The Cyclist

by Tim Sullivan

  'You not going with your partner, Josie?' Carson asked mischievously.

  By the time Ottey had gathered herself together and got outside, Cross was already leaving the car park on his bicycle. When she passed Cross in her car, she gave him a hoot of annoyance for leaving without her. It gave him such a start that he lost his balance and fell off his bike. She felt terrible and slowed down to make sure he was all right, looking in her rear view mirror. He was, so she accelerated away before he realised it was her.

  Cross had insisted that work should not continue with the demolition, much to the chagrin of Morgan, the contractor. He had, of course, been proved right to do so, as they now found themselves going back to look for traces of automotive paint. All of this would’ve vanished had work continued. Car paint had been an important factor in one of their recent cases, Ottey reflected as she parked up. Cross arrived not long after her. She asked him if he was all right. She immediately regretted it, thinking it might give her away as the honking driver. He replied in the affirmative and made his way down to the remains of the pertinent garage. It didn't take long for him to find what he was looking for, as the wooden frame that went round the door was still pretty much in a couple of large pieces. He found some paint on one part of it.

  'Paint. Metallic, I think. We need to get forensics down here,' he said.

  Twenty minutes later, after she’d told him that no forensic teams were available, Ottey watched as Cross strode over to the pile of garage debris and started pulling away at the wooden frame.

  'George, it's still technically a crime scene,' she said.

  'There's no point in preserving the scene if we don't have a forensic team to come down and analyse the evidence,' he replied. But the wretched thing wouldn't come away, however hard he tried. He looked at it indignantly then tried again. But it wouldn't budge. She sighed and went over to help.

  They drove back to the station. Just as well she had an estate car, as the boot now contained not only Cross' bike but also a large part of the door frame. It had only just fitted in the car. One end of it stretched the entire length of the car, lying through the gap between their seats, stopping inches from the windscreen. She hoped that she wouldn't have to stop suddenly before they got to the MCU. She was pretty sure she had windscreen insurance included for free in her car insurance. Why did they do that, she wondered? Give it away like that? It can't have been out of the goodness of their hearts. It had to be a business decision. Maybe people didn't smash that many windscreens. So it looked like a generous offer when it was nothing of the kind.

  Cross was annoyed, as he had a bloody great big splinter in his finger. He'd got most of it out but the end had snapped off. He would get it out later with a sterilised needle as efficiently as a fully qualified doctor in A&E.

  Carson looked up from his desk then back to his computer. Wait a minute, was that...? He looked up again and yes it was – an enormous door jamb being marched towards him by an irate Cross. He had it over his shoulder as one end trailed on the floor. Carson didn't want to say what had occurred to him as his political sensitivity kicked in promptly, but Cross looked like he was on his way to his own crucifixion. Carson walked into the open area where Cross had stopped.

  'George. I had no idea you collected driftwood,' he said, laughing. Others joined in quietly.

  'What?' Cross asked, puzzled, 'I don't. Why would I collect driftwood?' Then he understood what his boss was referring to. 'This is from the crime scene. It's the door frame.'

  'Then what is it doing here? This breaks every tenet of Chain of Evidence,' Carson stated. He looked at Ottey as if she might venture some explanation. But from the look on her face he realised that this wasn't going to be forthcoming. She was pissed off enough as it was.

  'So what else was I supposed to do? There's no-one available from forensics, apparently. How are we supposed to solve a case when we don't have the resources to do it?' asked Cross.

  Carson didn't have an answer to this. He felt, from experience, that trying to have this discussion with Cross in public again would only end up with him losing and looking a little foolish.

  'I'm bringing pertinent forensic evidence to the station, because apparently no-one from forensics is available today,' Cross went on.

  'That's true,' Carson agreed.

  'Is it indeed? Are you actually sure of that?'

  'It's what I, like you, have been told,' said Carson.

  'Because I happen to know that one Eric Walsh is sitting at home doing nothing. Paint, plastics and synthetic materials were his specialisms, that we could now have made use of had he not been let go last month thanks to departmental cuts,' said Cross. Carson made no attempt to refute this. 'So, if it's not too much trouble, I would like someone to take this down to the lab and ask Eric to come back in and identify these paint scrapings.'

  'I'm afraid that's not possible. But you already know that because you know as well as everyone else that I've had to find cuts. Something I dislike as much as you,' Carson said.

  'I appreciate that, which is why, in the circumstances, I thought it would be helpful to bring the evidence in. The question is what I'm supposed to do with it now,' Cross said.

  'Leave it with me and I'll deal with it,' said Carson, trying to ameliorate him.

  'Thank you. I'll be in my office,' Cross replied, and turned to walk away.

  'You're welcome. It'll take a couple of days.'

  'What?' said Cross, stopping in his tracks.

  'We just have to send it out now, that's all. It's no different,' Carson explained.

  'It's completely different,' Cross retorted.

  'I agree with George,' said Ottey unhelpfully. 'We'll be sending crime scene photos to Boots next.'

  'No we won't,' said Cross irritably. 'They're all digital. No need.' A couple of the other detectives in the room sniggered.

