Comply or Die

by Tony Hutchinson

  Sam opened the fridge door, blinking as the bright light flooded her eyes, then poured milk into the mug and unwrapped a mint Club biscuit.

  Back upstairs 20 minutes later, she slid under the duvet and closed her eyes.

  Thursday 17th April 2014

  Sam stared at the bright red eyes looking back at her from the wall mirror above the sink. Three hours sleep, tops. She’d read once that Paul Newman used to submerge his head in a bowl of cold water every morning to fight facial ageing. She ran the cold tap, filled the sink, and dunked her face. Brain freeze. She spluttered, dried herself, and looked again in the mirror. The puffiness around her eyes was still there. Cheers Paul.

  Thirty-five minutes after a hot shower she was in her office, speed reading her emails. Most of them could be deleted without a response. Those that needed one would have to wait. She was way too busy to provide statistics to the bean counters.

  Ed walked into her office, face ashen. With a little eyeliner he could have been an extra in Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Suddenly she felt 100 % better. ‘Rough night?’

  ‘Yeah, ended up on the whisky.’ He sat down. ‘Rough as a badger’s now but I’ll be sorted in an hour. Bev’s gone out for bacon sarnies. Want one?’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Sam answered her phone. The deep Cornish accent should have been advertising clotted cream or starring in Jamaica Inn.

  She listened then spoke. ‘I’ll get DC Bev Summers to liaise with your DC Welch, sort some photos out. Cheers.’

  Ed was putting his mobile back in his pocket. ‘Sarnie’s sorted.’

  ‘That was the DI from Devon and Cornwall,’ Sam told him. ‘They’ve got a witness who saw a young Asian man drive the car into a lock-up and walk away. Could be Sukhi.’

  Ed said that sounded promising.

  ‘I hope it is,’ Sam went on. ‘I’ve said we’ll get Bev to liaise. She can email them a photo, one of the ones we took off Bethany’s phone.’

  Their noses twitched, nasal partners in a synchronised dance of hunger pangs, the smell of cooked food alerting their stomachs before their eyes saw Bev.

  ‘Two bacon with brown.’

  ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ Sam said.

  ‘Suppose you want a cup of tea as well?’

  ‘Only if you’re offering.’

  ‘Make that two,’ Ed said.

  ‘I’ve got the CCTV from Rendezvous,’ Bev told them. ‘I’ll start on that this morning.’

  ‘And Bev,’ Sam said. ‘Can you liaise with a DC Welch from Devon and Cornwall? He needs one of the photos of Sukhi. They’ve got a witness down there who saw a young Asian male driving the car into the lock-up.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem.’

  Sam bit into the bun, a dollop of brown sauce dropping on to her finger.

  Ed wiped his mouth as his mobile rang.

  ‘Any idea what it’s about, Charlie? Okay, give me half an hour.’

  Bev walked in with two mugs of tea.

  ‘I’ll have to pass,’ Ed said. ‘Fatty Sanderson’s in the cells and wants a favour. Says he got something for us.’

  ‘And he is?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Joey Sanderson, Handler of this parish, too fat to do burglaries. Been around the block a few times. We go way back but he’s never given information before, not to my knowledge anyway.’

  ‘How old is he?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Fifty-odd,’ Ed said, as he stood up, reaching for the mug on the desk. ‘Convictions going back to when he was a juvenile: theft, burglary, handling stolen goods, deception. No violence, but a full house for dishonesty. Even got one for ‘removal of an article from a public place’.’

  ‘Not often you hear of that,’ Sam said.

  ‘I’ll let you know the sketch if it’s anything worth knowing.’

  Joey Sanderson waddled. Like a giant penguin, he came up the corridor from the cell block, his black Fila trainers squeaking on the glistening, recently mopped linoleum, three yellow ‘caution, wet floor’ signs stating the obvious.

  Ed closed the interview door.

  ‘Long time no see, Joey.’

  ‘Yeah. How you been?’

  ‘Champion,’ Ed said. ‘You still getting around the pubs and clubs with stolen gear?’

  Sanderson smile was almost shy. ‘You’ve got to earn a crust, Ed. You know what it’s like, grab it while you can.’

  ‘What you in here for?’

