Robbing the Dead (Inspector Jim Carruthers Book 1)

by Tana Collins

  ***

  ‘Mr and Mrs Roberts, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Jim Carruthers. Can I just say how sorry I am about the death of your son?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Roberts. She was a large woman with a kindly face. Carruthers looked at Mr Roberts and was reminded of an undertaker. The man was tall and thin with a gaunt face. He remained silent.

  ‘I’m afraid I need to ask you a few questions about Dave.’

  ‘What’s the good of that? Why aren’t you out there catching his killers?’ Mr Roberts demanded.

  ‘Oh, Tom. I’m sure they’re doing their best.’ Mrs Roberts laid a comforting hand on her husband’s shoulders.

  ‘I thought he’d turned his life around when he joined the RAF,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘He promised us that he’d put all that political nonsense behind him. But he hadn’t, had he? And now he’s wound up dead.’

  ‘Political nonsense?’ said Carruthers.

  ‘Tom, we don’t know that it’s got anything to do with that.’

  ‘Of course we do, woman. It all fits.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Roberts, can I ask you to start at the beginning.’

  ‘I’m sorry, chief inspector,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea? I must say it’s very pleasant to have tea and coffee making facilities in the room. We don’t travel much. Don’t see the need. My hip plays up, which makes movement difficult. Doesn’t it, Tom?’

  Mr Roberts nodded.

  Carruthers thought Mrs Roberts strangely calm and chatty for someone who’d just lost their son to a violent death. But then again, bereavement did strange things to people.

  ‘Nothing for me, but thank you. So, what did your son do before he joined the RAF?’

  ‘He worked in a garage when he first left school. Joined the Territorial Army too,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  Mr Roberts turned to his wife. ‘No, he’d left the garage by the time he’d joined the TA. He was working for McDonald’s when he joined them. There was that unpleasantness at the garage, and he was forced to leave.’

  ‘Unpleasantness?’ said Carruthers.

  ‘Happiest day of his life when he joined the RAF. That’s why he joined the TA, you see. Thought it might help him get into the RAF,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  ‘No, he thought it might help him get into the army. Then he changed his mind and decided he wanted to join the RAF instead.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why did he get asked to leave the garage?’ said Carruthers.

  ‘They took on another apprentice,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘Coloured feller. He and Dave didn’t see eye to eye. There was some trouble. He made a complaint about Dave.’

  ‘What was the complaint?’ There was a moment’s silence and Mr and Mrs Roberts exchanged glances. ‘I need to know,’ said Carruthers.

  ‘Somebody daubed a swastika onto the back of the coloured boy’s jacket. He accused Dave,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘He may have been a bit wayward, but he was never a bad lad.’

  Carruthers raised his eyebrows.

  ‘It was never proved. There were no witnesses, but as Dave was overheard calling him a nig-nog on a previous occasion the manager decided he had to let him go.’

  Carruthers was silent.

  ‘It was never proved,’ Tom repeated, ‘and calling someone a nig-nog doesn’t mean anything, does it? It’s like saying you’re going out to get a chinky, or you’re going down the Paki shop.’

  Carruthers could feel his stomach tighten with irritation and distaste. He knew very well that ignorance played a big part, as did the custom of language, but he doubted there could be a person alive who didn’t think that ‘nig-nog’ could be meant as anything other than a term of abuse. Apart from the Roberts, apparently.

  ‘Well, it’s not as if he called him a nigger, is it? Nig-nog’s more friendly somehow. Anyway, it’s no worse than calling a Scotsman Jock.’

  The tightening in his stomach continued. ‘Isn’t it? Surely it depends on what their relationship was like.’

  Mr and Mrs Roberts looked confused.

  ‘Whether they were friends,’ continued Carruthers. ‘It sounds like the new apprentice started to suffer from a catalogue of racial abuse. It’s unlikely it would have stopped at the two incidents you’ve mentioned. The kid did the right thing to report it. Nobody should have to put up with that sort of harassment at work.’

  Both Mr and Mrs Roberts were silent.

