, but he had never tried the house wine, preferring French beer or a glass of Côtes du Rhône.
‘Over the last year, they’ve become one of our biggest customers.’
‘What’s the name of the vineyard?’ Walters asked.
‘It’s no secret, it’s on the bloody label. Château Osanne.’
SEVENTEEN
It had been a warm day and was developing into a lovely evening, the slowly descending sun glistening over the sea right outside his window. Harvey Miller had just finished his afternoon nap and no, it wasn’t a dream. He had accompanied Sussex Police to the Bell Lane Industrial Estate and the warehouse that had been filled with wine barrels, books and equipment only a couple of days ago, was now empty.
Once DI Henderson had got over his understandable strop and started to think straight, he spotted the marks on the floor and the wall where the equipment had been, which proved Miller hadn’t made the story up. Miller realised it would be a hard sell to Henderson’s bosses as no one had a clue where the wine fakers had gone and the police had nothing to show for all their effort. There was nothing else for it but to soldier on.
This evening though, Miller decided to take a break; no more researching on the web or sitting in a car for hours. He took a shower and dressed in clean clothes that had been washed and ironed by the hotel’s laundry. The plan was to have something to eat in any restaurant which took his fancy, enjoy a stroll and perhaps sit in a café or a bar with a drink and watch the world go by, anything to take his mind off today’s events. Then, with a clearer head, he would decide what to do next.
He was way-laid, fifteen minutes into his walk, when he spotted the Café de Paris in the middle of a row of restaurants in Jubilee Street. He had never eaten there before, and while its connection with Château Osanne and the parcel business in Uckfield was at the back of his mind, it looked a good place to eat. All thoughts of conspiracies and murders were set aside when a pretty Polish girl brought him a bottle of the house red and a plate of various breads and oils.
A large glass or two was usually his limit now, as he was trying to reduce his alcohol consumption after too many years as a well-oiled journalist, but he wanted to take a look at the bottle. On the front, the Café de Paris logo, a pen drawing of artists at their easels on the banks of the River Seine. The overall effect would give the uninitiated the impression that the Café de Paris bottled their own wine. Only by looking at a small section at the bottom of the back label did he see the inscription: ‘Bottled for Café de Paris by Château Osanne.’ Beside it, their logo of a leaping grey wolf.
The wine didn’t taste too bad if a bit light, and lacking the depth and heaviness of more expensive Bordeaux wines, while avoiding the bubble-gum fruitiness of its neighbour, Beaujolais. In other words, a good lunchtime drink with a ham baguette or steak frites, but a little underpowered for the beef bourguignon he had ordered for his main.
He left the restaurant an hour later, pleased with his choice of a place to eat as the food was good and the Polish girl, Magdalena, a delight. It was still light outside and, feeling a little sluggish from all the food and wine, he decided to take a walk.
He took a right at the end of Jubilee Street and headed towards the Steine. Using the map in his pocket, he crossed the Steine at the lights and walked in the direction of the sea. When he reached St James’s Street he took a left, as he knew if he carried on walking it would lead him into Kemptown, a place his guidebook told him was worth seeing, with its smart little houses and interesting bars and shops.
By the time he climbed to the top of the hill, he decided he’d walked enough. Unlike most of his countrymen, he liked to walk, but hadn’t done so for a couple of weeks and guessed he was out of condition. He turned down Lower Rock Gardens as he could see the sea in the distance, its hazy shimmer softer in the fading light, and knew if he followed the coast towards the Palace Pier he would soon arrive back at his hotel.
It was a warm evening and several people were lounging in doorways, drinking cans of beer and smoking, but it didn’t feel intimidating as it did in the Hunting Park or Strawberry Mansion districts of Philly. There, it wasn’t unusual for such individuals to be armed, and rather than swigging from tins of beer they would be passing around a crack pipe. The drugs made them arrogant and unpredictable and the guns could turn the evening into a deadly shoot-out.
When he reached Marine Parade, he crossed the road and walked along the promenade but he couldn’t see much in the fading light but the white glow of breakers and the silhouette of the pier. He expected at least to smell the tang of seaweed and rotting fish, but it was the aroma of sausages and hamburgers that filled the air, food he gave up years ago to ward off an early death, toasting away on homemade fires and portable barbecues.
A car drew up alongside him. The window wound down and a guy inside called to him. ‘Harvey Miller?’
‘Yeah.’ He walked closer. The voice sounded familiar.
‘Detective Inspector Henderson needs to talk to you, urgently. Jump in and we’ll take you there.’
The back door opened and he walked towards it, but hesitated. ‘My mother told me never to get into car with strangers.’