  ‘Handling. They come round with a warrant.’

  ‘What did they get?’ Ed asked.

  Sanderson looked ridiculous as he shuffled, trying to get comfortable in the tiny seat. Ed estimated his six-foot frame now weighed about 30 stone.

  ‘Clothes and food.’

  ‘Food?’

  ‘Big business now, Ed,’ Sanderson told him. ‘People are skint. Not everybody wants to go to food banks, so I provide an alternative.’

  ‘How much food did they recover?’

  ‘About 500 quid's worth. Forty-odd carrier bags.’

  Ed shook his head. ‘Five hundred pounds worth of food.’

  ‘Ed, it’s done to order,’ Sanderson said. ‘People bring their shopping lists to me. I’ve got a team of young lads and lasses that go out for the stuff. I pay them, then dish it out at 40% of the marked price.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  Sanderson’s fleshy face looked sad. ‘Got this morning’s deliveries and as the last arrived your lot burst in.’

  Ed nodded. Sanderson had obviously been grassed up. ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Ed, I’m on a bender. I don’t want to go down for this. I’m too old for bird.’

  The ‘bender’ – slang for a suspended prison sentence – explained Sanderson’s eagerness to do a deal.

  Ed was thinking fast. The police had gone into his house after the last bag drop. They were either lucky or had the place under surveillance. He favoured the latter. An informant had to be involved, and if that were the case, the handler would want payment for his snout.

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Help me out Ed. I scratch your back.’

  ‘What you got then?’

  ‘I need some insurances, Ed.’

  ‘I think you mean assurances, and I can’t give you any, not until I know what it is you’re giving me.’

  Sanderson paused, weighing up his options, and then spoke.

  ‘The Asian guy,’ he said. ‘The one on the TV on Saturday whose daughter’s gone missing.’

  Ed concentrated on keeping his face neutral, concentrated on breathing slowly and quietly. ‘What about him?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘No promises,’ Ed said. ‘But if it’s good, I may be able to help, and that’s better than you’ve got now.’

  ‘They call you a twat in my world, but it’s a mark of respect,’ Sanderson sighed. ‘Everybody says you’re good, fair, and a man of your word. The Last Mohican, Ed, that’s what the older villains call you. Old school. The young cops haven’t got a clue. You’re different. You promise you’ll help?’

  ‘If what you tell me is good, I’ll do my best.’

  ‘It is.’ Sanderson took a noisy, deep breath. ‘A couple of weeks before Christmas I saw Dav Bhandal in a pub. I won’t say which one. He knows I do a bit. Told me he wanted me to burn a settee. Would give me a ton, and whoever helped me carry it, he would give them a Commodore.’

  ‘Commodore?’

  Sanderson looked surprised.

  ‘Fifteen quid. You know... fiver’s a Lady Godiva, that Commodore’s song, ‘once, twice, three times a lady’... three Lady Godiva’s is 15 quid.’

  ‘What and he said Commodore?’ Ed said, surprised.

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’m telling you that. He said 15 quid.’

  Ed shook his head. Who thinks these up?

  ‘So you burnt the settee?’

  ‘I told him I would burn it, but when I went to get it, it was brand new,’ Sanderson said. ‘Bit of a smell of pee about
it, but that soon washed off. No way was I burning it. He gave me £115 to get shot of it, and I sold it for another £50.’

  ‘Who’s got it now?’ Ed asked, doing well to hide the adrenaline rush.

  Sanderson grinned and laced his fingers over his huge stomach.

  ‘Not so fast, Ed,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Two hours after delivering bacon sandwiches, Bev was back in Sam’s office.

  ‘Photo sent to the Devon and Cornwall Dee?’ Sam asked.

  Dee, slang for detective constable.

  ‘Yeah, that’s sorted,’ Bev told her. ‘You might want to view the CCTV from Rendezvous. Tracey Davies and Charlotte Swains coming out at 3.25am, each with an arm around... ’

  Sam slapped the table as if it were the buzzer on a quiz show. ‘Jack Goddard!’

  Bev nodded. ‘Bingo.’

  ‘Are we sure about the time on the cameras,’ Sam asked. ‘I always get a bit paranoid with times when the clocks go forward.’

  ‘The times are right,’ Bev told her.

