Bold Lies
Page 9
‘Did the white van men leave with anything?’ Kelly asked.
‘She said a few suitcases, and she added that the men looked “rough”.’
‘Ballsy. Not fazed about the daylight, and a white van isn’t exactly covert. How did they gain access to the property?’
Matt had already asked the same question. ‘No sign of forced entry,’ he confirmed.
‘I wonder what Alexandros was doing in the shed. Has it been searched?’ Kelly scrolled through information on several screens.
‘Yes, and there was a key rack with one empty hook.’
‘The garage?’ she guessed.
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
‘So, Alexandros panics because he knows that George is dead. Then he goes to the garage and finds Emily and Mike.’
‘He left the door open so they’d be found.’
Another call came through; it was from the general appeal for Alexandros Skarparis.
‘Guv, I’m at a Thai restaurant on Bethnal Green Road. There was a table booked for four under the name of Mike Hudson for Monday night at 7 p.m. They were regulars, but didn’t show. Mr Skarparis turned up late and was surprised to find that his colleagues weren’t there. He waited for about half an hour and then left.’
Kelly turned to Matt. ‘Time of death for Emily and Mike?’
‘Early Monday evening, between 4 and 8 p.m.’
‘Where was Alexandros before that?’
‘He knocked off work at midday.’
Matt called the team at Ravensword and asked them to check the footage for Monday afternoon. Perhaps they could work out where Alexandros had gone.
After twenty minutes, they had a trace on him leaving Ravensword, heading to Bethnal Green. The trail went dead somewhere in Bethnal Green, and they lost him.
‘Let’s check the CCTV for the estate where the garage is.’
Matt contacted yet another team, which was sitting inside the Tower Hamlets council building. So far, they’d found no CCTV camera facing in the direction of the garage, but there was one facing the car park opposite. They had positives on three of the four cars for Monday afternoon. Emily had arrived at 11 a.m., Mike at midday and Alexandros just before 1 p.m. Alexandros left at 3.10, and it was confirmed that Mike and Emily’s vehicles were still there, wheel-locked, and complete with parking warnings.
It was a great result.
‘So, George was renting the garage and he and three colleagues were working on something private. If they had a primate, they must have been testing something.’
‘Let’s find out if Ravensword knew about it.’ Matt grabbed his jacket. Finally they were going out.
Chapter 17
The patrol car that took them across the city to the London Docklands was even more technologically resonant of something built by NASA than the incident room. Kelly had been inside plenty of vehicles kitted out with multiple radios, blues, computers and coffee stands; but this was something else. Three TV screens were set up so they could carry on their work from the back seat. The leather interior was reminiscent of a top-end night club, and she couldn’t even hear the engine. The thing was a beast.
‘Is it armour-plated? It feels heavy.’
Matt nodded. There was a glass barrier between them and the driver, and she felt as though she were in a mobile conference suite.
‘You’re missed, Kelly. Why don’t you come back?’
‘Don’t start, Matt. I’m not in the mood.’
He smiled. ‘You haven’t lost your fire. That’s why you’re an amazing officer. You’re wasted in the sticks. I’m impressed by your track record. I did ring when you exposed that trafficking circle, and that weirdo serial killer – “the Teacher”, was it?’
‘I know you did. I ignored your calls. And stop calling Cumbria “the sticks”. It’s three hours from here on the train.’
‘Sorry. Why did you ignore me? I just wanted to offer my congratulations; they were massive cases. I actually wanted your advice about a killer in London around the same time.’
She turned away from the screens and looked at him properly for the first time. He was well built and she knew he worked out. His brown hair was thinning on top and greying at the sides. His skin was lifeless and his eyes were vacant, as if harbouring great sadness. He was nowhere near as attractive as she remembered, and she knew she must have been in love with the thrill of working cases together in a super-heated environment. She thought of Johnny: his bright, open eyes, his fell-kissed skin, and what he looked like when he stepped out of a lake. She stared out of the window and prayed the journey would be quick.
The factory was as colossal as she’d expected it to be. Companies like Ravensword turned over billions of dollars per year, and Kelly surmised that much of their profit went into the upkeep of these vast buildings across the planet. They parked in the same car park where Alexandros had made his phone call to the switchboard on Tuesday. They still had a walk of half a kilometre to the main entrance, and once inside, they showed their badges. The staff were clearly aware that the investigation into their colleagues’ deaths was in full swing, and the place was crawling with uniformed and plain-clothes police. The atmosphere was sombre.
The arrival of the SIO always caused a stir, and the uniforms who recognised Matt stopped what they were doing to greet him. Matt acknowledged them officially and swiftly. Kelly, bringing up the rear, admired the respect he commanded. He’d done well.
They were shown into an office and greeted by a man in a suit, who asked them to sit down. They declined. The suit identified himself as the head of media relations. It really wasn’t helpful.
‘We’re not journalists,’ Matt said.
‘I have several hats, I—’
‘We need to have a serious conversation with somebody who knew the work of the neurocellular lab well. We’ll wait here.’
