Songbird Page 35

  ‘I like closing the net around whoever did it. Making certain that whatever excuses they make and whatever lies they tell, they’re not getting away with it. And making sure the selfish people don’t win out over the decent ones.’

  Wayne Fletcher’s funeral, standing in the graveyard among the lime trees, watching from a distance as the family said a final goodbye to their teenaged son, the first drops of September rain beginning to fall, and Smith saying something like that.

  Cara Freeman seemed to spend a long time thinking about his answer.

  ‘You like nailing the bastards, then! Me too. Gleneagles Motors. What sort of name is that for a car sales company in Luton? Do you think there’s a Mr Gleneagles? How do you want to handle this?’

  They never discovered whether there was a Mr Gleneagles. Waters parked in the area marked “Customers” and a salesman appeared immediately, watching them and waiting at the entrance to the anonymous, modern, metal and glass building. Freeman told him to go ahead, she’d catch up in a moment, taking out her phone.

  The salesman met him halfway, hand outstretched, smiling desperately – it looked as if he was on some sort of last warning. He was young and small and labelled Neville, but somehow the jacket of his light blue suit still wasn’t big enough.

  ‘Good morning! Mr and Mrs…?’

  No words could convey the epic nature of this error. Waters showed his warrant card and asked to see the manager. When asked if he, the salesman, could tell Mr Mancini what this was about, the answer was no – experience had taught Waters he could end up repeating the story several times before he reached the right person. Neville went away and Waters waited in the still, humid air. The heatwave was over but nothing had come to take its place. Freeman was still by the car and apparently speaking into her phone.

  Mr Mancini arrived on the forecourt, with Neville watching from behind the safety glass of the showroom. Mr Mancini’s suit fitted his rotund form perfectly, as did the demeanour that said I am a very busy man and profit responsible.

  ‘Is this about the C-class?’

  ‘The silver Mercedes. Yes, it is. One of my officers ca-’

  ‘Friday, I know. It’s been stood here all weekend. That’s our busiest time, I’ve had people looking at it. What’s going on?’

  From the manager’s glance, Waters could tell that Freeman was now standing close behind and listening. He said, ‘When you say you’ve had people looking at it, Mr Mancini, do you mean that customers have viewed the car?’

  ‘Aye, it’s what we do here!’

  The man looked at Cara Freeman with a smirk on his face.

  Waters said, ‘Customers have touched the car… Have they sat inside it?’

  ‘I imagine so. People usually do before they lay out twenty-five grand.’

  Waters explained there had been a misunderstanding. The car should have been withdrawn from sale and put in a secure location, pending a police investigation. Mr Mancini was singularly unimpressed by this. He’d purchased the car fair and square and everything was legitimate. He didn’t know what sort of business they thought he was running here but-

  ‘Sir? Could you show us the vehicle now?’

  Mr Mancini looked as if he might want to argue this point as well but the tall policeman’s manner suggested that compliance would bring the matter to an end more quickly. The manager turned on his heel, and they followed him.

  The Mercedes stood in a line of expensive used cars, with the price clearly displayed in the windscreen. Waters stepped forward to the side of it, bent a little and looked in through the driver’s window. Then he straightened up and caught Freeman’s eye. He couldn’t know how thoroughly she had briefed herself on the files but she could probably see something in his face.

  Waters said, ‘Mr Mancini. I’d like you to remove this vehicle from the forecourt. It isn’t for sale until further notice. Please put it somewhere secure. We’ll need to examine it. That might be done here or we may need to take it away.’

  The sales manager took a step forward, inflating himself, arms raised a little as if he would settle this with fists if necessary.

  ‘Until further notice? On whose say-so? And on what grou-’

  ‘On my say-so, sir. Detective Sergeant Waters, Kings Lake Central police, Kings Lake. And on the grounds that this car may be significant as part of an ongoing investigation into a serious matter. Please have the car removed from the forecourt, immediately.’

  Mancini said, ‘That motor represents a significant investment, never mind a significant anything else. I don’t think you can just turn up and start telling-’

  ‘Sir? Can I stop you there?’

  It was Freeman. The manager turned and stared before he asked none too politely what she had to do with this. Waters noticed that a small crowd of appreciative employees had joined Neville inside the showroom.

  Freeman said, ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Freeman from the same place as Detective Sergeant Waters. We can just turn up here and, unfortunately for you, we have. How many vehicles do you have on your stocklist this morning?’

  The question took the sales manager by surprise. He couldn’t be sure but eighty or ninety. Why?

  Freeman turned to Waters.

  ‘This looks like a legitimate business but you can never be sure. Appearances are deceptive, aren’t they, Mr Mancini? Anyway, how long would it take to check the legality of ninety vehicles, Sergeant Waters? V5s, MOTs, trade insurance forms, serial numbers, registration plates. On top of that, we’d need to look at the credit finance capabilities, if we were being thorough.’

  Waters said, ‘Several days, ma’am.’

  ‘And we’d have to issue a Closure Notice while we did it, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She turned to Mr Mancini with a warm, engaging smile and said, ‘Or you could just remove the effing car.’

