Ruthless Crimes

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  Sophie shook her head. ‘We only went to one and that was a quick visit for lunch. She didn’t drag me round on a pub crawl. I couldn’t cope anyway, not at my age.’

  ‘Don’t kid me, Mum. I know you and your beer. Good job you’ve got Dad to rein you in. Where are you off to tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m not totally sure. It’s probably up the M1 somewhere, then off towards the Chilterns. I’m there as a sort of observer, the Met is taking the lead. They’re taking a kidnap victim back to where she was held for a week. It’s all a bit peculiar if you ask me.’

  They stopped talking as their food arrived.

  ‘We could do a mini pub-crawl of our own, Mum, once we’ve finished here. There are two great pubs across the road, down Cosmo Passage. Then we could get a cab back to the flat. What do you reckon?’

  ‘You’re a bad influence, young lady.’ Sophie took a mouthful of her spaghetti. ‘But I could be persuaded.’

  It would take her mind off tomorrow’s expedition. Up the haunted highway, through the gloomy woodland, then across the spooky glen to the evil gingerbread house. Or should that be the other way around? Sophie sighed. Maybe she’d already had too much alcohol. But only maybe.

  Chapter 33: The Cottage

  Tuesday morning

  The vehicle convoy pulled up outside a secluded cottage, set back slightly from the narrow lane. There was a gravelled parking area beside the road, already containing two police cars, so the newly arrived vehicles were forced to use the verge. The building stood beyond a grey stone wall. It looked deserted and somewhat neglected. Only the crime-scene tapes fluttering in the breeze added a splash of colour. Sophie had travelled in the second car, along with Paul Baker and the driver, a woman officer from his staff. Corinne Lanston, Steve Lamb and two other Met officers were in front, followed by a minivan containing a number of police security personnel, including several armed officers.

  Sophie climbed out of the car and looked around her. It was exactly as Corinne had described, a single storey stone cottage, the only one in a narrow lane, which meandered away towards open farmland. Sophie noted the old wooden windows. It looked as though the scrawny rambling roses had climbed up the walls at some time in the recent past, but these now looked tattered and neglected, as did the rest of the narrow, weed-infested front garden. A decrepit wooden gate lay half across the entrance. One hard shove and it would probably topple over.

  A faded wooden shutter, covering one of the narrow front windows, was hanging from a single hinge. It was split, long splinters protruding in several places, evidence of having been kicked from the inside. Several uniformed police officers were standing guard at the small porch, one with a gun that he held with the barrel pointed at the ground. Birds sang and the tree branches swayed gently in the light breeze. It was a beautiful setting, yet it seemed full of menace.

  Sophie attached herself to the rear of the group as it made its way into the cottage. Corinne accompanied the lead officer inside, followed by Steve Lamb and Paul Baker. She didn’t say much, apart from a few brief comments. They entered a narrow hallway, dark and forbidding, lit only by the daylight entering through the small glass panes in the door behind them. Sophie glanced at a couple of letters that lay opened on a small shelf near the front door — circulars and a bill. The small group turned immediately left into the room that had served as Corinne’s prison for a week. It was exactly as she had described, bare, with the minimum of furnishings. The walls were painted a faded cream colour. The bare boards of the floor had evidently been varnished at some time in the past but were now worn and grey.

  There they saw the small cubicle with toilet and basin that had allowed Corinne to keep herself clean, and thereby maintain some measure of dignity. Sophie was last to peer in. There were still two rolls of toilet paper sitting on the cistern. The toilet bowl itself looked moderately clean, as did the wash basin, with its single tablet of soap sitting behind one of the taps.

  ‘Have forensics finished?’ Sophie whispered to Paul.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘They’ve had three days. They’ve got everything they need.’

  She flushed the toilet, listening for a second or two as the cistern filled. She ran the hot tap. The water was tepid.

  ‘That was what it was like. No hot water,’ Corinne said to her as she emerged.

  Sophie smiled. ‘Not ideal, but at least you had running water to use and to drink. You must have been thankful for that.’

  ‘Yes. It could have been so much worse.’

