by Penny Grubb
Melinda glanced at him. Webber gave her the ghost of a shrug. He couldn’t think of anything useful to pursue along this line.
‘Was there something about the quintets, Joyce?’ Melinda changed track.
‘Yes, there was. Tilly Brown.’
Webber crouched to add the new name to the list as Melinda asked for detail. He straightened to hear the voice say, ‘… wasn’t the quintets originally, it was Tilly and the quintets. There were six of them. Then Tilly left and they were the quintets on their own.’
Melinda looked at him wanting guidance. That the group had been six strong in their earlier years at school seemed an irrelevance. He mouthed, ‘So what?’ as he mimed a pair of scissors with one hand.
‘Are you saying it might have been Tilly Brown cut off the picture, not Will Jones?’ Melinda asked. ‘Or was she the one taking the photograph?’
‘I don’t know. I think Tilly would have left before that photo was taken. They were the quintets in the sixth form.’
By the time Melinda ended the call, Webber had added the new information to the board and his mind had been back over Saturday and Sunday. The only time they hadn’t been together had been when Melinda had been out somewhere with Sam. But right at the start of all this, when he knew Joyce Yeatman had been in this house, she’d told him Joyce was never in the same space as Sam.
‘What do you make of that?’ she said, standing beside him looking at the new information he’d written down.
‘Mel, when did you see Joyce at the weekend?’
‘I nipped round while Sam was at Jess’s. Her little boy’s one. He had a party. I told you about it. You could have come along.’
She spoke impatiently. He nodded, relieved. He’d forgotten about the party and wondered if he should have gone with her. It hadn’t occurred to him. He never went to things like that.
‘Tilly Brown,’ he repeated. Saying it out loud generated a flicker of unease. The name suddenly had the familiar feel of a long-ago memory. It wasn’t unlike the feeling he’d had of Robert Morgan’s name reaching out from his past. Tilly Brown.
‘I wish you’d found out about Will Jones,’ Melinda said.
‘If he was the one in the photo,’ Webber pointed out, ‘then he was next to Edith Stevenson. Ayaan will have had the name from her. She was on his list this morning.’
Melinda shook her head. ‘She wouldn’t see him. He rang her, but she wasn’t playing ball.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me.’ Webber thought his jaw must have dropped visibly. Her lips pursed. ‘I’m not making this up. He didn’t tell me much, but he told me that. I think he thought I knew the woman. Will Jones’s name didn’t come from Edith Stevenson.’
‘Maybe it was the Stevenson woman who sent Ayaan the address. He’ll have left his contact details.’
‘The email was from Harmer.’ Her words were coated in ice.
‘But whoever they have and haven’t found, Mel …’ He looked at her and saw she was ahead of him. ‘They haven’t found Joyce Yeatman. And they need to talk to her.’
‘I suppose so.’ Her expression hardened and he knew the spectre of Suzie Harmer was centre stage once again.
Chapter 21
Ahmed surreptitiously rubbed his arms and stamped his feet beneath the table. The hard frost from outside seemed to have seeped into the building, creeping up through the floor. His feet were freezing to the point of numbness. It didn’t help that he’d put himself in the draughtiest corner away from the radiator where Suzie Harmer sat leaning her back against the heat. She’d moved there when DI Davis had vacated the spot. Davis and his team had dispersed, though Ahmed could still see the DI in the room across the corridor in a huddle with a group that included Webber. Davis stood facing the door and if Ahmed concentrated hard, he could lip read most of what he said.
He felt a stab of unease about his conversation yesterday with Melinda Webber.
Suzie Harmer flicked through a sheaf of papers. Ahmed glanced across the corridor and saw Davis’s lips shape themselves around ‘crime scene’, and then a moment later, ‘toxicology’ with a satisfied nod at Webber.
Progress was being made in the search for Jenkinson’s killer. He gathered the scraps and squirreled them away.
‘Who the fuck’s Tilly Brown?’ Suzie Harmer’s voice jerked him back.
The question hung in the air. She hadn’t aimed it at him, but he was the only one who had an answer.