  The little crowd of employees had dispersed as the sales manager headed back to the building – there was a brief silence which came to an end with distant screams of ‘Neville!’ The two detectives waited by the Mercedes until the unlucky representative reappeared with car keys in hand. It had to be Waters’ imagination, but the jacket seemed to fit better now, as if it had enlarged itself or the owner had shrunk a little.

  Waters followed on foot to supervise the incarceration of the vehicle and sign something, and Freeman went back to wait in their own car. It was about fifteen minutes before he joined her there.

  She said as he got into the driver’s seat, ‘I found my opposite number in the station here. He’s alright. They’ll pick it up by the end of the day.’

  Waters nodded, pushing the keys into the ignition so he could open the window – there was no air to breathe anywhere.

  Freeman went on, ‘I’ll send you this DCI’s name and number. You’ll need to speak to him and tell him exactly what you want.’

  ‘I will, ma’am.’

  ‘Do you know exactly what you want?’

  He was beginning to adapt to this abrupt, no nonsense way of speaking but it was easy to see where her reputation for intimidation had come from, and easy to see why Serena Butler was more careful when Freeman was around than she ever was when DI Terek was in charge.

  He said, ‘The car has been fully valeted. All sorts of people have got in and out of it over the weekend. Neville told me several potential buyers have viewed it, and two test drove it. It’s about as contaminated as it could be.’

  ‘But I haven’t just wasted Luton CID’s time because? Give me something or I’ll call them back!’

  ‘The upholstery on the seats is cream-coloured leather. Our pathologist found two pieces of something similar under Michelle Simms’ fingernails. Forensics said it was a material possibly linked to the automotive industry.’

  Freeman said all right and fell silent. Inside the showroom, they could see Mr Mancini. He’d taken off his jacket and was walking about and waving his arms quite a lot. Freeman said she really wanted his name to
be Henry but Waters didn’t understand why, and he didn’t ask. Instead, he said, ‘He’s quite annoyed about the Mercedes. He seems to think he’s been done over, and he’s threatening to call Graham Fletcher about it.’

  ‘Oops! Did you make any attempt to discourage him from doing such a thing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That could liven up our morning, couldn’t it?’

  Waters nodded. Eventually, after another good look at him, Cara Freeman said, ‘You could DNA the car but if you found hers, it would be useless. She’s a family member and he could easily come up with an un-checkable story to account for her having been in the vehicle at some point. Doing it the other way round, if we can find recent evidence of the car on her, that’s stronger. But I doubt whether you’ll be able to match the fragments to actual tears in the seat, not after they’ve been processed in a lab. If we could put that car in the area at the time, that’s a different matter altogether.’

  Waters was ahead of her here.

  He said, ‘When the car goes into our custody, so will the satnav.’

  ‘How long does it hold the data? Would you happen to know that?’

  ‘Up to a month in most cases.’

  She checked the date on her watch before she said, ‘No time to waste, then! Nice! Get the boys here to look at the seats and the satnav, as soon as.’

  He nodded but didn’t say much, his mind already moving ahead with different scenarios for different sets of results from tests that hadn’t begun yet. Freeman looked at him and wondered whether he was paying attention.

  She said, ‘So you know, I tend to say things just the once. I don’t repeat and I don’t remind. I don’t chase people to do things. If things don’t get done, I get rid of the people who don’t do them.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘OK. That said, I’m quite enjoying myself. You know how to show a girl a good time, Chris. Where are we off to next?’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The premises of Luton Central Heating Services were on the far side of the town, and the traffic was still Monday morning heavy. At around the eighth set of traffic lights, Freeman said, as if nothing had happened since they were last discussing the subject of Waters’ motivation, ‘People say I’m ambitious but that’s not how I see it myself. I’ve done the job in a particular way, and I’ve ended up where I am as a result. That’s not the same as being ambitious, is it?’

  Waters said he didn’t think it was.

  She went on, ‘I set myself goals but not with any aim other than doing the job properly. The key is choosing the best people in the first place. I’m usually right on that. Then they just need to be managed in the appropriate way, and it’s sorted.’

  He thought it probably was that simple, but the simple things often aren’t the easiest to do.

  ‘So, what are your goals for the new squad?’

  Though it wasn’t that new anymore. Her team of specialists had been set up since January but the dearth of good murders meant it still had the feeling of being untested.

  ‘Ha! Where do I begin? First, I want the powers that be to start calling it the murder squad. That’s what it is but for some political and therefore inexplicable reason they won’t. Second, I want a permanent base and a permanent core staff – you can’t build a team by weekly emails and quarterly meetings. It’s like the England squad only training together a couple of hours before an important international match.’

  This was the second reference to football but he made a conscious effort not to hold it against her.

  ‘Third, local divisions must hand over cases more quickly. I can see why they don’t but it’s a murder squad in name only – except they won’t call it that – unless you give it murders to investigate. There are eleven ongoing investigations in the county, and we’re currently looking at two – both of them over a year old. But the suits know that if they insist on me having all the relevant cases, they’ll have to give me the base and the permanent staff. It’s a standoff, at the moment.’

