Bad Blood (28 page)

Jeffreys offered tea and while he busied himself in the kitchen Savage and Enders stood in the bay window. The little lane turned a dogleg just past their car and when Jeffreys came into the room with a tray of mugs he nodded.

‘Parked on the corner it was. I saw the, er, black guy, standing by the taxi and thought, this isn’t right. Not out here, not at this time of the morning.’

‘Which was?’ Savage said, moving to an armchair and accepting a mug.

‘Six. I’m up with the birds these days.
Before
the birds at this time of year. It was still dark of course, but the interior light in the taxi was on. Well, when I saw what was happening I went to the front door sharpish and checked it was locked. Put the chain on too. Then I called you lot. I can tell you I was scared, thought he’d be coming in and murdering me in my bed.’

‘You weren’t in your bed, Mr Jeffreys.’

‘No, but you know what I mean. The riots. That lot. Drugs, isn’t it? Always drugs and guns. Rappers, they call them, I believe.’

‘What happened then?’ Savage put her tea down, beginning to find the liquid, which was the colour of the furniture, as bitter as the conversation.

‘I spoke to someone on the phone and they were dismissive. Told me to call back if anything happens. Idiot. How am I going to be able to call back when some burglar is knifing me?’ Jeffreys went over to the window. ‘When I came back in here there is a white van out in the middle of the lane and the black guy is getting in the back.’

‘White?’ Enders said. ‘What type?’

‘Not sure, not a little one, more like a delivery van or the sort builders would use. Anyway, they had trouble turning in the road. Back and forwards, back and forwards they went before they drove off, the taxi following them.’

‘Whoa, hold on,’ Savage said. ‘Rewind. The black guy got in the back?’

‘I say “getting”, more like being forced. Two other men dragged him in and then the doors closed and they did the turning thing.’

‘For God’s sake why didn’t you call us again?’

‘Well, I … I guess the black guy scared me. I was glad to see him gone. I thought he was probably up to no good and was simply getting his just desserts. Anyway, you lot weren’t interested the first time, were you?’

‘Mr Jeffreys, do you realise who the black man was?’

‘No. Some druggie?’

‘He was a police officer.’

‘Never! I didn’t know, how could I? I mean black. Down here in Devon. In the police of all—’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Savage stood, feeling herself shake, wanting to go across and smack the old guy in the face. ‘I don’t know what the hell we can charge you with, but if anything happens to our officer I promise you we’ll find something. Get the rest of the details, Patrick, while I go and look outside. There’s a stink in here and it is making me sick.’

She left the house and went down into the lane. The road was single track, but on the corner up from the bungalow a gateway allowed access to a field. The verge was a little wider next to the gate and it was an obvious point to turn around. Savage strode along until she found what she was looking for: some tyre marks had ridden the verge. She knelt to examine one of them. The width was wider than a car would have made and yet it didn’t have the knobbly indentations which would indicate the track belonged to a 4x4; they could well have been from a transit van.

She took out her phone and called through to Charles Cross. When she managed to reach the custody officer he had a dose of dry humour for her.

‘Long gone, ma’am. But he signed for the clothing we gave him to replace his wet stuff so I’m sure he’ll be back with that.’

‘Jesus!’ Savage said, hanging up as Enders came down the path and joined her in the lane. ‘That had to be Chaffe’s van. It was there when Riley was taken and I let the bugger walk out this morning. I just phoned the custody centre to check and he’s been released.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘Understatement of the year. We had Chaffe and …’ Savage shook her head, once again feeling a rush of emotion and anger. Only this time the anger was directed at herself. ‘We have failed Darius big time. There’s me wittering on about you lot joking. I’m the joke. I should have realised that—’

‘The van, ma’am,’ Enders said. ‘It will probably still be in the pound. Then there’s his flat.’

‘Of course.’ Savage tapped her head. ‘Well done. You get on to them and make sure they don’t release it, get a team round to Chaffe’s flat too. I’ll call John Layton.’

An hour and a half later, Savage was back in her office at Crownhill, and Layton was on the line, telling her that the van represented a veritable feast for someone like him.

