by Ray Clark
Who had kept all these? And why had they ended up here? Somebody was obviously trying to tell him something. But who, and what?
Sorting through the pile of letters he noticed that very few were junk mail. Npower and British Gas had written to him – two weeks ago. Both were final bills. They had been given readings and these were a settlement. He then noticed something else rather odd. They were addressed to the occupier, not him.
Further final bills came from the water company and the phone company. He did have a landline as well as a mobile. Both providers had written with final settlements. Other news came from insurance and investment companies – all sorry to hear the bad news, and that final settlements were being prepared.
Anthony flopped down in one of the chairs. He had absolutely no idea what it all meant. As far as he could see his whole life had somehow been switched off.
Why? Did all these people think – for some reason – that he was dead? Is that why everything was so final?
But he wasn’t dead. So why did they think he was, and who had told them? Panicking, Anthony searched through more paperwork. His exclusive wine club had written to say they were sorry that his membership had been cancelled. He’d always been a valued customer and if he wanted to return at any time he was more than welcome.
So they didn’t think he was dead.
He spotted a letter from Santander – his bank. Anthony reached out and ripped it open, his heart almost stopping when he saw the account had been completely cleared.
He jumped, causing the chair to fall back onto the floor. “What the fuck is going on?”
He found another bank letter: same story, no money.
If it was some bastard’s idea of a joke, Anthony was not laughing. He’d rather his colleagues were not responsible but he couldn’t think of anyone else – certainly no one clever enough.
But why would they do it? Had any of them actually gone away? Or had they conned him, led him to believe they had? And all the time, they had stayed back and – as far as he could see – completely wiped him out. Whilst he could understand them taking the money, he couldn’t see why they would clear out his house. Or steal his car from the airport.
Anthony sat back down, tried to think rationally. Why was he so quick to blame his colleagues? They had never shown signs of robbing him in the past. All of them had worked well together. They’d had disagreements, ups and downs, but then all companies go through that.
Anthony ran his hands through his hair. Were they playing a joke on him? A pretty sick fucker if it was.
Another thought forced its way into Anthony’s brain at jet miles per hour. He ran out of the living room, through the extension and past the swimming pool. He actually stopped to notice that all the water had been drained, before continuing, slipping into the small changing room at the side.
Like the others, the room was empty. He reached down to the false tile, pressing and shifting it to the right. The whole thing lifted out of the floor like a box. Anthony removed the top and reached in, breathing a sigh of relief.
Whoever had cleaned him out knew nothing of his emergency supply. Anthony retrieved the money – £5,000 in cash – all he had if the letters were anything to go by.
Dropping the safe back into the floor he left the house in search of answers.
Chapter Twenty-five
Gardener stood at the front of the incident room with a bottle of water in his right hand. Behind him were a number of whiteboards. Pinned to one were photos of James Henshaw, Zoe Harrison, and Anthony Palmer. To the other, a number of photos of Michael Foreman, taken at the scene of the crime on Bond Street, plus a whole host of information.
In front of him on a desk were the files the desk sergeant had found relating to the hit and run of David Hunter, with another steadily growing pile to the left, courtesy of DI Winter’s cyber team.
In the next room he could hear HOLMES setting up their equipment.
The last of his officers, young Patrick Edwards, filed in, closing the door behind him. He was pleased that Thornton and Anderson had returned to work. And thankful that DCI Briggs was still down in London at a Metropolitan Police convention, which, no doubt, was all about the latest cuts to the police budget. Shona Pearson had returned as the SPOC for the latest meeting.
“Thanks for coming, guys,” said Gardener, placing his empty bottle on the table. “Looks like we have our hands full with a new lead on the DPA hit and run.”
Gardener went on to explain in detail the incident he had stumbled upon earlier in the day in Bond Street – from Millie Johnson entering the sports shop to his team arriving.
“Is he dead?” said Dave Rawson.
“I hope so,” said Reilly. “I wouldn’t like to be inside his skin if he isn’t.”
“So what happened to him?” asked Sarah Gates. “Did this Millie Johnson actually know?”
“No, but once I’d secured the scene I slipped back into the sports shop and to her credit she was still standing where I’d left her.” Gardener held up a sheet of paper. “I have all her contact details here so I’d like someone to follow up and take a proper statement from her. We all know that once people have had time to think, all sorts of things come back to them.”
“So this Michael Foreman, who’s staggering all over the precinct,” asked Longstaff, “had he been attacked? I take it he wasn’t on drugs or anything.”
“Not attacked in the sense of beaten up,” replied Gardener. “According to what Fitz found he appears to have been injected with something. There was a mark to indicate as much on his neck.”
“Oh no, we’re not back to this again, are we?” asked Sharp. “Syringes in the neck job.”
“Hopefully not,” replied Gardener, remembering the problems they’d had with the Father Christmas murders.
“Do we know what he was given?” asked Bob Anderson, a solid dependable officer who could always be relied upon in a crisis. “Judging by the photos on that board he doesn’t look too clever. Must have been something pretty bloody lethal.”
