by Adam Croft
Things would also have to be smoothed over with Emily. He’d only just got his relationship with her back on track. How would she respond to finding out her dad had moved on from her mum and got himself a new girlfriend? He didn’t know, and he had no idea of the safest way to find out, either.
He’d decided to go with a casual shirt, open-necked. Wearing a suit jacket would make him feel like he was at work, and that wouldn’t do him any good. He knew that if this was going to go well, he needed to completely ditch work mode and try and let his hair down for a while — what there was left of it.
That wasn’t something he found easy at the best of times. Work consumed his life, and a succession of friends, colleagues and relatives had pointed out that it had a tendency to completely take over. He couldn’t deny that.
He’d chosen a pub-restaurant in a village a few miles out of town. Meeting Christine in Mildenheath would be too much of a risk. For now, he wanted to keep this to himself. It wouldn’t do to bump into a local criminal — or, worse, a colleague — whilst out on a first date with a woman he’d met on a mobile app. Could he even call it a date? As far as he was concerned they were just meeting up to see if they got on, but he hoped there’d be something more to it than that. Even he knew he deserved to be happy.
He’d got to the pub a good ten minutes before they’d planned to meet, and sat down at a table in the corner, absentmindedly looking through the wine list. He didn’t know the first thing about wine — he used to joke that you could tell how nice it was by looking at the price column on the right hand side — but it gave him something to do while he was waiting. He didn’t order her a drink as he didn’t know what she wanted. She might be a wine drinker, a spirits girl or even a pint chugger. He guessed he’d find out when she turned up.
A few minutes later, he was aware of some movement in front of him, and he looked up to see a woman who looked vaguely — slightly — familiar, grinning at him and holding out a hand.
‘Jack? International man of mystery?’ she asked, giggling with the most annoying laugh he’d ever heard in his life.
He reached out to shake her hand. ‘That’s me. You must be Christine.’
‘Guilty as charged!’ she shrieked, holding her hands up in the air in mock surrender.
Jack forced a smile. ‘Want a drink?’
‘Ooh, yes please. Tomato juice for me.’
‘Ah. You driving?’ he said, looking back at the remaining dregs in his pint glass.
‘No, no. I don’t drive. I don’t drink, either. No-one’s going to catch me drink driving!’ she said, her annoying high-pitched laugh returning.
Jack tried to look amused, and turned away towards the bar to order a tomato juice and another beer. He glanced back over to the table, where Christine was happily playing away on her phone while she waited for him. He was tempted to sneak out the side door and disappear while he could, but he at least owed it to her — and to himself — to stick around and give it a fair crack of the whip.
Once he’d got the drinks, he returned to the table, promising himself he’d try to look for the positives and not make rash judgements. Unfortunately for him, his entire career had been based on having to make quick judgements and he was finding it difficult to change the habit of a lifetime now.
‘So, what do you do for a living?’ he asked.
‘I work in a charity shop,’ she replied, not taking her eyes off her phone.
‘Oh right. I didn’t think they paid their staff. I thought it was voluntary.’
‘It is.’
Not really what you do ‘for a living’, then, is it? Jack wanted to ask. ‘That sounds like fun.’
‘Yeah, it’s alright,’ Christine replied, locking her phone and placing it in between her breasts, as if they formed a makeshift pocket. ‘So, what about you? Apart from being an international man of mystery, I mean.’
‘I’m afraid I might have over-egged the pudding a little bit on that one.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘If you must know, I’m a police officer. CID.’
Christine’s eyebrows rose a good couple of centimetres. ‘Ooh, nice,’ she said, before leaning forward. ‘Here, do you get to see a lot of dead bodies?’
‘Erm, a few. It’s all part of the job, I guess.’
‘Lots of gruesome murders? Rapes?’
‘Yes. Yes, a few.’
‘That sort of stuff always fascinates me. I read a lot about true crime and all that. It’s amazing, really, innit? I remember reading about this one bloke who used to pick up hitchhikers and kill them. Then he’d chop off their heads and boil them right down, to make stock or soup.’
I won’t be going for the gazpacho, then, Culverhouse thought. ‘Yeah, well thankfully those sorts of things are a rarity. Mildenheath’s much more boring.’ Deciding to change the subject quickly, he added: ‘So, what’s it like working in a charity shop?’
‘It’s alright,’ Christine replied, taking her phone back out of her breast-pocket and replying to a text. ‘You get first dibs on stuff that comes in, so that’s good. Got to pay for it, mind. ‘Ere, what does plaggyrism mean?’
Culverhouse looked at her, confused.
Christine showed him the phone, which he was careful not to handle. ‘There, look.’
‘Plagiarism,’ Culverhouse replied, trying not to look or sound exasperated. ‘It means stealing or copying someone else’s work.’
‘Fucker! Sorry, not you. My tutor texted me. Said he wants to speak to me next week about accusations of... What was it?’
‘Plagiarism.’
‘Yeah that.’
‘What does he tutor?’ Culverhouse asked.