  ‘Do you remember the name of the young lad at the garage, and what the garage was called?’ asked Carruthers.

  ‘What on earth do you need to know that for? It was over four years ago,’ said Mr Roberts.

  ‘Just routine enquiries. I need all the background detail I can get. You never know, it might help to catch Dave’s killers.’

  ‘I don’t see how, unless you think it was that nig– black apprentice at the garage,’ said Mr Roberts.

  Carruthers now knew where Dave Roberts’ racist views came from.

  ‘But if you really need to know…’ Mr Roberts thought about it, ‘what was the name of the garage again? Oh yes, Williams Garage. I don’t remember the name of the boy, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do as it happens,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘It was Eustace.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Don’t you remember? Dave used to call him Useless.’

  The irritation in Carruthers’ stomach was giving way to an unpleasant acid curdling which was also finding its way into his mouth. He swallowed the bitter bile back down.

  ‘Can’t think of his surname though,’ continued Mrs Roberts. ‘No point in trying to contact him now though, inspector. He left the garage soon after. Well, didn’t so much leave, as disappear into thin air. Left them right in the lurch. I heard all this from our neighbour. One day he was here and the next he never turned up for work.’

  Carruthers made a note of all these details in his little black notebook. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach about the apprentice’s disappearance. This was something that needed to be followed up. ‘Do you know where he went?’

  ‘No, but it would’ve been about the time Dave had the accident,’ said Mr Roberts.

  ‘No, he had the accident well before that, Tom. It was before he joined the garage. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Accident?’ Carruthers ears pricked up. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Just before he joined the garage. Would have been seventeen.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Him and some other boys were larking about. Climbing trees. That sort of thing.’

  Carruthers was thinking that at seventeen he was a bit old to be climbing trees, but he kept quiet. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Branch broke and he fell out. He landed on his head. Physically he recovered, but it seemed to change his personality.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, he became moody and more aggressive. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Got into more fights.’

  ‘What did the doctors say? Was there any permanent injury?’

  ‘Oh no, he wasn’t brain damaged, inspector. Just seemed to change his personality a bit. That’s all.’

  ‘Where did Dave work after leaving the garage?’ said Carruthers, wondering how Roberts had passed the RAF medical.

  ‘McDonald’s. By then he’d joined the TA. We encouraged him. Like Tom said, he was never a bad lad but he had started to keep bad company.’

  ‘Who did he run around with?’ asked Carruthers.

  ‘There were three of them, weren’t there? Tom Petty’s lad, John. Billy Thomas and Dave.’

  ‘Billy Thomas?’ asked Carruthers. ‘Any relation to a Mal Thomas?’

  ‘Younger brother.’

  Carruthers frowned. ‘That wouldn’t be the same Mal Thomas who is a member of Bryn Glas 1402?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ answered Mr Roberts.

  Both he and his wife became silent but Carruthers caught the look that passed between them. He had a strong feeling that they knew more than they were saying.

 
; ‘I take it you’ve heard of Bryn Glas 1402?’ said Carruthers.

  ‘Not until this week,’ said Mr Roberts quickly. He looked away from Carruthers when he next spoke. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there, though. Dave was never a member. We would have known.’

  ‘Could he have become a member after he left home to join the RAF?’

  ‘I don’t think he was that interested in Welsh nationalism. Certainly not enough to have become a member of an organisation like that.’

  Carruthers looked from one to the other. Why didn’t he believe them? There was something they weren’t telling him.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Roberts, you’ve said Dave had a problem with the coloured apprentice at the garage where he worked. Would it surprise you to know we’ve learnt that Dave was a paid-up member of the BNP?’

  ‘I’ve voted Plaid Cymru all my life, and I’m proud of it,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘I won’t deny Dave had some strong views, but the BNP is still a legitimate political party, inspector. If he wanted to join it, then that was his right.’

  On the other hand, thought Carruthers, Bryn Glas 1402 is not a legitimate political party. It’s looking likely that it’s a terrorist organisation fronted by an ex-con..

