by M. G. Cole
“Of course I did. I loved Derek. Oscar was a stupid one-night stand. We were drunk. I was pissed off with Derek. It was before Oscar and Rebecca had got together, so she understands. Derek was always shooting blanks. As soon as he found out I was pregnant, he was delighted. But when he discovered the truth… he didn’t want to know me. At least Oscar was a gentleman. And now he wants what’s best for his son.”
“And a new life for you.”
Garrick had assumed that Rebecca’s comment about Derek being unable to father children had been nothing more than spite, not biological fact.
Chib indicated to the photo. “Where are the bags? They were not in Rebecca’s Airbnb or her car. And you arrived from London without them. And an empty one was found in your apartment. Why would Stanley Matthews have your possessions?”
“Because Oscar had asked Stan to look after me. I don’t have a car or storage. He has a whole dealership. That’s where my boxes are going.”
Garrick was once again feeling that his list of suspects was dwindling. Rebecca Ellis had been freed. They had nothing to hold Terri on, and it was all down to one man who had hanged himself.
While Chib dealt with releasing Terri Cordy, Garrick stood in front of the evidence wall. The nameless corpse had to be linked to Huw Crawford in an attempt to impersonate Derek Fraser, a man he hated because of their love feud over Terri and the child. A child fathered by Oscar Benjamin. A man with a grudge against Fraser.
For whatever reason he couldn’t fathom, the impersonation had gone wrong, so was the attempt at stealing the artwork a desperate last-minute bid? Had Mark Kline-Watson – a man desperate for the money - threatened to expose them, forcing Huw to silence him? Had Huw’s actions been encouraged by Oscar Benjamin? Or an act of desperation because Oscar had abandoned him, Terri, and Rebecca, taking the stolen cash with him?
And the security truck heist… Garrick was still mulling that. Was it simply a case of opportunity? Two separate crimes that were too tempting for the same crooks.
Then there was the possibility that Huw was the mysterious Hoy…
The harsh sound of coins jangling in a cup close to his ear broke him from his reverie. Fanta was holding a mug sporting the Kent Police crest. She shook it again. By the sound of it, there was only a bit of loose change inside.
“I’m collecting for Harry!” She shoved the mug under Garrick’s nose.
“Why? He’s getting sick pay.”
Fanta’s eyes widened in protest. “Sir! That’s a horrible thing to say. He was injured in the line of duty!”
Garrick felt the pain in his buttock twinge. That made two of them.
“As our commanding officer, you’re expected to set the bar high. Not tight.”
“Oh, really? How much did Superintendent Drury contribute?”
Fanta sheepishly lowered the cup. “I wanted her to be awed by the rest of the team’s generosity.”
Garrick angled the cup down and counted the contents. “One-pound-forty? What treasures were you planning to buy him?”
“I’ve just started.”
Garrick took his wallet from his pocket and pulled out his debit card. “Where should I swipe this?”
Fanta glowered at him and slammed the cup on a table near the evidence board. “I shall leave this here so everybody can make a donation.”
Garrick put his card away. “How about doing something really useful? Terri Cordy claims that her baby’s father is Oscar Benjamin, not Fraser. Fraser took a paternity test. See what’s on file.”
Eighty minutes later, she returned with the news that Rebecca Ellis had just checked in at Gatwick Airport. She was leaving in a hurry.
She also had not one, but two shocking answers to Garrick’s query.
And like that, the entire case cracked open, revealing the predator within.
28
“Nobody has come in, and he hasn’t left,” said the bored officer sat in the patrol car at the end of Fraser’s drive.
As Garrick and Chib approached, they could see him playing a game on his phone. The copper had even flinched when they knocked on his window, so his observational skills were questionable.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Garrick noticed there was a small mailbox bolted onto the wall just outside the gate.
“About an hour ago he came out and offered me a cuppa. He’s been good at doing that for everyone.”
“And he’s had no visitors?” The copper shook his head.