  'I was trying to make a point, George. To back you up,' Ottey protested.

  'You can't back anything up with inaccurate information,' he retorted. She gave up. He could fight this one on his own, she decided. She went over to her desk.

  'You said it'll take two days. That makes it different for a start,' Cross said, his attention now firmly back on Carson.

  'Hopefully. I'll order a courier now,' he said.

  'A courier? ' Cross spluttered in disbelief. Carson left quickly before he said anything else that might cause further unrest.

  Cross was sitting in his office. He was taking a break from the case and had gone back to preparing papers for court in the Carpenters' murder case. A husband and wife, murdered fifteen years apart. It had been complex and quite surprising in the end. He, as usual, wanted to make his narrative for the case as clear as possible for court. The jury could have no doubt, the prosecution find no chink, no technicalities to prevent them from finding the accused guilty. Everything had been done by the book, as it always was with Cross.

  Ottey appeared. 'I need coffee and fresh air. Would you like to join me?'

  Cross looked at his watch. 'I don't have coffee for another half hour. No.'

  She knew better than to argue, but she actually wanted him to go with her. She wanted to run through the case with him again without anyone else. So she waited. Thirty minutes later they were driving into Bristol, at Cross' insistence, to a café run by a couple of New Zealanders, who according to him made the best flat white in the South West. New Zealanders, he went on to tell her, had become world leaders in making coffee. Indeed, they claimed to have invented the flat white, although that had become the subject of fierce debate down under where an Australian from Sydney now laid claim to the fact that he had invented it way back in 1989.

  When she got back to the car (he had determined, through the car window, that the café was too full to enable him to concentrate and have a proper conversation with her) and tasted the coffee, she was forced to agree that it had been well worth the trip. Cross then insisted on going through the few facts they had, out loud. She had found this fantas
tically tedious and laborious when she had first been forced to partner with him. But she had to admit that some of his best thoughts and ideas about investigations had come out of these repetitive sessions.

  'So what are your thoughts about the fruit and veg man?' Cross asked.

  'He's involved somehow,' she replied, Cross looked at her, slightly surprised. 'Sorry, I don't mean in the murder, necessarily, although I wouldn't rule it out. But he was definitely mixed up with Alex in some way.'

  'And Hellenic?'

  They had come up with a blank on Hellenic. It was a Greek company, based out of Athens as far as they could tell. Its presence in London comprised solely of a brass plaque on a Georgian building in Mayfair and a PO Box address. No phone, no details at Companies House. Hellenic had, indeed, been a major shipping company back in the day, which had been sold off by the son of the founder, a Euro-Trash playboy as far as Ottey could tell. Several wives, even more girlfriends and dozens of children, legitimate or otherwise. Even with his prodigious appetite for excess he wasn't able to make his way through his inherited billions before he fell off his boat somewhere in the Cyclades. His body was never found. His beneficiaries were many, but even with that number, his vast wealth meant they could all count themselves as well off. One of his daughters ran a charitable foundation in her grandfather's name. Some of the other children were in various businesses, including real estate and the media. One of them was even an artist. But currently they couldn't figure out why the name should've cropped up in Alex's affairs.

  'It could be all manner of things,' said Cross.

  'True,' she said. 'There's a Hellenic travel company in Leeds.'

  'So what else do we have?'

  'The pharmacy was clean. That we know,' said Ottey.

  'Which only means that it wasn't the murder scene. It doesn't rule the chemist out. It could've happened somewhere else,' Cross pointed out.

  'True.'

  'We need to concentrate on the text.'

  'Why?'

  'Because it doesn't make any sense. His making no reference to their fight. Behaving as if nothing was wrong. As if nothing had happened. Something's missing.'

  'So, as we’ve said, in all probability he didn't send the text,' she said.

  'Exactly. But then there's the packing. He'd packed and was clearly still going, which is also important. It means something definitely happened we don't know about, between the fight and the text. But the key is who sent the text.'

  They sipped their coffee. Then Cross had a thought.

  'His hamstring. We could have Clare check whether there's any damage.'

  'Can she do that in post mortem? I mean, you actually see a pulled hamstring in the flesh?'

  'I'm not sure. But when sportsmen have an injury they have an MRI... You should call Clare and ask for a post mortem MRI.'

  'Why me?' she asked.

  'You know very well why, and I think you are teasing me now,' he said. They both knew that Clare had a love/hate relationship/respect for Cross and could never be sure at any given moment of time whether she was on the up or down-swing of her feelings towards him.

  Chapter 19

  Cross sat in his office, door closed and blind down, for a few days. In at the start of the day, earlier than anyone else, and out last. No-one saw anything of him during this time. Ottey had joked with him once that he could just take a few days off with his office closed up like this and no-one would be any the wiser. He was completely baffled as to why he would want to do such a thing in the middle of a murder case. His actions indicated that he didn't want to be disturbed. People had become used to respecting this, because when he appeared, he would, more often than not, have discovered something of significance for the case they were working on. It wouldn't be some great insight worthy of Sherlock Holmes, who would eloquently spout forth a confected and well-configured theory of what had happened. In Cross' case it was normally a tiny speck of information that no-one had noticed, and therefore passed blindly over, which then had a fundamental knock-on effect on the case.

