by M A Comley
The woman gasped. “He what? I had no idea.”
“It’s not the first time we’ve heard something like this occurring. Why is the system breaking down like this, Miss Anderson?”
“I haven’t got a clue. His name should have been recognised when anyone tapped into the system to check his background information.”
“I know he’s now going under a different name. Do you people realise how easy it is to obtain another identity?”
“We’re obviously not aware. Otherwise, this type of situation wouldn’t occur. We’re not at fault here, Inspector.”
“No, I know—the system is. But someone has to look out for our children. Maybe you should pass that on to your bosses, Miss Anderson. Because when the system fails, it’s up to us to pick up the goddamn pieces.”
“Will that be all, Inspector? I have a meeting to attend,” the woman asked curtly.
“Yes, for now. I’ll let you know if we find out if Marwood—or Drake, as he’s known now—has either molested a child or killed one of the other teachers at the school, because that is what this phone call is about. He’s just become a prime suspect in a murder enquiry.”
Sally ended the call before the woman could reply. She glared at the phone. “Stick that in your bloody pipe and smoke it... agh! Some people really do get on my tits. Her I’m-only- doing-my-job attitude stinks. Let’s get back to the station, Jack.”
“It would be pointless telling you to calm down, I suppose?”
“Yep, I’m seething. Makes you wonder if anyone takes pride in their jobs anymore, or if they just turn up for the pay packet at the end of the month.”
“I take it you’re not referring to us when you say that?”
“Definitely not, partner,” she declared, shaking her head in despair.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jack opened the door to the station’s entrance just as two uniformed officers were leaving the building. They seemed jovial, laughing at something, and were oblivious to those around them until Sally spoke.
“Hello, Patrick. How are you doing?”
Patrick Thomas’s face dropped. “Hello, Inspector. I’m coping as well as can be expected. Any news on the case yet? I was going to contact you later to see how things are going.” He shuffled his feet uncomfortably as his partner stepped away from the conversation.
“Saved you a job then, haven’t I? The case is progressing slowly. Actually, I’m glad I’ve bumped into you, because I wanted to ask you a personal question.”
“Fire away, Inspector.”
“I need to ask you if either you or your wife had money troubles around the time of her death.”
His gaze drifted out to the car park as he thought, then returned to her. “Yes, we did... well, not exactly money troubles, but we did take out a dubious loan. Aisha was desperate to have a child, so we borrowed five thousand pounds for fertility treatment.”
“Dubious loan? Care to expand on that?”
“I was furious when Aisha told me what she’d done. I came home from work one day and found a wad of money fanned out on the kitchen table. When I asked her where she’d got the money from, she told me she’d contacted someone through an advert in the local paper. I was livid. Told her to return the money immediately as I thought it was from a loan shark. I was right. She was adamant that she wasn’t going to return it. I remember we didn’t speak for a few days. She didn’t have a clue about things like that. No idea the damage these people can do if you don’t keep up the exorbitant payments. She refused to listen to me because she was so desperate to have a child.” He turned to look at his partner. “You remember that, don’t you, Caroline?”
Caroline’s gaze sharply went from Patrick to Sally and back to Patrick again. “Gosh, I had totally forgotten all about that, Pat. Awful situation, I seem to recall.”
“Can you remember the name of this loan shark?”
He tutted as if annoyed at himself. “Spike someone... can’t for the life of me think of his surname.”
“Does Spike Barker ring a bell?” Sally enquired.
He nodded. “Yes, that’s it.”
“Can I ask what happened to the money you borrowed?”
“Aisha insisted we use it for what it was intended for. We had a course of fertility treatment booked. The first appointment was to have been the week after her death,” he replied sadly.
“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened regarding the payments to the loan shark?”
“I ended up borrowing the money off a friend. I’d rather be in debt to a friend than one of those thieving shits. I turned up to repay the money, and even though we’d only had the loan a month or so, he wanted an extra grand on top. That’s how these scumbags work. Once you’re in their grasp, they tighten the bloody vise and keep tightening it around your balls whether you want to pay the debt off early or not.”
“Didn’t you try to report him?”
“I had a word with my sergeant, but he said it was futile going over to see Barker, as he ran a ‘legitimate business’.”
“I’m sorry about that. So where did you find the extra thousand to pay him off?”
Patrick’s gaze dropped to the ground. “From another friend.”
“Okay, that’s really useful information. Thanks. I’ll let you both get on with your work now. I’ll be in touch soon if I have any news for you.”
Jack and Sally watched the two officers walk away before they entered the station.
“What are you thinking?” Jack asked as they walked up the stairs.
“The wife takes on a debt that neither of them can afford, and a few weeks later, she’s found murdered?”
“Are you pointing the finger at him?”
Sally shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know, Jack. We need to find out more about this loan shark. That’s got to be our next move. Let’s see what the others have come up with and go through the facts again.”
“What about Drake?”
“There’s an alert gone out for his arrest. Once we get the warrant, we can go back there and search the place. Would a child molester turn around and kill an adult?”
“Well, he’s on the run for a reason. Maybe Aisha got in his way. Maybe he had his eye on one of the pupils and Aisha confronted him about it.”
