by Penny Grubb
As Webber watched, Ahmed suddenly shot upright, mouth half open, his gaze darting about but not focussed on anything nearby. He strode through.
‘What have you got, Ayaan?’
Ahmed’s stare turned to Webber, his expression puzzled. ‘Edith Stevenson. She knew we were there. Outside that supermarket when we filmed her.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s not what … it just popped into my head. We saw her car, thought she was coming our way out of that crescent, but then she swung the car left, last minute, made a meal of turning the corner. She must have seen us. She wasn’t going to the supermarket at all. Suzie had just been banging on her door. She’d pretended to be out. As soon as we left she raced off.’
‘So where do you think she was going?’
Ahmed spread his hands in a helpless gesture and shook his head. ‘I don’t know, but I’m certain she was one step ahead of us. And if she knew we were watching her when she came out of the shop, maybe she put on that weird walk deliberately. Why would she do that?’
‘To cover for using the disabled parking.’ Webber voiced the obvious. ‘Are you saying that wherever she was heading might be where Suzie’s gone?’
‘Maybe, but …’ Ahmed shook his head, frustration clear on his face. ‘That’s not what I was trying to remember. It’s something Suzie said to me today. I don’t think it’s anything to do with Stevenson.’
Webber returned to his office. Experience told him that the stress of the situation had Ahmed building up some scrap of memory that wouldn’t in the end be worth the angst, but he’d have to work through it in his own way.
The phone on his desk sprang to life simultaneously with his mobile. The former identified itself as Farrar but the latter showed his own home number. He cursed inwardly; should have rung Melinda before now. He’d managed a brief call earlier but had had to cut it short, promising to ring back. The last time he’d red-buttoned Melinda she’d vanished. Farrar was out at a black tie do. He’d be ringing for a progress report during some kind of interval. Mel was safe now. She would understand … he hoped.
Farrar’s voice was low, the background sounds loud. ‘I don’t have long, Martyn. Have you found Suzie? What the hell’s going on?’
Webber could only give a negative and admit, ‘I misjudged it, John. I took Michael Drake for the patsy. I thought Edith Stevenson was the brains. Maybe it’s a case of equal partners. They were responsible for Robert Morgan and the first Mrs Drake and he knows something about Suzie but he’s not talking. It’s tied in with the second Mrs Drake. He more or less confessed but not in any way I can use. I’ve got him locked up but I’ll be letting him back on to the streets tomorrow evening. I haven’t a shred of evidence that’ll stand up.’
‘Slow down. You’re saying he was planning to kill his current wife?’
‘Yes, for the insurance. We’re turning his house upside down. If he poisoned the first Mrs Drake and got away with it, chances are he’s pulling the same trick with the second. But we got the warrant because of Suzie. That’s the last place she was known to have been.’
‘It’s not though, is it? She contacted Ayaan after she left. And where’s her car?’
‘OK, I’m chancing my arm a bit, but we need to find whatever’s there before we have to let Drake out again to destroy more evidence. And wherever Suzie went, it was because of something she found there.’
‘If we go after Drake for his first wife,’ said Farrar, a measure of distaste in his tone, ‘we’ll need Brad Tippet.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Webber. ‘Loose cannon of a witness but he’ll remember it all like it was yesterday the second he knows Drake’s in the frame.’
‘And the traffic business?’
‘Still no idea how it links to them. We’re going through what they managed to recover from the stuff Stevenson threw off the Humber Bridge. But she picked her spot. She knew what she was doing.’
‘And what was the whole media circus thing?’
‘That was Mel working old contacts. She knows just what buttons to press to bring them out, though they’ll not trust her again after this.’
‘But why did she do it?’
‘It was her way of making sure she had witnesses on the spot, though apparently they didn’t go where she’d told them.’ PC Melinda Bryant’s old contacts network knew that her tip-offs came with baggage. ‘It might have stopped Stevenson throwing herself off the bridge. She’d have done it quietly but not with an audience. That fits with what I had from the teacher, Meyer, and Mel had something similar from Joyce Yeatman.’