Chib followed Garrick up the driveway. The living room lights were on, but all seemed quiet. She rang the bell as Garrick peered through the windows. The curtains were drawn.
“Maybe he’s asleep?” Chib said after thumbing the doorbell for the third time.
Garrick motioned for her to follow him to the plyboard covering the broken patio window. He wedged his fingers against the lip of a vertical slat and heaved. Only when he put his full bodyweight into it did the wood give as nails pried free.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m concerned that he could be on the floor, bleeding to death!”
He heaved again. The wood cracked so loudly that they were both surprised when the cop on guard duty didn’t come running. Garrick rested the freed six-foot wooden panel against the other door, then he stepped into the extension.
Nothing had changed. Even the two Hoy paintings were on the wall.
“Derek?” He yelled. “It’s DCI Garrick!”
No answer.
The square of carpet still hadn’t been replaced. He moved into the kitchen, noticing the lights had been left on.
“Derek?”
“I’ll check upstairs,” said Chib.
She hurried off before Garrick could caution her that it might be dangerous. He realised how bad that could sound in this day and age. He was sure Chib was more than proficient in self-defence, maybe more so than he was. He had trained on the streets, in the art of gouging and punching when your opponent wasn’t looking.
He tried the backdoor. Locked. From above came the sounds of Chib dashing from room to room, and he could just hear her calling for Fraser.
The kitchen counters were tidy, the sink empty. Garrick leaned against a cupboard as he took in the room, searching for anything amiss. He called Fraser’s mobile – and it rang in the kitchen. Fraser found it just behind the fruit bowl. He heard Chib hurry down the stairs and check the dining room. Then she reappeared in the kitchen.
“He’s not here.”
“He’s left his mobile.” Garrick looked back at the empty sink. He sniffed the air. There was a strong lingering smell. He turned his head in a slow circle, tracing the odour under the sink. He gingerly opened the cupboard.
Inside was a bottle of bleach, window cleaner, a packet of dishwasher tablets, and a bottle of turps. The dishwasher was alongside the cupboard, its wooden facade neatly blending it with the other work units. He opened it. Inside were a few cups, plates, and placed neatly upright amongst the cutlery: four paint brushes. He took one out and held it up so Chib could see.
“It seems we have a keen artist.” He indicated under the sink. “Turpentine to clean them. He’s been using oil paints.”
Chib’s eyes widened. “Fraser is Hoy?”
“That’s why he wasn’t in a rush to disabuse me of my idea about it being Terri.”
They walked into the living room, searching for fresh clues. Garrick looked down at the hole in the carpet, recalling the body lying there.
The man who looked like Fraser.
No. Not entirely. The watch marking on the wrist. The coroner said it had been too tight for comfort. The clothes not quite the right cut. He had been dressed to look like Fraser just before his murder. Then there was the paternity result.
Fraser had said the baby wasn’t his. He had been correct. He and Terri knew it was Oscar Benjamin’s. The paternity test confirmed that. Except the DNA taken for the test also matched that of the victim on Fraser’s floor.
It was Oscar Ben
jamin.
The two men had been roughly the same size. Fraser was prematurely white-haired, while Oscar was blond, hence the dyed hair. Side-by-side they looked nothing alike, but with a smashed-up face…
Garrick moved into the hallway. There was an empty coat peg and the rack of shoes under the stairs seemed to be missing a pair.
“Fraser’s done a runner,” he said.
He was about to return to the living room when he spotted the pair of green wellies with the shoes. Nothing unusual about that, except he couldn’t picture Fraser as the type to wear them. He doubted Fraser did his own gardening. He picked them up and examined the sole. Something glinted in the deep grooves. It was a single shard of broken glass.
Garrick hurried back into the living room, imagining the crime scene. He pointed to the broken door.
“Oscar Benjamin was already here. Beaten so badly that he was almost dead. Fraser broke the door himself to make it look like forced entry.” He saw Chib’s curious look. “There is a piece of glass in the wellies back there. Same sort that littered the carpet when I arrived. Forensics would have cleared every single shard by the time we let Fraser back in the house. So it shouldn’t be there.”
