by Damien Boyd
‘You’re all up to speed with where we’ve got to?’ he asked, looking at the jacket and tie sitting nearest to him.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘We’ve got two hundred and sixty-seven people owing money to the taxman; these are the people caught up in Collins’s schemes who were being pursued by Finch, or at least might have thought they were. One hundred and seventy-one of them have entered into settlement agreements with HMRC, so we start with the other ninety-six. Find them, interview them, alibi them; DNA swabs too, if they consent.’
‘And if they don’t?’ asked the jacket and tie.
‘We put a giant asterisk by their name.’ Dixon turned to Cole. ‘How have you got on with the archery retailers?’
‘I’ve emailed the sellers of the broadheads, but they’re all in China, so I’m not holding my breath. Only one UK retailer has them listed on his site, but they’re out of stock.’
Dixon slid the padded envelope he’d picked up at Bowman Archery the day before out of his jacket pocket, took out one of the broadheads and passed it to the jacket and tie. ‘Just so you all know, this is what we’re talking about.’
‘Fucking hell.’
‘Pass it round,’ said Dixon. ‘One of these went straight through Keith Finch’s eyeball. The tip is sharp and those are curved blades on the side, so be careful.’ He waited while the broadhead made its way around Area J, watching the reactions as it passed from hand to hand; if he hadn’t had everyone’s attention before, he certainly did now. ‘Nigel, what about crossbows?’
‘I’ve come up with seven so far, sold to people living in Avon and Somerset in the last three months; all of them online. Bowman sold two, again both online but to people out of the area.’
‘I don’t suppose any of them are on the loan charge list?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘That would’ve been too good to be true. What about the red car, Dave?’
‘We’ve checked all the CCTV and number plate recognition cameras nearest to the bungalow in Bradley Stoke and come up with one hundred and seventeen red cars in the two hours either side of Finch’s murder. That’s CCTV on Winterbourne Academy and ANPR cameras on the intersection of Beacon Lane and the Old Gloucester Road; there’s one on the Bristol Road too.’
‘If he ducked out into the country we’re buggered, though,’ said Kevin, sitting next to Dave.
‘Could he?’
Dave nodded. ‘If he knew his way around; residential streets will take you out the back and into the country lanes.’
‘We have to assume he did know his way around. Finch spotted him scoping the place days earlier. Check them anyway. I don’t suppose anyone on the crossbow list owns a red car?’
‘I’m afraid not, Sir.’ Dave slumped back in his chair. ‘We’ve already cross-checked the lists.’
‘Computers, Lou?’
‘All with High Tech, Sir.’ She glanced across at Kevin. ‘And the micro SIM that Zephyr missed.’
‘Right, let’s get on with it. We all know what we’ve got to do.’
The twelve new faces dispersed to vacant workstations in Area J, leaving Louise and Mark staring at Dixon. ‘We don’t, Sir,’ said Louise, frowning.
‘I’ve got an accountant telling me the agency workers wouldn’t have known who Collins was and I’ve got the senior officer at HMRC Cardiff telling me Finch wasn’t a caseworker, his name was just printed on the letters, so I’m not entirely convinced by the loan charge. It’s all we’ve got at the moment, and we’ll go with it, but I want you two to find another connection between Finch and Collins.’
‘And what if there isn’t one?’ asked Mark.
‘Then we’re stuck with the loan charge, aren’t we?’
‘What about me?’
‘You’re with me, Nige.’
‘Really?’
‘We’re going to visit the agencies and then start working through your crossbow buyers.’ Dixon was holding the broadhead between his thumb and index finger, turning it by the thread, the blades glinting in the morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. ‘We’ll need some discreet body armour too; a stab vest isn’t going to stop one of these.’
‘They’re always above a shop, aren’t they.’ Cole looked up. ‘With one of these on the pavement.’ He kicked the A-board, the poster of job listings spattered with what Dixon hoped was coffee, or Coke perhaps.