It wasn’t the only thing Melinda had had from Joyce. There was the issue of loyalty to her husband that had apparently been the motivation behind concealing the last page of Pamela’s note. He felt a burst of anger at the officialdom that had missed the fact it had been incomplete. What had Pamela revealed? Presumably Gary Yeatman’s part in Robert’s death. Not that Webber was convinced Yeatman had been involved. Drake’s version had woven a tale attributing the master plan to Yeatman, but then Drake would say that. He intended going back yet again to listen to Kowalski’s version of Morgan’s funeral. There had been something in it that chimed with the story he’d had from Drake.
‘We know Jenkinson was approached in Hull by Streetwise’s henchman,’ Farrar said. ‘And later Streetwise went to some trouble to track down Stevenson in York. So even if they didn’t kill Jenkinson, could they be behind this traffic business – some planned disruption for another purpose? It’s all very well saying they do their own dirty work, but that applies to murder not to road traffic accidents. Is that what Suzie found, some link to Streetwise or Boots Boy?’
‘I don’t know.’ Webber had nursed a similar idea but found nothing to add weight to it.
Farrar rapped out orders. Webber was to make contact again with their Norwegian counterparts, to see what else might be unearthed from the undercover operative. ‘Let them know about Suzie if you haven’t already. I want them pulling out all the stops. Get on to them right away.’
They didn’t give a fuck about Tom Jenkinson, Webber thought sourly. He didn’t think a Detective Sergeant from York would feature much higher up their list.
As soon as the call ended he picked up his mobile and punched in his home number. ‘Sorry Mel,’ he said. ‘I was on the other line to John. Are you OK?’
‘Never mind that,’ she said. ‘Tell me about Michael Drake. You’d got up to where he’d confessed to killing his first wife.’
He glanced around and hunched over the phone, lowering his voice. Of course he shouldn’t be telling her any of this. It was his quid pro quo for not coming home, for staying to direct the search for Suzie. ‘I’ll have to stop if anyone comes in,’ he said.
‘Then get on with it,’ she snapped. ‘Did he confess to Pamela Morgan?’
‘No. Not even close. It was barely a confession about his wives, nothing I can use anyway.’ Webber told himself that talking it through with Melinda gave him a better chance of remembering the detail for later, for when they’d found Suzie and had time to concentrate on the old crimes again. ‘He spun it that the three of them, him, Gary Yeatman and Robert Morgan, went to Dorset to stop Will Jones doing the tiger stunt. Jones had told Stevenson all about it. Supposedly they were going to keep Jones out of trouble. He gave me a patchwork of a story but he let a few things slip that he didn’t mean to.’
Webber glanced round to make sure no one was in earshot. Ahmed looked like he was going to start tearing at his hair. He would have to go and have another word. ‘I haven’t had time to check,’ he went on, ‘but Drake talked about hitching a lift after the car was stolen. There’s a reference to it in the case files from the time. Someone came forward to say they’d picked up a hitchhiker. It wasn’t followed up but it was in the area of the warehouse. The thing is …’
He paused as someone strode down the corridor past his open door. The hands of the clock would soon be nearer to nine than eight. ‘The thing is,’ he repeated,
‘the timing would fit one of them dumping Morgan’s body which of course was before the tiger lorry arrived. And it was a single hitchhiker.’
‘So the three of them drove to Dorset, but why did they go in Brad Tippet’s car?’ Melinda said. ‘And anyway how? We know that’s not the car Michael Drake had keys to.’
‘Presumably they didn’t use one of their own cars because they knew they were going to put a body in the boot,’ said Webber, ‘and as to the keys, I have a theory about that now I’ve seen how Drake operates.’
He thought back to what Ahmed had told him from when he’d spoken to Suzie. She’d offered to make tea in Drake’s house in order to get out of Drake’s way. Ahmed had teased her about it. Suzie Harmer didn’t make tea for anyone. What were the chances that Drake had made comments about hot drinks as he needled Suzie with his frustratingly painstaking search for Tiffany’s password book? He thought back to his own request to Drake,
Would you let us have a look at your wife’s computer? DC Ahmed here could bring it away with him …
He’d done the asking but Drake had prompted it with his comments about Suzie’s search. And what had Tippet said about giving his ex-brother-in-law a set of keys to the new car?