The guy in the back reached into his pocket for what he believed to be an id, but instead pulled out a gun and pointed it at him. ‘Get in, now.’
Miller climbed in and the car took off. He turned to look at the attacker beside him, only to see the butt of gun coming towards his head.
When he woke up, he’d lost track of time and to some degree his senses, as he had no idea how long he had been out. The haze soon cleared and he realised he was lying in the back of a car, on the floor with a pair of heavy boots resting on his back. He listened for several minutes but could only discern tw
o voices. The man in the back with the big feet sounded young, and the driver much older, with a guttural voice as if he smoked a lot, which really didn’t take too much detective work on his part as the car reeked of it.
A change in engine tone suggested the car was slowing down, and the incessant banging, not a problem if sitting in a seat, but deafening so close to the road, a sign they were travelling over uneven ground. After a few minutes, the car stopped. The weight of the legs on his back eased as both men got out. Seconds later, he was pulled out by the collar, punched in the stomach and dumped on damp grass.
He tried to stand but as soon as he did, he received a punch in the gut again and immediately regretted eating all the bread earlier in the restaurant, as he could feel it rising in his throat. The young guy stood back to light a cigarette, while the older man came closer. It was hard to see his face in the dark, but he could smell his breath which was rotten and worse than a dog after it had eaten its dinner. He hauled him upright.
‘Miller, you’ve caused me no end of grief,’ he snarled. ‘Now, I’m getting it in the neck from my boss, thanks to you.’
Got them! The two thugs who beat him up in Bordeaux.
‘How? What did I do?’
From nowhere, the assailant’s head crashed into Miller’s forehead, causing him to jerk back and bang his head on the side of the car. It hurt like hell but due to the bad light, Dog-breath had missed his intended target and Miller’s nose remained intact.
‘I ask the fucking questions around here, sonny. When we came across you in Bordeaux I told you to get the fuck out of our hair, remember?’
‘Yeah, but–’
‘Yeah, but nothing, ya useless scumbag. I’ve had enough of you. This is where it ends.’
Miller felt he was standing in a piece of open ground like a park, as he couldn’t see any street lighting or the headlights of cars, but the darkness could not disguise his assailant’s next intention. A shiny mental blade glinted. The young guy behind Dog-breath stood relaxed as he smoked his cigarette, as if carving up private investigators was something they did every day.
Miller cowered back as if his legs were giving way then swung a fist as hard as he could. By the satisfying crunching noise it made, he was sure he’d hit the knife-holder’s nose. He pushed him backwards into the smoker standing directly behind, and without looking to see what happened next, took off.
Away from the car and the path it was parked on, he could see in the dappled moonlight a wide expanse of grass, and not far up the slope, a dark shape: a copse. His first instinct was to hide in the trees but decided against it as he needed to put some distance between himself and the two goons; he kept going.
He had been running for no more than five minutes, aiming towards the line of trees further ahead, when his foot caught a divot and he sprawled on the wet grass. He tried to stand and run again, but the pain from his ankle screamed for him to stop. He’d been a keen long distance runner in his youth, but a dodgy ankle had cost him a place in the NCAA Championships. It was this ankle that had brought his run to an end, but if he didn’t get up and carry on, it would cost him more than a lousy medal.
Lying there, only his heavy breathing interrupted his thoughts, but there was something else. He listened again. It was the sound of his two pursuers calling one another, and by the tone and volume of their voices, they had split up. Dog-breath sounded further away but the young guy didn’t seem so far behind his victim.
Miller forced himself upright, his left leg shaking and the sweat soaking his forehead as if he’d been running for an hour. Taking a few steps at a time and then stopping, he hobbled up the hill into the cover of the trees. He wasn’t sure if his pursuer was wearing night-vision goggles or was just bloody lucky, but only a few minutes later and accompanied by the sound of clumsy clumping and heaving wheezing, he came the same way. Miller searched around for a weapon but the only things he could find were puny branches and twigs.
Moving away from a tree that was giving him much needed support, he looked further afield and located a solid, heavy branch. Wielding it like a club, he waited. The young guy crunched over twigs and pine needles as he entered the woods, talking loudly all the time into a mobile phone, to someone he called ‘Da.’ Dog-breath.
If a rush of adrenaline had helped Miller to escape from the two goons and run up here, it was a rush of fear that gripped him now. He was capable of taking on the young guy with the club, providing the gun stayed in his waistband, but the restriction imposed on Miller by his injured leg prevented him facing his pursuer in open confrontation.
Several minutes passed when he didn’t hear the awkward movements of his tracker, and after allowing another five, he ventured away from the cover of the woods. Keeping within the shadow of the trees, he could see the lights of a city in the distance and headed towards them using the makeshift club for support. He was getting the hang of it now and walked with a steady rhythm, the short club pressed into the upper part of the slope, easing the passage of his weak leg.
