‘I took a chance that a bank manager called Patrick Haynes wasn’t going to have Chinese heritage,’ she said severely. ‘The joke was to make me feel relaxed, not to take the piss out of the Anti-Terrorism Unit. I take what they do very seriously. So, I made the ID and I did a fake warrant for disclosure.’
‘Tell me you’re making this up. Because I can see both our careers disappearing in smoke at this point.’
‘I’m not making it up. There’s nothing that tracks this back to me.’
‘Except that you’re the only Chinese female officer in Bradfield and they presumably have CCTV?’
‘I kept my head down. And I put on my posh Radio Four accent. But there won’t be any blowback, I promise. I put the fear of God and the Official Secrets Act into Mr Patrick Haynes. And he dug out the details on the card. Purchased by one Norman Jackson five months ago. I couldn’t see the balance and transactions on that screen, only his name and address. He’s a plumber.’
‘Hence the boiler?’
‘Got it in one. Hence the boiler. I called his number this morning and asked where he was working so I could drop off a part for a job I’d booked in with his office girl. I was able to reassure the bank manager that the nice plumber he’d loaned thirty-five grand to wasn’t going to use the money to buy guns or bombs to start his very own Harriestown jihad.’ She frowned, considering. ‘I don’t think he’ll take it any further. I think I struck the right note of authority plus holy terror.’
‘I imagine you did. I’m amazed, Stacey. Jeez. All the same, I don’t think you should get out from behind your desk too often. You missed Blake’s grandstanding performance this morning. Basically, he’s coming for us. And as Kevin pointed out, when we bend the rules and don’t get results, we put ourselves at risk.’
‘But I got a result, Paula.’
‘You did. A plumber in Harriestown. Where did that come from?’
‘It’s weird but it’s not as scary as a bunch of gangsters on the other side of the world. This guy lives three streets away from you. He’s married, he’s got his own little business. He employs three other guys and he’s rated four stars on Google. He’s probably some lone weirdo who crossed paths with Torin and created this whole fantasy relationship in his head.’
‘One for Tony to explain to us,’ Paula said, taking the right-hand fork that led them into Harriestown. ‘People are weird.’
‘You have to promise not to thump him.’
Paula had a sudden thought. ‘But what are we going to do? We can’t arrest him. I don’t want Torin dragged through the courts.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Stacey said. ‘I think we threaten him with arrest. Offer to throw the book at him. Then we talk about restorative justice. Pay Torin his money back and never do anything like this again or we’ll give you a taste of your own medicine and plaster it all over social media and the local press that he’s a blackmailing pervert. Between us, I think we can scare the living shit out of him.’
‘Is that enough, though? What’s to stop him going after somebody else? How do we know he isn’t already targeting other people?’
Stacey looked startled. ‘I thought this was just about Torin?’
‘Well, yes, it was, but I don’t want this guy thinking he can get away with it with other people.’
They drove in silence for a few minutes. ‘Torin’s still a minor, right?’
‘Yeah, he’s fourteen.’
‘I’m thinking we could caution him and put him on ViSOR. Torin doesn’t have to come into it at all. With a caution, it’s only about him admitting the offence. There’s no court case, no reporting of it. But we thoroughly bugger his life up.’
She had a point, Paula thought. With a caution, Jackson could be put on the sex offenders list for two years. He wouldn’t be able to move house or change his job or his bank details without reporting to the police. ‘You’re getting worryingly good at buggering people’s lives up.’
‘It’s a digital world, Paula. I own that space. No more Ms Nice Guy.’
There was a white van in the driveway of 71 Camborne Street, JACKSON PLUMBING emblazoned on the side. Paula found a parking space a hundred metres away and the two women walked back down the pavement. ‘I’m channelling Cagney and Lacey right now,’ Paula said with a swagger.
Stacey groaned. ‘That means I’m stuck with Harve, right?’