‘Got a big handprint on the rear bumper, inside, some dried blood, loads of fingerprints and a few pieces of silver plastic which I couldn’t place at first. Turns out to be from a phone. Nokia, one of the latest models. You know where this is leading?’

‘Riley.’

‘Yup. Riley’s mobile contract specifies the same type.’

‘So he was definitely in the van?’

‘His
phone
was in the van. You’ll have to wait on the prints and blood. There’s something else though.’

‘Go on.’

‘I found a scrap of pink material snagged on a rough edge on the floor. It’s from a dress. Not just any dress, mind you. The fibres match the material found in the plastic crate alongside Simza Ellis.’

‘
What?’

‘Yes. There are also some curly hairs which look very similar to ones I found down in the caravan. I’ll need to match them too, but I’d say it is a cast-iron cert that the girl was in the van sometime. I should be able to confirm it later.’

Savage hung up and placed her own phone on the desk, giving it a spin. Then she sighed, watching the whirl of black and silver until the phone stopped revolving.

Somebody had snatched Riley. The same person had been involved with taking Simza. The question was, who? Owers surely had something to do with the girl, but he was dead before Riley went missing. Stuart Chaffe? It appeared to be his van which had been used in the kidnapping, but Savage didn’t think he had the brains, certainly not brains enough to deal with the complexities of the
Sternway
case. Which tended to suggest there was somebody else, somebody they knew absolutely nothing about.

Lateral thinking, Savage thought. They had the connections from Riley and Redmond to Fallon and
Sternway
. What wasn’t apparent was any sort of connection between Owers and Fallon. Find that link – another of Collier’s nodes – and they’d be one step nearer to what was going on.

A close look at Owers’ previous conviction revealed nothing, nor did a trawl through old crime reports and a keyword search across the national database. There were plenty of entries relating to Fallon and to Owers but none correlated.

Frustrated, she went and grabbed a coffee from the machine down the hall and returned to her office, sitting in Maynard’s chair once again. She looked for a piece of visible desk to rest her cup on, but the surface was covered with documents. Maynard was working on some fraud case involving dodgy housing benefit applications and it certainly looked to be generating a lot of paperwork. She moved a piece of paper and put her cup down, glancing at the sheet and noting it was a list of letting agencies Maynard had selected for visits. Four from the top was a name she recognised

Dream Lets.

She took a gulp of coffee. Owers’ letting agency had been Dream Lets. In life, such a coincidence might be shrugged off as just chance, the same way two people might be amused to find they shared the same birthday. In police work a coincidence like that raised a red flag. The fact the company had been flagged as potentially involved in criminal activity gave her an idea. She picked up the phone and called through to the Hi-Tech Crime Unit to ask about progress with the USB memory stick she had found at Owers’ flat. Doug Hamil, the chief technician, was apologetic.

‘Layton gave me the stick last week but I only got around to processing it yesterday. Sorry about the delay, we’re swamped over here.’

Savage could well understand. Just about every case these days involved computers and mobiles and all the data needed to be extracted, catalogued and stored as potential evidence.

‘No problem. What was on the stick?’

‘An encrypted and compressed backup file which contained bloody hundreds of spreadsheets,’ Hamil said. ‘Accounts for a number of local businesses going back several years. Cashflows, P and L, duplicate sets for private and tax use which the Inland Revenue would be interested in I am sure. There were also a few pictures. Pretty tame really, considering. Stuff you could find on the web in thirty seconds. Innocent, except when you consider the bloke who was downloading them. I’ll send everything through.’

Savage thanked Hamil and hung up. Seconds later an email arrived, dozens of files attached. She saved the files to a folder and then searched through. There it was: Dream Lets. A number of spreadsheets dating back several years. Owers had been doing accounts for the very agency he had rented his house and flat from.

Savage didn’t bother opening the spreadsheets, instead she made a list of the other businesses and fired off an email to a contact in Economic Crimes. Ten minutes later and the information came back: the majority of the businesses Owers did accounts for were owned by one particular holding company, in turn owned by a name all too familiar to her.

Kenny Fallon.

‘Charlotte. Your job I think,’ Hardin had said when she’d come to him with the Owers connection.

The job being to interview Kenny Fallon.

‘He knows that we know that he knows. See what I mean?’

