MURDER IS SKIN DEEP

by M. G. Cole

  18

  Garrick was thoughtful on the drive back to the incident room. Chib kept herself busy sending emails and making calls to track down the Airbnb owner, so she hadn’t noticed. When she finally did, Garrick was rapidly shifting his gaze between the road ahead and the mirrors.

  “What is it?”

  “We’re being followed.”

  It was a strange twist for Garrick. He had followed suspects many times, but this was the first time it had happened to him. As soon as he spotted the tail, he kept his driving habits as mundane as usual, giving no hint that he was aware of their tail. He even gave a long signal as he pulled into the forecourt of the petrol station. He needed to fill up anyway, so it wasn’t anything unusual. As he stopped at the pump, he watched the black Hyundai drive past without slowing.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ever since we left Rebecca’s he’s been behind us.” Of course, it was a busy A-road back to Maidstone, and it was the most direct route. It could just be a case of paranoia, and after the last few days, that was foremost on his mind. Yet their pursuer had diligently kept two or three cars between them, no matter how much the traffic had shuffled.

  He took his time filling up, paid, then pulled out of the petrol station. Three hundred yards ahead, the black Hyundai i40 Saloon was parked in a layby. With a new bout of drizzle, he couldn’t make out the driver, but sure enough, the car pulled out and continued to follow him. He recited the licence plate to Chib, taking care to double-check each reversed character in his mirror. She called it in and was told it belonged to a seventy-year-old retiree from Guildford.

  The car followed them all the way back to the station. As they turned into the private car park, the Hyundai continued on its way.

  Garrick had an unsettling feeling he knew who was following them.

  “My money is it was the press,” he growled quietly. He’d received a message that Fraser had appeared live on two Sunday morning shows, and a glance at the Sunday papers in the petrol station showed him that, despite the country slowly falling apart with political strife, Kline-Watson’s death had ensured they’d made the front page again.

  By the end of the day, PC Fanta Liu had found more footage of Rebecca’s new companion. Taken from the Tonbridge car park cameras, the newcomer could just be seen walking past the gates thirty-five minutes before Rebecca had showed up. It wasn’t the clearest footage, but it had been enough for PC Harry Lord to pop into Tonbridge Station and ask to see what they had around the same time.

  His hunch paid off. A clearer image of the figure was backtracked exiting the station a few minutes earlier. The stranger had arrived from London Bridge Station. And hadn’t been carrying any luggage.

  “Any guesses on what they picked up from Matthews?” Garrick asked the room.

  “I’m struggling to see how this is connected to the first body or Kline-Watson,” Wilkes admitted. “Rebecca wasn’t in the country for the first murder.”

  “No. But what if she is trying to help Oscar Benjamin leave the country? If anybody knows where he is, it’s her. I suspect that Derek Fraser is now too high profile a target for extortion. If that’s what they were planning. And my money is on the fact Kline-Watson was in on it too. Rebecca Ellis claims she was demanding he reveal Hoy’s identity. What if they were arguing because the whole thing had gone wrong?”

  “And Kline-Watson was the weakest link,” suggested Chib.

  “So that’s the link we need to expose if we are going to make any progress.”

  Fanta held up her hand. Garrick sighed heavily.

  “I keep telling you, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Kline-What’s-His-Face was in arrears with his landlord, and I’ve found out he owed his bank ninety thousand in business loans he had accrued to start the gallery, on top of previous debts. From the first Hoy sale he paid off the landlord, but his commission, even on the two new sales, wasn’t enough to pay the bank who were threatening to foreclose on the business.”

  “Just as it was on the verge of becoming a success.”

  “He kept all his financial records on the computer in the gallery, but it wasn’t configured for email. He must have done that on his phone.”

  “Which is still missing,” said Chib. “We’ve contacted his service provider.”

  Fanta continued reading from her bulleted list. “All the security cameras from neighbouring premises show nothing useful. Pretty much none of them looked out onto the street.”