  They went back out into the hallway, and then explored the rest of the cottage. Corinne looked as curious as the rest of the group. She’d told them that she’d never had an opportunity to see the rest of the building, its small, dark rooms, the slight smell of mildew and damp in the rear kitchen and lounge — two rooms that must have received little direct sunlight. A narrow stairway at the end of the hall led upstairs to two bedrooms, tucked under the eaves of the cottage, each with a dormer window. The main bathroom was also upstairs.

  Sophie slipped away from the group, made her way downstairs and out into the front garden. It must be around here somewhere. She glanced around the paving slabs that led the few steps to the rickety gate, then the gravel path that ran along the front of the building. No sign. She walked out into the lane, looking left and right. Nothing obvious, but there was a pile of freshly blown leaves and other detritus piled up against the wall at one point. She kicked the rubbish away to reveal a mains water point, the location of the stopcock. She extracted a pen from her bag and used it to lift the cover. There was the water meter she was expecting. She took a note of the reading, closed the lid and made her way back into the cottage. The top letter on the shelf was a water bill. It should have been addressed to the cottage owner by name, but instead bore the irritatingly bland greeting, To the Registered Proprietor. Sophie scanned the details, then looked up as the rest of the group started to descend the stairs. Corinne was looking at her intently, so Sophie smiled once more. This time it was not reciprocated.

  Corinne then led the group across the lane and onto a narrow footpath that vanished into a copse of trees some twenty yards further on. This was the track she’d followed four days previously, heading across some farmland towards a small village about a mile away. As the group followed the path, heading south for the most part, Sophie sidled up to Paul Baker.

  ‘This is a complete pack of lies, Paul. It’s utter tosh, from beginning to end.’

  * * *

  The group arrived at the village green, opposite the local store and post office. Sophie glanced at her watch. Almost twenty minutes. Corinne had told them that she’d half-run and half-walked, covering the distance in less than fifteen. As she was speaking, the shop-owner came out and told them how shocked she’d been the previous week when a bruised, dazed and injured woman had suddenly staggered into her shop.

  ‘It scared me, I can tell you.’ She smiled at Corinne. ‘I’m so glad you’ve recovered so quickly.’ She turned to Paul Baker, his uniform identifying him as a senior police officer. ‘I kept her safe in a back room until the first police car arrived and tried my best to look after her. She was distraught but calmed down a bit after she’d had a cup of tea and a bun. It’s terrible that these things happen. What’s the world coming to?’

  The cars arrived and the various members of the group climbed in, ready to head back to London. Paul, Steve and Sophie lingered at the roadside.

  ‘This is surreal,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s pantomime, pure and simple.’

  ‘Okay, I take your point about the water use. Could there be another explanation?’ Paul asked.

  Sophie shrugged. ‘I can’t think of one. She was there for more than a week. She would have flushed the loo, what, ten times a day? Each flush uses about seven litres. That’s about six hundred litres. Then she told us she washed every day and washed her clothes twice. That must be another fifty litres at least. But that meter showed no significant change from what was on the bill, record
ed several weeks earlier. It should have shown almost another cubic metre, surely? It doesn’t add up, Paul.’

  ‘How did you calculate that? I’m not disputing your total, Sophie, although it will have to be checked.’

  Sophie chuckled. ‘It’s what being married to a maths teacher does to you. Martin does conversion calculations for fun. Well, he calls it fun. I call it extremely sad. He did that one recently when we changed over to a water meter, now that Jade’s no longer with us. She loved her baths and now she’s not at home, we’re using far less water. And while we’re talking of washing, there’s another thing. Think about the tablet of soap. To me it looked as though it had hardly been used, yet the fragrant Ms Lanston claimed to have washed every day and used it several times to launder her underwear and blouse. She’s having us on. It wasn’t just the abduction that was staged. So was this supposed incarceration. The real question is, why? What’s her game?’

  ‘We can do pretty much anything we want to keep tabs on her, because of the national security angle,’ Paul said. ‘But she’s got powerful friends. We can’t afford to get it wrong.’