“We have a lot of speculation brewing but no concrete evidence to back anything up—that’s what is so bloody annoying about this case.”
They walked into the incident room, and Sally headed towards Joanna’s desk while Jack grabbed a couple of coffees from the machine. He deposited Sally’s beside her on the desk as Joanna went through what she’d come up with regarding the loan shark.
“He was banged up six years ago, boss. Was found guilty of GBH, beat up several people who refused to pay back some of their loans. He got out of prison in July last year. As far as I can see, he’s kept his nose clean since then.”
Sally frowned. “He hasn’t gone back to running his distasteful business? That seems odd.”
Joanna shrugged. “He has a wife. Maybe he’s put the business in her name. I’ll look into it, see what I can find.”
“Good idea. Give me ten minutes in my office, and then we’ll go through what we’ve got so far. Any news on the warrants?”
“I’ve stated the urgency behind the request, boss, but nothing has materialised as yet.”
“Okay, I’ll leave it until mid-afternoon and chase them up myself.”
Sally drifted into the office with her cup of coffee and stopped to gaze out the window for a second or two. Bathed in the sun’s rays, she contemplated why they weren’t more advanced in the case. She finished her coffee, ignored the post on her desk, and returned to the incident room.
She drew everyone’s attention to the whiteboard she was standing next to. “Let’s thrash this out. I want to hear what you think about each suspect on the list. Don’t hold back. We’re missing a vital clue somewhere, and we need to locate that clue. Otherwise, this case will end up defeating us. I
’m not about to let that happen.”
Sally turned to the board, picked up the marker pen sitting on the shelf, and added to the list of suspects on the left-hand side. “On the run, we have Jonathon Drake a.k.a. Paul Marwood. Not suspected of anything other than working illegally with children so far—if that’s the case, then why is he on the run? Jack came up with the idea that maybe he was getting close to a child and possibly Aisha either confronted him with her suspicions or threatened to report him. Would that really cause him to go after Aisha and kill her? If so, where’s the connection with the two burglars? We mustn’t forget that part of the equation in all this. I think that is going to be the crucial piece of the puzzle.”
Joanna tapped her pen against her cheek. “Maybe once we get hold of the search warrant, something will show up in his flat that will highlight a connection, boss. Perhaps he was friends with the burglars. Maybe their paths crossed while they were in prison. I’ll have to check out the dates.”
“Okay, I’m going to point you in the direction of a dubious lead in the shape of Sandra Ball, music teacher at Highfield School. According to another music teacher, there was no love lost between the women. I honestly don’t think it’s anything more than a case of jealousy, but I’d like to keep her in mind anyway. She’s also guilty of stirring up trouble with one of the parents, and that led to Aisha being struck around the face by this lady, Dawn Ward.” Sally circled the name on the board. “We need to look into her background, not that I think much will show up. After talking to her this morning, I believe she was wound up by Sandra Ball and went on to accuse Aisha of trying to groom her son. Sounds like bullshit to me. I don’t believe for one minute Aisha could have been like that, but it’s not something we should discount, either.”
Jordan raised his hand to speak. “If—and it’s a big if—she was grooming this boy, maybe that’s a link we should be looking into with Drake.”
“Another good idea. Well done, Jordan. We’ll bear it in mind when we search Drake’s address. We’ve also got Warren Dean, who, to me, is another prime suspect in this case. Aisha’s neighbour has suggested that he’s a bigoted racist who was constantly badgering Aisha. Again, we have to ask ourselves where the connection between him and the other two victims is. Maybe he knew the burglars. Hard to say without interviewing him, which isn’t likely to happen any time soon.”
“That’s the frustrating part about this guy.” Stuart sat forward in his chair. “Would it be worth getting in touch with the German police about questioning him?”
“That’s a great idea, Stuart, however, if he knows we’re onto him, he might go on the run in Germany. He’s due back in the country in a few weeks. We’ll have to be patient until we can haul his arse in. One other thing: Jack and I bumped into Patrick Thomas as we returned to the station. Given what we’ve learnt about the two burglars, Wilson and Jenkinson, and their money troubles, I asked him if either he or Aisha had any debts at the time of her death. He told us that Aisha had gone to a loan shark for a five-thousand-pound loan to enable her to have fertility treatment. The loan shark was none other than Spike Barker.”
“Hence you wanting to know what he was up to?” Joanna asked.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s going to be my next stop, if you can get me his address, Joanna, please?”
Joanna left her seat and rushed to her desk. She scribbled down an address and handed it to Sally.
“Brilliant. So, does anyone else have anything they’d like to highlight?”
“What about the husband, boss?” Stuart asked. “Is he in the clear?”
“Not at this moment, Stuart. I’ve still got him high on the list, but with no incriminating evidence pointing his way. This loan debacle has highlighted him again, however. We’ll know more after we’ve interviewed the loan shark. Again, where would the connection be with the burglars?”
Jack cleared his throat, ready to speak. “Perhaps he was already aware of the burglars. He’s a copper after all.”
“That’s true and a very plausible link. Well done, partner. Right, you guys get some lunch. Jack and I will have ours on the way to see Barker. Keep digging and do what you do best. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved thus far this week. Keep up the good work.”