He glanced down at the vacancies: C++ developer; digital officer, facilities management; database manager (Oracle/Postgres); cyber security engineer. None of them less than fifty pounds an hour. ‘I’m in the wrong business.’
‘Do they know we’re coming?’
‘You can’t wrong-foot someone if they know you’re coming, Nige.’
The door between the bookshop and the coffee bar in Small Street was standing open, a flight of stairs leading up to a glazed door etched with Bristol Recruitment Solutions and their logo, a sort of speech bubble that left Dixon wondering what they had to say.
‘She’s on the phone,’ was the slightly unusual response to his warrant card, the receptionist hardly looking away from her computer screen while she carried on typing.
‘Who is?’
‘Natalie.’
‘What about Clare Pring?’
‘Gone.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll need to speak to Natalie about that. May I?’ she asked, picking up the phone when it rang on her desk. ‘Bristol Recruitment Solutions. She’s on a call at the moment, with someone else waiting. Yes, I’ll tell her. Thank you.’
The red light on the switchboard went off, then the door opened. Must have been alerted by an email, thought Dixon.
‘I’m Natalie Corfield.’ Short dark hair, sharp two-piece suit, red shoes. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We wanted to have a word with you about Godfrey Collins,’ replied Dixon.
‘Oh, God, not that again.’ She folded her arms tightly across her chest. ‘I’ve been dealing with the tax office in Cardiff and it’s all sorted.’
‘Not about the loan charge, if that’s what you’re referring to.’
‘What then?’ A sharp edge of impatience was creeping into her voice. ‘It’s nine-thirty on a Monday morning, my busiest time.’
‘Would you like to do it out here, or should we step into your office?’ Dixon knew the answer to that one before he asked it, given that there were two people sitting on the far side of the waiting room.
Her office was small, an empty cereal bowl on the corner of her otherwise tidy desk; a laptop, a phone and a pad of forms, a piece of carbon paper sticking out of the side. Phone calls and filling in forms – recruitment was sounding a lot like police work already.
Cole must have been briefed by Louise, sitting down and taking his notebook out of his pocket.
‘Do sit down,’ said Natalie, her impatience slipping into sarcasm.
Cole was about to reply, but Dixon beat him to it. ‘What’s happened to your co-director? Your receptionist just said that Mrs Pring had gone.’
‘The loans thing was my idea and when it all went bang Clare wanted none of it, so I bought her out and she’s resigned her directorship.’
‘It’s not updated at Companies House,’ said Dixon.
‘She said she’d deal with that and it’s her problem if she doesn’t.’
‘Do you have any other staff?’
‘One part-timer who comes in on Monday and Friday, ten till four. They’re the busiest days, really.’
‘And your relationship with Godfrey Collins?’
‘Business relationship, just to be clear. Look, I met him at some business networking event and he said he could save me thousands of pounds a year. It was as simple as that, really.’
‘When was this?’
‘At least ten years ago, so maybe 2008, thinking about it. I’d not long started up and was doing the rounds of those tedious networking events trying to meet employers, contacts, clients, anyone.’
‘And he came here?
’
‘I was working from home back then, but we met and it all seemed perfectly legit. He’d got the offshore trust in place and everything. He said it was legal and he was an accountant. He took whopping fees, but we were all still better off.’ She slumped down into the leather chair behind her desk. ‘If only I knew then what I know now.’
‘How many staff were paid using the scheme?’
‘Ninety-three over the course of seven years. Some of them I got to know quite well over that time and it was devastating when that tosser Osborne changed the law in 2016.’
‘I was over at the tax office yesterday and they have a slightly different take on it.’ Dixon softened the blow with a smile. ‘I’m paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of: Do they seriously expect us to believe it never occurred to them there was something wrong with using loans they didn’t have to pay back?’
‘They do have a point, I suppose, with hindsight, but I was assured by Collins it was legal and I always told anyone going into the scheme to get their own advice as well. Look, what’s this all about?’