  ‘We’ve heard a man matching Dave’s description was seen in the politics department at the university at the time of the car bomb,’ said Mr Roberts. He leant over and took his wife’s hand.

  ‘We might not get out that often, but we watch the telly,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  ‘We want you to know that we’ve no idea why he’d have been there,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘But I can tell you one thing. There’s no way Dave would have planted that car bomb unless he was forced to do it.’

  ‘Why would he be forced into doing it?’ asked Carruthers.

  ‘Well, supposing it is Bryn Glas 1402 who planted that bomb. They’d be looking for someone with a knowledge of bomb disposal in the area, wouldn’t they? They also happen to know Dave through one of his mates.’

  ‘As far as I’m aware, Dave was an aircraftman working on the Tornado aircraft at RAF Edenside along with another Cardiff boy, Rhys Evans. You know that we’re also currently investigating his death?’

  Mr Roberts shook his head.

  ‘He was found dead in a doorway of Bell Street in Castletown. He’d been beaten to death. I’m led to believe,’ continued Carruthers, ‘that Dave knew Rhys from his Cardiff days? How long had they known each other?’

  ‘They were at school together,’ said Mrs Roberts.

  ‘But they didn’t hang out together?’

  ‘No.’ Mrs Roberts turned to her husband. ‘We knew of him but don’t think we ever saw him at the house, did we?’

  Mr Roberts shook his head again. Carruthers was starting to form an opinion that he was a man of few words.

  Carruthers directed his next question to Mrs Roberts as she was the chattier of the two. ‘They weren’t friends?’

  ‘Why are you asking us all these questions?’ said Mr Roberts. ‘What has this boy’s death got to do with Dave?’

  ‘We’re not sure,’ said Carruthers quickly. The forensic results from the T-shirt found at Charlene Todd’s house still weren’t yet in and he didn’t want to give out too much information. He certainly didn’t want to accuse their son of murder if it was subsequently found that the blood didn’t belong to Evans. Or Roberts, for that matter. He brought his mind back to the previous part of the conversation before he had started talking about Rhys Evans. There was an important question he needed to ask of them.

  ‘How would Dave have knowledge of bombs?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought you would have known,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘Back in Cardiff when Dave was in the TA, he was in the bomb disposal unit.’

  Carruthers was so dumbstruck that he nearly forgot to ask the final question he had for them. Forced himself to get back on track. ‘What do you know of Ewan Williams, the front man of Bryn Glas, and his family?’

  ‘Of course we’ve heard of him. Williams might be a popular name where we come from, inspector, but everybody’s heard of Ewan Williams. We’re from Ely, the same suburb of Cardiff as Ewan Williams. Our parents knew his parents.’

  ‘They had five sons and one daughter. The daughter left home at nineteen. How much do you know about where she went and what happened to her after she moved out?’

  ‘I remember the girl,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘She was very close to Ewan. She moved to Belfast to be with her boyfriend. It was very sad what happened to her. She got injured in the Bloody Sunday march. 1972 wasn’t it? Ended up in a wheelchair, until she died.’

  ‘Sorry? You say she’s dead? How recently did she die?’

  ‘Two months ago. We heard from someone down my bingo club,’ said Mrs Roberts. ‘Although she’d moved away she became a bit of a local hero in Wales and in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. I remember my parents talking about her. She insisted, just after her shooting, that she didn’t want any reprisals, see.’

  Thinking what an incredible woman Meg McDaid must have been, Carruthers thanked the Roberts for their time, stood up and left.

  EIGHTEEN

  TUESDAY LUNCHTIME, 5TH JUNE

  ‘That march fuelled nationalistic fervour, leading to many more individuals joining the IRA,’ said Carruthers. ‘This is a personal crusade for Ewan Williams. I believe we now know the reason he’s waited so long to act. I found out Margaret McDaid died two months ago.’

  ‘You think her death was the catalyst then?’ said Bingham.