“We’re still awaiting the results from Fitz.”
“He didn’t have any ideas, then?” asked Thornton, another one returning from compassionate leave. Thornton and Anderson worked well together but Gardener was constantly reminded of a POW when he saw Thornton because of his thin – almost emaciated – frame.
“He did,” said Gardener, “he thought it might be some sort of nerve agent.”
“Here we go,” said Rawson. “The Novichok nerds are back in town.”
“It isn’t a Hazchem scene, then?” asked Paul Benson.
Gardener glanced at Reilly, who remained silent. “I didn’t think so.”
“But it might be,” Patrick Edwards pointed out.
“I hope not,” replied Gardener. “I agree that he might have been given a dose of something rather nasty. In a short space of time his skin had blistered, and his throat swelled up, constricting his breathing. He was in constant agony before he died.”
“If it is a nerve agent,” said Rawson, “they’ll shut Leeds down. We all know what happened in Salisbury.”
“As far as I’m aware no one else has reported having similar symptoms, and I’m pretty sure they would have done by now.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” replied Thornton.
“It might be worth checking with the hospitals,” said Gardener.
“Where had this Michael Foreman staggered from?” asked Bob Anderson, leafing through one of the reports. “Did Millie Johnson say?”
“She didn’t know, Bob,” replied Gardener. “Hopefully, this is where you guys come in. Can we work it out from the statements you took this morning?”
With a rustle of paper, the team consulted their notes. Gardener listened intently to what they had to say. They had managed to construct Foreman’s movements, which appear to have originated in Butts Court sometime after ten o’clock. He was definitely seen swaying around in Short Street, before finally making his way onto Bo
nd Street.
“In that case,” said Gardener, “we need someone on the CCTV from Butts Court. I know for a fact there is some. How did he get there? Did he stagger out from a building? Was he brought in and dumped from a vehicle? If so, what was the vehicle and where did the driver go from there?
“We’ll also need to follow up on the names and addresses of everyone who was questioned – including Millie Johnson – from Butts Court, through Short Street and onto the precinct at Bond Street. My guess is Michael Foreman will have been given his treatment somewhere else and dropped off. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to do what was done to him outdoors and not be noticed.”
Gardener turned to Reilly. “Sean, we have a PolSA team in place on Bond Street. Can you get in touch and tell them to widen the search in view of what we now know?”
“I have a witness named Dennis Frost,” said Patrick Edwards, the youngest member of the team, who had an earring in one ear, “who works in the loading bay opposite. He saw a dark green Evoque leaving Butts Court pretty rapidly around ten.” Edwards had played a blinder in a recent case and had gone up in the SIO’s estimation.
“Good work, Patrick. Did he see the registration, or where it went?”
“No reg, sir, but the vehicle took off down Short Street. Mr Frost thinks the driver was male, but it all happened so fast, and he wasn’t looking for anything suspicious at that point.”
“Did he see Michael Foreman?”
“No,” replied Patrick.
“Seeing as you can’t drive straight down Butts Court because it’s a dead end,” said Reilly, “he’s taken Short Street, and then had to go right onto Upper Basinghall Street.”
“Where there are more CCTV cameras,” added Gardener. “He could only have turned left onto The Headrow, so that’s another set of cameras to check. Patrick, follow that up please. I want all the CCTV footage. Find the registration of the Evoque and see what we can learn from that. If we’re lucky we might be able to compose a picture of who we’re looking for. If we’re really lucky, we might even get a photo of him.”
“What about the other names on the other boards, sir?” asked Paul Benson. “Any information on them?”
Gardener let Shona Pearson take over. She quickly summarised in detail from the night of the hit and run to the present day, including the information in the attaché case and the bitcoin scam, and what they had discovered about a team known as DPA: real names, false names, and business premises that did not exist, registered to the company called V-Tech, that didn’t exist either. She finally finished with the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of them all – apart from Michael Foreman who was now laid out on a mortuary slab.
“So this guy killed David Hunter?” asked Colin Sharp. “And somehow or other, he’s laid low all this time?”
“We still don’t know for sure who was driving,” said Pearson, “but, yes, you’re right in what you’re saying, he was responsible for the banker’s death in one way or another, and he hasn’t been seen until today.”
“I remember when all this happened,” said Rawson to Gardener, “you spoke to James Henshaw’s wife and you discovered he was missing. Is that still the case, or has he turned up as well, and does she know anything about it?”
“We need to speak to her again,” said Pearson, also to Gardener. “When we spoke to her very recently she confirmed that James Henshaw was still missing but she has no idea where. He hasn’t made any contact at all. To be honest, she’s at her wits end. She’s now harbouring suspicions that he’s been leading a double life for years.”
Gardener also summarised what they knew about the business premises in Leeds and the damaged Overfinch; that the accident hadn’t happened where James had said, neither was the vehicle being repaired in Skipton like he’d also claimed. “We’ve been checking with Range Rover UK about the vehicle’s tracker. They can’t help because they’ve had no signal from it since the night of the hit and run.”
