by Mark Eklid
They came to a halt in the corridor. Graham took hold of Andreas’s forearm and they looked at each other. There was intensity in Graham’s stare. This was painful for Andreas to hear but he could not shut it out. He feared he knew the words that were coming next.
‘What if Ken had Yates murdered?’
Andreas pressed on the few more steps to his office and Graham followed him inside, closing the door behind him. The younger man slumped into his chair. This was a lot to take in.
He stared up to the grimy ceiling and was unable to formulate a contrary sequence of events. Not one that made any sense and yet the thought that faithful old Ken, the long-serving finance manager who must be coming up to retirement, was a murderer and drugs baron made no sense either. Everybody liked Ken. He was kind, efficient, perfectly pleasant in every way and had never given anyone a reason to offer a bad word about him. There must be another explanation but still there was so much in what Graham said that needed to be explained first.
‘We must talk to him,’ said Andreas emphatically.
‘Do you want this home number?’ suggested Graham.
He considered.
‘No. I want to see him. Let’s see if he’s at home.’
24
Rebecca made no attempt to disguise the fact that she was not especially pleased to be told one of her transport administrators was wanted for other duties today. This was the kind of disruption she had feared would happen when the boss brought in his long-lost father, against her better judgement, to work in her team. She liked her authority to be absolute and felt undermined but knew there was nothing she could do about it. She decided she would find a way to make Graham suffer for this, to keep him in line.
Graham had much more pressing issues on his mind. He had decided not to tell Andreas that he knew the head of the drug gang from university because it struck him as over-complicating an already complicated situation. Telling him that they had a brief relationship which produced a child and that he had a half-brother who was a member of the drug gang would definitely have made the picture murkier.
So he decided to hold back that information for another day but there was another matter he had to raise.
‘Just before they took me back to my car last night they gave me a phone,’ he announced as Andreas drove a little too erratically, following the sat nav directions to Ken Arnold’s home address.
‘A phone?’ he answered, accelerating harder through traffic lights as they turned amber.
‘Yeah. What do they call them – a burner?’
He had been a big fan of The Wire on TV.
‘It has one number programmed into it and I’m supposed to call them when we know where the shipment is meant to be delivered so that they can intercept it. They told me they would confiscate the drugs – as a gesture of good will, they said.’
‘They said what?’ The conversation was not doing anything to calm Andreas’s mood. ‘I hope you told them they could go and fuck themselves.’
Graham gripped the edge of his seat a little more firmly as a line of static traffic became closer much more quickly than Andreas appeared to be reckoning for.
‘I didn’t think that would be a very smart thing to suggest in the circumstances,’ he explained. ‘Quite frankly, I was ready to agree to anything if it meant I could get away from that place in one piece.’
‘Yes, of course, of course!’ Andreas conceded as the Jaguar squealed to a halt a foot or so short of the bumper of the car in front of them.
‘But there can be no question of us allowing them to get to the truck first, surely. They might decide to start another fire and, this time, while the trailer is fully laden.’
Graham hesitated for a moment but the second part of the sentence he expected to hear was not spoken.
‘And we wouldn’t want to put the driver or anyone else in danger either, would we?’
‘Of course not! Of course not!’ Andreas barked in a tone that made it sound so obvious a statement that it did not warrant saying.
‘I won’t hand over anybody to these gangsters and I won’t allow them to seize the drugs. If we did that we would be leaving ourselves open to further trouble. They would have a hold on us. They could blackmail us into bringing more of their dirty business into the country on my trucks in the future and I cannot allow that. It would blacken the family name.’
Graham had not thought of that. It was a good point.
‘In that case, we have to call in the police. Do it by the book.’
Andreas considered this. The traffic was heavy with other motorists wanting to get to work and being unable to go anywhere quickly had cooled his temper.
‘In time,’ he said. ‘We go to them when we have established who is responsible and where the rendezvous point is. Otherwise, the police will just get in the way.’
The suggestion went against Graham’s instincts but he reasoned that they would get to the right conclusion eventually following such a plan. Andreas seemed to have a real problem with authority figures. He might have to be prepared to put up with that.
‘I’d go to the police straight away but OK, if that’s the way you’d rather play it. As soon as we track down the truck and identify Turnbull, Ken or whoever else is mixed up in this, we call in the cops, OK?’
Andreas was satisfied with that. ‘Agreed.’
They made the rest of the journey to Totley safely, wrapped in their silent thoughts.
The sat nav told them they had arrived and Andreas pulled up. They craned to identify numbers on the white doors of the creamy stone detached houses, with their uniform grey slate roofs, on either side of them.
‘I can see number two,’ said Graham. ‘Which number are we after?’
Andreas checked the scrap of paper. ‘Eight.’
‘It must be that one there, up the driveway with the black car outside. Is that Ken’s car?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Andreas replied. ‘Let’s get out and see.’