  ‘Almost certainly. Apparently, after her shooting, she called on the community not to seek reprisals. We know Williams was close to his sister. Perhaps he made her a promise, which he kept during her lifetime, not to hunt down and kill the man who maimed her. However, with her death, he may feel freed from that promise. It’s more than likely Williams became interested in Welsh nationalism post-1972. He was a young man then.’

  ‘I wonder to what extent people in Wales were motivated to join nationalist movements when they saw what was happening in Northern Ireland?’ said Bingham.

  ‘Williams may have set up Bryn Glas 1402 for the specific job of targeting Holdaway. Who knows? He’s had over forty years to plan his revenge. Margaret McDaid hadn’t been keeping the best of health. Perhaps Williams knew her time was short. He’s certainly been very clever in manipulating the other members of the group into targeting Holdaway. He had a perfect excuse with Holdaway buying a holiday home in Wales and bringing out his book. From what I’m also led to believe, Williams is a very charismatic leader who commands great respect and loyalty. He’s also hard to refuse.’

  ‘How about Dave Roberts?’ asked Bingham. ‘Glean anything from the parents? Did he have an interest in Welsh Nationalism? Could they confirm whether he was he a member of Bryn Glas 1402?’

  ‘They admitted to their son’s membership of the BNP. They see it as a legitimate party, which of course it is, however odious its politics. But they deny Roberts was involved with Bryn Glas 1402. However, they weren’t convincing. And the Roberts family know or at least knew of the Williams family back in the day. We need to keep digging.’

  ‘When Roberts joined the RAF, he would have been closely vetted,’ said Bingham. ‘If he did become a member of Bryn Glas, it must have been after he joined up. The vetting to get into Britain’s armed forces is second to none. I’m reluctant to say this after your earlier carry on with McGhee, but good work, Jim. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’ve got Holdaway in my office. We’ve got the CCTV through from the car park. We think it shows Roberts planting the bomb. I want to see if Holdaway can identify him as the man on the stairwell. It’s looking pretty definite now that it was Roberts who planted the bomb. Apparently, before he joined the RAF, Roberts was in the bomb disposal unit of the Territorials.’

  ‘Was he now? Perhaps that’s why he was needed by Williams.’

  ‘We’ve also got some photos to show Holdaway.’

  ‘Right. While you do that, I’ll
fill McGhee in. His people have arrived from the south, so he’s briefing them. Some of them have been liaising with the South Wales Police in Cardiff. We do need to find Williams as a priority. He’s clearly dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, but at least we now know he’s only after Holdaway. The Scottish population’s safe.’

  ‘Let’s not be complacent. He’s a dangerous criminal, a terrorist. He’s not stupid either. He’ll know that we’re closing in on him. Who knows how he’ll respond when cornered. We need to catch him, Jim.’

  ‘We will, sir.’

  ***

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON, 5TH JUNE

  ‘Professor. Have a seat.’

  Carruthers didn’t stand on ceremony, nor did he engage in small talk. There simply wasn’t time. His stomach rumbled reminding him he hadn’t eaten all day.

  ‘We’d like to show you something,’ said Carruthers. ‘It’s the CCTV footage from your departmental car park on the day of the explosion.’ He gestured for Holdaway to take a seat in the meeting room.

  The images on the large TV were grainy. For several seconds there was no movement among the cars.

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ the professor looked enquiringly at Carruthers.

  ‘Be patient.’ A few seconds went by. ‘Right, here it is,’ said Carruthers.

  Out of the shadows, a figure emerged. Baseball cap on head, the figure was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He glanced around, then, as if satisfied the coast was clear, furtively made his way to Holdaway’s car crouching down out of view on the far side.

  ‘We’re pretty sure this is the moment when he was planting the bomb.’ A little later the figure emerged. Carruthers froze the CCTV, as the figure looked up towards the camera. Despite the fact the man was wearing a baseball cap, it was still possible, through the grainy image, to see his face as he defiantly looked straight into the camera lens and smiled.

  ‘Oh my God. He’s looking straight at the CCTV camera,’ Holdaway said aghast. ‘He actually smiled. The nerve of him.’