Out of Sight

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘What about Jaidev?’

  ‘Jaidev’s wife claimed that he came straight home and stayed in for the rest of the evening. In theory, Manoj could have dropped him off before he went and did whatever he did that night, but she’s now no commenting, so we don’t know if that’s what happened.

  ‘A rather big fly in the ointment is that Jaidev and Manoj appear to leave their phones at home every Thursday night. So, whatever they’re up to, it wasn’t just that night.’

  Grayson grunted. ‘There could be an entirely innocent explanation for the brothers leaving their phones at home — maybe they’re going for a pint and don’t want their wives phoning them to nag them that the kids need bathing?’

  ‘So why not say that?’ asked Warren.

  Grayson drummed his fingers on the table as he thought about it. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted eventually.

  ‘I think their wives might be the key to this,’ said Warren. ‘Manoj’s wife is clearly protecting him; I think she knows exactly what her husband was up to that night. I also think Jaidev Patel’s wife knows more than she is letting on. And she’s certainly pissed off with him after he racked up two speeding tickets in her car.’

  ‘Well, you know the law as well as I do, Warren. Neither wife can be compelled to give evidence against their husband. You’ll have to figure out how to get them to do so voluntarily.’

  He sighed and picked up their mugs, crossing his office to his coffee machine. He didn’t need to ask.

  ‘So, if means and opportunity are still up in the air, that leaves motive.’ He slopped milk into both mugs. ‘Give me your best theories.’

  ‘Leading contender is the business with the will, but here is another idea that I’ve been kicking around, ever since we found those cigarettes in Manoj Patel’s shed,’ said Warren.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It turns out that the Patel family business has form for selling dodgy fags under the counter. Assuming that those cigarettes aren’t legit, then that raises a whole load of other issues.’

  Grayson blew the steam off his coffee. ‘So, we’re back to the organised crime angle?’

  ‘Possibly, although I haven’t worked out the connections yet. It could just be a falling out between the brothers; no need to involve outside parties.’

  Grayson’s eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘You think that Anish Patel got wind of their scam and threatened them?’

  Warren shrugged. ‘Maybe, I’m just throwing it out there.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain why he was in that hotel, or why he had been visiting it so regularly. And why would Anish have been meeting his brother – or brothers – there? There are plenty of other places they could have met up.’

  ‘Which leads us back to Leon Grime,’ said Warren. ‘His tools were used to mutilate Anish and his belongings turned up at Grime’s allotment. He has no alibi for that night, and it’s looking increasingly like he was dealing – the sniffer dogs have indicated that there were probably drugs stored in the shed recently. Forensics have ripped up the floor for more detailed analysis.’

  ‘These gangs aren’t too fussy about what they deal in,’ allowed Grayson. ‘Profit is profit, so he could also have been supplying the Patels with dodgy cigarettes, but it’s still looking pretty flimsy.’

  ‘I know,’ said Warren quietly.

  ‘Until Trading Standards get back to you and tell you whether those cigarettes are dodgy or legitimate, it’s all speculation,’ said Grayson decisively. ‘And even if they are suspect, it’s quite possible they have nothing to do with this case. You’ll get a pat on the back I’m sure for finding them, but our aim is to solve Anish Patel’s murder, not work out if his family have been diddling Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.’

  On the other side of town, Moray Ruskin stepped out of his car and pulled his coat tighter. An icy-cold drizzle had started an hour or so previously, and the constant stopping and starting as he’d traipsed around town hadn’t given the engine time to fully warm up. Nevertheless, after spending most of the day in a stuffy office, he’d relished the chance to head outside and visit some of the garages that may have changed the tyres on Anish Patel’s hire car.

  JJ Car Repairs looked more like a wrecker’s yard than a garage. A badly mangled people carrier with no wheels rested on top of a rusted set of jacks, next to the shell of a small hatchback of indeterminate make and model. Loud rap music blared out from inside the workshop.

  It was the fourth garage that Ruskin had visited in the past couple of hours; it would be his last stop before heading back to the station he decided.