  They were perhaps a mile from their destination now but waiting in a contraflow on the ring road. Waters heard her mobile ping with a message but Freeman was ignoring it, apparently more interested in having this conversation.

  ‘What are your chances of getting what you want?’

  ‘Ninety-two per cent by the end of the year. Seriously, there’s no practical alternative to what I’ve asked for, and they’re about to give in. Of course, when I get my way, you’re going to lose Serena Butler for good.’ She looked at him, waiting to see how that would go down.

  He said, ‘Any thoughts about where you’d base the squad?’

  ‘It’s a bit far west but Kings Lake has the best communications as far as roads are concerned. It also has the worst – or the best – murder rate in the county over the past few years, as you probably know, having worked some of them yourself. I’ve been having a good look at it recently.’

  And that explained why she had been around for some time before Alison Reeve went on sick-leave.

  She said, ‘So Serena would still be in the building, just not in your team. Unless you joined the team as well.’

  She’d been studying him, but now, when he looked at her, she glanced away. They edged forward a few more yards before the lights changed to red again. Still looking ahead, Freeman said, ‘That would make sense and solve some of the problems. Smith’s departure left a situation which hasn’t been resolved – it’s a credit to him, of course. He was outstanding but politically a misfit, and he left behind a team of outstanding misfits who can’t, or more likely won’t, adapt to doing the job any other way. This morning’s argument was a good example. One answer might be to stop trying to make them fit. Just put them into a new set-up with a new boss who doesn’t carry any of the old baggage.’

  Alison Reeve had been – still was, Waters told himself – a good DI and a good DCI, but he’d never encountered anything quite like this. Everything made sense now; the way Freeman had appeared in briefings, sat at the back and said little or nothing, the times he had seen her on her own in odd places around the station.

  ‘Who do you mean by “them”?’

  ‘We’re not talking big numbers, Chris. You and Serena.’

  ‘What about John Murray?’

  ‘I know Smith rated him. Do you?’

  She was unnervingly direct but it was fascinating. And it felt like the most important conversation he’d had at work in months.

  ‘If you asked me to choose between the two of them, I’d find it impossible.’

  ‘OK…’

  They were moving again and his thoughts had to go towards Fletcher now. Freeman had chosen a strange moment to raise the matter with him, but he had a suspicion she knew that too. Was she still trying him out?

  She said, ‘I suppose he’d come in useful when we were moving the furniture into the new offices. Would he be up for it?’

  ‘Moving furniture?’

  She smiled and said, ‘Thank you. I do allow sarcasm but each individual is awarded only as much as they prove they can take in return. If you came across, would Murray come with you?’

  Waters paused because this was serious. When it came to reaching her goals, he knew now that Cara Freeman, ambitious or not, was deadly serious, and being a part of that would be serious, too. He turned the car into the industrial estate where they would find Fletcher’s company and maybe Fletcher himself. He could feel the start of the adrenaline rush, familiar now but no less exciting and scary, aware that the senior officer beside him was waiting for an answer.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think he would.’

  From the reception counter, they could see back into the building. There was an office behind reception where a middle-aged woman sat in front of a screen, and then another office behind that one which was Graham’s but he wasn’t in, said the receptionist, he’s down at the big job in Farley, about thirty minutes’ drive away. At Waters’ suggestion, she called his mobile number but did
n’t get an answer. This wasn’t unusual she said, if Graham was in the middle of something technical, but he’d get back to her when he noticed the missed call.

  The receptionist’s name was Ashley. She had a badge with the company logo and her name pinned onto her blouse, and she noticed when the detective glanced down and read it. Waters had shown his identification but hadn’t introduced Freeman. The DCI had said nothing to the contrary but judging by events at Gleneagles Motors, she was happy to stay in the background, at least for today.

  The girl was attractive, and Waters smiled at her before he asked whether that was Mr Fletcher’s new number – he said he knew Graham had lost his mobile last week some time, wasn’t it, or the week before? She said it was his new number, and Waters asked whether the lost phone had ever turned up, to which she answered no, it was still a mystery.

  He picked up one of the company leaflets from the counter and handed it to her.

  ‘Ashley, could you write down Graham’s new number for me? I’ll give him a call later. It would be useful to have a word while I’m still in Luton.’

  She did so without hesitation, gave him the leaflet, and then picked up a pad from her desk, asking if she could have his number so that Graham could reach him, too. Waters didn’t glance at Freeman but he gave himself a split second in which to weigh this up, before he told her. On balance, this was likely to work to his advantage.

  The girl wrote it down, and then said something he wasn’t expecting. ‘Is this about Michelle?’

  ‘Michelle?’

  ‘Michelle Simms. She was Graham’s sister-in-law. Course you know that! Is that why you’re here?’

  The only sensible thing was to say yes. Behind him, he sensed Freeman taking an interest now. Waters said they were in Luton to update Michelle’s family on some developments, and Ashley didn’t pause to wonder why they were here and not at Michaela Fletcher’s home or at Barry Simms’.

  She said, ‘Terrible, wasn’t it? I still can’t believe it. She was so bubbly and funny. Graham’s still devastated by it…’