Out of Sight

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kimpton.

  ‘We went to see Leon Grime in prison this morning,’ said Warren. ‘Up until now, he’s denied any involvement in this whole affair. But he also couldn’t account for his whereabouts that night. You’re right about the drugs; he’s been dealing them out of the fire exit of the hotel for the past year or so. He stored them in his allotment shed. Quite a good little racket; good enough that he even bunged you a few quid to look the other way.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ snapped Kimpton. ‘He’s just being spiteful because I’ve told you what he and Jake did that night.’

  ‘Either way, he claims that he wasn’t at the hotel that night, that he was playing pool. But we know that wasn’t entirely true, he ducked out early.’

  ‘Well there you go,’ said Kimpton.

  ‘He ducked out early to meet his supplier,’ continued Warren. ‘A charming individual already known to our colleagues in the drugs division for his alleged enthusiasm in going after the relatives of those he perceives as a threat: kids, wives, elderly mothers in care homes, you get the picture. Leon was seriously contemplating standing trial for Anish Patel’s murder rather than using this rather dangerous and violent man as an alibi.’

  Kimpton snorted. ‘And you believe this crap?’

  ‘Have you ever visited Leon Grime’s allotment?’ asked Sutton.

  Kimpton hesitated. ‘No, he’s told me about it, but I’ve never been there. I’m not the green-fingered type. Like I said before, I’ll cook it, but I ain’t going to grow it.’

  ‘Well, that’s not completely true, is it?’ said Warren. ‘According to Leon’s wife, you went down there earlier this year to help Leon bring his harvest back. You then cooked a lovely roast dinner for the three of you.’

  ‘No comment,’ muttered Kimpton.

  ‘The point I’m making,’ said Warren, ‘is that you knew all about Leon’s first arrest. You also knew that he was unlikely to have an alibi for the night Anish died – at least one that he would want to share with the police. And you knew exactly which allotment plot was his.’

  ‘No comment,’ repeated Kimpton.

  ‘There was always something that bothered us,’ Warren continued, almost conversationally. ‘Anish’s backpack was hidden behind the water butt attached to the shed. Leon has admitted that he hid drugs inside the shed. So why would he conceal the backpack containing Anish’s clothes – covered in blood because the person who mutilated him was wearing them at the time – outside the shed? It was hidden from view but it was never going to fool a search team for long. It’s almost as if the person concealing them there wanted them to be found.’

  He turned his laptop around, so the screen was visible.

  ‘This is CCTV footage taken from the outside the main gates to Leon’s allotment, at 1.26 a.m., the night that Leon was in custody for the first time.’

  The footage was black and white, but clear enough that Kimpton’s distinctive striped bicycle was recognisable, as was the grey backpack over his shoulder. Kimpton pulled up to the gates and dismounted. Using the bicycle as a ladder, he boosted himself up and over the gate. He was inside the allotment within fifteen seconds of arriving.

  ‘Very smoothly done,’ commented Sutton. ‘I guess you could say that breaking and entering is like riding a bicycle, you never forget how to do it.’

  The video continued playing in real-time and barely two minutes later, Kimpton reappeared. This time he used a low wall to give him the extra height he needed and was back over the gate and cycling away within seconds.

  He no longer had the backpack over his shoulder.

  The room fell silent as Kimpton and his solicitor absorbed the damning evidence.

  ‘Leon Grime had absolutely nothing to do with the events of that night, did he?’ said Warren.

  Kimpton looked to be on the verge of tears, and he gave his head a tiny shake.

  ‘So why drag him into it?’ asked Sutton. ‘If nothing else, I thought he was your mate?’

  Kimpton took a shaky breath and let it out.

  ‘Most of it was just like I said. Anish collapsed when he was with Jake, I knew nothing about what was going on until he texted me to tell me to get up to room 201. Jake threatened me if I didn’t help him out. He planned it all. He drove Anish’s body out to the ditch, wearing Anish’s hoodie, leaving me to clean up the room. The next morning he left dressed in Anish’s clothes and got rid of his car.