  With no obvious doorbell, he banged his fist on the steel double-doors.

  Nothing.

  He tried again, harder. Still nothing.

  ‘Hello, anyone in there?’ he called out.

  He was about to give up and walk in, when one of the doors squeaked open. A shaved head atop a pale face, bisected by what could only be a knife scar.

  ‘Yeah? Oh fuck, what do you want?’

  Ruskin was dressed in a suit, with a smart black coat. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but yet again he had been identified as a police officer before he’d said anything. Alex said it was something about the way he held himself. Ruskin figured it was just a skill possessed by those with a guilty conscience.

  ‘Mr Johnson?’ The advert on the local business directory listed the proprietor of the business as a Joe Johnson.

  ‘Yeah. Who’s asking?’

  ‘DC Moray Ruskin, I want to ask you some questions about a customer that you may have served.’

  Johnson gave a sigh, but pulled the door fully open, and walked back inside. Ruskin took that as an invitation.

  ‘The sign outside says that you replace tyres?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  It wasn’t the warmest welcome that Ruskin had ever received, but at least Johnson turned off the radio.

  ‘Were you open for business on Friday the 25th of November?’

  ‘Yeah, I work Monday to Friday and Saturday mornings.’ Johnson still had his back to Ruskin, as he opened a pack of cigarettes, ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall.

  ‘Do you remember if you replaced all four tyres on a white Ford Focus?’

  ‘Dunno, I do a lot of Fords.’

  ‘I have the licence number here, if that helps?’

  ‘Doubt it; I don’t usually make a note of registrations unless it’s an insurance job.’

  ‘The vehicle was a hire car. It had a green sticker from Middlesbury Vehicle Hire.’

  Johnson paused in the lighting of his cigarette, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘Now that you mention it, yeah I did. Weird, I don’t usually see hire cars.’

  Ruskin felt his pulse rise. ‘Can you remember anything about it?’

  Johnson flicked his lighter and took a deep drag. He let out a steady stream of smoke.

  ‘Like I said, weird. Bloke phoned me at stupid o’clock, like just after six. Good job I’m an early riser. I told him to come round in an hour as I don’t open that early and I’d do it whilst he stayed. But he wouldn’t wait. In the end, he offered me another hundred to open up and do it then. All four tyres as well. I figured, what the hell? Got a bit of grief off the missus ’cause she had to get the kids ready on her own, but I wasn’t going to turn that down.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted it done so quickly?’

  ‘Nope, none of my business.’

  ‘Did he give a name?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  Johnson shrugged. ‘To be honest, I just took his money and did the job as quick as I could.’

  Ruskin wasn’t sure if he believed him but decided not to press him yet.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have CCTV?’

  Johnson just looked at him.

  ‘How did he pay?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘Did he sign an invoice?’

  ‘No, I just logged it in the book.’
r />   Ruskin suspected that whatever note Johnson had made for his accountant probably wouldn’t include the hundred-pound sweetener.

  ‘Can you tell me what tyres he bought?’

  Johnson sighed again, before walking over to a cluttered folding table with a portable credit card reader and a locked cashbox. He opened a hard-backed ledger.

  ‘Full set of Runways. They’re not standard issue for that model, but they’re cheap and they do the job. Besides, that’s all we had in stock. If he wanted Goodyears like the ones he already had, he’d have needed to wait for the delivery on Monday.’

  ‘One last thing,’ said Ruskin, ‘I don’t suppose you kept the old ones?’

  Johnson smirked. ‘You’re in luck, I’m not due to get them taken away until next week. Follow me.’ He set off towards the rear of the workshop, Ruskin scurrying to keep up with the much skinnier man. His coat was stained with rust by the time he reached the back door.

  ‘Knock yourself out, officer.’

  Ruskin smiled tightly, as he thanked the man. Forensics were not going to be happy; JJ Car Repairs changed a lot of tyres.

