Hell to Pay

by Rachel Amphlett

  She craned her neck to see to the end of the road.

  The camera that had recorded the car’s passing was placed on the side of a corner shop, below an advertising board that stated the first floor was available to lease.

  Two uniformed officers exited one of the properties a little ahead of her and Carys and waited by a thin privet hedge to let them pass. Kay recognised one of them as a young probationer she’d worked with six months previously.

  He’d already aged with the job, and no longer looked like the scrawny teenager she’d met before.

  ‘Constable Parker, isn’t it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘No. We’re only about halfway along, though.’

  ‘Spoken to the shopkeeper?’

  ‘Last on the list for this street, so no – not yet.’

  ‘All right. We’ll have a word with him. We’re heading that way anyway.’

  ‘Thanks, Sarge.’

  ‘I would’ve thought they’d have started with the shopkeeper first,’ said Carys as they continued past the houses.

  ‘He doesn’t own the CCTV camera – it was installed by the council,’ said Kay. ‘I expect their supervisor’s taking the view that we need to find the vehicle owner’s house first. Makes sense.’

  They passed a female uniformed officer who was pacing the street, collecting the door-to-door enquiry forms from her colleagues as they worked, ready to enter the details into HOLMES on their return to the station.

  Kay had sensed the frustration of the uniformed team when chatting with Parker – whoever the driver was, he’d taken care to shield his face from the CCTV cameras his vehicle passed under the night before. The medical staff at the hospital had been adamant the police couldn’t take photographs of the man while he was still under observation in the critical care unit – too much risk of infection, Sharp had been told.

  It didn’t matter – the man’s face was so swollen and bruised from the accident and subsequent surgery, it was unlikely anyone would recognise him if they had managed to obtain photographs.

  Kay led Carys across the junction at the end of the road and strode across the chewing gum-stained pavement outside the shop.

  A group of three teenagers, all on bicycles, glared at her as she approached. The middle-sized one, his hair the colour of washed out bleach, yelled after an older woman who hurried away from the shop tugging a shopping trolley after her.

  They fell silent when Kay drew near.

  ‘Do you live around here?’

  ‘Nah,’ said the shortest of the three. ‘Cheaper ciggies here, innit?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  The three lads sniggered.

  ‘Day off,’ said the oldest. ‘School closed ’cause of a teachers’ strike.’

  ‘Got your cigarettes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All right. Now, clear off. No hanging around and intimidating the other customers.’

  They glared at her, but turned their bikes and pedalled away, catcalling over their shoulders.

  Kay shook her head.

  ‘Do you know them?’ asked Carys.

  ‘I arrested the oldest one for stealing from a shop over at Shepway eighteen months ago,’ said Kay. She sighed. ‘No doubt I’ll be seeing him again soon.’

  She pushed the door to the shop open, an electronic ping sounding behind the counter to the left of her.

  An elderly man fussed behind it, restacking newspapers and straightening a small display of sweets to the right of the till.

  ‘They’re nothing but trouble,’ he grumbled. ‘You lot should come around more often.’

  Kay held out her warrant card. ‘DS Hunter, and this is my colleague, DC Miles. We wanted to ask you a few questions regarding a vehicle spotted on the CCTV camera above the shop.’

  ‘It’s not my camera.’

  ‘We’re aware of that, thanks – it belongs to the council, right?’

  ‘That’s right. Landlord insisted on putting it up there.’ He winked. ‘Reckon they paid him for the rent of the space. Hate to think what he charged them. That’s why the offices above are empty. Costs too much, see?’

  Kay turned to a new page of her notebook. ‘What’s your name, please?’

  ‘Higgins. Malcolm Higgins.’

  ‘And you’ve had this shop for how long?’

  ‘About twenty years. Should’ve sold up ages ago. Too late now – business doesn’t make enough these days, so no-one’s interested in buying it.’