‘Oh, I’m doing a beauty course down at the college. Couple of days a week, but it’s alright. I wanna become a beauty therapist.’
Culverhouse raised his eyebrows and tried to look enthusiastic. To say her dating app profile picture had been, perhaps, a few years out of date would be accurate. He presumed she’d be no more credible a beauty therapist than would a twenty-five-stone personal trainer or a blind archery coach.
‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘Sorry, don’t mind me. Back in two ticks.’ He stood up and headed in the direction of the toilets. Once he reached the gents, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and fired off a quick text to Wendy.
Call me in five minutes. Make it sound like an emergency.
Noticing how close the toilets were to where he and Christine were sitting, he made a point of drying his already dry-hands in the noisy hand dryer before heading back out to try and put on a brave face for a little while longer.
The next few minutes were spent watching Christine type out a response to her tutor, as well as helping her to spell a number of words. He wasn’t exactly a master speller himself, but this woman was missing some vital brain cells. Fortunately for him, his phone finally rang.
‘Culverhouse,’ he said, as he answered the call.
‘Come on, then,’ Wendy said on the other end of the line. ‘What’s this all about? I want the juicy gossip.’
‘A body, you say? Where?’
‘Is this the secret date that Ryan told us about but we’re not meant to know about?’
Culverhouse gritted his teeth. ‘Right, I think I know where that is. Do you need me there right away?’
‘Let me guess. She’s sixty-five, wears knitted jumpers and lives with her mum.’
‘Okay, I’ll head down now,’ he said, standing up and fumbling to put his jacket on with his one free hand, as he mumbled ‘Bitch’ into the phone before hanging up. ‘Sorry, I feel really bad cutting things short but I’m the on-call DCI and there’s been an incident.’
‘No no, no problem at all,’ Christine said, grinning and doing a mock salute with her hand. ‘You’d better get to the rescue.’ She stood up and moved towards him. ‘Let me know if it’s a juicy one, though, eh?’
Before Culverhouse could realise what was happening, she was leaning in for a kiss. He managed to dod
ge just in time and turn it into a very brief hug.
‘Right. I’ll catch up with you later,’ he said, as he jogged out of the pub and back towards his car. He started the engine and went to put the car into gear, but realised there was something he needed to do first. He took his phone out of his pocket, brought the screen to life and deleted the dating app.
41
John Lucas’s head was starting to feel groggy after the half-bottle of whisky he’d consumed earlier. It was that horrible late-in-the-day fug you got from lunchtime drinking. There was only one way round that: carry on.
He poured himself another glass and thought about what had happened at Benjamin Newell’s house. He’d not seen the man for years, but he’d barely changed. He was still the same weaselly, pathetic human being he remembered. He was the sort of person who’d mastermind stealing the Crown Jewels then get nicked for pinching a tin of Brasso to clean them.
What really irked him, though, is that Newell wouldn’t deny thinking Lucas had murdered Freddie Galloway. There’s no honour amongst thieves, as they say, and there was certainly none where Benjamin Newell was involved.
His head was buzzing with a thousand and one thoughts. He’d had years to get his mind straight and concentrate on the future, and all of a sudden that prospect had disappeared, replaced with having to look back into the past, back at a time he’d rather forget. It was clouded with double-crossing, lies, betrayals and he-said-she-saids. In that sort of world, the truth didn’t exist. What was true to one person was completely false to another.
That was the world he’d wanted to escape from, the world he had now been thrust back into. He guessed you could never really, truly escape. Once you were marked, that was it. That history would follow you around like a bad smell, creeping back up on you when you least expected it and least wanted it to.
He knew he’d never get his chance to start again. Not properly. Just a few days ago his prospects had looked remarkably good, considering. He was able to walk out of prison and straight into a job with the shoe repairs company and he had been planning to sell the house, enabling him to set himself up somewhere on his own. Somewhere without the hassle. Somewhere without the baggage.
The job would’ve even allowed him to transfer to another one of their branches elsewhere in the country. Despite having thrown it all away eleven years ago, there were still people willing to give him a chance. But while the baggage of the past kept coming back to haunt him, he was in no position to take them up on those offers. He risked losing too much. He couldn’t have those worlds colliding.
If truth be told, he’d love to just up sticks and go. He could do so legitimately, but that’d involve leaving a trace. If people wanted to find him, they’d find him. He’d need permission from the probation officer and he’d have to apply for that transfer at work. If he still had work to go back to, of course. Even that was a known unknown at the moment. He’d need to do it all through the official channels or he’d risk being categorised as an absconder and would be straight back in prison before he knew it.
But that wouldn’t help. That wouldn’t be the fresh start he needed. He’d still be looking over his shoulder everywhere he went, worrying about being betrayed, found out.
He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. As far as he saw it, there was only one way out. It wouldn’t have been his favoured option, but right now it was his only one. To lose all hope and have an olive branch handed out to you — a final chance at redemption — only to have it taken away and snapped in half by the people who got you there in the first place... That hurt. That hurt a lot.
Yes, there was only one option. He had no choice. He’d made his mind up.