  ‘I spent the rest of the day in a daze, you know? Like it was all some shitty nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. When I finished my shift that night, I got home and who was there? Jake. Sitting outside my flat door, with a black bin bag. Fuck knows who let him into the building. He followed me into the flat, then tipped up the bag and the backpack fell out, and he was like “it’s your problem now, deal with it.”’ Kimpton looked down. ‘I knew exactly what he was doing; he was getting me more involved. He’d told me what he’d done to the body, so I knew the clothes and everything would be covered in blood and DNA and stuff. Unless I wanted to go down for it, I had to work out how to get rid of them, and I had to keep my mouth shut. As if threatening my daughter wasn’t enough to keep me quiet.’

  ‘So where does Leon Grime come into it?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Jake told me that he’d cut off Anish’s fingertips and smashed his teeth in with a hammer. I asked him what he’d done with the hammer and knife and he said he’d wrapped them in a towel and dumped them near the body. He’d worn gloves, so he figured it didn’t really matter if the police found them. I kind of forgot about that until Leon was arrested and I realised that you must have linked the tools back to him.’ Kimpton wiped his nose with the back of his hand and gave a loud sniff. ‘It seemed so obvious, you know? You guys already suspected Leon was guilty. His missus said that he couldn’t give you an alibi for that night, so I thought if I shifted the blame onto him, me and Jake would be in the clear. I knew you were already searching his flat, so I went and planted the backpack down his allotment. I didn’t have a key to the shed, so I just hid it behind the water butt. I figured you’d be down there that morning, find the bag, and case solved.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Leon would deny everything of course, but unless he was willing to risk his wife and his mother’s life, he couldn’t give you an alibi, so he’d go down.’ Kimpton smiled humourlessly. ‘But that didn’t happen. You didn’t know anything about his allotment, so you kept on investigating and that’s when it all fell apart.’

  Kimpton leaned forward, his tone pleading. ‘I was an absolute shit, I agree. But everything I did was to protect my daughter and happened after Anish died; I just helped clean up the room and get rid of the backpack. I didn’t mutilate his body or anything. Jake came up with this whole plan, I just thought I was helping a mate have a bit of fun. I had no idea he drugged him and was taping it all to blackmail him.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I want to put it on the record that Leon Grime was not involved in any way with what happened that night. He should be released immediately.’ He looked down at the table. ‘And please tell him I’m really sorry.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be delighted with your apology,’ said Sutton.

  ‘Where did you work before you started at the Easy Break Hotel?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Here and there,’ muttered Kimpton.

  ‘Can you be more specific?’ asked Warren. ‘What sort of work did you do?’

  ‘A bit of kitchen work, general maintenance, anything to pay the bills really,’ said Kimpton; he kept his gaze away from them.

  ‘Any farmwork?’ asked Sutton. ‘We’re a semi-rural area.’

  ‘Yeah, a bit,’ he admitted.

  ‘How did Jake know where the tools were?’ asked Warren.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you said that you knew nothing about Jake’s plan to mutilate Anish’s body until after he did it. But he used Leon Grime’s tools. We know that Leon wasn’t present that night and whilst anyone working in the hotel would know the keycode to
his office where he kept them, how would Jake Beechey know it unless you told him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kimpton.

  ‘That ditch is in the middle of nowhere,’ said Sutton, ‘and it’s a perfect spot to dump a body; underneath a bridge, concealed from the road, you can only really see it from the field. A field that wasn’t due to be ploughed until after the New Year. That gives you months of breathing space to figure out what you’re going to do when his body is finally found. But who would know about that spot?’

  ‘We found two sets of footprints at the scene where Anish’s body was found,’ said Warren. ‘The first matched Anish’s own shoes. We know that he didn’t walk there himself, so that must have been whoever was wearing his shoes. Leon Grime wasn’t there – and none of his shoes match anyway – so who owned the pair of size ten men’s Nike trainers, Nick?’

  Kimpton said nothing.