Savage had. If they ignored the links they’d uncovered Fallon would wonder why. With his suspicion raised he’d reschedule any delivery and
Sternway
wouldn’t stand a chance.

Fallon lived in Saltash, meaning Savage had to drive over the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall. The little town clung to the hillside, the bridge spanning the river and piercing the very heart of the place. Few people stopped though, as they sped down the A38, drove across the bridge and went through the twin tunnels which ran under part of the town.

After crossing the bridge, Savage left the main road and headed out on a country lane to North Pill where Fallon’s house sat on the banks of the estuary. A long drive curled down towards the river through neat lawns, a number of marble statues punctuating her progress as she drove along. At the front of the property the drive swept past the columned front door on its way to a detached garage which had some sort of accommodation over the top. Behind the house, the land sloped away in another expanse of immaculate lawn all the way to the estuary, where gulls wheeled in the air above the incoming tide.

As Savage brought the car to a halt, the front door opened, one of Fallon’s goons standing there on the step. Fallon appeared from behind the muscle and shook his head as she got out.

‘Can’t even spare a proper cop for good old Kenny Fallon? You know, a bloke? Tut, tut, tut, what is the world coming to?’

Fallon ran a hand through his greying shoulder-length hair. With his scraggy Van Dyke beard and sideburns, he looked more like the member of an ageing rock band than a gangster. Drugs though were the only common theme. And Savage didn’t think Fallon was foolish enough to ever dabble himself.

‘DI Charlotte Savage,’ Savage said. ‘Got a problem with that have you, Mr Fallon?’

‘With a nice bit of eye candy? Not at all. ’Cept they don’t usually look as good as you, do they? Boilers, most of the rest.’

‘I’ve no idea. Can I come in?’

‘Be my guest, Charlotte. I was thinking I might be due a visit from you lot.’ Fallon waved an arm at the man on the step. ‘Let Detective Inspector Savage through, Kev, then go and check out the grounds.’

‘Expecting trouble, Mr Fallon?’ Savage said as she followed him in to the house.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary. Man like me makes enemies. Kev’s my driver, but he’s handy too.’ Fallon didn’t elaborate further, just swept his arm in the direction of the hallway and then led her in and through to the kitchen. ‘In here. It’s down to me to make you a coffee or tea, today being the maid’s day off and all.’

Inside, the decor was subtle, but expensive. The kitchen had come straight out of
Grand Designs
, with a long breakfast bar in front of a huge glass window which looked out over the garden to the estuary. A golden retriever lay sleeping in a dog bed by the window. The dog’s eyes opened as they entered, the tail thumping a couple of times. Fallon went over to a coffee machine the size of a small car and reeled off the names of a string of hot drinks, face dropping for a moment when Savage said she would be fine with a cup of tea.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said, then rummaged in a cupboard for a couple of mugs and some teabags and then pressed a button on the coffee machine.

The machine gurgled away and while Fallon made the teas Savage began to ask him about Franklin Owers and Gavin Redmond.

‘You see Mr Fallon, they both had connections to you. Franklin Owers was your accountant and you have a substantial shareholding in Redmond’s business. Now they are both dead.’

‘Coincidence.’

‘Really?’ Savage smiled. ‘I thought lightning didn’t strike twice.’

‘Can do, if you run out of luck.’

‘And is that what happened to Owers and Redmond? They ran out of luck? Look, I don’t know what Owers was up to, but I’d hazard a guess he was involved in helping you with tax evasion, something dodgy. Redmond I don’t know much about, although I understand the business has had financial difficulties in the past.’

‘Tax
avoidance
is the word. Totally legal. As for Redmond, since I invested in Tamar I think you’ll find the business has done well. And I resent your implication that there is something dodgy going on. All my business interests are above board. Legit.’

‘If they’re above board then why did you employ a shit like Owers as your accountant? The only answer is you knew you could persuade him to fiddle the books.’

‘The accountants I use are Hemming and Sons in Liskeard.’ Fallon squeezed the teabags with a spoon and dumped them in the sink. ‘Owers helped me with some bookkeeping, that’s all. I knew him from way back, years ago. I was giving him a second chance. For old times’ sake.’