  ‘So, out at 3.25am. What, a 10-minute walk to the tow path? Ten minutes when you’re sober anyway. So, that’s at least 3.35am. Alex O’Connell finds him dead at 4.05am. Where had she been? Check to see if she’s in Rendezvous. Do you see them going in?’

  ‘We’ll check that now,’ Bev said. ‘You wanted the later time doing first.’

  Sam nodded: ‘I did, but let’s see if Alex O’Connell’s in there. And find them all going in. See if Glen Jones went in with them.’

  Sam got into her car and drove to a local park. She needed to think without interruption, think with a cigarette in her hand, in a place devoid of diesel fumes. She ordered a coffee from the travelling barista, his glistening chrome machine attached to the back of a tiny French Citroen, a vehicle so small Sam couldn’t decide whether he got into it or put it on.

  The wooden bench under the willow tree, a small plaque confirming it had been a much-missed grandfather’s favourite spot, was speckled with green, decades of waxy foliage leaving its mark. Sam sat down, lit up, and inhaled as she watched a distant dog chase a tennis ball. She sipped the double espresso and began to process.

  Goddard dead... Davies and Swain lying... O’Connell probably lying about her movements prior to finding the body... Amber evasive... the photographs sent by the Sisters of Macavity – or someone pretending to be the Sisters.

  The ABC of investigations... accept nothing, believe nothing, challenge everything.

  She looked up and saw a mouse form in the wispy cirrus clouds. Mortimer. Her brain was in full race mode, mice scurrying everywhere.

  The bouncers, King and Wilson. Ed didn’t think the likes of Wilson ever changed, and young King? Why was everybody wary of him? Not forgetting, he despised men bullying women.

  Sukhi’s car in the garage in Plymouth. Had they got away? Perhaps caught a train to somewhere like Falmouth, took the water taxi from there to St Mawes? Could they be living in that white cottage overlooking the harbour and a sea that didn’t judge them?

  And the demos? Would there be another? Was there a serial killer on the loose? Were the dead students all Mortimers? Could Elliott Prince be believed?

  What had Ed once said? ‘Crack the witnesses…’

  Jill Carver... Aisha’s parents... The uncle.

  Her head churned like a food mixer fighting a thickening mass of information, but the faster it spun, the more solid it became, impossible to separate, impossible to interpret.

  Sam chain-smoked another cigarette.

  She didn’t believe all the ingredients were in her mental mixing bowl. There was more to come.

  Smoke left her lungs and forced its way out of her pursed lips like the barista’s pressurised steam. She dropped the disposal cup into a bin, bought another coffee. The ringtone broke the silence but not her concentration. She ignored the phone, ignored the subsequent text or voicemail alert.

  Paul Adams was sitting with Bethany Stevens. While Ed had noticed the ageing kitchen and the fraying brown carpet, Paul had eyes only for the young woman in front of him.

  ‘I’m a bit of a hoarder,’ she said. ‘Here are as many notes as I could find.’

  She handed him eight handwritten notes.

  ‘Most were written in classes when you couldn’t talk. I hope it helps. She was a writer, so it’s entirely in keeping that she could write to someone.’

  Paul examined each in turn.

  ‘Like I said on the phone, we’re just pre-empting things really, you know, just in case Aisha gets in touch by writing.’

  ‘Is there any news?’ Bethany locked her green eyes on to his.

  ‘Did she ever talk about going to Cornwall?’ Paul asked, ignoring the question.

  ‘Cornwall?’ Bethany looked puzzled. ‘No. She’d never been out of Seaton St George, unless it was to go to India or visit family. She said she’d never been on holiday. But I told her about Cornwall. When I was little, Mam and Dad took me there most summer holidays. Newquay. All the fun of the surf, as my father used to say.’

  Paul held her gaze. She was beautiful. Nine years younger than him but if she hadn’t been a potential witness, he would have asked her out. Now if he did anything to compromise the investigation, Sam Parker would crucify him. He’d replaced Jason Stroud on the team. Jason had left under a cloud after playing out a sinister rape fantasy with his now ex-wife. That was enough for Sam to get rid, and that didn’t happen at work. If he screwed the inquiry into Aisha, Sam Parker would finish him. He needed to stay professional.

