by Salkeld, J J
Inspector Joe Crawford didn’t bother with the blues and twos, just flashed the lights on the marked Volvo whenever he needed to. But he was, reputedly, the best driver in the whole Constabulary, and other drivers seemed to sense it, and the traffic melted away in front of him. Hall glanced at the speedo, then back at the road. He felt completely relaxed, despite the three figure speed. Joe looked as if he was out for an afternoon drive. He was talking about Terry Walker.
‘I hear he’s out of hospital.’
‘Is he?’ said Hall. ‘I wish he was in there for months, keep him out of harm’s way.’
‘Natives restless, are they?’
‘A couple of the local hard men are encouraging him to leave, shall we say.’
‘I’d heard that.’
‘Of course you had, Joe. Anyway, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to charge the bastard with anything, worse luck.’
Crawford drove in silence for minute or two.
‘You know he likes to drive while disqualified, don’t you?’
‘I saw he had a fair few driving offences, yes.’
‘We may only be traffic, but we like to help out where we can.’
‘Are you saying that you’d be willing to keep a special eye out for Mr. Walker?’
‘I think that could be arranged.’
‘But within the rules?’
‘Oh aye, Andy, don’t you worry about that. But I can’t help it if my lads happen to go past the pubs he frequents just after closing time, or park up for their break nearby. And if we got lucky he’d get two years this time, given all his previous, more if he was pissed up as well.’
‘You’d be doing the world a favour.’
‘It’s Eleanor Barrow and that poor daughter of hers I’d be thinking about, Andy. My lads and lasses spend their whole lives being patronised by middle class arseholes in BMWs, no offence mate, or talking to the parents of teenage RTA deaths. So having something to really brighten up their day, like nicking Terry Walker, would be most welcome all round. It’s a shame you can’t charge him though. Aren’t we talking about a hate crime here?’
‘We are, and I agree with you. Terry Walker is a vicious, nasty bastard and his kids are every bit as savage. But if it did go to court you know what would happen. The defence would turn on Eleanor, and all that would happen is that her name, her medical history and everything else would just get dragged in to it. We’d all spend months on the case, and Walker wouldn’t be convicted anyway. So I’d cheerfully take a year or two for driving while disqualified.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. And you in the back, you didn’t hear anything we said then, right?’
When Joe had dropped off the two PCs he told the two he was due to collect to go and get a brew, and that he’d pick them up in half an hour.
‘Where to, squire?’ he asked Hall.
‘Let’s just have a drive around, Joe. Can we start at the hotel she stayed in?’
They’d been up and down half a dozen streets when Jane noticed the used car lot. It looked closed.
‘What about that, Andy? Buy a cheap car and just drive out of town? If I had the cash I might be tempted.’
‘Drop us off here would you, Joe? And then maybe have a ride round for ten minutes, see if anything catches your eye as well?’
Simon Winner saw the Police car from his office window, and groaned out loud when it stopped. He wondered if he had time to lock the door and get down, out of sight, but he hesitated for a few seconds, and by then the man and woman, both in plain clothes, were walking towards the office. He didn’t think that the cops gave lifts to Trading Standards or Tax Inspectors, and he doubted he’d done anything to interest CID. So he got up from behind his large desk, fixed his smile, and opened the plastic door to his prefabricated office.
‘How can I help you, officers?’
‘We’re looking for the manager, or owner’ said Hall.
‘I’m the proprietor, Simon Winner. As in ‘every one’s a Winner’.’
Hall looked blank.
‘It’s on a sign on top of the office, look.’
Hall took a few steps back. ‘No, there’s nothing on top that I can see.’
‘Bugger, it must have blown over again. What can we do for you anyway?’
‘We? You have colleagues?’
‘Well, strictly speaking it’s just me. In this part of the business. I like to give a personal service to my clients.’
Hall smiled. ‘I’m sure you do. Could we come in for a moment?’
‘Certainly. Can I offer you a coffee, or a tea?’
‘No, thanks.’ Hall had to stand up so he could push the photo of Alison Thornton across the desk, it was so big. He reckoned it covered at least a third of the whole floor area. ‘Have you seen this woman in the last day or two? Her hair might have been shorter than in this photo, and blonde as well.’
Winner hesitated. It would only take him a minute to enter the details of the transaction in his cash book, retrospectively like. They couldn’t touch him for it, he was sure of that. He nodded. ‘But I didn’t recognise her, honest I didn’t. Like you say, she looked different.’
‘That’s OK, Mr. Winner, don’t worry. Did this woman buy a car from you?’
‘Yes, yesterday morning, a nice clean little Clio. Only 85,000 on it, and...’
‘Registration number please.’
‘I’ve got it here somewhere, hang on a minute.’
Thirty seconds later Jane was outside, phoning in the registration number and passing on Hall’s instructions to get everyone focussed on finding the car. Then she went back and joined Hall.
‘Did you get the impression that this woman, Alison Thornton, was with anyone?’
‘No, I think she was on her own.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘No, she just said her car was off the road, and she needed something temporary like.’
‘And how did she pay?’
‘Cash.’
‘Do you still have the money?’
Winner hesitated.