They both climbed out of the car and walked towards the house they reckoned might be the one they wanted. It had a ‘For Sale’ sign posted on the front lawn.
‘I’ll handle this bit,’ said Andreas. He rapped on the door.
Around 20 seconds later, a smartly-dressed older woman opened it. She clearly recognised the face immediately facing her but appeared surprised to see him.
‘Hello, Jenny,’ said Andreas, as if turning up unannounced on the front door so early in the morning was the most normal thing in the world.
She was confused. ‘Goodness, Andreas! I haven’t seen you since, well, the funeral. How have you been?’
‘Good, thank you. I hope you are well too.’
Jenny glanced at her wrist and then noticed the other figure standing further back on the driveway. Andreas took the cue.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. This is Graham, my colleague. Graham, this is Jenny Arnold.’
They exchanged awkward smiles of greeting.
‘This isn’t a good time, Andreas. I have to get to work and I’m running behind already.’
‘Oh, I thought you’d retired.’
Her face went suddenly very stern and she let out a small ‘hmphh!’ noise. A nerve had been touched.
Andreas did not pursue the line.
‘I don’t want to make you late. We actually need to see Ken. He’s not at work today – is he home?’
She stared at him, looking for anything other than innocence in the question. She saw no sign. He can’t know.
‘Ken hasn’t lived here for six months. I threw him out. I’m divorcing him.’
The news stunned Andreas for a moment.
‘Jenny, I had no idea. You and Ken seemed made for each other.’
Her features softened, the pain showing.
‘I guess none of us really knows everything about a person, do we? In January, I discovered that Ken had taken out a huge loan without telling me and had used our home as collateral. I was under the impression that we were debt-free becau
se we paid off the mortgage using a large part of my retirement lump sum but then I stumbled on a letter which suggested we owed over quarter of a million. I confronted him with it and he tried to fob me off with some story of it being sent by the building society in error and that he had sorted it out with them and that I should ignore it but I couldn’t. I went in to the building society myself and they confirmed that Ken had taken out a loan for £270,000 last October.
‘Of course, I was furious. I’d trusted Ken to take care of the financial side of things all our married life because that was his area of expertise, but we’d always made the big decisions jointly. I asked him why he’d done it and eventually he confessed to me that he was in big trouble. He was a gambler, Andreas. In all the time we’d known each other, I’d never seen him so much as go near a betting shop but it turned out he was hooked on the online casino sites and he’d lost everything. He told me he’d lost almost £300,000.’
Andreas’s jaw was practically on the block paving of the driveway.
‘That’s why I had to go back to work. He ruined us. If it hadn’t have been for financial help from our daughters, the house might have been repossessed. All I can do now is try to sell so that I can pay off some of what we owe. That’s why I threw him out.’
He moved forward and took hold of Jenny’s hand between his.
‘I’m so sorry for you. I knew nothing about this. I only hope you are back on your feet soon but I really must talk to Ken. Do you know where he lives now?’
A tear came to her eye and she dabbed at it with the back of her other hand.
‘The only communication we have now is through solicitors but I believe he has a rented flat in Handsworth or Darnall, somewhere around there. I’m sorry, Andreas, I really must go.’
‘I understand. Just one more thing, though – who are your solicitors?’
She hesitated, unsure if it was wise to pass on the information, but relented.
‘Tooms, Tonks and Taylor in town.’
He clasped her hand a little tighter for a moment and then released it.
‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, Jenny. Goodbye.’
He backed away with a final sympathetic glance and the two men returned to the car.
Andreas slammed the car door behind him angrily.
‘The lying, deceitful bastard! How could anyone do such a thing?’
He appeared ready to hit something or someone but contented himself with gripping the steering wheel with both hands as if he was throttling two chickens simultaneously.
Graham allowed the worst of the storm to pass before speaking.
‘I understand you’re angry but let’s try to see past that. This is definitely pointing more and more towards Ken being our man. He’s clearly desperate for money. If he’s confessed to losing 300 grand to his wife it’s not beyond the realms of possibility he could be even deeper over his head in debt. Maybe he devised a plan to sell drugs to generate the income he needs and now that he’s getting bolder at it, he’s looking to import larger quantities. I’m afraid it all makes sense.’
A further thought occurred.
‘And could he have embezzled money from the company? Would he have the access to be able to do that?’
Andreas was almost grinding his teeth in fury. This new possibility made him stoop to lay his head against the steering wheel between his hands.
‘I don’t know,’ he said despairingly. ‘I would hope that a discrepancy like that would be picked up by the financial director above him but I don’t know. I’ll have to arrange for someone to go through the numbers.’
He stayed in his pose, locked in silent reflection.
‘If he has cheated me as well, I will kill him myself.’
Graham was growing impatient with this self-indulgent show of rage.
‘Come on, Andreas, we’ve got to get back on this. We need to find Ken and the only lead we’ve got for where he lives now is the name of the solicitors. How do we get the information from them?’