  Garrick waved an annoyed hand across the evidence wall. “Time and time again, we are facing a series of dead-ends.”

  “Not entirely.” All eyes turned to PC Sean Wilkes, who blushed at being the sudden centre of attention. “I mean, it might be a red herring, but Tonbridge got in touch over Oscar Benjamin. They’re now interested in finding him too.”

  Garrick sat in his chair and folded his arms. With a nod, he encouraged Wilkes to continue.

  Wilkes cleared his throat. “Well, sir, when you flashed his face up at the press conference, it jogged a couple of memories. Two witnesses thought they’d seen him three days before our murder. They reached out to Tonbridge because they’re directly dealing with an armed robbery.”

  Garrick gave an involuntary gasp. “Armed robbery! And he’s a suspect?”

  “The witnesses think he, or somebody like him, held-up a security truck on its way from the Securitas depot there.”

  The depot was an unmarked secure holding facility for the Bank of England. In 2006 it had the ignominy of being the target for Britain’s biggest robbery when fifty-three million pounds was stolen. Thirty-two million of which was still missing.

  Garrick was aware of the heist, and glad he wasn’t involved with the case. Dealing with criminal gangs was often worse than murder.

  “How much was stolen?”

  “It was a scheduled delivery for two million–”

  “Two million quid?” Garrick barked.

  Wilkes held up a cautionary finger. “But there was a last-minute schedule change. So there was only, ha, ‘only’, eighty thousand loaded.” Wilkes laughed, then immediately regretted it under Garrick’s withering look. He composed himself. “Two people, armed with shotguns took the money minutes after it left the depot. They fled on foot. Oscar Benjamin fits the description of one man seen pulling his mask off a couple of streets away.”

  “We need to bring Rebecca Ellis in for formal questioning,” said Chib.

  Garrick was undecided. “Not yet. She’s concealing something from us. She may not have been in the country during the robbery or the murder at Fraser’s place. Yet everything seems to orbit around her.” Talk about a femme fatale, he thought. It was becoming clear she was mixed up with Oscar Benjamin’s illegal activities.

  “If you find that interesting, then you will love this,” said Chib, looking up from a message on her phone. “The owners of Rebecca’s Airbnb live in Italy. They say the property was booked for four weeks. By Oscar Benjamin.”

  The scent of the trail was getting stronger and with it fragments of the case were beginning to form a coherent picture for Garrick. Unlike the Hoy masterpieces. With the threat of Rebecca leaving the country soon, they had started the wheels in motion to get a search warrant for her Airbnb. As it had been booked and paid for by the very man they were looking for, he felt confident that it would come through quickly. Until then, the priority was establishing a connection between Ellis, Kline-Watson, and the first victim.

  Instinct told him that there was one, but the connections were too vague. Whispers in the darkness that he couldn’t quite link. Unlike earlier, he was feeling sharp and alert. In fact, he was feeling better than he had done in a long while. Perhaps the benefits of taking the sleeping pills?

  At a set of traffic lights, he found Wendy’s number on his phone and his finger hovered over it. It wasn’t too late, and perhaps they could get a drink? Although she would have an early start at the school tomorrow, and after a day rambling, she may be exhausted
…

  Garrick stopped himself. He was making excuses. Something he had been doing too much lately. He had to be more proactive.

  The light turned green, and he turned towards Derek Fraser’s hotel. There was being proactive; and there was putting work aside. He could only do one at a time.

  Asking for Fraser at the front desk, he was guided into the hotel bar. Fraser was perched on a stool, waving animatedly as he talked to a woman. Jacketless, he had opened the top two buttons of his shirt. For him, that amounted to being dressed down. As Garrick neared, he spotted an open champagne bottle cooling in an ice bucket and, from his slurred speech, it wasn’t his first.

  “Mr Fraser!”

  Derek Fraser’s smile slid into an open look of disgust. “Bloody hell! Can’t a man have a celebration with a young lady?”