  Warren produced a still image from the bus stop CCTV of Kimpton cycling to work. The image had been blown up, and was grainy, but the Nike swoosh logo was easily visible on the white trainer. ‘We’ve measured the width of the pedal and used it as comparison, and it would appear that these white trainers are size ten. What have you done with them, Nick? They aren’t in your flat.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Warren. ‘We’ve been looking through your bank statements and you bought something from the discount shoe store in town back in October. They’re going through their sales records to identify what you purchased.’

  ‘You helped mutilate Anish’s body, didn’t you,’ said Sutton. ‘You and Jake stripped him, wrapped him in a bed sheet, placed him in the back of his hire car and then drove him to a secluded spot that you were familiar with from when you did a bit of cash-in-hand work at Carrington Farm. You then removed his fingertips with a craft knife and smashed his teeth in with a hammer; how did that work Nick, did you take a job each – or did you both have a go?’

  By now, tears were flowing freely down Kimpton’s cheeks. ‘He made me do it,’ he sobbed. ‘He knew all about my daughter and he said he’d hurt her if I told anyone what happened. But it was all his idea and I didn’t know anything about what he was planning, I thought he was just stringing Anish along, getting him to pay for stuff, I had no idea he was filming him and blackmailing him. I never even met the guy. And the night he died, I just thought it was like Jake said; he just collapsed. I didn’t know anything about the GHB.’

  ‘Stop lying,’ countered Sutton. ‘You were in on this from the start. You planned it all with Jake from day one. He’s told us all about it.’

  ‘He’s the one lying,’ wailed Kimpton. ‘He’s still trying to set me up. Can’t you see that he’s telling you stuff so you think he’s cooperating and he’ll get a lesser sentence?’

  ‘We never told you Anish was drugged,’ said Warren quietly.

  ‘What? You did,’ insisted Kimpton.

  ‘No, we didn’t; we never mentioned it,’ said Warren firmly. Beside Kimpton, he could see that his solicitor had noted his client’s slip-up.

  ‘How did Jake know about the fire exit?’ asked Sutton, getting his next question in before Kimpton could think up a lie. ‘This whole plan only works if that fire exit has no working alarm and the CCTV is broken, so that Jake could enter and leave the hotel at will. That’s something that only an employee of the hotel would know. Jake had no other connection to the hotel aside from you.’

  ‘No comment,’ said Kimpton.

  ‘And what about the spy camera?’ asked Warren. ‘It could hardly be left in the room in case another guest or the cleaners found it. You went in and fitted it before Anish arrived each time and took it away after he left.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Kimpton.

  ‘That’s why they only ever met up on a Thursday; it’s the quietest night of the week and nobody likes being so far from the lifts, so it’s almost guaranteed that room 201 is available. You knew that because you worked there.’

  ‘No, that was all Jake’s idea,’ said Kimpton. ‘Jake sold that idea to Anish as part of the whole spy-movie thing.’

  ‘You used the master keycard to gain access to the room,’ continued Sutton. ‘Not too difficult, it’s behind the reception desk. You probably thought you were clever, wiping it down after you used it that night, but you screwed up. There are three different cards. I don’t know what particular night you used the one with your fingerprints on, but it’s a lovely impression. We’ve spoken to the manager and he can think of no legitimate reason for the hotel chef to be using the master keycard for the guest bedrooms.’

  Kimpton was shaking his head; whether he was denying what Sutton was saying or denying the situation he was in, was unclear.

  ‘And then there was the camera itself,’ said Warren. He pushed a large, coloured photo of the tiny device across the table. ‘You were very careful to wipe it down after you removed it the night of Anish’s death, before you gave it back to Jake. You even filled the hole in and painted over the top.’ He pushed over a second photograph. ‘But you forgot the memory card, or rather the inside of the protective cover on the back where the card slots into. There are clear thumbprints from when you removed the card after each recording session and gave it to Jake to save the video.’

  ‘You were in this from the start,’ said Sutton. ‘You planned this alongside Jake and you helped him as he groomed Anish and took advantage of him. And you knew that Jake was planning on drugging Anish that night to finally get your pay-off. In fact, it was you who pushed Jake to end it all that night. After all, Jake was having a great time: expensive meals, free drinks, weekends away … but so far, you’d not seen a penny. Christmas was coming and you needed cash.