He snapped back into an upright position melodramatically.
‘Yes. I know one of the partners. He owes me a favour.’
Andreas took out his phone.
‘I’ll try Ken’s number again,’ he said.
After only a couple of seconds with the phone to his ear, he brought it back down with a snort.
‘Still turned off.’
He was looking for another number now and pressed the button to dial it.
‘Hello, is Peter Tonks in this morning please?’
He waited for the query to be answered.
‘He is. Good. Could you see if he can spare 10 minutes this morning for Andreas Johnson, please? It’s urgent.’
Another delay. A longer one this time.
‘Splendid! 11 will be fine. I look forward to seeing him.’
Andreas hung up and checked the time. It was almost nine. He turned the key in the ignition.
‘Come on. We’ve time for breakfast.’
25
The rolling tide of disturbing developments had no apparent impact on Andreas’s appetite. They called at a cafe on Ecclesall Road and Graham picked at a single slice of poached egg on toast while the man opposite devoured a generous plate of full English. It was probably wise of him to keep up his strength for whatever challenges lay ahead.
The first of them was to call at the offices of the law firm, Tooms, Tonks and Taylor, to try to persuade them to release the address Ken Arnold had moved to since he had been thrown out of the marital home. Andreas needed no prompting from the sat nav to drive straight to the public car park closest to the offices, just off Bridge Street.
‘Peter and I have known each other for a long time,’ he said as they walked towards the three-storey red-brick building with its triple-T logo set above a black-framed smoked glass revolving door. ‘It’ll be better if I see him alone. He’ll be more likely to tell me what I want to know that way. You can wait in the reception, if you like.’
Graham nodded. He could see the sense in that.
Andreas strode ahead alone towards the silver-fronted reception desk in the large, pristine open floor area. Even the pale floor tiles looked as if a team of highly-motivated cleaners had only recently completed their task.
‘Barbara, my darling, how are you today?’
His ability to slip effortlessly into full charm mode was impressive.
The older woman behind the reception desk smiled in recognition.
‘Good morning, Mr Johnson. Very well, thank you. How are you?’
‘Excellent, excellent. I have an appointment to see Peter at 11.’
The large black and silver wall clock to the left of the desk, a reminder maybe that this was a business where time really was money, indicated it was almost five to.
‘I’ll call through and let his PA know you’re here. Would you like to take a seat for a minute?’
Andreas headed towards the purple chairs beyond the desk and Graham followed. They sank into either end of a soft sofa and stared towards a large, rectangular canvas with a very colourful abstract design on the wall opposite them. Its chaos was utterly at odds with everything around them. The two men studied it without comment.
Two minutes later, a young woman with blonde hair diverted their attention.
‘Mr Johnson? I can take you through to see Mr Tonks now,’ she said with an immaculate smile.
Andreas struggled to extricate himself from the sofa with all dignity intact before taking the cue to follow her towards the ground floor offices. Graham was drawn to look back towards the painting but then decided he had no idea what it was meant to represent and made a conscious effort to look at anything but the painting until Andreas re-emerged, unescorted, almost 15 minutes later.
Graham raised himself from the sofa at the third attempt as Andreas made for the exit without waiting. He increased his pace to catch up, eager to know how the mission had fared.
‘Did you get it?’ he asked as they stepped from the revol
ving door and back onto the street.
Andreas slowed and patted his inside jacket pocket.
‘Peter is a good man,’ he confirmed with a grin. ‘Let’s go and find him.’
They pulled into a space in front of a shuttered-up nail shop. To one side of them was a takeaway called The Peking Dragon, which looked as if no attention had been paid to its outward appearance since the time of the Ming dynasty, and to the other side was a convenience store whose main window was filled almost entirely with posters advertising offers on cheap lager.
‘Is this it?’ asked Graham.
If nothing else, the area certainly gave the appearance of a place where someone who was short of funds might end up.
‘I guess so,’ replied Andreas. ‘We had better find out.’
They got out of the car and Andreas double-locked the doors. There were more shops to their left and, as they walked towards them, Andreas pointed out the number 398 above the door of a flower shop called Blooming Lovely, which had plainly been a long time closed and now looked more of a blooming eyesore.
‘The number we want is 398a, so we can’t be far away,’ he suggested.
The next shop down was a cafe and the proprietor had optimistically set out two metal tables with chairs on the area in front in case any customer felt inclined to sit and sip their coffee in the tepid sunshine and watch the traffic go by on the busy main road. No-one had taken up the opportunity but at least the cafe appeared to be open and so the two men headed towards it in hope of locating the flat.
The only person inside the cafe was an Asian man who was sitting cross-legged on a chair in front of the counter reading a newspaper. He seemed to not notice the two of them walking through the open door, even though he hardly gave the impression of having been particularly overwhelmed by custom.