  He also only ever retreated in this way when he felt they didn't really have a lot to go on and were chasing half leads, trying to piece together a narrative with few facts. Which was of course what police work was often about. He just knew that if he concentrated he might come up with something. Sometimes it only took a few hours. Other times it could be days at a stretch. He was poring over Alex's emails in an account Alice had found via the USB. There was a lot of correspondence with a man called Angelo Sokratis at Hellenic Holdings in Athens. But it was the name of the person who'd introduced them in the first place, Franny that stood out to Cross. So Tony had been involved. Most interesting of all, however, was a meeting Alex had in his diary for the evening he died. It was in the Hampton by Hilton hotel at the airport. Cross checked the flight plans for private aircraft that day and discovered that a flight had arrived from Athens at five thirty that afternoon and left just after one in the morning. He hadn’t realised that Bristol was an airport that operated twenty-four hours a day. There were two passengers and a stewardess. The passengers were Angelo Sokratis and his business manager, Theo. It seemed that, over time, Angelo had gone from wanting to be a co-investor to sole investor. This was around the time that Alex had told the bank that he wouldn't need their loan.

  There had been a to-ing and fro-ing over terms as Theo was trying to strong-arm Alex, who, it had to be said, stood his ground. He finally informed the Athenians that he didn't need this deal. He would just go back to the bank, bide his time and find another investor. He was confident that his proposal had become more and more attractive to potential investors, the more work he did on it. The more he crunched numbers, the more potential profit he was able to find. One of the big decisions he had made was moving the location from the new King's Cross development to Camden, saving a huge amount in overheads. He thought that King's Cross was way over-priced and that, even though he said it himself, he had been seduced by going into what was fast becoming one of the trendiest, and so most costly, retail areas in London. Better to set up shop somewhere less expensive, make a name for themselves and then, maybe, move to KX when they had a firm customer base.

  But something had gone sour in the last few weeks. What that was, Cross couldn't determine from what was in front of him. But it was important enough for Angelo to fly over and meet with Alex in person. The third thing, possibly the most important of all, which could easily have been missed in the hundreds of emails between Alex and Theo was a "cc" in one of them. It was the name which surprised Cross, because this person was supposedly ignorant of the continued London project.

  Kostas turned up at the unit one afternoon asking for Cross and Ottey. When they settled in a VA (voluntary assistance) suite, Kostas emptied the contents of a black refuse sack he had brought onto the table where the coffee machine resided. There were several boxes and bottles, all containing pills of some kind.

  'I found these hidden in the back of our food storage room,' he said. Ottey examined some of the packets. The names meant nothing to her. They were mostly pharmaceutical as far as she could tell. Cross, on the other hand, seemed to have no interest in the drugs, but was watching Kostas closely.

  'Were you looking for them?' asked Cross.

  'No,' said Kostas.

  'But if they were hidden, how did you come across them?' he went on. 'Were you looking for them?' There was a nanosecond as Kostas obviously made a decision as to how to answer this.

  'No, we were doing our usual provision stock check,' he said. 'Perishables,' he added, as if this might give it more veracity, Cross thought.

  'All right, well as you're here, maybe we could have a talk?' Cross said. Kostas looked uncertain. Maybe he was just expecting to be thanked and sent on his way.

  'Sure, I can't be too long, though. I have the evening service to prepare for,' he said.

  'Of course. Would you excuse me?' said Cross, leaving the room. Kostas looked at Ottey, a little confused.

>   'Coffee?' she asked. 'The only thing I can guarantee about it is that it won't be anywhere near as good as yours.'

  'Thanks, I will,’ he replied.

  Cross returned, pushing the door open with his back. He was carrying a small table, the size of a card table. He placed it in the middle of the room then disappeared again. Kostas looked at Ottey.

  'Most times he's okay without the table, but today, it seems, is one of those days he needs it,' she said. Cross re-entered without a word, placed a chair behind the table, then set about organising his papers. He looked up at Kostas.

  'So, Kostas,' he began, 'I think it's about time you started telling the truth and not deciding for yourself what you will divulge and what you won't.'

  'I don't understand,' Kostas protested.

  'Your brother is dead, murdered. A nice young man, who I think may have got himself into a bit of trouble. Now you, yourself, are not in trouble, but how long that lasts will depend entirely on how honest you are with us. Because you've been truthful, to an extent, but you've also been sparing with what you've told us. Which is inconvenient. You see, it costs us time to find out what you haven't told us. Pointless, really, when based on the knowledge you could've given us, we could've spent those hours trying to get a clearer picture of what happened to your brother. When people don't tell everything it's normally because they have something to hide. They've done something which they need to cover up because they're implicated in some way in what the police are looking into. You, I'm convinced, are not involved in your brother's death, nor, I suspect, in his drug dealings.'

  'His what?' said Kostas.

  'Your brother was not only taking performance-enhancing drugs but had been dealing in them for the past eighteen months. You didn't think those,' he said, indicating the pile on the other table, 'were for his own consumption, did you?' Cross went on.