  ‘I’ll keep away from now on. She spotted me outside the cottage, when I was looking for the water meter. Luckily it wouldn’t have been visible behind the front wall, but she must have wondered what I was doing out there. Don’t underestimate her, Paul. She’s very devious and very clever. And we face a real problem. If she wasn’t here last week, under lock and key in that cottage, where was she? And how much did she manage to learn about our investigations?’

  Chapter 34: Occasion to Swear

  ‘We’ve been bloody lucky,’ Dave Nash said. ‘It was almost too faint to see anything, but we think one of the dyes in the ink stuck harder to the paper than the others. Given the right treatment, this shows up.’

  Barry, Rae and Tommy were all at the forensic labs, looking at a screen showing a small shop receipt with several lines of characters faintly visible.

  ‘I can’t make anything out,’ Barry said.

  ‘Neither could we at first,’ Dave said. ‘But we are nothing if not painstaking.’ He ignored the sound of mock coughing and choking coming from the two senior detectives and moved to the next slide. This was much clearer.

  ‘This is enhanced further,’ he added.

  ‘Tyndall’s Chandlers,’ Tommy said. ‘And is that a Southampton address? That’s where old Andy Coates said Dorry O’Brian had moved to.’ He leaned forward and peered at the screen.

  Dave continued. ‘As far as we can tell, it’s the receipt for some clothes, a dark blue tracksuit and a set of waterproof outers. Does that tie in with what you expected?’

  Rae nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, yes. That’s exactly what the people on the boat said the crewman was wearing. It’s why we thought those tracksuit trousers might be his. They were found close to the coast path. What else can you tell us?’

  ‘It’s what you thought. They’d been immersed in seawater. The grit and bits of seaweed were exactly right for the bit of shoreline the boat washed up on.’

  ‘No DNA though?’ Barry asked.

  Dave shook his head. ‘Nothing so far. I’ve got someone still looking, but don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘I think Tommy and I need to pay a visit to that chandlery,’ Rae added.

  * * *

  The chandlers were an integral part of a relatively new quayside development on the River Itchen, just to the east of Southampton city centre, well away from the main docks in the west. Rae parked facing out over the sparkling water, dotted with boats and yachts. The whole of the Solent waterside was a mass of marinas, quays and docks, interspersed with nature reserves and country parks.

  Tyndall’s Chandlers was a new building that looked across a brick-paved walkway to the water’s edge. Spacious as a small warehouse, it seemed to sell everything that a boating person could ever want, and more. Rae asked Tommy to take the lead. He needed the experience to boost his confidence, which was still woefully lacking. He identified himself to a member of staff and asked to see the manager.

  John Duke was a tanned, roguish-looking man in his late fifties, short and stocky.

  ‘We’re trying to find some details about a purchase that was made a few weeks ago,’ Tommy explained. ‘We’ve got the receipt although it got wet, so it’s badly faded.’ He produced a copy of the enhanced image and handed it to John. ‘It’s for some waterproof clothing and a tracksuit. Can you help us?’

  John took the sheet and studied it carefully. ‘Fairly late on a Tuesday afternoon,’ he said. ‘And the till operator was Naomi. You’re in luck, she’s in today. I’ll find her for you.’

  He went over to a young woman on a stepladder, tidying boxes on a high shelf. She took the paper and studied it.

  ‘Yeah, I remember this one. He was a tall, thin bloke with really piercing eyes. He made me kinda nervous. He paid in cash, which is unusual these days.’

  Tommy frowned. ‘Oh. You sure? We thought it was a bearded man. Irish accent?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Of course. The one I described was the guy who paid. He made me a bit nervous. The other guy was the one the clothes were for. I think he had a bit of a squint. Would that be right?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Tommy looked relieved.

  ‘You didn’t happen to pick up on any names by any chance, did you?’ Rae asked. ‘Did they talk to each other at all?’

  Naomi thought hard. ‘I think one was Phil. The Irish guy, the one with the squint, said something like, “that’s the least you can do, Phil, buy me some half-decent clothes.” I can remember the guy who paid, Phil, looking annoyed. I’d never seen them before, and they haven’t been back since. Are they in trouble or something?’