  Friday 9th December

  Chapter 36

  With Leon Grime in custody, along with both of Anish Patel’s brothers, the investigation had moved into high gear and morning briefing was a busy affair. Ruskin had just finished telling the team about his success the day before.

  ‘Trading Standards have got back to us about that stash of cigarettes we found in Manoj Patel’s garden shed,’ said Hardwick. ‘They’re dodgy, just as expected.’

  She opened her notepad. ‘There were eight different brands – all of the usual ones that you’d expect to see in a newsagent. All have a duty-paid sticker on them, but the stickers are fake.’

  ‘What about the fags?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘They’re probably legit, contraband rather than counterfeit, but they’re testing them to see if they’ve bulked them out with anything nasty. Trading Standards reckon they’re brought in illegally from overseas, where you can buy them for a fraction of the price they sell for here. People nip abroad and fill their suitcases with them. Rebranding them so they look like they are UK-bought isn’t that difficult; most punters would never notice the difference. The gangs are even getting kids into it now; the profit on a couple of full suitcases easily covers the cost of a cheap weekend in Europe and a bit of spending money for the smuggler.’

  ‘How much money are we looking at here?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Well, we don’t know how much they are being sold for. Six hundred cartons is six thousand packs, and if we take an average of about £9.50 per pack if they were sold at full UK prices, then we’re looking at over fifty grand in resale value. And with roughly eighty per cent of a pack’s price being duty and tax, that’s forty grand that the taxpayer never sees.’

  ‘How much profit would he have made?’ asked Pymm.

  ‘If the smugglers sold them for three quid or less per pack, and he sold them on at full-price through the newsagent, then that’s six or seven quid profit per pack; that haul in his shed could return up to forty thousand.’

  Sutton let out a low whistle. ‘That’s forty thousand reasons to kill someone.’

  ‘How does this link to Anish?’ asked Warren. ‘Assuming it does, and isn’t just a coincidence, where was he in the supply chain? Was he sourcing the cigarettes or just passing them on?’

  ‘If Anish was Manoj and/or Jaidev’s middleman, it would explain his trips to the hotel,’ said Hutchinson.

  ‘I’d place good money on the transaction being facilitated by Leon Grime through that dodgy fire exit,’ said Sutton. ‘And given what we’ve found down his allotment, it looks as though he was in deep enough to take part in Anish’s killing.’

  ‘I can see now why Anish used a false name and a hire car,’ said Pymm. ‘You wouldn’t want these sorts of people knowing your real name or where you live, especially if drugs were involved.’

  Warren frowned. ‘The problem is it still seems an awful lot of trouble to go to. I understand the hire car, but why go to the expense of arranging a hotel room? Surely a pub car park or an unlit layby would do the job just as well? How long does it take to fill a car boot with cartons of cigarettes?’

  ‘Maybe it appealed to his sense of adventure,’ said Sutton. ‘That flat of his is like a shrine to spy movies.’

  Pymm wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t know, I agree with the chief. It still doesn’t smell right.’

  Another night in custody, and a lengthy consultation with his solicitor, had finally convinced Leon Grime to tell the truth. Or at least a heavily redacted, limited version of the truth, all written out carefully in a statement that gave away very little.

  ‘Mr Grime admits that he has turned a blind eye to comings and goings through the fire exit at the Easy Break Hotel.’

  It was hardly news, but at least he had started to open up.

  ‘A little over a year ago, Mr Grime became aware of a problem with the alarm on the fire exit during one of his regular inspections. He mentioned it in passing to colleagues at the hotel, who urged him not to fix it, saying it could be useful when taking additional cigarette breaks. The hotel had recently undergone a change in management and some staff felt that the new regime was somewhat draconian.’

  ‘Which colleagues?’ asked Sutton immediately.

  ‘Mr Grime would rather not say; he does not wish to get them into trouble.’

  Sutton bit his tongue. Everybody in the room knew that was a lie, but so far Grime was being cooperative – after a fashion – and he didn’t want to jeopardise that. The questions that Grime chose not to answer, and the partial truths he was giving, revealed more to Sutton and those watching than the handyman probably realised.