  Carys fished out a colour photograph of the vehicle. The image had been captured by one of the CCTV cameras in the town and provided the best view of the car. The one taken from the camera above the shop had been too blurred.

  ‘Have you seen this vehicle around here?’

  The man took the photograph from her and peered through smeared glasses at it. His brow puckered.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Is he local?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ said Kay.

  ‘What’s he done, then?’

  She smiled. ‘We wish to speak to him in relation to an ongoing investigation.’

  The shopkeeper snorted and passed the photograph back. ‘Rehearsed that, did you?’

  ‘Do you know the owner of this vehicle or not?’

  He shook his head. ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. I don’t really have time to watch the traffic go past.’

  Kay glanced over her shoulder at the deserted shop and the dust covering the shelves nearest to her. ‘Right. Well, thanks for your time, Mr Higgins.’

  She turned back towards the door.

  ‘You make sure you get those coppers out there to come back every day,’ the man called after her. ‘Pain in the arse, those teenage kids.’

  The front door burst open and she took a step back in surprise.

  Parker entered the shop, slightly out of breath.

  ‘Sarge, we’ve located the driver’s house.’

  Kay and Carys hurried after him as he crossed the road, heading towards one of the terrace houses on the opposite side of the street.

  ‘Who confirmed it?’ said Kay.

  ‘Elderly couple over at number twenty-two. The husband’s confined to a chair most of the day, so they tend to spend their time watching the street,’ he said. ‘They’ve seen the car parked outside number twenty-five a few times over the past couple of months.’

  ‘Renting or owners?’

  ‘They say renting – there was a sign put up a while back, and then the bloke moved in. They’ve seen a woman turn up a few times, but they don’t think she lives there. They thought she might have been having an affair with him, because of the way she used to check the street before knocking on the front door. She used to be careful leaving the house, too – the wife says she saw her peering out the front door once or twice before leaving, as if she was afraid of being seen.’

  ‘Interesting. Anyone in now?’

  Parker shook his head. ‘Place looks empty. No-one answered when we knocked. Thought we’d get you there before we did anything else.’

  They stopped on the pavement outside the house, the frontage separated from the street by a wooden fence that held a gate on rusting hinges.

  ‘All right. Let’s do this.’ Kay pulled out her phone from her bag and dialled Sharp’s number. ‘Guv? We’re going to need that search warrant.’

  Chapter Seven

  Barnes arrived over an hour later, the signed search warrant in his hand.

  ‘Sorry – the magistrate Sharp had briefed was stuck in court, so we had to find another.’

  ‘It happens. Don’t worry – I’ve got officers placed in the road behind this one in case anyone tries to leave over the back fence.’

  Ignoring the small group of uniformed officers who had crowded on the pavement beside her, Kay checked the wording of the document, then handed the warrant to the uniformed PC next to her. ‘Let’s take a look, shall we, Norris?’

&
nbsp; ‘How do you want to do this? Break it down, or pick the lock?’

  Kay pivoted and glanced down the street, before turning back to Barnes and Norris. ‘We don’t have time, and all the neighbours know we’re here anyway, so if anyone was going to warn him, they’d have done it by now. Break it down.’

  Kay waited while Norris turned to Parker and gestured at the door.

  He moved forward, battering ram in his grip, and then aimed it at the door just below the handle, and swung it.

  Kay averted her eyes as the door crashed open, sending splinters of wood across the doorstep and over her feet.

  ‘Right, two of you with Barnes, Carys and myself. Everyone else stay outside,’ said Kay, slipping gloves over her fingers. ‘Let’s find out who the hell this bastard is.’

  She kicked the bigger splinters out of the way while Norris pushed the door open wide and stepped over the threshold.

  ‘Police!’ he called, making his way through the house with Parker at his heels.

  Kay hovered at the front door while the two uniformed officers checked downstairs, and caught Norris’s eye as he returned from the kitchen shaking his head.

