by Adele Abbott
“Thanks. So, you’re sure about Westy?”
“Absolutely. You have my word on it.”
When Armitage had left, I did count the money. All eleven-hundred pounds of it.
That’s what I called a result!
Now that I knew who the mysterious man with bushy sideburns was, I could discount him as the murderer, and instead focus on the cases that Westy had been working on. I was convinced that they would lead us to the killer.
***
By four o’clock, I’d finished going through Westy’s cases. One of them had been for my new friend with the bushy sideburns. I’d ended up with a list of three possible candidates. Two of them, I already knew because we’d done work for them previously. The other man, I’d never heard of before, but judging by the nature of the case, he seemed worth checking out. I planned to pay each of them a visit over the next day or so.
I was almost out of the door when Zero called.
“I’ve cracked it, Kat!”
“That was quick.”
“Are you kidding? I can’t believe it took me this long.”
“What’s Dale doing now?”
“He said he’s going to take a look through the files tonight, and then he and Lisa will go to the police first thing in the morning.”
“Ask him if he wants me to go with him, would you?”
I waited until he came back on the line.
“He says they’ll be okay.”
“Fair enough. You might as well get off home, then. I was just about to leave myself.”
“Did you go through Westy’s files?”
“I did, and I’ve come up with a few people I plan to talk to.”
“Won’t that be dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than waiting for them to find me. Oh, and by the way, we received a payment today. I’ve put it in your drawer. You’ll need to enter it into your new accounts thingy.”
“What was that for?”
“Payment for one of the cases Westy had been working on. It seems Roy was doing a lot of cash-in-hand work I knew nothing about.”
“Okay, cool. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Chapter 22
It had just turned six in the morning when I got the phone call. A whole hour before I had intended crawling out of bed.
“Kat, it’s me.”
“Zero? What’s up?”
“It’s Premax. I’ve just checked the overnight footage, and I think you’ll want to see this.”
“What happened?”
“A few minutes after the cleaners arrived, someone passed a dozen small boxes through the door. I couldn’t see who they passed them to because we only have the one camera inside the loading bay.”
“That’s okay. I’m pretty sure I know who’s on the other side of that door. I only have a link to the live feed. How can I get a look at that footage?”
“Check your email. I’ve already sent you another link.”
“Okay. Hang on.”
Moments later, I was watching the incident that he’d just described.
Bingo!
“That’s fantastic, Zero!”
“What are you going to do now?”
“We are going to Premax. I’ll call Kevin Lockhart at eight to see if I can set up a meeting sometime today. Sit tight there until you hear from me.”
“Okay.”
Fortunately, Lockhart was in the office when I called, and he was very keen to hear what I’d discovered. We arranged to meet at his offices at ten o’clock.
I got back to Zero and told him I’d meet him outside Premax, then after I’d showered and dressed, I took a leisurely walk to Geordie’s. After the unexpected windfall from Mr Armitage, I figured the least I could do was to treat myself to a proper breakfast.
“Morning, Kat.” Larry had his head buried in the local paper, the Lewford Chronicle. “Have you seen this?” He handed it to me.
The article, which had had Larry so engrossed, related to a local man who’d discovered he had a winning lottery ticket worth fifteen million pounds. According to the piece, the ticket had been in his fishing tackle bag, and would have expired in another two weeks’ time.
“Fifteen million?” I started to daydream about what I could do with that kind of money. “Lucky sod.”
“He doesn’t deserve it if you ask me. I can’t be doing with these people who buy tickets but can’t be bothered to check them. If it were up to me, there’d be a seven-day limit for claiming prizes.”
“What if you’re away on holiday? Or in hospital?”
“Okay, two weeks, but no more.” Larry was clearly prepared to countenance no further compromise. “What can I get you, Kat?”
“I’ll have one of your small breakfasts, please.”
Just then, my phone rang; Caller ID showed it was Bruce Layne.
“I’ll bring it over to you, Kat,” Larry said.
“Batman, have you got something for me?”
“The car that tried to run you over was stolen.”
“Is that it?”
“Patience was never your strong suit, was it, Kat?”
“Sorry.”
“We have footage of the driver when he abandoned the vehicle near the old docks.”
“Any idea who it is?”
“None.”
“Can’t you run it through your face recognition software?”
“You’ve been watching too many movies.” He laughed. “We don’t have that yet. Certainly not for routine offences.”
“Routine? Someone tried to kill me.”
“The best I can do is to make sure all the local lads take a look at his face. One of them might recognise him.”
“Can I get a look at it?”
“I’m not even supposed to be working on this.”
“Come on, Bruce. No one need ever know.”
The line went silent for the longest moment, and I was beginning to think he’d hung up.