  ‘What about the CCTV camera?’ asked Ruskin.

  ‘There have been issues with the CCTV system in the hotel for some years. It’s well known that the system is old and needs replacing. The time that the fire exit alarm stopped working coincided with one of the periodic outages of the system. When the system was fixed, management immediately noticed staff standing outside the fire exit taking unauthorised smoke breaks and sanctioned them accordingly.’

  The solicitor cleared his throat; Sutton doubted he believed the statement that he was reading any more than anyone else did.

  ‘It was suggested to Mr Grime that the next time the CCTV system went down, it might be better if it wasn’t repaired.’

  Sutton pretended to give consideration to what Grime’s solicitor had just read.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Grime. Just a couple of things we need to clear up. First, you suggest that both the CCTV camera over the fire exit and the alarm stopped working spontaneously, and you agreed to leave them unfixed to help colleagues go for a smoke break?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Grime. It was the first time he had spoken since the interview had started. Beside him, his solicitor maintained a poker face. Doubtless he would have counselled Grime to keep his mouth shut and let his written statement – such as it was – do the talking. However, Grime knew that the statement was a half-truth at best; answering Sutton’s follow-up questions was the only way he could strengthen it. And as the wording of the police caution warned ‘it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court’.

  ‘But you did more than that, didn’t you, Leon? Your fingerprints were all over the inside of the junction box for the CCTV camera and the wiring for the contacts on the fire exit.’

  Grime had clearly been prepared for the question.

  ‘Well obviously. I had a look inside to see if I could fix it.’

  ‘Which you couldn’t – or rather wouldn’t. So why didn’t you call in the CCTV company?’

  Again, Grime was prepared. He’d clearly spent a significant amount of time thinking through the possible questions that he might be asked and decided that having already admitted to facilitating the use of the fire exit, there was litt
le to be lost by confessing that he had stopped the service contract to the company.

  ‘They were taking the piss. They charged a bloody fortune for maintaining a so-called “legacy system”. Everyone knew that it was going to be scrapped as part of the refurb, so I figured I’d save the hotel some money.’

  ‘Very noble of you,’ said Sutton, not even trying to conceal the sarcasm. He leaned backwards in his chair. ‘You see, this all leaves us with a problem, Leon. It’s looking very much as though the killer of Anish Patel entered the Easy Break Hotel through that doctored entrance, and likely disposed of his body through there also. On the night of his killing, you cannot account for your whereabouts. In fact, you’ve actually lied about that night. Anish Patel’s body was mutilated after death using your tools and wrapped in hotel bedding that you had access to. The motive for killing Mr Patel is, as yet, unclear. But I would be willing to bet that it has something to do with whatever you were storing in your allotment shed. The shed where we found Anish’s clothes, wallet and keys.’

  Sweat had started to bead on Grime’s forehead and he was breathing heavily; his solicitor looked over at him with concern. Noting the man’s discomfort, and unwilling to risk another panic attack, Sutton glanced at Ruskin.

  The younger officer locked eyes with Grime. ‘Look, Leon. You need to start helping yourself here.’ He softened his tone. ‘Work with us. We know that it took more than one person to kill Anish and dump his body. Who else was involved? It’ll go a lot better for you if you give them up and cooperate.’ He opened his hands in a gesture of trust. ‘Honestly? We don’t think you were the person that instigated this. We think you got in over your head. Perhaps you were brought in to help clean things up? But unless you start assisting us, we can’t help you.’

  Grime shook his head, his tone one of abject misery. ‘I didn’t kill him, I wasn’t involved. I don’t know how those clothes got there. Anyone can get access to my toolbox.’

  ‘Then if you weren’t involved,’ said Ruskin, ‘what were you doing that night? Tell us where you were so we can rule you out. Whatever it was you were doing that night, it can’t be as bad as what you are being accused of here. Give yourself a chance, Leon.’