He stood at the end of the table and turned his hand into the shape of a gun, miming shooting the man. “Fraser kills him. The TV was on loud, to mask the gunshots. Then he leaves for the retreat, his alibi. He doesn’t take his own car because people might see him leaving. I bet there’s a gap in the fence that he can slip in and out of.”
“Which is why the bloke at the gate hasn’t seen him leave.”
“He walks to the station… no,” he corrected himself. “He’s got to have been seen to have left earlier. He would have bought the train tickets to get him to Hay, but somebody would have driven him.”
“Rebecca?”
Garrick shook his head. “My money’s on Huw Crawford.”
Chib reacted with surprise. “Fraser checked into the hotel under fake name…”
“And kept himself to himself…”
“Until he left. Then he made a scene. Shouted a lot.”
“Just so people would remember he was there and reinforce his alibi. He had left here with the intention of never coming back.” He pointed to where the body had lain. “Oscar Benjamin was dressed like him and with his face smashed up nobody would know the difference. He’d even dyed his hair to be the same.”
“And finding a dead man in his own house…”
“We wouldn’t waste time doing a DNA analysis of the body. We just assumed. If he hadn’t come back, then he could have got away with it.” Garrick paced as he laid out the timeline. “Nobody came and found the body. He had no friends. There’s a regular mailbox at the gate, so the postman wouldn’t come this far, so there was little risk the body would be found until he wanted it to be.”
“Which is why he ordered an Amazon package!”
“The body is discovered conveniently when he has been at the hotel for a day. The poor delivery guy, hearing the noise from the TV, seeing the broken window, stumbles over the body. The TV wasn’t to mask the gunshots, it was to draw attention to the murder. The delivery guy calls the police. By which time the swelling and bruising on Oscar’s face has become worse, making identification difficult.”
“And how is Crawford tied into this?”
“The pathologist said that the broken jaw, teeth and cheekbones were done with just a little too much precision.”
“Which a medical student would know.”
“Huw either did it or advised Fraser. Just enough to make it look like torture, and just enough to leave Oscar Benjamin unrecognisable.”
“But what brings Fraser back from the dead? Why go to all the effort of faking his own death using a man he hates?”
Garrick steepled both hands over his nose and mouth as he took in the scene once more. He started chuckling as tiny clues took on a whole new meaning.
“He was killing himself off and at the same time getting revenge on Oscar. Fraser was never coming back. He was hiding out in Hay – until the news of his death hit. That’s what triggered the sudden interest in the Hoys he had been trying to sell.”
“His own work.”
“Which he had tried to pass off as a new discovery. And it was working, just not enough.”
“Until he died. And the price shot through the roof. Which would have left Mark Kline-Watson with his commission and Fraser’s unclaimed share.”
“So he makes a lot of noise at the Hotel in Hay so everybody can say he’s been there the whole time. And he comes back. Makes a dramatic entrance…”
“And the value of the art keeps increasing as he magically produces more Hoys for sale.” She nodded. “Right.”
“Right.”
“But…”
“You’re going to find a hole in my theory, aren’t you?”
“Only one I can drive a car through. Okay, maybe two. Why? He’s running from creditors; he could just go missing without having to kill anybody. Especially not Oscar Benjamin. And Huw Crawford tried to rob him, not help him.”
“You’re wrong, Chib. You can drive a bus through it…” then a thought struck him. “Crawford and Mark Kline-Watson knew one another. Fraser and K-W were already in cahoots trying to sell the artwork… no, that doesn’t make sense either...” Garrick slumped onto the sofa, his mind hopping from one random fact to another, desperate to draw them together.
“Although…” teased Chib. “What if we’ve been looking at this from completely the wrong end? You just said yourself that he came back from the dead because his art sold.”
“Right.”