It was … it was for Tina. She’d have wanted me to …
His tone had turned to hastily smothered surprise as though he’d only just realised how stupid a reason it sounded. Drake had finessed the keys out of him, the car had disappeared … and Tippet did what he’d always done, pretended not to notice, except that when it was still gone by morning, he’d reported it.
‘We can take it that he had keys,’ he told Melinda. ‘The way I see it, the three of them were in the pub before they went to the warehouse. Drake told me Gary Yeatman went off with Robert Morgan and came back alone with the tale of some kind of fracas, Morgan in a fight with Will Jones. He was lying. He was the one who went off with Morgan, took him to the warehouse. Yeatman must have stayed in the pub.’
Drake had blurred the edges in the telling, wary probably of what secrets the car had revealed.
‘None of them recognised the man who used to be at school with them – the eldest brother from the post office raid. But he recognised them, and he recognised that they were in Tippet’s car. He knew the deal, he knew the players, he knew Drake would have taken the car without Tippet’s permission. He followed them and he lifted the car.’
‘Followed them? He didn’t take it from the pub?’
‘No, that doesn’t fit with the hitchhiker. From the pub it’s a short walk to the station. And anyway Robert Morgan was alive when he left the pub. He was dead by the time they got to the warehouse. The hitchhiker fits with someone stranded at the warehouse.’
Webber’s hand reached for a pen. He scrawled the words he’d heard from Drake.
I had to hitch a lift. It was touch and go getting back in time.
He had to hitch a lift, not Yeatman. Webber smiled. For someone who’d had decades to polish his cover story, that had been careless.
‘I think the car was taken from the back of the warehouse,’ he told Melinda. ‘Drake wouldn’t have locked it while he went in to dump the body. Must have been a hell of a shock to come out and find it gone.’
‘But does that mean …?’ Melinda’s voice tailed off into a half question.
‘Exactly,’ said Webber. ‘For big brother post office to know where they’d gone, he must have followed. And you know what that means. He witnessed the murder; he saw Drake stop the car, hit Morgan on the head and bundle him in the boot, before driving on to the warehouse. After the post office raid, after they’d dumped the car, he tried to blackmail Drake about it.’
‘So he drove the car back, did the raid the next day, dumped it in the gravel pit and then …’
As she paused he finished the sentence for her. ‘He went to Drake and tried a bit of blackmail. And he ended up in the grave where someone had put Tilly Brown 15 years earlier.’
She gasped. ‘Tilly Brown?’ He’d forgotten she didn’t know that bit.
‘It’s not a 100 percent confirmed yet but that’s who it’s going to be.’
‘But why? Why Tilly Brown?’ She sounded shocked but before he could respond she changed tack as though remembering they were on borrowed time for this call. ‘Did Will Jones know or not?’
‘I don’t think so, not at the time. I think he put the pieces together while he was inside. And I want to know what Joyce Yeatman’s been hiding; what was in the rest of that note.’
‘I can go and confront her about that. She’ll tell me now. It’s way too late to be protecting anyone.’
‘No, Mel, you mustn’t …’ He paused to soften his tone. Barking orders at her was the worst thing he could do. She was safe at home and couldn’t go off anywhere because of Sam. ‘We’ll get to her in good time. I guess there was some allegation about Gary, but I’m yet to be convinced he was in on the murder.’
‘Really? You’re not just saying that for Joyce’s sake?’
‘Of course not,’ he snapped, irritated. He would happily slap Joyce Yeatman for what she’d put them all through.
‘But Martyn, about the car and everything. The warehouse was out of the way … middle of nowhere back then.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So if it happened the way you said, big brother post office wasn’t alone. He must have followed in a vehicle. I mean he wouldn’t have left his own car behind, not if he’d just witnessed a murder.’
She was right. He felt a surge of something like triumph. ‘That’s good, Mel. That’s bloody brilliant.’
