Blood Substitute (6 page)

‘I told her everything that's gone on,' he explained. ‘I can't be doing with sneaking out to meet people, especially when they're her friends too.'

‘Quite right too,' said Joanna, a vivacious red-head, robustly. ‘I used to be your sergeant, after all.'

‘Any joy at the farm?' Carrick asked us.

I related the full story while Patrick organized their drinks.

‘But it's bloody mind-blowing!' James burst out when I had finished. ‘What did this character look like? The one who told you Archie was dead.'

‘Around five feet ten and of stocky build,' I told him. ‘Thick grey hair that was probably once fair, blue eyes, fresh complexion. He spoke with a Scottish accent.'

‘Like mine?'

‘Yes, similar.'

‘From the description it could be Archie himself,' Carrick muttered. ‘But as you said yourself, we won't know until we hear back from the local authorities regarding who pays the council tax. He's a distant cousin of my father's on the Carrick side. I've never met the man but he could well have been on the boat when Robert went overboard.'

Joanna said, ‘You could ask Ross, Lord Muirshire.'

‘Aye, I will. But don't forget, it happened a hell of a long time ago.'

‘But the suitcase, James,' she said. ‘What on earth was that for?'

‘God knows.'

‘Insurance,' Patrick suggested. ‘In case “friends” of your father's turned up looking for him.'

‘Which rather puts Archie in a different bracket from someone just living quietly in retirement on Dartmoor,' I commented.

There was a reflective pause before Patrick said, ‘I gather it was you who put in a word about us with regard to the investigation into Cliff Morley's death.'

‘I did, but Paul'd already said he'd like SOCA on the job. I hope you didn't mind.'

‘Not at all. It sort of keeps it in the family.'

‘I haven't mentioned any possible connection with the initials and anyone in
my
family. Until evidence turns up that makes a connection, that is.'

‘No, of course not; it might muddy the waters and waste a lot of time. Tell me, did the records give your father's latest known address?'

‘No, it said “of no fixed address”. I found that strange.' Carrick then said bitterly, ‘But I'm being stupid as that's the norm with most hoodlums; they keep on the move, shacking up with cronies.'

I was sure that, under the table, Joanna took his hand.

To James I said, ‘Is there anything at all that you can tell us, on or off the record, that might help track down Cliff Morley's killers? Any remark he made to you in connection with his work?'

‘No, I can't think of anything. You're only too glad to forget work and concentrate on your sport.'

‘I don't understand how he was working undercover in a mob and yet could play rugby for the police at weekends,' Patrick said. ‘Someone could have recognized him.'

‘Oh, he'd finished his stint of duty on that case and was due to take long leave and visit his parents in Cumbria. It was his idea to play in the match – a very bad one as it happened.'

‘Surely Reece warned him.'

‘He did. But Cliff was a stubborn man. He reckoned he lived far enough away from the trouble zone to be safe for a couple more days.'

‘In Bath?'

‘Yes, up near the university. He had a flat in a big house up there.'

‘I take it Reece's team have been over it.'

‘No doubt.'

‘What were his particular strengths – the characteristics that made him so suitable for undercover work?'

‘Well, again, you'll have to ask Paul, but I reckon it was his ability to blend into his background. As you saw yourself, he was a big guy but he had a way of being part of the scenery. Just a bloke reading a paper, someone prodding around under the bonnet of a car.'

‘And yet they rumbled him,' Patrick observed.

‘Not necessarily,' I said. ‘He could have just got up someone's nose.'

‘You're forgetting,' he said, ‘Morley was tortured.'

‘That doesn't definitely mean they suspected him of being a
policeman
.'

‘Solving his murder might hang on what he told them, if anything.'

So might the lives of those doing the investigating, I thought.

‘H
e had a way of not arousing the suspicion of the villains among whom he moved,' Superintendent Paul Reece said. ‘A man-in-the-street sort of person – or at least Cliff could make himself look ordinary. He had a knack; he was a natural. We're all bloody angry at what happened to him.'