‘It’s all right, Mr. Winner. Your dealings with HMRC are your business, and so long as you’re as helpful as you can possibly be in the next five minutes I promise that we won’t put in a call and ask your local Inspector to take a close look at your little business empire. Now, have you still got the cash?’
‘Yes, some of it.’
‘Can we see it please?’
‘You won’t have to take it will you? It’s what we call working capital in the trade.’
‘I understand, and no, it’s not evidence. We just want to know if it came from a bank, maybe an ATM, or whether she’d been carrying it for ages.’
‘Oh no, it was all from a machine. You can always tell. It’s lovely and crisp. Look, here’s the £500 I’ve got left. I mean with me, the £500 I’ve got with me. All the heads on the same side, but not tied up with a band, see.’
‘Thanks, Mr. Winner. Now, when the woman drove away, which way did she go?’
‘Back towards the centre of town.’
‘And how much fuel was in the car, do you remember? An establishment like this, I expect you like every customer to drive away with a full tank of petrol?’
Winner knew better than to assume that this detective was having a joke at his expense. And he didn’t care if he was, so long as they were away quickly. He had his suit jacket on, and the cabin was starting to get hot. He could feel sweat trickling between his shoulder blades.
‘In an ideal world I’d love to give them all a full tank, but margins are tight, and fuel prices being what they are...’
‘So the tank would have been almost empty?’
‘Usually, yes, but I’d been running round in the Clio myself. My Jag’s off the road at the minute see. I remember I did wonder if I could charge an extra £20 because there was plenty of fuel left in the car.’
‘So how far could she have got before she’d have needed to stop for fuel?’
�
��A hundred miles, probably more. Like I say, there was plenty in it, quarter full at least.’
There was a real buzz in the office before the team meeting that evening. Hall called for everyone to settle down. ‘You all know that Alison Thornton left Grange in this red Clio, at a little before 10am. What you might not know is that we only have it twice on the ANPR database, and that’s on the A6 coming in to Penrith at a little before noon. So what happened then? Did she dump the car in Penrith? If so, where? Has she left by another means; bus, train, another car? She’s bought herself a decent time window, got well ahead of us, and she’s left herself lots of options here, so let’s split in to two groups. Ten officers in five cars will drive every street in Penrith, starting in the centre and working outwards. Every car park, every side street, all the supermarkets. We need to look everywhere. Just find that Clio if it’s there. Everyone else, get on the CCTV, and lots of it. We need all the station CCTV from noon until now, and we need officers in plain clothes at the station and the bus station with photos. Anyone got anything to add?’
‘What about an accomplice?’ asked Ray Dixon. ‘Is that still a possibility?’
‘Possibility yes, probability no. If she had help there were loads of easy ways out, and I think she’d be long gone by now. So let’s work on the assumption that she’s traveling alone. Anything else? No? OK, get to it everyone.’
Thursday, 16th May
Terry Walker was glad to be home. Kylie came and checked on him every ten minutes or so, and his lads had made the right noises about giving Alan Frostick and his boys a proper hiding, just as soon as they got the chance. Terry knew better than to expect anything to happen, but at least the lads were on his side. And Kylie had told him that some plain clothes Inspector, who they’d not seen on the estate before, had been round and had a quiet word with Alan. So he reckoned that the worst he could expect was the silent treatment for a while, and he could live with that. He’d heard everything that his mates had to say anyway.
He really fancied a curry, but the take-away at the end of the street wouldn’t be open for hours. He could still smell the one that the rest of them had eaten the night before.
‘You could have kept a bit for me’ he said, when Kylie brought him a sandwich.
‘I never thought’ she said, ‘sorry.’
For a moment she was tense, that was just the sort of thing that could set him off, but something told her that she had nothing to worry about.
‘Story of my bloody life’ he said. ‘Nobody ever thinks about what I want.’
‘I’ve just seen to my Deputy Chief’ said Tony Sheridan. Hall had put him on the speakerphone so that Jane and Ray could hear what he said.
‘I imagine he was very happy that we had the leak, not you.’
‘You could say that. I think he said the shit that was about to fall on Cumbria Constabulary should be called the Turdtanic, it’s that big.’
‘Colourful turn of phrase, your Chief.’
‘You could say that and all. Am I on speaker-phone, Andy?”
‘Yes, DC Dixon and Jane Francis are with me.’
‘Shame. I was going to tell you what he said about your Val Gorham. It had something to do with lemons anyway, and it didn’t sound anatomically possible.’
‘So what is friend Murphy saying about Alison Thornton?’
‘What you’d expect. Admits he knows her, says he didn’t know that she was a Special up with you, and says he knows nothing about the information about Williams. We can say what we like, we could charge him with conspiracy if we had enough, and he wouldn’t say a word more.’
‘Any chance of finding any evidence to connect them?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know, maybe something from the mobile phone traffic?’
‘No, Andy, not a chance. Pay-as-you-go phones both ends it’ll be, dumped straight after the call was made. No way could we connect to either of them. Our best bet is if you can catch Alison and she decides to talk. So how’s that going?’
‘In a word Tony, to shit. We’ve got everyone we can muster on it, but we can’t find that bloody Clio, and we haven’t got her in the railway station either.’