The team got back to work. Jack and Sally left the incident room and made their way over to Barker’s address.
En route, Sally’s mobile rang. “Hi, Joanna, what have you got for us?”
“I wanted to catch you before you began questioning Barker, boss. I’ve looked into any business dealings that might be in his wife’s name and—bingo! I found a loan company called Midas Loans registered to their home address.”
“Bloody marvellous! Well done, Joanna. We’ve just arrived, so excellent timing on your part.” She ended the call and smiled at Jack. “A leopard never changes its spots. How stupid do these idiots think we are?”
Jack laughed and shook his head. “He’d have to be smarter than that to get one over on you, boss.”
“Let’s see what the little shit has to say for himself, shall we?”
The house was a huge Georgian manor with a large gravelled drive at the front. Sally rang the ornate doorbell, and the tone echoed inside the house for a few seconds before the door opened.
A smartly dressed blonde woman chewing gum leant against the doorframe. “Yeah, what do you want? You look like the filth to me.”
“Who is it, Marissa?” a man’s voice asked from a distant room behind her.
Sally and Jack produced their warrant cards.
More chewing ensued, then the woman replied, “See, I can smell you lot from ten miles away.”
“You’re very astute, Mrs. Barker. May we come in?”
“What for?”
A scrawny-looking man in his early forties appeared behind the woman and mumbled something incoherent under his breath. “What do you lot want? I’m straight now, have been for years.”
“Because of your enforced imprisonment, I suppose,” Sally replied with a beaming smile. “We’d just like a brief chat. We can either do it here or down at the station—the choice is yours.”
The man walked away from them and called over his shoulder, “You better let them in, love, or they’ll only invent another charge to put me away again.”
“You can come in for ten minutes maximum. I have an appointment to keep at the hairdresser’s, and I want you out of my house by then. I ain’t leaving you alone with my Spike. Not after last time. Ended up with a busted nose and two crushed fingers because of your bloody lot.”
Sally grinned at the woman. There was no way on earth she was about to apologise to the likes of them for another colleague’s behaviour.
Sally and Jack walked through the large, well-lit hallway, which was dominated by a curved glass staircase, and into an expansive lounge at the rear of the property. It overlooked a pool area immediately outside the bi-fold doors, which were open to the beautiful landscaped garden beyond. Sally’s envy gene was on high alert. The place was magnificent, but it stuck in her gut that all Barker’s money had been obtained from desperate people.
The furniture was in soft muted tones, and there were plenty of gilded elements to the room in the shape of ornate picture frames and a huge mirror in a gold-plated frame hung above the marble fireplace.
“Do you mind if we sit down?” Sally asked.
“No, I’m not having your stench on my furniture. Outside on the patio. Spike can hose that down once you’ve gone,” Mrs. Barker screeched, much to her husband’s amusement.
“You might want to watch your mouth,” Jack warned the woman.
“I’ll do and say what I like in my own home. We could always do this outside on the drive if you’d rather?” Mrs. Barker snapped at him.
Sally placed her hand on Jack’s arm. “It’s all right, Jack. On the patio would be fine. It’s too stuffy in here for me.”
Marissa Barker glared at Sally. “What do you mean by that?”
Sally smiled b
roadly and shrugged. “It’s a warm day.”
The four of them went outside onto the patio. Before Sally and Jack could sit down, Marissa swiped the cushions off the seats, leaving them to sit on the uncomfortable wicker. You really are an insufferable bitch. Any thoughts of this being a nice, friendly interview have gone out the window now, lady, and it’s all your fault. “Take notes if you will, Jack, thanks.”
Jack opened his notebook, his pen poised.
Marissa sat next to her husband. She grasped his hand and held it on the glass-topped table. “What can I do for you, Inspector? A warning if I may: if your questions get too invasive, I’ll be forced to put a halt to this interview and call my solicitor,” Spike said.
“Fine. I have no objections to your solicitor being here from the start if you think you have something to hide. Like I said, this will be an informal chat.” Damn, that’s put paid to my idea of coming down heavy on the bastard.
“Nah, you’re all right for now, just warning you.” Spike turned to smile at his wife, then he raised her hand and kissed it. Marissa wriggled in her seat and giggled like a teenager.
Sally felt sick at the overly exuberant display of affection. Hearing Jack sigh heavily, she almost burst into laughter. Instead, she cleared her throat and asked, “I need you to cast your mind back to ten years ago, Mr. Barker.”
“You can call me Spike. Mr. Barker sounds too toffee-nosed for this time of day.”
“Thanks, Spike it is. Ten years ago, you were deep into your loan-sharking business, I believe.”
“Wrong. I had a legitimate loan business. It’s the filth who labelled me a loan shark.”
“Okay, whatever the term you wish to use. What was the aim of that business?”
“Are you bloody serious? It was a loan company. We dished out loans to people,” he replied, a large dose of sarcasm thrown into the mix.
“And who did you offer these loans to? Businesses?”
He roared with laughter. “You really are a dumb broad, ain’t ya?”
His wife chuckled.