Driving into Darkness (DI Angus Henderson 2)
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Authors: Iain Cameron
Driving
into
Darkness
IAIN CAMERON
Copyright © 2014 Iain Cameron
ISBN: 978-1503335004
The right of Iain Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
To find out more about the author, visit the website:
For Andrew Brown Sinclair (1923-2014), an inspiration to all who knew him.
Contents
Decisions, decisions. It would be the most important decision of his life, but he was focused only on the road ahead.
Having just endured a long and fractious meeting with engineers and technicians who didn’t understand numbers because they couldn’t measure them with their gauges or test them with their meters, there was no way he could drive the straight and boring A23; he needed something more challenging. The B2117, a narrow country road with plenty of sharp bends and several long straights would do nicely.
The bike’s big Ducati 900cc engine responded with a beautiful deep-throated burbling and a mid-range whine, a superb blend of high-tolerance engineering, top quality components, and the finest lubricating oils that money could buy, making the aural experience every bit as pleasurable as the ride itself.
If he was thinking like an engineer, it was because he had spent most of the day with them, although the engineers in his company worked in more microscopic realms than could ever be found in an Italian bike factory, but he was sure the principles employed were just the same.
In the mirror, a Subaru Impreza was coming up fast. On another day, when he didn’t feel so tired or preoccupied with the incompetence of a new supplier who couldn’t deliver parts when they needed them, he might have delivered a quick puff of Ducati exhaust before disappearing into the distance, but today he eased over to let him pass.
The Subaru moved alongside but made no effort to overtake. He shrugged. It wasn’t his funeral if a car was coming the other way. He glanced over. The driver was alone, mid-thirties and sporting a baseball cap, dark glasses and a chin that hadn’t seen a razor for a while. Despite the fading light, his sneering disdain for bikers was obvious and when he indicated he wanted to race with a regal pointing of a finger, he nodded his approval.
Before he could react, the Subaru surged forward. He gunned the bike and soon he was hugging its rear bumper, determined not to lose him, as a long straight started after the bend and he knew he could take him there. The Subaru sailed around the tight corner as if on rails but he stayed put, the fat tyres of the Ducati almost on their sides. Before the road straightened, he eased the bike upright and wound up the power.
He moved to the right, shadowing its rear wing and trying to get a good look at the road ahead, as sections were barely wide enough for two cars, never mind the number of overloaded tractors and lorries that used the road regularly. With a subtle dip of the elbow, he pulled out and accelerated hard. The speedo touched ninety-five and when they were level, he looked over and gave the insolent prick his middle finger.
Before his hand regained a firm grip on the handlebars, the Subaru swung towards him. Bastard! It was only a game. For a split second, he was caught in two minds; brake or accelerate? Before he could do either, the Subaru made contact with the front wheel and in an instant, the bike shot over the carriageway and into woods at the side of the road.
He crashed through rhododendrons, brambles and holly as if they weren’t there. He tried to grip the handlebars with all his strength, trying to reach the brake, but the bike was shaking so violently he found it impossible to feel anything or to see through the wildly shuddering visor. For an instant, his fingers touched the brake but before he could pull it, the front wheel hit something solid. The bike stopped dead and he shot high into the air.
For a moment he felt weightless, ethereal, the ground racing by in a grainy, green and brown collage. He was falling, falling when he slammed head first into the trunk of a 500-year-old oak tree.
He opened the car door and wearily climbed out. Detective Inspector Angus Henderson knew it was a stupid idea to go out boozing in the middle of an investigation, but last night the temptation to let off some steam had been too great. He stopped for a moment to let his slow brain catch up with his tired body, before gulping a lungful of fresh air and popping an extra-strong mint into his mouth. He walked towards the house.
A young copper stood guard at the place where the front door used to be. It looked as though it had been attacked by a medieval mob looking for witches or had been rammed by a bulldozer in the course of extracting an ATM machine, as the wooden frame had been turned into an ugly mess of splinters and bare brickwork with the door hanging open and a large hole where the lock used to be.
‘Is Mrs Frankcombe inside?’ he asked PC4367, who came from God-knows which police station, as he was having trouble remembering which part of Sussex he was in.
‘Yes sir,’ he said, a touch too brightly for Henderson’s liking, ‘she’s in the living room with the FLO, Mrs Wilkes.’
Only an hour before, he had been in bed, comatose and enjoying one of the deepest sleeps he’d had for many months and at some point in the future he would forgive Detective Sergeant Carol Walters for having the temerity to wake him up, but not yet.
It didn’t help that the sanctimonious Miss Walters was behaving like a card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous, as she reeled off in the car on the way over, all the stupid things everyone said last night. This included the boorish and sexist behaviour of many of her colleagues, conduct thought banished by successive government decrees and the directives of righteous Chief Constables. Walters left the pub before closing time and unlike the rest of the crew who ended up back at his place, she went straight home.