  ‘We don’t know. That’s why we’re trying to trace them. Did you see them get into a car or van after they left?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, sorry. You’re lucky I remember that much. It’s usually too busy for any customers to stick in my mind. They did, mainly because they were such an odd pair.’

  The detectives thanked the two staff and left.

  ‘Phil, eh,’ Rae murmured. ‘Well, it’s added a name, at least. And we know that the clothes did belong to that boatman. We’re getting somewhere, Tommy. Slowly but surely.’

  * * *

  On the way back to the incident room in Weymouth, Rae decided to pay a quick visit to Charmaine Biggs. Maybe she’d remembered something else about either the woman who’d threatened her with a knife as a teenager, or the young man at the centre of the adolescent love tussle. She rang the doorbell twice but there was no answer. Rae started to walk around the side of the house, stopping when a woman called out to her from the neighbouring garden. She’d been clearing dead flowers from a bed. She asked Rae who she was.

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ Rae said and showed her warrant card.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find them in, not for a few days at least,’ the woman said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘They both left the day before yesterday. They had bags with them. I asked if they were off on holiday and Charmaine said yes. A surprise break was what she said. She was a bit vague about how long they’d be gone.’

  ‘Did she say where they were going?’

  ‘I expect it was on one of their sailing holidays. They keep a yacht down in the harbour. If the weather looks good, they often sail to places along the south coast. They even get as far as the Channel Islands and France.’

  Rae was starting to feel worried. ‘What kind of car do they have?’

  ‘A big thing. You know, one of those huge German tanks. Well, that’s what my husband calls them.’

  ‘A BMW?’

  ‘That’s it. A big dark blue monstrosity.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Maureen Callaghan. I’m sixty-three, fit and a vegetarian,’ she said proudly.

  ‘Thanks. Maureen, what’s Charmaine’s husband’s name?’

  ‘Philip. He manages a used car dealership in town.
We always get our cars through him because he says he can get us any make of car we want at a good price. But he specialises in used BMWs.’

  Rae beckoned to Tommy and they made their way back to the car. She rarely swore, but now she was doing so repeatedly under her breath, driving fast back to the incident room. The boss wasn’t going to be happy.

  The bosses weren’t happy, either of them. Barry sat with his head in his hands for several moments and Sophie, just arrived back from London, went over to the window and stood staring out. She took a deep breath and turned back to face Rae, who was pale by now.

  ‘How did we miss it?’ she asked.

  ‘You mean, ma’am, how did I miss it? It was me that interviewed her. And I still can’t believe it. She had me totally fooled.’ She paused. Sighed. ‘I don’t know what to say. Do you want my resignation?’

  Sophie realised that Rae was being serious. ‘Absolutely not. It really isn’t that bad, Rae. Anyway, I’ve never had cause to doubt your judgement.’

  ‘Up to now,’ Rae added despondently.

  * * *

  Sophie’s request for a search warrant produced one of the speediest responses she’d ever had. Within two hours, a search and forensic team arrived at the Biggs’s house in Poole. Maureen Callaghan was at the door within a few seconds of their arrival. She quickly spotted Rae.

  ‘Don’t bash it down. I’ve got keys, Sergeant. I keep a set for Charmaine, and she does the same for me. It’s a lot safer than hiding them under a flowerpot.’

  Sophie glanced anxiously at Barry as he took the proffered set of keys and unlocked the door.

  ‘We’ll be careful, Mrs Callaghan,’ Rae said. She still felt sick.

  The house, a three-bedroomed semi, was clear of anything that might be deemed suspicious. There were no laptops with suspect data, no weapons secreted in dark cupboards or hidden under floorboards, no unusual planning documents in locked cabinets. Even the garden shed contained only garden tools and the garage an old bicycle, an unused puncture repair kit and various bits of boating paraphernalia. The only suspect items in the house were a set of walking maps, with some sections of the Dorset coast path marked in blue ink. These were on a shelf next to a pair of binoculars.