  ‘We’ll check upstairs, but you’re okay to make a start down here.’

  ‘Thanks. Where’s Parker?’

  ‘He went out the back door to check the garden. Don’t hold your breath – it doesn’t look like it got used much and there’s no sign of anyone leaving through the back door before we got here.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kay turned to Barnes and Carys. ‘Right, let’s split up – Carys, you take the kitchen. Barnes and I can split the living room between us.’

  ‘Sarge,’ said Carys, and brushed past her, a look of determination on her face.

  Kay glanced up the stairs as she led Barnes towards the living room.

  Norris stood at the top, and shook his head. ‘No-one’s around,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to start the search up here?’

  ‘Go for it.’

  As Kay moved into the living room, the first thing she noticed was that the furniture appeared to be a collection of second-hand assortments. Nothing matched.

  Everything about the place seemed temporary, as if the tenant didn’t expect to return. A two-seater sofa had been placed against the wall behind the door. In front of it, a small table contained an ashtray and a copy of an old newspaper. A small television had been set upon a low chest of drawers in one corner near the window, and what appeared to be a home-made bookshelf leaned precariously against the wall opposite the window.

  Kay bent down and began to flick through the pages of the paperbacks. She glanced at Barnes over her shoulder as he pulled open the doors to the chest of drawers and began sorting through it.

  ‘If there was a couple living here, how come it feels like we’re only seeing one half?’

  She held up one of the books. ‘A lot of these are sport biographies, not the sort of thing I’d expect a woman to read.’

  Barnes straightened and placed his hands on his hips as he turned. ‘I know what you mean. Even the decor is wrong. I know it’s a rental, but you’d expect to see a bit of a personal touch. There’s nothing, is there? No photographs, no paperwork lying around—’

  ‘This isn’t a home, is it? It’s temporary.’

  ‘You think he kept it that way? In case he had to clear out at short notice?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking. We’ll get the place checked out for fingerprints, but given that we know the driver’s prints aren’t on the system, and nor are his victim’s, I don’t hold out a lot of hope that we’ll find any others. He’s been too careful.’

  Carys appeared at the doorway. ‘There’s nothing in the kitchen of interest, either. They certainly don’t appear to have cooked at home much. Kitchen bin’s been emptied recently – I’ll get uniform to take a look in the wheelie bin outside, but the refrigerator’s only got the basics in it.’

  She fell silent at a call from upstairs.

  ‘Sarge? You need to see this.’

  Carys stepped to one side as Kay hurried by her and took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘What is it?’

  Norris appeared from a bedroom at the back of the house, his gloved hands clutching a small collection of photographs.

  ‘Found these on top of the wardrobe.’

  Kay took the photographs from him and began to flick through the images as Barnes and Carys reached the top of the stairs.

  Two of the photographs had been taken in a woodland, the woman relaxed and smiling at the camera as she’d posed beside a large fallen log. In others, the camera had been held aloft and captured the driver and the woman smiling up at the lens.

  ‘Why hide them on top of the wardrobe?’ said Barnes, taking the photographs from Kay and holding them so Carys could see at the same time.

  ‘More to the point, those have been taken on an instant camera,’ said Kay. ‘Why not use his phone?’

  ‘Maybe she’s not his wife,’ said Norris. ‘They could have been having an affair.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Kay. ‘That’d certainly make sense. Especially with the neighbours telling us how furtive the woman was when she arrived or left the house.’

  ‘If they were having an affair, that also explains why there’s nothing here to suggest a woman was living here,’ said Carys. ‘Maybe he killed her because she was threatening to expose the affair to someone.’

  Kay frowned. ‘Hang on. Give those back to me a minute.’

  She flipped through the images until she found one that included the man and held it up to them. ‘I recognise him. I’ve seen this face before.’

  ‘Where?’ said Barnes.

  ‘When the case against Jozef Demiri fell apart and we had to let him go. He arranged for a car to collect him. This guy was his driver.’