Dixon was standing with his back to the window, the view of the block opposite not terribly inspiring. ‘How many of the ninety-three would have had any direct contact with Mr Collins?’
‘None.’
‘Would they have known who he was?’
‘I don’t think so. The loans were paid by bank transfer and any queries came through me. You said was.’ She sat up. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Mr Collins is dead, Miss Corfield,’ replied Dixon. ‘This is a murder investigation.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘And a Mr Keith Finch, who was the head of the enforcement team at the tax office in Cardiff.’
‘Bloody hell. It was his name on all the letters, but I dealt with someone called Sanjay.’
‘Do you recall any of your agency workers being particularly aggrieved by the loan charge?’ Dixon was admiring the bewildering array of certificates hanging in frames on the wall.
‘Not really. Some of them had put money aside for the tax because they thought someone would come after them sooner or later. I’ve even got a few still on the books.’ Natalie leaned forward and closed the lid of her laptop. ‘Most have settled, but a couple joined the action group and campaigned against the charge; letters to their MP, that sort of thing. I don’t think any of them would have killed Collins, that’s in the unlikely event any of them knew who he was. And the taxman’s just doing his job, isn’t he?’
‘What’s the biggest bill any of your workers was landed with?’
‘Two hundred and ten grand. He sold a rental property and paid it off. Not everyone was so lucky.’
Chapter Fifteen
The notice of possession pinned to the door of the office on Queen Square had been ominous, and a quick check of Google had come up with a company winding up petition issued in the High Court by HM Revenue and Customs. Someone hadn’t checked the agencies properly, but then it had been the weekend, so he decided to let it go. And Jones’s assurance that no one had been bankrupted clearly didn’t extend to companies, although it may have been unrelated to the loan charge.
‘Get someone to speak to the directors on the phone,’ had been Dixon’s response, and Cole was organising that as they drove out of Bristol.
‘There’s a bloke in Weston on the crossbow list,’ said Cole, when he rang off. ‘We could pay him a visit after the next employment agency.’
‘Which bow did he buy?’
‘A Desert Hawk, two hundred and twenty-five pound recurve bow.’ Cole was looking at his notebook. ‘It fires twenty inch bolts and you’d need to add three for the broadhead so it sits off the end of the rail, and that fits with the twenty-three inch bolts found in Collins and Finch.’
Dixon reached behind his seat and felt for the body armour in the rear passenger footwell of his Land Rover.
‘I got Type IV, Sir,’ Cole said. ‘Solid Kevlar plates. It’ll stop a crossbow bolt, don’t you worry.’
Dixon parked on the double yellow lines opposite the Worlebury Hill Residential Home and looked up. It was the last building before the road disappeared into the trees on the top of the hill, set over three floors in grey stone with bay windows and a new annex on the left.
The Worlebury Hill Care Agency occupied what looked like a converted double garage by the roadside.
‘Hardly looks like a den of tax avoidance and criminality, does it?’ muttered Cole.
The front of the garage had been replaced by a floor to ceiling window and a glazed door; three women visible inside, sitting at desks, two of them on the phone. Filing cabinets along the back wall were covered in lever arch files, just enough room left for a kettle.
‘I suppose they nip up to the house if they need the loo.’
‘I’ll leave that question for you if you’d like to ask them.’ Dixon was undoing his seatbelt.
‘I was just thinking out loud.’
‘Best avoided in my experience.’
‘We’re being watched, Sir,’ said Cole, as they walked across the road, the phones ringing but going unanswered.
‘Can I help you?’ asked the woman striding towards them from the back of the office as Dixon opened the door, the dark blue nurse’s uniform reminding him of his last visit to hospital. There was even that hospital smell.
Cole was first to produce his warrant card, the response an exaggerated sigh.
‘Do we have to do this now? It’s Monday morning, our busiest time.’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘And you are?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Dixon.’