‘Um … Tilly Brown,’ he said. ‘Superintendent Webber gave me the name. Uh …’ Hadn’t Webber said something else, said he might have another name for them? He tried to pull his mind back to the job in hand. Whatever else Webber had said, he’d only given him the one name. ‘He said to see what we could find on Tilly Brown. She was an old school friend of Robert Morgan.’
Suzie rolled her eyes. ‘Oh Christ! Not another of his hunches. Saints preserve us from dinosaurs. Someone should pension him off.’
‘He gets results,’ Ahmed’s colleague murmured. It was the usual mantra about Webber – awkward sod to work for but gets results.
Suzie met the comment with a sharp stare. ‘And saints preserve us from 20th century crimes. Do we even have a crime scene?’
It was clear she didn’t expect a yes, and she didn’t get one. They all knew that the scene of Robert Morgan’s murder would have told every nuance 30 years ago. Even now, if it had survived, it might have secrets to release, but three decades ago, the investigation had gone down the wrong line and missed what must have been a blazing trail. Now, they’d probably never find out where he’d been killed.
‘Except we know it’s on their damned patch,’ Suzie grumbled referring to their Dorset colleagues who had recently sent on the rest of the case files. Ahmed watched her. She was in a snappy mood this morning. ‘It’s bad enough doing their job for them, without going off on tangents after old school friends,’ she went on, tracing a circle around the name, Tilly Brown.
The colleague beside him leant in to whisper, ‘She found the old dinosaur good enough on one count.’
Ahmed coughed long and hard, convinced the words had echoed round the room. Suzie didn’t seem to notice.
‘Why are we taking the lead on this?’ he asked, with a hard glare at the man beside him. Because Suzie was right. The crime scene was hundreds of miles away. It had to be. Robert Morgan hadn’t been long dead when the tigers found him, not long enough to have been carted down the length of the country.
‘They don’t have the resources to spare.’ She said it with a sneer, then sighed. ‘But also there’s the car. It was stolen round here and it found its way back.’
‘And took a lead role in a post office raid carried out by three brothers who have no link with any of the rest of it.’
‘Yeah well, that’s an interesting one because big brother post office, the one who was never caught, gets a mention in that latest batch of case files from down south.’
‘Really?’ Ahmed stared, surprised. He’d seen the volume of material that had been generated back in 1986; thankfully most of it had been digitised. The publicity surrounding the escaped tigers and the animal rights group had sparked a huge public response.
‘Here, Ayaan.’ Suzie pushed a piece of paper across the table towards him. ‘Check it out. And do it before you go chasing red-herrings for Superintendent Webber. Now, you reckon the neighbour’s on the level? Tippet’s in the clear?’
‘I don’t think he drove that car to Dorset.’ Ahmed picked his words with care. ‘And I’m wondering about Tippet’s relationship with Michael Drake, his ex-brother-in-law, if that has a bearing.’
‘How so?’
‘Tippet can’t stand Drake. They worked together for Tippet’s father, but Drake was the competent one. Tippet ended up sidelined in his own family firm. I didn’t get the impression of any particular animosity the other way, just exasperation. I think Drake tried to stay out of Tippet’s way. There’s a lot in the original file from way back, fro
m when Tippet accused Drake of killing his sister. It’s all in there.’
‘Wasn’t there a life insurance policy?’
‘Yes, but she’d taken it out without telling Drake. That was his version anyway, but it pans out. In fact it was Tippet and his sister who went to a broker together and took out policies that covered both couples. Tippet admitted that his own wife didn’t know.’
‘But Drake didn’t get any money, did he?’
Ahmed shook his head. ‘No. She died about six months too soon for it to pay out. The odd thing was that if Drake himself had died at that point, she would have got the money. It was a different sort of policy.’
‘Anything in any of this?’
‘I did some digging,’ said Ahmed. ‘Tippet’s wife died a couple of years ago. He got a tidy sum out of the policy he took out at the same time.’
Suzie Harmer threw back her head and laughed. ‘Christ, Ayaan, don’t go finding us another murder.’