‘No need to go over the top,’ she grumbled at him. ‘It doesn’t help you find Farrar’s golden girl.’
He felt his mouth curve to a smile. She was pleased he’d been so easily distracted from Suzie’s plight. He could have pointed out that Suzie had well and truly lost her golden girl status, but said only, ‘You should switch to CID.’
A snort of derision. ‘Not a chance. I’d die of boredom.’
He hadn’t been over the top. With all that was in his head, in everyone’s heads at the moment, that small insight could have lain hidden for a long time. With a feeling of satisfaction he clicked together the links. Ahmed’s scatty witness, Larry Scott, the one who’d been in the pub with the post office brother when he’d spotted the Ford Tempo … Scott’s wariness around all mention of the car … why would those tiny details have stuck? Why hadn’t Scott mentioned the car 30 years ago when he’d tried to grab his piece of the limelight? Some trivia about seeing a car should have been swamped and forgotten in all the furore over the tigers … unless it was linked … the car … the tigers … the killing. Had Scott been the accomplice? Had he and big brother post office followed the Tempo and then stolen it? Everything hung by a thread from this distance in time, but it was possible. He wanted to be there when Michael Drake was told that there was a living witness to Morgan’s murder.
A shout from across the corridor snapped his attention to a sudden flurry of activity.
‘Hang on. I have to go, looks like something’s kicking off.’
‘But wait, what about Pamela?’
‘I don’t have anything, Mel. I still don’t know. I’ll ring you later, soon as I can.’
He clicked off the call and leapt from behind his desk, stopping as he remembered Farrar. He’d told the Chief Super that he’d ring the guy in Norway before it got too late. ‘What have you got?’ he shouted across.
‘Suzie’s phone’s just gone live.’
Florid-features could wait. He strode over to join the huddle round the screen. A shiver went through him to see that symmetrical grid again.
Another phone rang. A hand reached out to pluck the handset from its rest.
Webber glanced up to see Ahmed standing by his desk. He’d obviously just got to his feet, but something had frozen him to the spot, eyes glazed, expression puzzled …
His attention veered back to the phone call which was from the search
team.
‘They’ve just found it at Drake’s house. They turned it on.’
The words punctured the momentary elation that had been in the air. ‘They want confirmation that it’s Suzie’s.’
‘Call her number,’ someone urged.
As the man beside him clicked Suzie’s number into a handset, Webber glanced again at Ahmed who had his own phone in his hand and was staring at it as though it was a ticking bomb.
He turned back to the officer taking the call. ‘Where in the house did they find it?’
It was no surprise to hear it had been down the back of the table that held the printer, as though it had slipped from her pocket as she leant across to get the pages from the tray. Nice try, Michael, Webber thought, and was it supposed to have turned itself off in the fall?
‘Fucking! Hell! Fire!’
The curse was loud enough to reach everyone’s ears, but it wasn’t the profanity that made Webber stare dumbfounded, it was the source. Ahmed, who rarely swore and never in such strident tones, stood horror-struck staring at the phone in his hand.
‘Ayaan!’ Webber called sharply to jerk Ahmed out of his trance. ‘What is it?’
Ahmed’s gaze rose to meet his, despair written into his expression. ‘I didn’t talk to her. She didn’t ring me. It was a text. It was a fucking text! And just look at it. It’s not her. Suzie didn’t write that.’
Chapter 53
Webber watched as things wound down. It was time to admit defeat and go home. He’d caught up with florid-features who had surprised him by having already done some more digging.
‘I have new information for you,’ he’d said. They now thought that Streetwise’s meeting in York had been with the go-between, not the target; the target was a man.
By the time the information reached him, it wasn’t news. Just like Ahmed recalling that text message. It reinforced the theory that Suzie hadn’t left Drake’s house to go off after someone else. Drake had done something to her … taken her somewhere. The problem was that by the time anyone was back in Drake’s face wanting answers, he’d had time to move about, to hide things, and they’d been asking the wrong questions. It might help keep Drake behind bars, but said nothing about where Suzie was now.