Up ahead, the ground seemed to narrow and he realised he was approaching one of the park’s entrances. His spirits soared, as this meant he would be close to an access road. When he reached it he would head towards the public road and hope that some kind soul would offer him a lift or point him in the direction of a bus or train.
Hearing a sudden noise, he turned. Before he could respond, a heavy thump on the back knocked him to the ground.
Instinctively, he rolled away, but before he could get up a figure leapt at him, punching with both fists. He lifted his hands to protect himself and was surprised to see he was still holding the club. He jabbed at his attacker at the same time as Dog-breath lunged forward. With a resounding whack, Dog-breath’s head made direct contact with the end of the club and his body instantly went limp.
Miller pushed the heavy lump off and stood, taking deep breaths in the cool night air, trying to calm the dizzy spin going on inside his head. Feeling better, he bent down and felt for a pulse. His attacker wasn’t dead but was sure to have a thumping sore head and painful nose in the morning.
Miller stood and picked up his club. He started to walk away but turned, wielding the club in a defensive stance as he was sure he’d just heard a voice. There was no one there. He stopped to listen. He heard it again and realised it was coming from the prostrate man. Miller bent down, reached into his pocket and fished out his mobile.
‘Da, can you fucking hear me? Say something for Christ’s sake.’
‘What?’ Miller said in the deepest, most gravelly voice he could manage.
‘Thank fuck for that, I thought you were lost. I’m saying, I’m heading back to the car. We’ll never find the bastard now. A’ right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘See ya in few minutes.’
Miller threw the phone on the ground and stamped on it once, twice, three times until bits of it broke off. If he faced trouble getting back to his hotel in Brighton, he sure as hell wasn’t going to make it easy for this pair of goons.
EIGHTEEN
‘What a bloody debacle,’ CI Edwards said, throwing a copy of The Argus towards him.
DI Henderson picked it up. She’d left it open at page four. The editor had the good sense not to put a photograph of an empty warehouse on the front page, but the headline above it, Police Draw a Blank, in bold, thick type screamed its humiliating message.
A quick glance told him it didn’t just focus on police incompetence but explained why the raid was carried out, what they expected to find and what they believed had happened to the equipment. It included his own curt quote after speaking to the PFB Parcels manager, Jim Bennett, but the overall tone of the article was negative; the police late for the party, as usual.
She pushed her chair back, an exasperated expression on her face. ‘I’ve got a bloody meeting with the ACC in half an hour to explain how we dig ourselves out of this hole. So come on Angus, how do we?’
‘There’s no getting away from it, H
arvey Miller’s pictures show a fully functioning wine-faking laboratory and it’s not there now. So between the time he was inside the lab taking the pictures, Wednesday, and our raid on Monday, they’ve scarpered.’
‘Why the hell did you leave it until Monday? Couldn’t you have done it earlier, Saturday or Sunday, then we might have caught them and avoided this embarrassment? Is your head still on this case or are you too focussed on your house move and your newly found domestic bliss?’
‘Of course my head is still on the case. I only found out about this on Friday, and if you remember, we had a big drugs bust in Worthing and the terrorist emergency at Gatwick, both during the weekend. We couldn’t spare anybody.’
She sighed. ‘You’re right but I’m not sure I should remind the ACC, as the job at Gatwick was on his say-so. How did they know we were coming? Could it be one of us?’
‘I don’t think so. It’s a small team and I know them all well, except Deepak Sunderam as he’s quite new.’
‘How is he getting on? He came to us with glowing credentials.’
‘He’s a bright lad; he should do well.’
‘Good to hear. I’ll mention it to the ACC as he’s very supportive of integration between us and Surrey and it might take his mind off this. I hope you’re right and we don’t have any leaks, as it would just give the bloody press more ammunition to shoot at us.’
‘If we accept it wasn’t one of us, I think Harvey or his burglar must have moved or taken something.’
‘It must have been something important to make them up-sticks like they did.’
‘Maybe Harvey helped himself to a bottle of wine, or his accomplice nicked the tea money.’
‘All the same, Angus,’ she said sitting back in her chair, ‘they’ve put into motion a pretty slick contingency plan. It smacks of military training if you ask me.’
‘Now you mention it, I’m forced to agree with you.’
‘Two things,’ she said, leaning forward to eyeball him. ‘I know you think there is a connection between the fraudsters and Chris Fletcher’s death. If there isn’t, and I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here, is chasing the people behind the wine-faking operation worth the candle. If so, who do you think’s behind it?’