  His companion was Molly Meyers. She was smiling, but her eyes sparkled with thanks that Garrick had arrived to save her.

  “Molly. Pursuing another scoop?”

  “Mr Fraser has just sold two more Hoys. Hence the celebration.”

  “And you have a private interview?”

  “Of course. Which was just ending,” she said with some relief as she slipped off the stool and took her coat that had been draped on the one next to her.

  “Oh! Stay darling. I got so much more to tell you.”

  Her smile never faltered. “I have everything, Mr Fraser. You’ve been wonderful. But I need to get my copy written up or you won’t be in the paper.”

  Garrick smiled to himself. That was the perfect ammunition to cool Fraser’s libido. She flashed a look of thanks at Garrick and quickly hurried out. With undisguised lust, Fraser watched her go.

  “What an arse.”

  Garrick never took his eyes off the Scotsman. “I was thinking the same thing.” He sat on Molly’s stool. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Fraser emptied his glass. He filled it from the bottle. It didn’t quite reach halfway before the last drop.

  “Oops. I’d offer you one, but you’re on duty.”

  “Congratulations. The buyers found you after all?”

  Fraser held up one finger. “Buyer. Singular and loaded. Went up to…” he used both hands to play a drumroll on the bar, “four-hundred thousand!” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And best of all, no commission!”

  “Lucky for you, Mark isn’t around anymore.”

  “Thirty per cent saved! I mean, don’t get me wrong, he was a nice bloke. And a hundred-and-twenty grand will buy some bloody nice flowers. It’ll always buy me a plane when I get me licence.” With a hint of melancholy, he watched the bubbles rising in his glass. “And I’ve got another two to go to the market soon. But I might give it a couple of weeks before announcing that.” He put his finger over his lips. “Ssshhh! Even our little Molly tight-arse doesn’t know about those. I’ll get her out for dinner then.”

  “I thought you’d be happy that we can let you return home in a day or so. Forensics have done all they can there.”

  “Terrific. About time.”

  “What has Rebecca said about it?”

  “Mmm?”

  “The house. She was expecting it as per your divorce settlement.”

  “Well, that cat’s out of the bag now. She knows she’s getting nothing. She threatened to sue me. I told her to go to hell.” He chuckled. “She wasn’t too happy about that either.”

  “Another two Hoys. He’s knocking them out quickly.”

  Fraser’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They’re in me room. Ssshh!”

  “You met today?”

  Fraser sipped the champagne. “We had a rendezvous. You know, I never really liked champagne. Never saw the point of it.”

  Garrick mentally kicked himself. If he had assigned some protection to Fraser, then they would have been able to identify the elusive artist.

  “You promised you would pass my questions to him.”

  “Aye, I did. When I have the answers, I’ll let you know.”

  “Can you think of any time Rebecca and Mark Kline-Watson would have been in touch with each other before she entered the country?”

  He watched Fraser gently roll the stem of the champagne glass between his thumb and fingers, swirling the alcohol one way, and then the other. While Garrick like the chatty drunk Fraser, he wasn’t certain this was the ideal time to raise the subject.

  Finally, Fraser spoke. His voice low, carrying a trace of regret – or was it fear? “Mark was broke. He put a lot of money into that gallery, but his tastes were all over the place. He asked me to help him out. I couldn’t.” His eyes glazed, and for a moment Garrick thought he was going to sob. “I haggled hard over his commission, but I let him have a bit more than I was comfortable with because I knew it would help him out.” He took another sip of champagne. “Who would have thought Hoy would have taken off like that?” He snorted with disbelief. “Not me or I certainly wouldn’t have given him thirty bloody per cent. So, when they exploded,” he stabbed his thumb into his chest, “because of all my hard work setting the scene. Building the legend. He comes back to me and asks for more. Sixty per cent. Sixty!”

  “And you told him where to go, in your inimitable way.”

  Fraser knocked back the champagne and hung his head. “I wanted to. The problem was that he had the network. All the buyers.”