‘I can answer any questions you might have. We’re being as transparent as we can be, and your officers are in the neurocellular lab now.’
‘Somebody from HR would be a good start.’ Matt wasn’t giving in.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ Kelly said quietly. Matt understood.
She left, watched by the suit, and wandered down the corridor. She was aware straight away that somebody had followed her out of the media office, and she turned around.
‘I can find my own way, thank you,’ she said. The young man who had obviously been detailed to watch her nodded and dropped back.
Kelly made her way back to reception and studied a map on the wall. When asked who she was, she flashed her badge and the enquirer backed off. She didn’t make a fuss, and didn’t stand out. These pharmaceuticals were too secretive, and she needed to talk to the scientists who oiled the machine, not the suits who looked after the money. She gained a quick understanding of how the factory was laid out: it consisted of several lift shafts serving different floors. It reminded her of MI5. The labs were all in the bowels of the building. She made her way to HR, which she knew would be run by women. This could go either way: she’d find either solidarity or bare hostility.
Luckily it was the former. She accepted a coffee and chatted to the three staff on duty. She was open about who she was and made the women comfortable. A printout of a cartoon stuck on the wall titled Human Remains Department depicted a conspiratorial gaggle of women picking over limbs. Kelly thought it amusing. It was supposed to be.
‘What were they like?’ she eased in.
‘So nice! All of them!’
Kelly heard stories of how George gave people lifts home, and Emily brought in cakes, and Mike spoke about his teenagers all the time. The women were unanimous in their verdict that Alexandros was the company heart-throb, although this was informal and in the strictest confidence. Kelly laughed companionably and listened to them pouring their hearts out. It was a position that very few people found themselves in: having to speak to a police officer about the murder of work colleagues, and dear ones at that, or so it sounded.
‘Nothing at all. Apart from everybody wanting to sit next to Alexandros at the Christmas party.’
‘Ah, the Christmas party!’ Kelly echoed. ‘And do you think Mike and Emily were both happily married? I know that’s a weird question – how would you know, right? But anything at all is a help at this stage.’ She had begun her real line of questioning, but the women hadn’t noticed.
‘They brought their partners and kids in on family days, and they were just lovely. George never remarried.’
‘After his daughter died and he divorced?’
The women were impressed that she knew so much.
‘Yes. It was so sad. He was such a lovely man, he would have made a fantastic husband.’ One of the women passed her colleague a tissue and she blew her nose.
‘Do you think we’re safe? No one is telling us.’
‘I’m sure you are. I can’t tell you our lines of inquiry, but I have faith that Ravensword has in place more than adequate security procedures for staff.’ It was true but bullshit at the same time. Every company had procedures, but that didn’t mean they worked, otherwise they wouldn’t have three bodies, one still in Ted’s freezer in Carlisle. She felt an instant pang for home and couldn’t believe that this was only her first full day here.
‘Did the team keep themselves to themselves, or did they have other close colleagues? Do you all socialise separately?’
‘No, we’re quite a close bunch. I know each lab is a bit territorial, but we’re all friendly.’
‘What about management?’
The women looked at one another.
‘Something juicy?’ Kelly asked. Two of the women giggled.
‘It’s nothing,’ the other said sternly.
‘Really? It might not be,’ Kelly said.
‘It’s well known that the biggest budgets go to the biggest tits.’
‘Ida!’
‘And the biggest tits are in which department? I know George didn’t have any.’ Kelly raised her eyebrows conspiratorially and the women all smiled.
‘You might want to check out the head of primates, Professor Cooper. She’s very close to the current CEO.’
‘And the last one.’
‘Thank you,’ Kelly said. ‘And thank you for the coffee.’ She asked where the head of primates might be located and left.
She already knew from inquiries that the company’s CEO, Philip Tooting, was in Bermuda on holiday. Three employees killed and one missing should have brought him home, but apparently he was seeing out the remaining five days. Kelly thought it odd, callous even.
Tooting’s offices were, of course, on the top floor, overlooking the Docklands. The view from the vast reception area was breath-taking. It was a megalomaniac’s paradise, and Kelly imagined that the CEO must stand up here and find it difficult not to congratulate himself frequently on his astounding success. She chatted to some of the reception staff and left with the feeling that the semblance of respect she had detected was in fact more accurately fear. It was in the body language, the fake laughs, the furtive eyes, as well as the fact that they had little knowledge of Tooting the man, but an encyclopaedic understanding of his expectations. They logged on to computers to tell her his mission statement, they paused when asked if they found him easy to work for, and they peered around before sharing even minor details. It was disturbing, to say the least.
Her visit to the primate lab was equally unconvincing. The technicians not only seemed harassed by the noise of the place, with monkeys screaming from their cages and metal rattling and echoing around the sterile room; they also appeared to be overworked.
‘They sound distressed,’ Kelly said, nodding at the animals, and it was true. It was like a zoo.
‘Not at all. Monkeys are noisy creatures. They’re well cared for; we have strict guidelines and inspections. They’re not keen on new faces, that’s all. They have amazing senses and can probably perceive your unease.’