It wasn’t difficult to locate the living room as every door in the house was thrown open to allow Scenes of Crime Officers to dust for prints and search for traces of hair and fibre. However, if the other three cases in this inquiry were anything to go by, they would find diddly squat, and if it wasn’t for the spectre of another
Argus
headline berating an incompetent police force for not doing enough, he would send them home now and save the taxpayer a few quid.
On stepping over the threshold, the opulence of the house hit him like a slap, as it did with all the other houses he’d visited in the course of this investigation. With antique-stuffed hallways, bespoke fitted kitchens, and enough hi-tech gadgetry to keep a geeky 16-year-old in rapturous ecstasy for many years, there was way more valuable stuff inside the house than languishing outside on the driveway or in the garage. However, it was his job to catch the criminals, and for psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists to understand what motivated them to steal cars.
The Family Liaison Officer, Madeline Wilkes looked up and smiled as Henderson and Walters entered the room. Madeline’s smiles were so warm and inviting, someone with less resolve than him could get into trouble with the pc-police or her rugby-playing husband if her natural friendliness was misread. No matter what tricks she played with a man’s mind or his testosterone levels, she was a skilled FLO and her attendance at crime scenes such as this was always a source of comfort for traumatised victims and their families and made his job a bit easier.
PC Wilkes was perched on the edge of a cream-coloured sofa, holding the hand of a woman he assumed to be Mrs Frankcombe, slight in build and almost engulfed by the large matching armchair.
‘Good Morning, Mrs Frankcombe, good morning, Constable Wilkes,’ he said extending a hand. ‘I am Detective Inspector Angus Henderson of Sussex Police and the Senior Investigating Officer on this case. This is Detective Sergeant Carol Walters.’
‘Hello,’ Mrs Frankcombe said. Without rising from the chair, she moved her trembling hand up to shake his.
‘May we sit down?’
Wilkes got up. ‘I’ll wait in the hall, sir until you’re finished. Call me if you need anything.’
He took her place on the settee but didn’t reach for the hand of the victim as gestures like this weren’t his style and in such a pc-age they could be easily misinterpreted.
‘I’m sorry to bother you at such a difficult time Mrs Frankcombe,’ he said, ‘but as you are no doubt aware, this is the fourth robbery of an expensive car in the Sussex area in the last few weeks and if we have any hope of catching these people, we need you to try and remember as much about the incident as you can. Feel free to take as much time as you want.’
‘I will,’ she sniffed. ‘I want these bastards caught and no mistake. They beat up my husband and put him in fucking hospital. Yeah you bet I want them caught.’
Henderson was slightly taken aback by her foul-mouthed outburst, not that he hadn’t heard a woman swear before, but it seemed incongruous from the mouth of such a well-groomed and well-heeled lady. However, he knew stress and fear could cause even the most restrained individuals from dropping their guard and eschewing social niceties, albeit for a short period.
It was hard to estimate her age, especially as her face was streaked with tears and make-up, but he guessed mid-forties and from the look of the expensive hairstyle and smart, elegant clothes, not all of their money was spent on the house. She was slim and sun-tanned, no doubt from holidays in warm, sunny places and not from lying on the patio recliner out on the terrace, visible through the French windows, as it was late March but the pleasant spring weather promised by Brighton Meteorologists had yet to materialise.
‘Please start at the point,’ he said, ‘when you noticed something was going on.’
‘Ok. My husband woke me up about two-thirty, although it’s only a guess as I’m sure I didn’t look at the clock until later.’ She paused, as if distracted by a sudden thought.
‘Did a noise downstairs wake you?’ Henderson said, trying to cajole her along. ‘There’s substantial damage to your front door and I imagine there must have been a lot of banging.’
‘No, it wasn’t. I'd had a few glasses of wine during the evening you see and I took some sleeping pills, as I find it hard to sleep after I’ve been drinking. I was well zonked when it happened. Alan woke me and told me he could hear something strange going on downstairs.’
‘What did it sound like?’
‘We’re at the back of the house so it was bit muffled but it was a constant thumping, a sort of boom-boom-boom. If I didn’t know it was the middle of the night, I would think it was the builders as we’re always having work done.’ She paused to take a sip of water.
‘Where was I? Ah yes, Alan got out of bed and said he was going down to see what was going on. The noise changed and now I could hear lots of banging. I found out later, they were pulling out all the drawers of the hall table and dropping them on the floor. Didn’t the fucking morons realise it was an antique, a 1760 Chippendale?’ Her face was red with anger.
‘So Alan went downstairs,’ Henderson said.
‘No, I mean yes but he didn’t go willingly, someone came into our room and scooped our mobiles from the bedside table and dragged poor Alan downstairs. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, they had him on the floor and they were kicking him.’ She began to sob. ‘Big boots into a man who’s nearly sixty, I ask you,’ she said as she raised her tear-stained face to look at him. ‘What sort of animals would do such a thing? He’s in hospital now with broken ribs, concussion and God-knows what else.’
‘You have my sympathies,’ he said.
He waited a few moments until she recovered.
‘What happened then?’