‘Buses?’
‘Still looking, and at the town centre CCTV. Nothing so far. You wouldn’t believe how much footage there is. Even if I can keep half a dozen folk on it I reckon it will take us a week to get through all the CCTV from shops and stuff.’
‘So what do you reckon has happened? Could she have driven on, and avoided all our ANPR kit? You said she’s wise to it? She knows it’s real-time data?’
‘Yes, and that’s certainly possible. Basically we’ve lost her on the timeline, and then the possibilities of where she’s gone start to multiply exponentially.’
‘You mean you haven’t got a clue where the hell she is.’
Jane and Ray laughed. ‘Yes Tony, that’s a fair summary of the situation. If we don’t get back on to her soon, today really, then I reckon she’s away. So it’s time to start to coming at this from the other end. Why did she do it, and who did she do it for?’
‘Agreed. I’m not surprised that she’s got away. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing as they say, and it’s certainly true in this case. And if she stays off the grid we’ll struggle to find her. But what’s she doing for cash? You think Cafferty is bank-rolling her?’
‘Has to be. She’s probably carrying bank cards registered to one of his people, and if we can find who that is we’ll be able to get back on her trail. But if she’s got half a brain she’ll be very careful about using them, and will keep moving around.’
‘She’ll be worried about Cafferty finding her before we do, you mean?’
‘Absolutely. She must realise that she’s the weak link now, and that it would suit Murphy, Cafferty and whoever else if she was to meet the same fate as Williams. And since it was her who grassed him up I’m guessing that she’s in absolutely no doubt about how Billy Cafferty deals with problems like her.’
‘Well we’ve been looking carefully at her place of work while you’ve been chasing shadows. Clean as the proverbial whistle. Been established for twenty plus years, impeccable reputation, no NI fiddles, nothing. They even did security for our Benevolent Fund’s boxing night the other week, all free-of-charge, honest they did.’
‘I get the picture, and I’m not surprised. The likes of Cafferty know that they have to compartmentalise perfectly to survive, and they can’t afford any contact between their straight businesses and their criminal activity. But if we don’t get anywhere from our end in the next twenty four hours would it be OK if we popped down again?’
‘Sure thing. Happy to have your input, just let me know. Anything else?’
‘Just one thought. Have Alison’s bosses at Safe Security had their auditors in, the last couple of days I mean? Since they’ve known what she was up to, I mean.’
‘Not as far as I know. Her boss seemed relaxed about the money side. He said she was a model employee, or words to that effect.’
‘That’s what makes me nervous.’
‘I hear you Andy. OK, I’ll suggest it to them. At least it might help us eliminate fraud as a motive. At the moment we’re struggling to work out why she did it.’
‘No sign of extra cash? New car, mortgage paid off, anything like that?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘She’s an accountant, so she might just be good at keeping cash out of sight. But if it’s not financial, any signs that the motive might be something else?’
‘No sign that she was having an affair with anyone, least of all Murphy, if that’s what you mean. If she was they were being bloody careful, anyway.’
‘Well, her prints were on that file, and she’s running as hard as she can now, so there’s no doubt that she grassed on Williams, and she can’t have taken all that risk for nothing.’
‘The way I heard it your Super more or less handed the file to her on a plate.’
‘It wa
sn’t quite like that, Tony.’
‘Just make sure you don’t join him on the bridge of the Turdtanic, Andy, because from what I heard it’s going down with all hands.’
‘Do you mind, I’ve got my sandwich here. And it’s sausage.’ Hall winked at Jane and Ray. ‘I’ll email you later and let you know if we’re coming down. It’d be me and Jane again. I’m leaving Ray alone on the bridge. He’ll tell us what the band’s playing when she finally goes down, I’m sure.’
To her surprise Alison Thornton enjoyed her morning in Edinburgh. It almost felt like she was on holiday. She’d intended to stay in Glasgow, but when she got off the bus from Hamilton she saw a non-stop service to Edinburgh, and it looked as if it was about to leave. So she’d climbed aboard, and here she was.
She’d spent one night in a hotel in the centre of town, and she’d seen an advert for a flat share in Marchmont. She’d met the girl who owned it within an hour or two, and they got on well. Alison had told her that she was taking a sabbatical from her work as an accountant, and would be staying until the end of the Festival at least. And she’d paid a couple of month’s rent in advance too.
Now it was time to shop. She’d decided that the best strategy was to hit one of the cards hard, then leave it alone, so she bought clothes, a top of the range mobile and a laptop, and managed to get a couple of thousand in cash before one of the cards was declined. From now on her plan was to use cash whenever she could, and make cash withdrawals on the other card in some of the Scottish towns that she’d never really heard of, like Dunfermline, or Livingston, or Kirkaldy. They all seemed to be just a short train ride away.
When she’d finished shopping she called a cab, loaded up her stuff, and made her way round to the flat.
‘I wanted a fresh start’ she said to her new flatmate when she’d finished climbing the stairs with all her bags and boxes. ‘Now, do you fancy going somewhere for lunch? I could eat a scabby horse.’
‘In that case I know just the place.’