‘What went wrong?' Patrick asked quietly.

Reece was of short stature and dark-haired. Despite obviously having been briefed by Carrick he did not seem to know quite what to make of us, this one-time Lieutenant-Colonel and his lady in their dark business suits, and there had been some unfriendly stares from those few members of his team who were on the premises, inhabiting an untidy office that resembled a collection point for a jumble sale. Everyone seemed to be wearing baggy jeans and yesterday's sweatshirt and had not acquainted themselves with soap and razor for a couple of days. There had been no females in sight.

But these were, I mentally told myself sternly in the next breath, amazing and brave people who had to look scruffy because they worked within the criminal underworld and who, for professional pride reasons, resented the arrival of outsiders in the shape of the Serious and Organized Crime Agency.

‘We don't know,' Reece said in response to the question. ‘The plan to lift him out had been well planned. We knew he would be driving someone else's car in a certain location with the owner as a passenger so we got Traffic to pull the vehicle over on the pretext that it was in an unroadworthy condition. Morley was in on the plan and, as pre-arranged, refused to cooperate with the law, actually putting up a fight. The man he was with did a runner and got away, as it had been decided he should. Morley and the car were then taken into custody and everyone congratulated themselves that the ruse had worked. Morley was de-briefed, went home to Bath, played in a rugger match the next day and was due to drive up to his parent's place in Cumbria the following morning. He did not; he disappeared.'

‘What was his brief?' Patrick asked.

‘I'll have to fill you in with the background before I do that,' Reece replied. ‘Can I get you some coffee first?'

Patrick smiled. ‘Did I see a machine in the main office on our way through?'

‘Yes, you did.'

‘Then allow Ingrid and me to get you some.'

Reece said nothing, but I detected a little surprise.

There were four of them, busily engaged with computers, phones or files, but there was a slight pause in the proceedings when we walked in. One individual with red hair stopped what he was doing altogether, throwing down his pen, and subjected Patrick to an unfriendly stare, as he had at our first appearance.

‘Is this a getting-to-know-the-lower-decks exercise then … sir?' he asked, pointedly ignoring me.

‘No,' Patrick said as we circumnavigated a rucksack and a pile of outdoor clothing on the floor on our way to the coffee machine. ‘Right now it's using four hands to fetch three coffees. Would anyone else like some?'

‘No thanks,' said the man, answering for all.

‘There's no need to call me sir; most SOCA people are given the rank of constable to enable them to arrest people. Patrick will do fine. This is my wife and working colleague, Ingrid. Was Cliff Morley a good chum of yours?'

‘He was,' the other man answered stonily. ‘A
very
good chum.'

‘I shall value anything you might be able to tell me about him and what he was working on.'

‘We don't need outside help. We're perfectly capable of finding the bastards ourselves.'

‘You might need someone to out-Herod Herod,' was all Patrick said, seemingly absently-mindedly, organizing polystyrene cups.

‘Sergeant Cunningham's taken Morley's death very badly,' Reece said on our return, having seen, but not heard, the exchange through the glass screen between the offices. ‘I sincerely hope he wasn't offensive.'

‘Not at all,' Patrick replied. ‘I could tell he was upset when we first arrived. Is he closely involved on the same case as Morley?'

‘No, he's not working on that at all.'

‘Nor now, on the investigation into his death?'

‘No. I thought it best if he stayed right out of it.'

‘I suggest you rope him in in some capacity. Let's get all that grief and burning resentment properly channelled, shall we?' Patrick opened his briefcase. ‘Now, please give us as much relevant information as you can.'

He did not think of himself as a mere constable, obviously.