  ‘It was your idea to finally pull the plug: to drug Anish on the night of the 24th and drain his account the month before Christmas. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t the one to slip the GHB into Anish’s glass of water or use a dying man’s finger to unlock his banking app; you planned it along with Jake Beechey and so you are equally culpable.’

  Warren locked eyes with the distraught chef. It took all his self-control to clear the disgust from his tone.

  ‘Nicholas Kimpton, I am charging you with the murder of Anish Patel.’

  Epilogue

  Warren entered the office of Assistant Chief Constable Mohammed Naseem. These informal debriefings had become something of a ritual over the years. As always, the expensive-looking notepad that Naseem would record the details of the case in sat on the desk. Rumour had it that at least one major publisher was courting him, interested in his memoirs; several of Warren’s cases were likely to feature heavily in the book. Unfortunately, Naseem would never be allowed to publish whilst still serving; Warren hoped that Naseem wasn’t planning on retiring any time soon. He’d come to respect, and even like the man.

  Naseem pushed a cup of coffee over without asking. It seemed that he’d given up trying to compete with John Grayson and bought himself the same machine. Warren’s nose told him that he had also sourced the same blend.

  ‘How is the case proceeding?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s getting there. We have supposedly full confessions from both Beechey and Kimpton, but their defence teams are still quibbling over who was the more responsible. I don’t think we’ll ever really know if Anish collapsed and banged his head, or was pushed, but the GHB almost certainly triggered his heart attack. The CPS are still keen to go with murder, not manslaughter, but it may come down to the jury on the day.

  ‘We found the carpet from the boot of the hire car, complete with traces of Anish’s blood, in a black bag at the local tip, alongside white trainers that we’ve matched to Kimpton and the shoeprints on the grass verge. He won’t be able to wriggle out of being present when Anish was mutilated.’

  ‘Good,’ said Naseem. He took a sip of his coffee. ‘Mind you, I do wonder sometimes if you and your team have enough to keep you busy.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Na
seem smiled. ‘You were supposed to be solving a murder, but you decided to help out Trading Standards and Serious Organised Crime along the way.’

  Warren laughed. He’d received a call just that morning from DCI Carl Mallucci at SOC, who’d had the grace to congratulate him on a job well done. Apparently, Leon Grime had panicked after his initial arrest and returned his drugs to his supplier; this hadn’t been received well. In the end, aided by a potential sweetener in the form of a reduced sentence, Grime had been convinced that the safest course of action for him and his family was full-cooperation with the Drug Division.

  ‘And from what I hear, that poor man’s family have also got what they deserved,’ said Naseem.

  Warren agreed. Bringing Anish Patel’s killers to justice was intensely satisfying; but seeing his family also answering for their crimes was nearly as pleasing. Anish Patel’s treatment had been heart-breaking. The Patel siblings were cooperating fully with Trading Standards and SOC in an effort to reduce their sentences, but it was inevitable that they’d all spend at least some time behind bars. It was just a shame that Gotam Patel would not be charged with any offences, although the apparent closure of several Everyday Essential corner shops and the destruction of his precious reputation brought some small measure of redress.

  Niceties observed, Naseem removed the lid of his fountain pen. They’d been through this before, and so for the next hour Warren ran through the case, including all the little details that he knew the ACC liked.

  Finally he finished. Naseem slipped the lid back on the pen.

  ‘It’s ironic really. Had Anish not been so obsessed with spy movies, this whole plan might never have happened.’

  Warren agreed; the whole affair had left him especially feeling sad. A lonely man, bullied even by his family, he had been looking for nothing more than somebody to show him some kindness and affection. And his trust had been betrayed on all levels.

  ‘I expect you’ll be taking a few of those rest days you’ve accumulated,’ said Naseem eventually.

  ‘Yes, Susan got us some last-minute tickets for a West End musical – no idea which one, it’s a surprise – and booked us a room near Tower Bridge as a pre-Christmas treat. We’ll catch the train as soon as she finishes school.’