They turned into the driveway as a heavy-set man in battered jeans and a checked shirt emerged from the side of the house and made for the van. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing complex intertwined Celtic tattoos on his forearms. He glanced at them briefly and carried on sliding the door back. He looked to be in his mid-forties, strands of grey in his untidy brown hair. He had the florid complexion of a man who drinks too much too often and a soft belly to match.
‘Mr Jackson?’ Paula called. ‘Norman Jackson?’
He withdrew his upper body from inside the van and looked them up and down. ‘That’s me. How can I help you, ladies?’
Local accent, genial tone, friendly smile. First impressions, Paula knew, could be deceptive. He didn’t look like someone who was due a good kicking. ‘I am Detective Sergeant McIntyre and this is Detective Constable Stacey Chen. Norman Jackson, I am arresting you on suspicion of blackmail and of possessing indecent images of a minor. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
She’d barely got past the introductions when he started spluttering. ‘What the – I don’t – What do you mean – Bloody hell, what is this? Blackmail? Indecent images? You’ve got the wrong bloke. I haven’t a bloody clue —’
‘Is there somewhere we can go to talk about this?’ Stacey cut in. ‘Or would you rather accompany us to a police station for questioning?’
He looked stunned. ‘This is a mistake.’ He looked around wildly. ‘Is this a wind-up?’
‘You’re under arrest, Mr Jackson. What’s it to be? Here or at the station?’ Paula kept her voice level.
He bit his lip. ‘The house owners are at work. We can talk inside. But you’re making a terrible mistake. I’ve no idea —’
‘Save it,’ Stacey said. They followed him into a kitchen where the cupboard under the sink stood empty, the U-bend missing. Tools were scattered on the draining board. They sat at a small dining table, the two women facing Jackson. Stacey took out her phone and set it to record. She identified everyone present and the time and place of the recording. Then she silently held out a sheet of paper with the card details laid out in thick black letters.
He frowned. ‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t recognise this information?’ Paula laced her voice with disbelief.
‘No. What is it?’
‘A sum of money was extorted from a fourteen-year-old boy. It was paid on to this prepaid credit card.’
He shrugged. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘The card was originally purchased from your bank account. It’s registered to you. You are the legal owner of the card that was used to extort money. The money was paid to prevent you posting indecent images of an underage boy online,’ Stacey said.
Paula leaned forward, getting in his face. She could smell the rank coffee breath. ‘There’s no hiding place. We have you bang to rights.’
But their words were having the opposite effect to the one they expected. First he’d looked relieved, then as Stacey had continued, he’d looked upset. Not afraid, upset. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I did buy a card. I put fifty pounds on it. But it wasn’t for me. It was for our lass. She was going on a school trip to London and she didn’t want to take cash.’ Then his face cleared. ‘She must have lost it or had it stolen. She’d have been too embarrassed to admit to it.’ He beamed at them. ‘See, I told you it was all a misunderstanding.’
‘You must think I came up the River Brade on a bike,’ Paula said. ‘
Is that the best you can do?’
‘It’s the truth.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, it’s nearly dinner time. We can go over to the school and talk to Elsa. My daughter. She’ll be able to explain.’
Paula and Stacey exchanged glances. ‘Are you sure you want to involve your daughter in this? These are very serious charges,’ Paula said. ‘If this goes to court, on the evidence we’ve got, you’d be looking at five years. Maybe more. But if you’re willing to admit the charges, we would consider a caution. That would avoid your victim having to testify in court. You’d go on the sex offenders register for two years. But nobody would have to know. Unless you committed another offence, obviously.’
‘Are you not listening to me? I’ve not done anything wrong. I’m not admitting to something I didn’t do. Go on the sex offenders register? You must be mad! I’ve read the kind of things that happen to people on that list. Dog shit through the door, graffiti on the house, broken windows. I’m not having that. Not for something that’s nothing to do with me.’ There was a rising note of indignation in his voice and his colour was heightening. He looked like he might stroke out before they could charge him.
But Paula’s heart was hardening against him. What kind of creep tried to hide his sexual offences behind his daughter? She wasn’t keen to put Elsa Jackson through this, but if that was the only way to nail Norman Jackson, she’d do it in a heartbeat after what he’d done to Torin. ‘Let’s go, then. Cuff him, Stacey.’