“Okay. I’ll text you the photo, but it’ll have to be later today. I was due in a meeting five minutes ago. And remember, you didn’t get it from me.”
“You’re a star, Batman.”
“Yeah, yeah. And you owe me a pint. Several, in fact.”
***
Punctual as always, Zero was waiting for me outside the gates of Premax. He was wearing jeans and a short sleeve t-shirt.
“Aren’t you freezing?”
“Nah.” He shrugged. “I don’t feel the cold much.”
“Clearly.” I could see my breath, and I’d just been thinking that I should have worn a jumper underneath my padded jacket.
Lockhart had us sent straight up to his office.
“Morning, Kat. Morning, err—”
“Zero.”
“Sorry, of course. Take a seat.”
We dispensed with the small talk, and got straight down to business. Zero brought up the previous night’s footage on Lockhart’s laptop.
“That’s Desmond,” he said, as soon as he saw the figure who was passing the boxes through the door. “He’s in charge of security.”
“That’s a bit ironic.”
“I don’t understand.” Lockhart sat back in his chair. “After you called earlier, I checked the overnight footage, but I didn’t see any of this.”
“Who’s responsible in-house for your CCTV?”
Lockhart nodded as the realisation slowly sank in. “Desmond.”
“Exactly. He doctored the CCTV.”
“But how did you know?”
“We worked it out by studying the footage from the night of the previous theft.”
“How did you manage to get hold of that?”
“That isn’t important. We realised someone had edited it to remove a small section of footage. Just long enough to cover the couple of minutes it took to hand those boxes through the door.”
“But I’ve checked that footage myself a dozen times. The timestamp doesn’t show any editing.”
“Whoever did this, knew what they were
doing,” Zero chimed in. “They must have realised that if the timer jumped, they’d soon be caught. That’s why they doctored the recording in such a way that the timer didn’t show the edit.”
“Then, how did you work out that a section had been removed?”
“We have a spider to thank for that,” I said.
“Huh?”
After I’d explained to Lockhart how the ‘jumping’ spider had alerted Zero to the doctored footage, he asked, “How are they getting the speakers out of the gates? Do you have footage from outside the loading bay too?”
“No, but I’m almost certain I know how they’re doing it. When I was working undercover with the cleaning crew, I came in on the minibus. I was the last one to be picked up, so I always ended up sitting on the back row of seats. No one wanted to sit there because there was less headroom. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but once I realised the thefts were taking place immediately after the cleaners had arrived, it was obvious that the only way they could have got those speakers out of the gates was on that minibus. I took a look at the same model of minibus recently, and the back seats are on the same level as the others. Someone must have modified the cleaners’ bus to provide a small storage area where they could hide the speakers.”
“Which must mean the driver is working with Desmond.”
“That would be my guess.”
Lockhart sat back in his chair, and was silent for a long minute. “It makes sense. Even if the guard on the gate checked the minibus, they wouldn’t be looking for hidden storage areas.”
“When I was on the minibus, the only thing they ever checked was our security tags.”
“I still can’t believe it’s Desmond. He’s been with me for twenty years.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to sack his backside, and then I’m going to get the police involved. Twenty years or no twenty years, that doesn’t give him the right to steal from me.” Lockhart stood up. “I’m really grateful. To both of you. I must admit, I thought you were out of your depth at one stage.”
“It’s been a difficult time, what with Roy and everything.”
“I’m sure it has. You’ll let me have your bill, I assume?”
“You can rely on it.”
***
Zero set off back to the Sidings while I headed for central London.
Malcolm “Malky” Moore had been a regular customer of RK Investigations for as long as I’d worked there. I’d never cared for the guy because there was something of the night about him. More importantly, I didn’t approve of his business. Fortunately, I’d never been asked to work on any of his cases. He was a loan shark, but one who specialised not in making personal loans, but in loans to small businesses which couldn’t raise cash through more conventional channels. What made it worse was that a lot of the businesses to whom he made loans were themselves rather dodgy. As you’d expect, his interest rates were obscenely high, but then he did expect to get stiffed more than the average bank. Malky often hired Roy to track down delinquent payers. Roy, in turn, often passed those cases onto Westy. Roy rarely discussed this kind of case with me, but he had on several occasions referred to Malky as a psychopath, and I was aware that the man had spent several stretches inside for violent crimes.
All of which begged the question: why was I on my way to see him?
Malky had a small office above a shoe shop near Seven Dials, but there was no sign to indicate the business was located there. I’d been there just once before when Roy had asked me to drop off some paperwork.
I pressed the intercom buzzer.
“What?” A female voice growled.
“I’d like to see Malky.”
“Who are you?”
“Kat Royle.”
“Never heard of you.”
“I used to work for Roy King.”
“Hold on.”
I heard nothing else for several minutes, and I was about to buzz again when the door popped open.