‘It’s not Mrs Featherstone claiming someone’s stolen her jewellery again, is it?’ She shook her head. ‘She hides it and forgets where she put it.’
‘It’s a murder investigation.’ Matter of fact.
‘Not one of our clients?’
‘No.’
Dixon waited; curiosity would get the better of her sooner or later. Sooner, as it turned out.
‘Who’s been killed?’
Time to turn the tables. ‘And you are?’
‘Liz Goodall. I’m the manager here.’
‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ asked Dixon.
‘Take a comfort break, girls.’
‘What about the phones?’ asked Cole.
‘They’ll go through to voicemail and we’ll call them back later.’
The two staff members filed out of the back door, Dixon watching them walk up the drive towards the house. Cole had been right, after all. ‘How long have you worked here?’
‘Seventeen years.’
‘And who owns the business?’
‘Hugh and Veronica Middlebrook. You can find them up at the house,’ replied Liz. ‘So, are you going to tell me who’s been murdered or not?’ She leaned back against her desk and folded her arms.
‘Godfrey Collins and Keith Finch.’ Slow, deliberate and watching for any reaction.
‘Who’s Keith Finch?’
‘He was the head of enforcement at the Cardiff tax office.’
‘I don’t know him, I’m afraid.’
‘It was his job to recover the back tax owed by workers paid using the loan charge schemes run by Godfrey Collins, who I assume you did know.’
‘Yes, poor Godfrey.’ Liz walked around her desk and sat down on her swivel chair. She pulled a tissue out of the box on the desk and dabbed her dry eyes. ‘It’s about the loan charge, is it?’
‘We believe so.’
‘He was as much a victim as everyone else.’ Liz blew her nose. ‘Poor bloke.’
‘How many staff did you pay under the scheme?’
‘All of them, for a time. It was his idea.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the main house. ‘Said it would save him thousands.’
‘How many?’
‘Oh, maybe a hundred or so over the years. Nurses, domestic help, carers, cleaners, shoppers, that sort of thing. This is a care agency
, so no one was raking it in. We started using the scheme in 2011 and it all seemed perfectly legal at the time. My husband is an accountant; he looked at it and said it was technically legal, and I filed tax returns declaring it for five years and no one said anything until George bloody Osborne changed the law in 2016. Not a single worker had a tax return queried, to my knowledge, and then all of a sudden you’re a bloody criminal!’
‘You were paid using the scheme?’
‘I had to use an inheritance from my mother to pay off the back tax,’ she said, tucking her bleached hair back behind her ear.
‘Did you know Godfrey Collins?’
‘Yes, I knew Godfrey. I met him several times. He was a lovely man, running perfectly legitimate schemes that we all benefitted from, none of them ever queried by the taxman and then, wallop, they put the poor sod out of business and practically bankrupt him.’
‘The tax officer we spoke to said that people should have known the remuneration was disguised and—’
‘If that’s right, then why didn’t they say something before? I filed annual tax returns for five years and I know people through the action group who’d been filing returns declaring the scheme for longer than that. Some even received tax rebates. What the bloody hell was that all about if it was illegal?’
‘Did any of your staff have big bills?’
‘Not huge. Some of the private nurses, perhaps, but the carers and domestic helpers . . .’ She grimaced. ‘I think the biggest was about eighteen thousand. Mine was thirty. Look, there are some out there who no longer work for us who don’t even know there’s an issue. The taxman still hasn’t caught up with them yet.’
Dixon was looking up at the house, watching the two women who had abandoned the phones standing outside holding mugs of coffee and cigarettes. ‘What about the employer’s bill?’
‘Mr Moneybags Middlebrook took it in his stride.’ Liz jabbed her thumb in the direction of the house. ‘Sent them a cheque and forgot about it. His view was it had been worth a try and it didn’t work; easy come, easy go.’
‘How the other half live,’ mumbled Cole.
‘Quite,’ replied Liz.
‘Did any of your workers know Mr Collins?’