‘What? You can’t do that.’
‘You’re under arrest. That’s what we do with people who are under arrest,’ Paula snapped.
‘Don’t humiliate Elsa in front of her mates. Look, this is all a misunderstanding, but mud sticks. Have some common decency.’ He looked as if he might burst into tears. But then, criminals were capable of weeping too.
Stacey caught her eye and gave a tiny shake of the head, as if to remind Paula that this wasn’t a real arrest. Paula sighed. ‘OK. But one wrong move, and I will taser you. Which, believe me, will be a lot more humiliating than wearing a pair of plastic cuffs.’
They walked him out to the chequerboard-patterned police car and put him in the back seat. Paula leaned in. ‘Where is Elsa at school?’
‘Kenton Vale High.’
Paula felt a high ringing noise keening in her head. Kenton Vale High was the school Torin attended. This crime was coming closer and closer to home. And she might be skating on very thin ice.
58
W
hen the phone rang, Alvin was the only person in the office. Carol had gone to North Yorkshire for a press conference, Kevin was canvassing wedding guests again. Karim had gone for a bite of lunch with his cousin who was visiting from Glasgow and Paula and Stacey were on the missing list. Alvin was desperate for lunch himself but he’d have to wait till one of the others came back. That was the trouble with a small team; you had to cover each other’s backs. So while his stomach rumbled, he tried to distract himself with going through his notes yet again to see whether he’d missed anything.
Alvin was conscious that he was the person on the squad with most to prove. Paula, Kevin and Stacey had been on Carol’s previous MIT here in Bradfield. They’d worked together for years and cracked a series of horrifying cases in the city and elsewhere. Karim was only a beginner; he could afford to make the occasional mistake and have it chalked up to his lack of experience. But Alvin had been in the job for as long as Paula. There was a level of performance expected of him, even though he’d come to Bradfield from a much smaller force. Fewer than five murders a year on average, and you could rely on most of them being domestics or drunken young men careless of the damage they inflicted. It hadn’t been hard to be the best detective sergeant there. Nobody had been more surprised than Alvin when helping Carol’s team out on a case had ended in an offer to join the new ReMIT.
But with the best will in the world, re-reading his notes was getting him nowhere. Hopefully they’d soon get a call from the lads in Leeds to say they’d positively ID’d Eileen Walsh and then they could get properly stuck in. When the phone finally rang, he was convinced that was what it was, so it took him a few seconds to work out what he was actually hearing. ‘I’m sorry, could you say that again?’
‘I’m Denise from Customer Services at Freshco. I’m ringing about the photo.’ The voice was nasal, the accent broad Bradfield, which didn’t make Alvin’s comprehension any easier.
‘What photo is that, please?’
‘Am I talking to the right person? Is this… the Regional Major Incident Team?’
‘That’s right, I’m Detective Sergeant Ambrose.’
‘Lovely. Only, a Sergeant McIntyre left a card saying if anybody recognised the photo they should give her a call. Is she there?’
‘Sorry, she’s out of the office right now, but we’re working on the same case. Is this the Freshco where’ – he searched his brain – ‘Claire Garrity worked?’
‘That’s right. Well, the thing is, I came on for my shift and I took one look at it and I thought, “That’s him.”’
‘“That’s him?” That’s who?’
‘The man who complained. I told you, I’m on Customer Services.’ She spoke as if he was a toddler to whom she was explaining the self-evident for the third time. ‘He complained there was a foreign object in his bread. I had to bring Claire across to talk to him. She ran the bakery, right? So he was demanding to know how a child’s sock got into his stone-baked San Francisco sourdough.’
‘A child’s sock?’ Alvin had the sense that this conversation was getting away from him.
‘He kicked off good and proper. I mean, you can’t blame someone for that. You don’t expect to find a child’s sock in the middle of a loaf, do you? Especially when there’s no way of telling if it’s clean or dirty and you’ve already eaten three slices off the end. He was livid. He said his girlfriend had been so horrified she’d thrown up her breakfast. And that’s not the way you want to start your day, is it?’ Clearly, Denise was not going to fall into the category of reluctant witness.