This was it.
42
The mood in the incident room the next morning was one of frustration. They were used to their suspects giving them seemingly credible alibis, but these ones were watertight. The problem with that was they knew the criminal code of honour meant that they tended to protect each other. A good alibi could often be too good. Suspiciously good.
The difference here was that all the main suspects weren’t exactly the best of friends. They all suspected each other and didn’t seem to trust anyone. But was that all an act to throw the police off the scent?
There were far too many nuances and possible double- and triple-bluffs to even begin to make sense of the situation. All they could do was strip it back down to basics and look at the facts.
‘Right,’ Culverhouse said, addressing the team. ‘I think we might need to start looking outside the box. Let’s presume our suspects’ alibis are true and correct. All that means is they didn’t go up to Freddie Galloway’s house that night and shove half a gallon of petrol through his letterbox. It doesn’t mean they weren’t involved, though.’
‘You mean they could’ve paid someone else to do it?’ Steve Wing asked.
‘That’s exactly what I mean, yes. I think we need to look at the possibility that more people are involved somehow. Say, for instance, John Lucas is in prison and he gets talking to a fellow inmate about Galloway. He finds out they’ve got a mutual hatred for the man. His friend’s been done over by him in the past too. Or maybe he hasn’t, but he agrees to do him over in return for a bundle of cash.’
‘What bundle of cash, though?’ Ryan said. ‘John Lucas doesn’t have a pot to piss in. He was done out of the Trenton-Lowe money by Galloway too. And why would his hitman do it hours after Lucas is released from prison? Surely it’d make far more sense to do it while Lucas was still inside, so the suspicion was never going to be on him.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t Lucas who was involved, then,’ Wendy said. ‘Maybe it was Newell or Golds.’
‘Not Golds,’ Culverhouse said. ‘He had no reason to want Galloway dead, and in any case I met the guy. He sought me out. He was absolutely cacking his pants about what had gone on, so I don’t think he’s involved in a million years.’
‘Newell then. The timing makes sense too. Not only does Galloway end up dead, but Newell’s got the perfect alibi by having his pre-wedding drinks and he gets the double-whammy of the finger of suspicion being pointed straight at John Lucas, the man whose actions got him jailed in the first place.’
Culverhouse nodded slowly. ‘I’ve got to admit, that’s probably my favourite theory at the moment. Especially with the evidence pointing to Lucas. I said from the start it looked as if it’d been set up. It was too good to be true finding all that stuff in Lucas’s garage. It was almost comical.’
Ryan Mackenzie shuffled in her seat and shook her head. ‘Only problem with that is there’s literally no evidence pointing to Newell. It’s all completely circumstantial at best. The best we’ve got is that he punched a bloke at his wedding.’
‘He had motive,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘As for means and opportunity, paying someone to do it sorts both of those out.’
‘Yeah, but that could be said of anyone. If that’s enough to arrest and charge someone, where do you start? You’d be looking at anyone who’s ever fallen out with the victim.’
‘Look into his financial records, then. Work out his links and associates. There’s got to be a trail somewhere.’
‘More than happy to, sir, but it’ll be difficult. What’s the going rate for a hit? Low five figures? Maybe fifteen grand?’ Ryan pulled a calculator out of her desk drawer and tapped a few buttons. ‘He’s been out and working for eight years or so, so that’s less than two grand a year he’d need to have put aside. Eighteen-hundred and seventy-five pounds, to be precise. Or a hundred and fifty-six quid and twenty-five pence a month. I imagine most people probably draw at least that out of a cashpoint each month. It wouldn’t be a difficult amount of money to hide over that period of time.’
‘No, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try looking for it,’ Culverhouse replied, looking somewhat chastened. ‘Besides, that hundred and fifty quid a month would be extra on top of whatever he was drawing out to buy h
is weekly shop and his trips to the pub or whatever.’
‘I see what you’re saying, sir, and we’ll definitely look into it, but it’ll take a lot of time and I wouldn’t expect to find much. He could easily hide a grand a year through stashed cash withdrawals, plus there’s the usual methods like converting it to Euros for holiday spending money, but not spending it. Keeps it under the radar. I don’t imagine for one second we’ll get his bank statements and see a withdrawal of fifteen grand showing up last week.’
‘Let’s just get the financial information and see what we can find, shall we?’ Culverhouse replied through gritted teeth. That was the problem with new young officers, he thought. Always reckon they know more than the seasoned detectives who’ve been there and done it a thousand times before the newbies were even born. And too afraid of hard work, most of them.
He’d seen plenty drop off and opt for a change of career as soon as they realised policing was more to do with going through bank statements than running around the streets catching criminals. But the reality of it was — as much as he hated to admit it — that this was how criminals were caught. Having an arrest was one thing, but having incontrovertible evidence in black and white was something else altogether.
And it was that evidence they were sorely lacking.
Culverhouse’s frustrations didn’t last long, though, as there was a knock at the door, followed by a young uniformed officer, PC Karim Rashid, entering the incident room.