‘A few more kicks and punches and he told them where the keys of the car were, he had to otherwise I think they might have killed him. They grabbed the keys and a few seconds later they were out of the house.’
‘How many people did you see?’ Walters asked.
She looked up at the ceiling. ‘Four. Yes, there were four men in the house.’
‘Was it obvious they were men? Did you hear it in their voices or was there something in their size or demeanour that makes you think it was men?’
‘I don’t know.’ She paused a moment. ‘No, not voices, I suppose it was their build. You see, they were all wearing black clothes and gloves and with a balaclava sort of thing over their heads. I didn’t see their faces, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Did you hear them say anything to one another?’ Henderson said. ‘For example, did they use names or phrases, anything you can remember?’
‘No, I don’t think so, they didn’t say much. In fact, I don’t believe I heard them say anything.’
*
After saying goodbye to Mrs Frankcombe, both detectives walked out into the cold March morning. Henderson spent a few minutes looking at the damage to the door while Walters wandered away. When he looked round, she was standing in front of a large open, oak-framed garage, wide enough to house three cars.
Her casual position, propped against an upright, shoulders relaxed, hands fiddling with something in her pockets, bore all the hallmarks of a seasoned smoker. She had kicked the habit four months ago but it was clear some practices were proving harder to break than others.
He walked over to join her.
‘It’s not much protection for a high-value motor like a Porsche, wouldn’t you say, sir?’ she said.
‘I suppose not, but good enough to stop the rain from besmirching an expensive paint job and keeping frost and snow away in winter.’
‘True, but I can see another advantage.’
‘Which is?’
‘Most people keep a load of old crap in their garages like old beds, kids bikes, and boxes but this open style forces even untidy scumbags into keeping it tidy.’
‘You could be right.’
He now knew they were on the fringes of Henfield, a large village to the north of Brighton and in a way, he could see why the Frankcombe’s house had been targeted. It was large, five bedrooms, several reception rooms and swimming pool, all set in five acres of land. He had experienced the long drive up from the B-road and from the four corners of the house, all he could see were paddocks, lakes, woods, and farmland but no other houses, no streetlights and no neighbours.
They came for the car. This one, a three-month old Porsche GT2 RS, worth around one hundred and seventy grand and fitting comfortably into a thieves’ shopping list which already included a brand-new Ferrari California, a Lamborghini Gallardo Spider, and his personal favourite, an Aston Martin DB9.
The sweet daydream of exotic cars came to an abrupt halt as they walked to Walters’s car, a 5-year-old Golf in much need of a wash and a thorough interior spring-clean. Before they got there, he turned to see another car heading up the driveway. As soon as it stopped, Rob Tremain, the chief crime reporter of
The Argus
jumped out.
‘Inspector Henderson, good to see you,’ he said walking towards them. ‘Heading back to the office now, are we?’
‘Morning Rob. Yes we are.’
‘What can you tell me about this one?’ Tremain said, thrusting an electronic recording machine towards him. ‘Would you say it follows the same pattern as the other three?’
‘Pretty much. The door’s been smashed open with something heavy, possibly using the same sledgehammers the gang employed in the other robberies, Mr Frankcombe was beaten until he told them where he kept the keys and they disappeared with the car a couple of minutes later. At this moment, we have a team of forensic experts working inside the house and I’m sure if the gang left behind a fibre, a bit of DNA, or a cigarette butt, we will find it.’
‘All very reassuring but there’s not much chance of that happening, don’t you think, as they found nothing at each of the three other robberies? These guys have been professional so far but is there anything you’ve seen at this house which gives you confidence this might be the place where you’ll find a vital clue, forensic or otherwise, that’ll help you track them down?’
A tricky question as he would be damned with a ‘yes’ and damned with a ‘no’. ‘Let’s wait and see on that one but forensics are only one strand of our investigation as we are also looking at car dealers and CCTV cameras, liaising with other police forces, a whole range of things. If I may, I would like to ask your readers to report any unusual activity they see around a garage or a lock-up in their area or if they’re offered an expensive car at a knockdown price, to call it in on the usual numbers.’
‘I will. Where do you think the cars end up?’
‘Not in Sussex, I’m sure but re-badged, re-plated, and shipped abroad to the Middle East or Asia, is my best guess. It’s much easier to sell a stolen car in these places than it is here in the UK.’
‘Thank you Inspector.’ He made a play of switching the recording machine off. ‘So, if I can ask you, off the record. This is the fourth such high-value car robbery in our area, how many more will it take until you stop them?’
‘C’mon Rob, how would I know? These guys are in and out of the place in minutes, they don’t talk much, they don’t leave anything behind, and they disappear with the car. There’s not much left for us to work on.’
‘I know you don’t have a large squad on this one. Is the Chief Constable giving this case sufficient priority?’
A few weeks ago, Tremain wrote a scathing article about inadequate resourcing levels in the county, leaving the Chief Constable and his ACC’s seething in anger, as it was not the usual jungle chant about wasting taxpayers money, but an attack on the spending priorities and judgement of the Sussex Police senior management team.