‘This appears to be one of those cases where a bunch of urban thickoes with truckloads of form headed by a brainier version jump into a black BMW with tinted glass windows and head for a city in the provinces either because of disagreements or because home is too hot to stay in,' Reece began urbanely. ‘These people are unknown to us and although the Met
think
the boss-man could be the brother-in-law of someone calling himself Ernie O'Malley, who runs his dirty little empire from a council flat in Walthamsden when he hasn't given the Met the slip, there's no proof. They seem to keep their heads down and play it respectable when they're not actually breaking the law. I'll be perfectly honest with you and admit that we haven't yet made any progress in establishing who they are. It's almost as though several neighbours from somewhere in the Smoke got bored, decided to rob a building society branch, realized that the life was for them and took it from there. It's that incomprehensible. But they mean business. One of them, or possibly two, carry weapons – knives and handguns – and know how to use them.'

‘Are you clear in your mind that these people you speak of were responsible for Morley's death?' Patrick enquired.

‘No, but there's a tenuous connection which I'll tell you about in a minute,' Reece replied. ‘Its all we have.'

I made notes. My shorthand, a mostly outdated concept these days, is still pretty good and has the advantage of being utterly unreadable to nearly everyone else should someone acquire my notepad or try to read over my shoulder. It also means I can be as rude as I like about those doing the talking and record any suspicions about them.

Reece continued, ‘We've actually got recent CCTV footage of a couple of them where you can see their faces. One was a jewellery shop robbery – the proprietor was shot dead – where the scarf that was being used as a mask by one of the gang slipped and you get a good view of the man wearing it. The other was when a Ferrari was stolen at knife-point in a station carpark and whoever was holding the weapon wasn't even trying to hide his face. We've enhanced the pictures and sent them off to the Met and, as they haven't the first idea who they are, I think their theory is wrong. As I said, newcomers. They probably go home afterwards and mow the lawn.'

‘Illegal immigrants?' Patrick said.

‘They
could
be, but the masked ones making most of the demands don't appear to have foreign accents; more like what's referred to as “estuary English”.'

‘You reckon it's the same bunch on both those occasions?'

‘Yes, because one of the guys involved is extremely tall and bony-looking. He dresses like a scarecrow and wears a balaclava. He doesn't have to carry weapons – his appearance frightens the victims silly. They say he has a strange squeaky voice and moves in an odd way – probably for disguise purposes.'

‘He could be the leader,' I commented.

Reece looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, a phenomenon that I have come up against quite a lot since working with Patrick.

‘Yes, I think he is,' he acknowledged.

‘So these people just come out of nowhere, do a job and then vanish?' Patrick said. ‘What was Morley doing then?'

‘Hanging around trying to spot and get an angle on the tall man. This character doesn't appear to go in the kind of pubs that dodgy people use – and we really are talking about a very tall individual; he's at
least
six foot six or seven and bone-thin. Up until a short while ago the snouts we use were as in the dark as we were, or so they said. Then Morley got a lead from one of them about someone who'd moved into a new estate in Bradley Stoke and immediately started upsetting all the neighbours – boorish behaviour, big aggressive guard dogs, the bloke tall and thin and always ready to pick an argument. Morley was given an address of sorts but when he went out there he couldn't find the place. He asked the snout to take him as he didn't want to use his own car for obvious reasons and the guy agreed but said he was banned from driving so Morley would have to. Then
another
snout hinted to someone else on my team that the first snout was involved with the gang and I became worried that Morley was at serious risk. I didn't want him to be seen anywhere near the area. So we lifted him out. During his de-briefing I warned him to keep his head down but he was keen to be available for the rugby match the next day before he headed up north. On reflection I should have made it an order. You know the rest.'

‘Both snouts could be dodgy,' I said. ‘And in the pay of whoever runs this gang.'

‘That too is possible,' Reece said.

‘So they both need to be taken apart by persons unknown in order to get at the truth,' Patrick said.

Reece's eyes widened in alarm. ‘Do you have that kind of brief?'

Patrick shrugged. ‘I could always make a point of asking my boss afterwards.'

‘But there can't be seen to be a connection with anything like that and a police department, surely!'