The woman behind the desk obviously shopped at Mutton and Lamb.
“Malky says you’re to go through.” She stopped filing her nails just long enough to point to the door behind her.
“Thanks.”
“Well, well, if it isn’t young Kathleen. I heard about that boss of yours. Terrible business. Are you looking for a new job? I could always use a looker like you.”
It made my skin crawl just to be in the same postcode as this man.
“Thanks, but I’ve taken over the agency. And the name’s Kat.”
“Come to see if I’ve got any work for you, have you? I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement.”
“Actually, no.” No matter how badly the business was doing, I was determined that I’d never work for the likes of Malky Moore. “I wanted to talk to you about some of the recent cases that Roy worked on for you.”
“What about them?”
“It doesn’t appear we ever received your payment for them. There are five, by my reckoning.”
“You’ve got a damn cheek!” So much for Mr Nice Guy.
“Are you saying you did pay?”
“Why would I pay? Roy and that pal of his, Westy, were ripping me off.”
“Ripping you off how? What were they doing?”
“They tried to tell me they’d been unable to collect the debts for at least half a dozen accounts, but they were lying. They got the cash and pocketed it themselves. Then they had the brass neck to try and collect their fees from me. Do I look stupid?”
I assumed the question was rhetorical. “How do you know they collected the money?”
“Because I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“You’ve heard that Westy was murdered too, I assume?”
“Course I did. Good riddance to the two of them as far as I’m concerned.” He grinned. “Now I get it. That’s why you’re here. You think I offed them, don’t you? You’ve got some balls, Kat, I’ll give you that.”
“Did you kill them?”
“What would you do if I said I had?”
It was a good question.
“My partner knows I’m here. If I don’t check in within the hour, he has orders to contact the police.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” Malky stood up and walked over to where I was standing; his breath was even worse than his dress sense. “No, I didn’t kill them. Do you think I’d risk all of this for those two wasters? So, Kat, what do you say? How about we do some sweet business together?”
“Sorry, I’ve already got more work than I can handle.” I began to backpedal towards the door.
“Pity. Still, if you change your mind, you know where you can find me.”
“Right.”
Back outside, the encounter had left me feeling like I needed to take a shower. Had Malky been right about Roy and Westy? Had they really collected Malky’s cash, and kept it for themselves? I couldn’t convince myself Roy would have done that. He would have been too afraid of the consequences. Westy, though? I wasn’t so sure. That man had been a total headcase capable of anything.
Chapter 23
While I was on my way back to the office, my phone pinged with a text message. It was from Batman, and read: You owe me at least five pints.
Attached, was an image lifted from CCTV footage, and even though it was quite blurred, I recognised the man’s face immediately.
“Batman, it’s me.”
“Jeez, Kat, I’ve already sent you the photo. Check your texts.”
“I know. I’ve just seen it, thanks. That’s why I’m calling. I know who he is.”
“You do? Who?”
***
Back at the office, Zero was beavering away on the computer.
“Someone’s busy,” I sat on his desk. “Not too busy to make me a coffee, I hope?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d found the books, Kat?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The accounts. You never said that you’d found them.�
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“That would be because I haven’t. I definitely need a coffee because you’re making even less sense than usual.”
“They were on my desk when I got here. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m trying to cross reference them with the case files, and entering them into the new accounts software.”
“Whoa there! Back up a minute. You’re saying that the books were on your desk when you arrived?”
“Yeah.”
“Was the door unlocked?”
“No. I had to unlock it.”
“So who put them there, and how did they get into the office?”
He shrugged. “I assumed it was you, and that you’d forgotten to mention it when I saw you earlier.”
“Make that coffee, and bring it through to my office, would you?”
While Zero was making a drink, I received a phone call from Mike Dale. It was brief and to the point.
“That was Dale.” I took a much needed sip of coffee. “He’s just left the police station.”
“What happened?”
“Not much yet, but he sounds a lot brighter. Relief, I guess. They’re sending someone to question Fulton, and the chances are he’ll be arrested. If not today, then soon. Dale expects to be arrested too, sooner or later.”
“Why?”
“He was a partner in the business when the money laundering was taking place.”
“But he didn’t know about it.”
“That’s no excuse. He should have done. But the fact that he came forward as soon as he found out, and handed over the evidence, should go in his favour.”
“Do you think he knew he’d be charged too?”
“I’m sure he did. He was more concerned about the threat from Fulton and the people behind him. Now that this is all out in the open, they aren’t likely to do anything stupid.”
“Is that it, then? Case closed?”
“For now it is, but I’m pretty sure the police will want to talk to me at some stage, to discuss our involvement.”
“Does that mean I can raise a bill?”
“Yeah. Dale said to send it to his address in South Kensington. I’ll let you have it.”