  “They would find you anyway. You have the artist.”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. I felt like he had me over a barrel. Y’see, I made the mistake of telling him that Becs had cleaned me out. Taken all my liquid assets and ran off with a man who hated me guts.”

  Fraser wiped a tear from his eye and sucked in a deep breath. The cocky shyster that Garrick was used to dealing with was now a vulnerable man.

  “Mark knew what buttons to press to get at me. There is only one person who could have told him that.”

  “Rebecca.”

  Fraser nodded. “I bet he reached out to her and she and that meathead boyfriend of hers concocted a scam to discredit me.” He gestured to the barman for the bill.

  In the silence that followed, Garrick digested Fraser’s words. They echoed the very line of enquiry he was following. And yet…

  “What made you get in touch with Mark in the first place? It’s a small gallery in Rye. And you said his tastes were dubious.”

  Fraser signed the bill without checking it. “I’m not stupid, Detective. I approached some better names than him in London. They either didn’t think much of the work, or they didn’t think much of me. It’s a snooty world, the art world. A working-class kid from Glasgow doesn’t fit in. Then I remembered Terri had sold a few of her pieces to him. He sold them for twenty quid, which at the time was a fortune.”

  “Terri is an artist? I thought she just studied it.”

  “She thought she could do it. But she was wrong.” Fraser stood and swayed. “Now you have chased the skirt away, I might as well hit the sack alone.” He motioned for the exit.

  “One thing still baffles me. Who gains by killing somebody doubling as you?”

  “Probably the same person who gains for having me killed. Night.”

  Fraser shuffled from the bar. Garrick glanced at the bill before the barman pulled the faux-leather wallet away. He’d had half a beer and the bottle of champagne and left no tip. Something the barman noted with a scowl.

  It was raining heavily when Garrick left the hotel. He pinched the collar of his Barbour tight as he jogged to his Land Rover. His impulsive detour had left it too late to call Wendy, and he now regretted making it. He was halfway to his car when he noticed a white Volkswagen Beetle parked next to his. Molly Meyers was behind the wheel, looking tiny in the car’s spacious interior. Her face was illuminated by her mobile phone, on which she was rapidly typing. She smiled when she saw Garrick and lowered her window.

  “Problem with the car?”

  “No,” she turned the phone screen in his direction. “I was writing the bones of my piece while it was still f
resh in my mind. Thanks for saving me back there. He’s a bit lecherous when drunk.”

  “All part of the service,” he grinned.

  “And I never thanked you for giving me the first question at the press conference. For what it was worth.” She laughed.

  Two compliments in one evening, thought Garrick. He must be doing something right. He opened his mouth to reply – when he noticed a black Hyundai parked several yards behind his own car.

  Then there came the crack of gunfire. Two shots, crystal clear despite the rain pelting the surrounding vehicles. Next came a smash of glass from the hotel – followed by screams.

  19

  People were rushing from the bar and dithering in the lobby as Garrick pushed through, closely followed by Molly, who held her phone up, capturing every moment on video. Garrick looked around for some hint about where the shots had come from. A young receptionist, her eyes wide in fear, recognised Garrick and pointed a trembling finger towards the staircase.

  “Stay here!” he said to Molly and galloped up the steps two at a time.

  The grand staircase in the centre of the room split in opposite directions, curving around bright pink walls before meeting at either end of the first-floor landing. Garrick was out of breath when he reached the top. Molly was right behind him when he suddenly stopped, and she cannoned into him.

  “I thought I told you to stay?”

  “I’m not a dog!” she snapped back – her gaze suddenly drawn to a man running towards them down a corridor. He was clutching a handgun as he came to an abrupt stop when he spotted Garrick and immediately turned around and sprinted back the way he came.

  Garrick gave pursuit.

  The man took a right down an adjoining corridor. Garrick’s lungs were burning, his knees complaining, and a detached part of his mind was appalled by how unfit he was. He would never have lasted fifteen minutes on the ramble with Wendy.