“The first person we have seen from the investigation is Michael Foreman, and he’s now dead,” offered Pearson.
“Well he isn’t just dead, is he?” said Rawson. “He’s been made to die.”
“Which suggests that someone might know who and where they are,” said Bob Anderson.
“Maybe he’s fed up of the fact that we haven’t been able to come up with any answers,” said Sharp, “taken the law into his own hands.”
“Maybe,” said Gardener. “But who’s to say that one of the others isn’t behind today’s little incident? Is James Henshaw controlling it all? He’s been clever enough to conceal everything from his wife.”
“Or is he caught up in it?” asked Reilly. “Does someone else have all of them? Has this person had them all from the beginning, which is why we haven’t been able to find them?”
“That’s always possible,” said Paul Benson. “We never found any evidence that they’d left the country. Have we found anything since?”
“Nothing,” replied Pearson.
“But they could have gone,” offered Sharp, “obviously using false names.”
“We didn’t get anywhere with facial recognition software,” said Gates.
“So maybe they didn’t leave,” said Pearson. “Let’s go with this theory that someone knows more than we do and has been keeping them prisoner.”
“That’s a bigger mountain to climb,” said Reilly. “We’ll need to go back through all the original witness statements to see if we can spot anything that might tell us who this person is.”
Gardener could sense his team really had the bit between their teeth, and were definitely showing signs of hunger to proceed.
“So we have a hit and run, a cyber crime and the sudden appearance and death of one of the DPA team, Michael Foreman. All of these events are connected.”
“So what’s the plan, boss?” asked Bob Anderson.
“We need to cover the local airports again. I realise we did that before but in the event of one or all of them reappearing we need to go back and check again. It’s possible that one of you guys might just ask a new question, which may produce a fresh lead. We won’t know until we try. Drag up every scrap of airport CCTV you can find dating back to the night of the hit and run, and come forward to the last couple of days. I realise it’s an awful job but it needs to be done.
“We’ll need to coordinate with DI Winter at cyber crime, but I’d like someone investigating any or all online presence from then till now to see if it offers any vital clue about where the hell they have all been. There has to be something somewhere. Now that one of them has surfaced, their online presence could have started up again.
“We also need to visit David Hunter’s bank again. Speak to the manager about his version of events; see if he remembers anything fresh. Or has anything else happened recently. I’d suggest someone gets onto that immediately. Banks are notorious for closing early and I want answers today, so whatever the bank manager thinks he’s doing, he isn’t.”
Gardener turned and pointed to the whiteboards before continuing. “As for this lot, visit their homes again, find out everything you can. Speak to the neighbours. I appreciate they have all answered countless questions and they’re probably sick of it by now but they’ll just have to put up with more.
“Information we had said they operated from premises that have actually been closed for years; visit them again. Something might have been overlooked. But until his disappearance, James Henshaw had his wife believe he left for work every day. So where did he go? Where did any of them go?
“I’ve just had another thought,” said Gardener. “Going back to cars. We drew a blank last time on the cars they drove, couldn’t actually find anything. Can someone check all the lease companies and see if they have any vehicles registered to a company called V-Tech or Hammer Studios, like the Overfinch? Or maybe they registered them under DPA, another lead worth checking. These people must have been somewhere, and no matter how good they are at covering their tracks, there has
to be a chink in their armour. We just have to find it.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The first thing Anthony had done after leaving the house was catch a train into the centre of Leeds. From there he had found a sports shops and bought a holdall large enough to carry clothes, toiletries, and other items he purchased a few minutes later.
Anthony also needed a phone and the anonymity of pay-as-you-go was perfect for him because they were far more difficult to trace. He didn’t load it up with too much credit in case he needed to ditch it and start again.
Following a coffee and a cake in an Internet Café he took advantage of their facilities to dig a little deeper into his financial situation. He was still flat broke, owned nothing, and, to his further amazement, didn’t actually exist. Someone somewhere had wiped him out. His stomach felt incredibly heavy as he’d even discovered he’d been registered as recently deceased.
So who was responsible?
Anthony didn’t have to think too hard for whom. It had to be the other three. Was it one of them, or were they all in it together? And why? What had happened in the time they had all spent out of the country to bring about such a catastrophic result? Anthony ran a check on his colleagues. No deaths had been registered amongst them.
He saw little point in returning home, so another internet search revealed a number of low budget hotels and guest houses within easy range of the airport.
He’d chosen well, a nondescript, slightly run-down establishment at the end of a tree-lined street. The landlord was more than happy for a cash only arrangement with no questions asked.
He’d only booked three nights in the bed and breakfast, and when Anthony saw the room he figured that was two nights too many. Cheap carpeting, faded wallpaper, windows that wouldn’t open easily, and a bed made from granite with thin sheets – though they were clean. The only two pieces of furniture were an MFI wardrobe with uneven doors and a bedside cabinet ringed with tea stains on top. The room had no Wi-Fi and was not en suite. But what could he expect for £20 a night? God only knew what breakfast would be like.