‘I’m not uneasy.’
‘Let’s take you somewhere quieter.’
Kelly asked three staff about the neurocellular lab and the answers were all the same: George, Emily, Mike and Alexandros were well liked, and there was no one who might want to hurt them.
‘They weren’t the most high-profile section in the complex at the moment, but they played a very prominent role in the company’s success.’
‘So which section is high profile?’
‘Malaria is hot right now, but asthma and cancer are the big earners. It’s all political.’
Kelly appreciated their candour, but when she asked where Professor Cooper was, a perceptible iciness crept into their demeanour. Apparently the professor left her lab whenever she pleased for as long as she fancied. Kelly was getting the distinct impression that neither the CEO nor the head of primates was particularly well liked.
Her next stop was the neuro-cellular lab. If the mood about the place as a whole was gloomy, then the atmosphere where the victims had worked was wretched. Two technicians packed belongings into boxes, and both had to stop occasionally to blow their noses. A few uniforms were working on computers; Kelly recognised two young detectives from Matt’s team.
‘Hi, guys, any luck?’
They shook their heads. ‘We’ve had five different scientists helping us translate all of this stuff into English. Apart from experiments, tables and results, it’s just time sheets, shift patterns and pay grades.
‘All as it should be then?’
‘Yes, guv.’
‘So what exactly were they working on?’
‘Mood disorders.’
‘Mental illness?’
One of the technicians looked up. ‘No, I’m sorry, I need to explain.’ Kelly got the impression that the detectives had already had the lecture that she was about to become privy to. ‘Mental illness is like a long-term acute mis-wiring, but mood swings are short-term chronic episodes. For example, depression isn’t a mental illness, it’s a mood disorder. Being drunk isn’t a mental illness, but intoxication makes one act like a lunatic.’
Kelly nodded. ‘Carry on.’
‘George’s team was working on neurotransmitters, and the chemicals that switch them on and off.’
‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.’
‘It’s probably best if I show you the diagram I drew for your colleagues.’
The two detectives looked at Kelly and signalled their approval; it had clearly helped them, so she decided to give it a go. The diagram looked like a sketch of a broken rope. The technician explained that since every event in the body was electrical, pulses needed to jump the gaps in nerve endings known as synapses. He pointed to the broken rope and Kelly tried to imagine the size of a nerve.
‘Hold out your hand.’
She did so.
‘If I was to hold a naked flame underneath your hand, you’d feel pain, but quicker than that, you’d have an overwhelming instinct to pull away. That’s an electrical message. The same is true for feelings: they’re just messages travelling around the body, acting upon what we know and have learned already. So toddlers know very little and act in predictable ways. Adults are trickier because we’ve probably been hurt in love, we know what it’s like to make a prat of ourselves drunk, and we also know that happiness might be round the next corner even though today is awful. So we use past experience to make decisions.’
All three detectives were mesmerised by the technician and nodded along like puppies.
‘George’s team was working on how we can make those electrical connections less or more intense, depending on the need.’
‘I think I get it. Do you mean like antidepressants?’ Kelly asked.
‘Kind of, but something more complex that could actually train the brain into remembering. Antidepressants simply mask stuff, like a magic trick, but they’re not a long-term cure. I could go into reward pathways and
the dopamine highway, but I think that’s probably a bit too much.’
They all nodded.
‘Thank you for your explanation,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s been really helpful. Is it a big budget? I know the highest earner for the company is asthma drugs, but what’s the business of depression like?’
‘Controversial.’
‘Meaning?’
‘If we found a long-term cure, the money made from the short-term magic trick wouldn’t be as impressive, but that’s just my cynical opinion, and cynicism isn’t really appreciated round here. I’m sorry, it’s been an upsetting couple of days.’
‘Are you aware of George perhaps working elsewhere apart from Ravensword? Did he mention a private lab to you? What about Emily and Mike?’
The technician hesitated. ‘Actually, that’s really strange. A couple of weeks ago, Emily said something a bit odd. I was standing right behind her. They were going to play squash and then go for a meal: they regularly did that, the four of them. Emily said to George, “I’ll see you at the lab.” When I took a double take, she said it was a mistake and we laughed it off. I never thought anything of it. Were they working somewhere else?’
‘We don’t know, it’s something we have to investigate. Did George ever mention the garage he rented in Bethnal Green?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know where they played squash?’
‘I think it was Bethnal Green, because they raved about the Thai restaurant there.’
As Kelly made her way out of the lab, she googled squash clubs in Bethnal Green. As she suspected, there were none. Next she uploaded HOLMES onto her iPad; the dynamic reasoning software was accessible to anyone working the case, and she could see updates coming in live. She cross-referenced the controlled drugs residues found at the garage with what was available in George’s lab, and got a match. She put a call through to the detectives in the lab and asked if drugs used in the developmental phase could be easily stolen, or was it like in a hospital where every minute vial had to be signed for. She had a reply straight away from the technician: before drugs became manufactured in combinations they knew were safe, all lab workers had free access to them, though it would be difficult to steal large amounts and he didn’t know anyone who would.