  Chapter Eight

  Kay paced the room and rubbed at her right eye.

  Despite the discovery at the house in Tonbridge, she couldn’t abandon the search process and had to wait until Harriet and her team had turned up so she could brief them.

  Instead, she had sent Barnes and Carys back to the incident room to report their findings to the rest of the team and start the process of checking tenancy records for the property and find any other online photographs that matched the image of the man they’d discovered at the house.

  On her return to Maidstone, she’d been disappointed to discover that they had found nothing, and that Sharp had been called to a meeting at headquarters on the other side of the town and wouldn’t be back until the afternoon briefing.

  She wanted to talk through her theory with him, determined to prove there was a connection between the driver and Jozef Demiri, an Albanian who was known to run one of the more lucrative organised crime syndicates in the south-east, but who had managed to avoid any criminal charges – despite their best efforts.

  Undeterred by Sharp’s absence, she had tasked the team to spend the rest of the day making phone calls and checking the information they had to date to try to get a breakthrough.

  Three hours later, and she was wondering if Demiri would evade them once more when a loud whoop reached her ears.

  Gavin tossed his mobile phone onto his desk and spun his chair round to face her.

  ‘That was Charlie – he’s helping Harriet with the forensics of the vehicle in the accident.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember him from the other night,’ said Kay. ‘What’s he got?’

  Gavin grinned and held up his notebook. ‘Partial Vehicle Identification Number off the chassis. He says most of it had been filed off, but once they’d removed all the mud and grime, they managed to get something for us. And – get this – it’s different to the one on the registration certificate linked to the licence plate.’

  ‘Put it in the system,’ said Kay, and scooted her chair across to Gavin’s desk.

  He turned and opened up a new window on his computer, typed in the details and pressed “Enter”.

  Kay sipped from a mug o
f tepid tea while they waited.

  Once, soon after passing his exams, Gavin had mentioned to her that he’d been surprised at how ponderous murder investigations could be.

  Kay had smiled, and explained it was often the smallest details that led to the biggest breakthroughs, and she’d noticed since then that the recently qualified detective had been one of the few content to spend hours trawling through minute information in the hope of a breakthrough. It often worked, or at least provided the team with solid data they could follow up on with great effect.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said, and pointed at the screen. His brow creased. ‘Hang on. It’s registered to a business.’

  ‘Which one?’ Kay bent over and scanned the lines of text displayed across the screen.

  ‘Delight Investments.’

  ‘What?’ Kay straightened and twisted round to summon Barnes, but he’d already pushed himself out of his chair and was moving towards them.

  ‘Delight Investments,’ repeated Gavin. His eyes shifted between Kay and Barnes. ‘Why? Is there a problem? Who owns the company?’

  Kay swallowed, fighting to keep her excitement in check.

  ‘Jozef Demiri,’ she said. ‘Josef bloody Demiri. I knew it.’

  She straightened as Sharp pushed through the door and strode across the room to where she stood, and their eyes locked.

  ‘Why am I hearing Demiri’s name?’

  Kay quickly updated him about the search at the property, and then pointed at Gavin’s computer.

  ‘He’s connected, guv. I recognised the driver, and the car’s registered to Demiri’s business. We’re onto something here.’

  In reply, he held up his hand. ‘All right, you’ve got me convinced. I’ll make some phone calls – DCI Larch will have to be brought up to speed, so I’ll need you to put together a summary report for me about this investigation to date before you leave today in order that we can get extra resources. You know what to do.’

  ‘Guv.’

  ‘Carys – while that’s happening, can you and Gavin pull together everything on our system about Demiri’s business assets, including Delight Investments – find out what else he’s got listed under that name and others together with any knowledge we have about people working for him. Tread carefully. We know what he’s capable of,’ he said, aiming an apologetic glance at Kay, ‘and none of us want a repeat of last year’s events.’