Ahmed smiled. ‘No, it’s not. She was ill for a good while. She died in hospital. Nothing untoward. It’s just odd, all the insurance business. Tippet was so antagonistic towards Drake. Not that I’ve interviewed Tippet or anything but Martyn has and he said he’s still holding a grudge. It’s in the notes. I just wondered if he knew his sister was dying and got her to take out a policy so he could finger Drake when it happened.’
‘That’s a bit convoluted. Is there any evidence to support it? Not that we’re going to go after Tippet for that after all this time. I just want to know about the car.’
‘Ah, well … yes. That’s where I’m going with this. When Tippet fingered Drake he claimed his sister had been the one behind the insurance policy business and that Drake must have known all about it. The broker had a different story. He said Tippet’s sister was the reluctant one and that it was Tippet in the driving seat.’
‘So?’
‘Well, it looks like Tippet pushed her into taking out an insurance policy, not the other way round.’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘OK, I’m thinking tenuous, insignificant and barely circumstantial. Is that the best you have?’
‘The car,’ he said, with a touch of smugness because he liked the feel of this theory. ‘When Quintina Tippet was alive she used to borrow her brother’s car. And Tippet didn’t seem to mind until she took up with Drake and then he made a real fuss over it, but when he accused Drake, he might have thought …’ Ahmed paused. The theory that had felt so good in his head sprouted holes as he tried to articulate it.
‘What? Where are you going with this, Ayaan?’
‘OK, so maybe … maybe he genuinely thought Drake had taken the car and he didn’t say anything because … because he wanted to get him into trouble over it,’ he finished in a rush.
After a moment, Suzie said, ‘Why would keeping quiet get Drake into trouble?’
‘Well … maybe not that, but he was so fixated on Drake. I just think that might be behind why he didn’t report the car straight off.’
‘Wouldn’t he be more likely to report it at once and get Drake picked up for car theft?’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t work like that, does it? Family member, used to borrowing the car. It’ll get put down to a misunderstanding.’ He pulled in a breath. He was sure there was something here to explain away the mini mystery of Tippet’s failure to report the theft the night it happened. ‘Drinking! He thought Drake was going out drinking … wanted him pulled up and breathalysed.’
‘Tippet and Drake weren’t working together at that stage, were they? Did they even have much to do with each other?’
‘No, Drake stopped working for the Tippets a couple of years after Quintina died. As far as I can work it out, he kept in touch with the parents for a while longer, but not Brad.’
‘We’re talking a ten year gap,’ the man at his side pointed out. ‘And it hadn’t been Drake who’d been in the habit of taking the car anyway, it was the sister.’
‘Yes, that’s true, but …’ Ahmed found himself wishing he’d rehearsed this theory in private. He might have realised how thin it was.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Suzie. ‘The Ford Tempo was only a couple of years old when it was stolen.’
Ahmed slapped his head. ‘Oh yeah. OK, junk that theory.’ It was the wrong car. Tippet hadn’t bought it until eight years after his sister died. If Drake had had keys, they would have been for Tippet’s previous car. ‘So big brother post office gets a mention in the files from Dorset, does he?’ he said.
‘Yes and he’s the one who disappeared into thin air after the raid. I want you to chase that. So far there are no known links between the Morgans and the post office raid. We know Morgan was in Dorset in that car boot after he died, so we know the car must have been there, too. Now it looks like big brother post office was there that day. That can’t be coincidence.’
* * *
Webber feigned concentration on the reports that lay open on the desk in front of him while keeping an eye on activity across the corridor. Ahmed was busy with paperwork of some sort, his gaze flicking back and forth between his computer screen and the notepad at his side. Suzie Harmer would leave soon. She’d booked time for a hospital appointment. He wanted to swap information via Ahmed, to find out about Will Jones as he’d promised Melinda, but also to get Joyce Yeatman’s name into the cold case enquiry.
The toxicology report focused under his eye. Its subject was Arthur Trent, the driver who’d died in a car with a jammed cruise control. There was satisfaction in being proved right, but mounting anger, too. He could see Trent’s sister-in-law … hear her voice as she’d talked about him.