  ‘Any reason you’re asking about Cornwall?’ Bethany asked him.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say at the moment.’

  ‘I think about her every night.’ Bethany’s eyes clouded. ‘I just hope she’s happy. I can’t imagine what she was going through. None of us at college could. But if she got somewhere like Cornwall, somewhere miles away, I’d have thought she’d have rung me.’

  Paul pushed back the urge to hug her.

  ‘Maybe she lost her phone, couldn’t remember your number. Maybe she didn’t want to compromise you.’

  Or maybe the unthinkable happened.

  Bethany didn’t look convinced.

  ‘Sukhi could have called… I don’t know. Would you like a tea? Or are you too busy?’

  ‘I think I can manage a cup, thanks.’

  Stay professional, Paul. Stay professional.

  Sam closed the Audi door and saw Bev marching across the car park.

  ‘Something urgent?’

  ‘I tried calling,’ Bev said quickly. ‘I left a voicemail.’

  ‘I was tied up. What is it?’

  ‘Alex O’Connell leaves Rendezvous at 3.34am, nine minutes after Jack Goddard, Tracey and Charlotte.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Now I’m trying to establish what time they enter,’ Bev went on. ‘I’ve started after 10pm, because that’s when they say they left the Jolly Roger.’

  Sam nodded her approval.

  ‘You can always view the earlier CCTV if they’re lying, which they seem to be doing a lot. Is that why you rang?’

  ‘No,’ Bev said. ‘Inspector Wright was looking for you.’

  Sam felt a small wave of dismay wash through her.

  ‘Any idea what Never was after?’

  ‘He never said.’

  The word play left them both laughing.

  Ed considered Joey Sanderson’s information. ‘The best I can do, providing it’s good, is get a letter to the judge, telling him you’ve provided important information. But remember, Joey, I can’t lie. He’s going to know you gave this information while you were already banged up.’

  Sanderson mouth dropped into a frown.

  ‘Can’t you just make it all go away?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Ed told him. ‘A letter’s better than what you’ve got now.’

  Sanderson slid down the chair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Will you get me some fags at least?’

  ‘I think I
can run to a packet of smokes,’ Ed said. ‘Now, I haven’t got all day. The settee?’

  Sanderson was staring at the ceiling again, considering his final decision.

  ‘Cigarettes and a letter,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Jesus, I’m trusting you here, and it goes without saying you can’t tell anybody what I’m going to tell you.’

  Ed knew Sanderson was coming on board.

  ‘How long have we known each other?' Ed said. ‘Years, right? Have I ever told you anything others have told me?’

  Sanderson’s eyes darkened.

  ‘No, and by the way, I’m not one of your grasses. Grasses are scum. This is a one off.’

  Ed nodded. Sanderson would be an informant; he just didn’t know it yet. Once you had them, you rarely let them go.

  ‘The settee was brand new,’ Sanderson began. 'You could tell by the cushions. That lot don’t go to posh furniture shops, they go to their own. I went to Singh’s, the little furniture shop not far from their house. Owned by Karan Singh. He gives me a few quid to keep an eye on his shop.’

  ‘Protection money?’ Ed said.

  ‘Ed, please,’ Sanderson looked hurt. ‘Private security. Ask him. They pay their money and they feel better protected than they do with your lot.’

  Ed hid his contempt and let that go. He’d agreed to put a letter in to the judge about the handling offence. He’d not agreed to give Sanderson immunity from prosecution for other offences.

  ‘I don’t recall seeing people in uniform with your logo on their jackets.’

  ‘We’re more effective,’ Sanderson told him. ‘Undercover, my lads.’

  Protection rackets had a simple USP – pay up or your business will be burgled or burnt down.

  ‘Was it one of your lads who helped you move it?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Come on, Ed. I’m not grassing on my own.’

  ‘And did Bhandal buy it from Karan Singh.’

  ‘He did, and here’s the thing,’ Sanderson said, moving his vast bulk forward. ‘He got the one he wanted me to burn delivered on the 14th December. Saturday. He didn’t know I knew that. He asked me to get rid of it when I saw him in the pub on the 15th, the Sunday. I took it out of his house on the Monday... put it on a big trailer.’