‘No,’ he said weakly. ‘So this man in the photo DS McIntyre left? You’re sure he’s the one who complained about the bread?’
‘As sure as I can be. He wasn’t wearing glasses when he came in, but it looks like him. I remember him so well because it was an interesting complaint. Mostly it’s the same old, same old. A mistake on the till. Shoddy stitching on the own-brand clothes. Food gone off before the sell-by. But a sock in a sourdough loaf? That was a day to remember. And of course, when he came back in, well, that was soon after Claire died. You knew she’d died, right? Well, anyway, that made it even more memorable because of course he wanted to talk to Claire. To thank her. And I had to tell him she’d passed away so tragically.’
She paused for a respectful moment and Alvin grabbed his chance. ‘Let me get this straight. The man in the photo came in to complain there was a sock in his bread and Claire Garrity spoke to him about it?’
‘That’s what I said. She was very apologetic. She said she’d leave no stone unturned to find out what had happened. Obviously she gave him another loaf and said she’d have head office get in touch about compensation. Anyway, it turned out the sock had fallen into the dough mix by accident. One of the bakers had bought some kids’ clothes earlier and nobody really understands how it happened but it did. Anyway, he came back in a while later to thank us for taking him seriously. Head office had been on to him and he said they were giving him compensation and he wanted to thank Claire personally. Only he couldn’t, could he? Because she was dead.’
‘Very tragic.’ And now for the $64,000-dollar question. ‘Do you have a note of this man’s name, by any chance?’
‘It’ll be on file. I can look it up. Is there a reward?’
Alvin rolled his eyes. ‘Sorry. You get to feel good about doing your civic duty, but that’s all, I’m afraid. So, can you look it up for me? This man’s name?’
‘Oh well, it was worth asking,’
Denise said with a sigh. ‘Hold on a minute.’ The clatter of a phone being put down, the rattle of a heavy-handed typist on the keyboard, the mutter as Denise talked herself through what she was looking for. Then a pause. ‘Hello? You still there?’
‘I am. Any luck?’
‘It’s right here in front of me, on the screen: Tom Elton, 426 Minster Tower, Walker Wharf, Bradfield.’
Alvin couldn’t quite believe it. He scribbled the address as fast as he could.
‘There’s a mobile number too, if you want it?’
‘Please.’ More scribbling as she read it to him. ‘You’ve been incredibly helpful, Denise. Do you mind telling me your surname?’
‘It’s Chowdhry.’ She spelled it out. ‘My husband’s family’s from India.’
‘I’m going to have an officer come round to Freshco to take a statement from you. All you’ve told me already, plus anything else you might remember. When does your shift end?’
‘I’m on till eight.’
‘Great, I’ll organise that right away. Thanks very much, Denise. You’ve been amazingly helpful.’ Alvin felt a kind of joy rising in him as the import of her words sank in properly. This could be the single piece of evidence that broke the case wide open.
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘This’ll be another day to remember.’
Alvin put the phone down and jumped up. He was doing a mad little happy dance when Karim walked back in, a look of amazement on his face at the sight of Alvin showing off his fancy footwork round the squad room desks.
‘Nice moves,’ Karim said, doing a little shimmy with his hips and a Bollywood dance move with his hands.
Sheepishly, Alvin stopped. ‘We finally caught a break, man,’ he said, slightly out of breath. ‘I need you to go over to Freshco in Kenton Vale and take a statement. I think we might have put a name to our killer.’
59
L
unch break at Kenton Vale High; swarms of teenagers milling around in groups as discrete and organised as bees. But there was a distinct slowing of movement and stilling of conversations when the police car drove into the staff car park. Hundreds of eyes watched the trio of adults who walked into the main block, then, with nothing solid to fuel speculation, they returned to whatever had obsessed them previously. One or two speculated that the man might be Elsa Jackson’s dad, but they were too far away to be certain.