A good family man. Nothing out of the ordinary to most people, but …
A senseless killing that almost felt careless in its execution. The needle mark had been found beneath one of Trent’s fingernails. The inescapable conclusion was that Trent had been killed because he knew too much about Jenkinson’s death. Webber thought back to the muddy expanse up by the fishing lakes.
‘What have you got?’ Davis had come into the room, a file in his hand. He looked curiously at Webber as he asked the question, adding, ‘You were miles away.’
Webber narrowed his eyes as the thoughts took shape. ‘If you were planning a murder and going to dump a body like they dumped Jenkinson, where would you go to get your concrete?’
Davis tipped his head to one side as he considered. ‘Canvass the pubs probably. Ask around.’
‘But look at the trouble our mystery man got into canvassing for expertise to gridlock the traffic. He might not have wanted to risk that. Maybe he already knew someone.’
‘Yeah, but I’d steer clear of someone I knew if I was planning … oh, I see … unless I was going to knock them off, too. You think this is someone that Trent knew.’
Webber pulled a face. ‘No, I doubt it. Jenkinson’s killing wasn’t planned, was it? Not really. He was pulled in and he found out too much. He followed a car up to those fishing lakes.’
‘The wrong car, he told Ayaan.’
‘Was it, though? He thought it was wrong because there was a woman in it, not just a man, but they’d lost it for long enough that he could have picked up a passenger. OK, so suppose Jenkinson’s become a liability. He’s done the traffic light thing – I wonder if our mystery man thinks that was kosher – but he’s learnt too much, so he’s got to go. Dump him in that pit, cover him over, assume he won’t be found for decades.’
‘And dump his coat in the lake,’ murmured Davis.
‘Yes, because it’s too bright, can’t risk it showing through what isn’t a very thick layer of concrete.’
‘It wasn’t properly encased; the body. It was half in the rubble. The concrete hadn’t seeped through properly. Wrong sort. It was meant for the wind turbines. The smell would have had it found as soon as they got back to work on that walkway.’
Webber watched as Davis reached out to put down his file, his gaze losing focus. He wanted to see if Davis’s line of thought
matched his own or if he was over-thinking it.
‘The car thing.’ Davis pointed at the toxicology report. ‘That’s nothing to do with all the traffic bollocks, is it? It’s just a rush job to get rid of Trent so he can’t finger anyone for the concrete, but what would he know?’
‘He might know who paid him the back-hander,’ said Webber. ‘He might have seen the body in the rubble.’
‘And he certainly knew the location,’ Davis said. ‘But he’d have kept quiet anyway. It was his job on the line.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t going to keep quiet about murder.’
Davis half nodded, picked up his file again. ‘I wonder if he got his pay out,’ he said. ‘There’s no sign of it. No unexplained cash, no bank deposits. Was he done in so he didn’t have to be paid?’
Webber shrugged, disappointed. Davis’s line of thought had petered out in a cul-de-sac.
Then as he turned away, Davis swung round again. ‘No, hang on, that isn’t right. Jenkinson’s a rush job, you reckon. So the concrete, the lakes, it’s all opportunist. And Trent puts himself in the firing line somehow or other, so his killing’s even more of a rush job than Jenkinson’s.’
Webber allowed himself the ghost of a smile, giving Davis a raised-eyebrows invitation to complete the picture.
‘The car … the cruise control thing … That’s not opportunistic. That’s planned. How do you explain someone doing that if it’s a rush job?’
‘All I can think of,’ said Webber, ‘is that it’s tried and tested. Our mystery man’s done it before.’
Chapter 22
Footsteps … the bang of a door. Webber caught a glimpse of Suzie Harmer’s profile through the frosted glass before she disappeared.
He didn’t like the patterns that swirled in his head. Arthur Trent … Jenkinson … the traffic chaos … the old fishing lakes … their link to the cold case via the car. The car with its link to Robert Morgan; the death that had been a murder all along.