“That was an unforeseen benefit. A side effect of his apparent death. Oscar Benjamin was over here two weeks before all of this, not to scam Fraser over an artist who was selling paintings for hardly anything. We know he came over for one last job. The security heist. Remember what Sean said, nobody wanted to work with him after he let Noel take the fall. If he’d do that to his own brother, who’d want to work with him? He needed somebody he could trust – not necessarily like – somebody who was as desperate as he was for the cash.”
“Fraser? So it wasn’t Crawford and Oscar holding up the truck. It was Fraser and Oscar…”
Chib nodded. “And Fraser used the Colt he had got from Mark Kline-Watson.”
Garrick stood suddenly as inspiration struck. “The same gun he then gave to Crawford. That’s why he was using blanks, it was a stunt to drive up the price again.” Garrick looked to the heavens as if it had been obvious. “Fraser wasn’t drunk. His bar bill showed he’d bought hardly anything. He wanted her there during the fake robbery, knowing it would be a huge press scoop.”
“An instead he got you, and a video that went viral.”
“Fraser was in the hotel the whole time. He could have cut the security cameras. And that’s why Crawford looked so terrified when he saw me and tossed the gun as soon as he could. He knew Fraser’s plan hadn’t gone smoothly.”
“Okay, I retract my statement. There’s only one flaw. The money from the truck.”
“The money from the heist wasn’t what they had expected. Remember, there had been a last-minute change from the two million they’d been expecting. It wasn’t enough to clear Fraser’s debts. It wasn’t enough to start Terri and Ethan up with a new life. They’re going nowhere. And with Oscar out of the picture, Crawford thinks he can still win Terri back. Although he’d be living in fear of Fraser saying anything.”
“And Mark Kline-Watson?”
“I don’t think it was Rebecca or Terri. They may be a lot of things, but they’re not killers. And I reckon once was enough for Crawford. Our favourite Scottish bastard has blood on his hands there.”
“And now he’s scarpered.” Chib sighed in frustration. “He could be anywhere. What would you do if you were him?”
“Leave the country. But he’s smart enough to know Border Force’ll stop him.” He shook his head. Then he spotted the new Flying magaz
ine on the table.
“I think I know where he is!”
Bridle Farm was just over twenty minutes away outside the small village of Postling, and Fraser had a head start. With headlights still triggering his migraine, Garrick didn’t trust himself to drive at speed, so he let Chib drive his Land Rover. She drove like a maniac, taking the blue light flickering on the dash as a sign to drive aggressively. Used to the instant power of her electric car, she was constantly grousing under her breath as Garrick’s aging diesel failed to deliver power on demand, and the gears ground every time she shifted. She took the tight country bends at such reckless speeds that Garrick clung on to the door strap above his head to prevent him from being thrown out of his seat. As well as his headache, he now had to contend with severe motion sickness.
Following the GPS on his phone, they were soon racing down the narrow Pilgrim’s Way. Their destination was up on the right.
The gate accessing the farm was wide open, and the huge farmhouse beyond was bathed in darkness. It was only 7pm, but Garrick had recalled that the family were away.
Pulling onto the grounds, the headlights fell across a sign for Classic Aero, a renowned aircraft restoration company. Garrick had once listened enviously as one of his colleagues recounted a story of taking a ride here in their two-seater spitfire. He’d always vowed to treat himself one day. A bucket list moment that he’d failed to achieve.
A dirt trail circled around the farmhouse, to an assortment of seven sheds and hangars at the back of the farm used for storing and repairing classic planes. The doors of two hangars were open, several small aircraft just visible in the dark interior. Fraser’s Mercedes was parked between the buildings.
Garrick lunged across the steering wheel. “Kill the headlights!” He found the switch and extinguished them. Chib cut the engine.
“That’s his car,” said Garrick. “He must have left it on the street so his protection wouldn’t see him driving out.”
As silently as they could, Garrick and Chib stepped out of the car, leaving the doors ajar so as not to make any more noise. They stealthily approached the nearest hangar, keeping to the shadows and listening for any signs of which building he’d entered.