Fault Lines (34 page)

Femur didn’t think Chaz Chompton had either the wit or the resources to have managed that on his own. The obvious source of information on the original killing was Spinel, but whether the initiative had been his or Drakeshill’s, Femur was still not sure. He had no sodding evidence. He’d have to get enough from somewhere to try to push a wedge between them and get them angry enough with each other to give him everything he needed.

‘Ah, Cally, good,’ Femur said, as he saw her coming towards him. She was looking much better, less angry and with more colour in her face, which presumably reflected his own feeling that they were getting somewhere at last. He wished he’d had her with him when he was interviewing Blair Collons yesterday. Then he wouldn’t have made such a fool of himself – or driven the pathetic little man to throw up.

‘Let’s go.’

‘OK, Guv.’ She led the way into the interview room.

Michael Napton looked up angrily and said, ‘This is outrageous.’

Here we go again, thought Femur, as Caroline stuck a tape in the machine and said who they were.

‘This is outrageous,’ Napton said again, as soon as she’d finished. ‘I’ve been dragged away from my family and brought here like a criminal on a charge of murdering a woman who died while I was out of the country! It’s not only outrageous, it’s ludicrous.’

‘Have you been charged, sir?’ asked Femur quietly.

‘I’ve been arrested.’

‘It’s not quite the same, sir. We’ve arrested you on suspicion of murder, and cautioned you, but we haven’t charged you. D’you understand the difference?’

There was a slight yielding in the man’s angry expression. It was a good-looking face, Femur thought, if a little weak about the mouth and chin. Not that physical features were any evidence of character, as he was always having to remind himself, but Napton didn’t look like a decisive man, or a particularly brave one. That was all to the good: if he were the weak link in Drakeshill’s chain it would break quicker.

‘How could I possibly be involved in her murder? I wasn’t there.’

‘No, I know you weren’t. Now, I understand that you have waived your right to a solicitor. Is that correct?’

‘Yes. I don’t need one. I told you, I was out of the country when the woman was killed, as you can check from the airline records. And if you think I slipped back here in between the flights I took with my wife and daughter, the hotel staff in Meribel ought to be able to tell you you’re wrong.’

‘I’m not interested in your movements or your alibi. There are only two things I want to talk to you about,’ said Femur. ‘One is the deal you negotiated for the council with Goodbuy’s Supermarkets, and the other is your connection with Martin Drakeshill and Sergeant Spinel of the drugs squad.’

As they watched, Napton’s face changed, moving through surprise to doubt and then fear, slackening all the time, as though it had been made of melting wax. So, Femur thought, Collons was right. But how the hell does it all hang together? If I ask the wrong questions now, I’ll blow it. But he’s ready to talk. Take it slowly, from the top.

‘You did, did you not,’ he went on, aware of sounding like a pompous fart, ‘negotiate with Goodbuy’s Supermarkets to accept a plot of land in the middle of Kingsford as a
quid pro quo
for planning permission for a megastore in King’s Park?’

‘We call it planning gain,’ said Napton helpfully. ‘But yes, yes, I did.’

‘And what was Drakeshill’s interest in it?’

‘I don’t think there was anything, was there?’

Damn, thought Femur. Got that one wrong. Aloud he said, ‘But he became involved, didn’t he?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Then how did you come to be working for him?’

‘So she did come to you, did she?’ Napton said. ‘I was afraid she would, once she realised. That’s why I told them I had to stop. And I thought …’

Femur sat in silence. Sometimes that got better results than clumsy questions. But he assumed that the ‘she’ in question was Kara Huggate.

‘How did she get on to it?’

Femur shrugged. ‘Same way as us, probably.’

Napton nodded, but he didn’t say anything else. Femur knew that Caroline was just as much at sea as he was. He thought through everything Blair Collons had said. It didn’t help much. ‘How did they take it when you said you had to stop?’ he asked, hoping that might turn the key.

‘I was amazed,’ Napton said, slightly shaking his head. ‘I’d envisaged all sorts of rows and more pressure of the old sort, but they were great. Spinel was quite aggressive when I first told him, but I said there just wasn’t any option and there was no point him trying to blackmail me again. If I lost my job, then I lost my job. I was so … It had got so bad, and I knew Kara Huggate wasn’t going to let go, that she’d go on probing until she’d worked it all out. I –’

‘I’m just a thick copper,’ Femur said. ‘Lay it all out for me. How, exactly, did Spinel blackmail you in the first place?’

‘By threatening to tell the council that I’d known all along about Goodbuy’s land being contaminated,’ Napton said, in an impatient tone. ‘I thought you knew that.’

‘I’m still a bit puzzled about the timing of it all.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘When did the council find out about the contamination?’

‘When the engineers dug their trial trench,’ he said, as though Femur were proving himself ever more stupid. ‘With all the subsidence in the area, they had to be sure the buildings were going to be secure, so trial trenches were dug all over the site, and it became clear straight away that something fairly bad was fouling the ground. They reported, and we got Flower Brothers in to do the assessment and quote for cleaning it up. And …’ He flushed. ‘I’d forgotten, you see, in all the excitement when everyone was pleased about the land and telling me how wonderful I was, to tell anyone what Goodbuy’s had said about the chemicals.’

‘Which was?’

‘They were so casual about it – I’m still not convinced they knew quite how bad it was. They just said they had an idea there might be some chemical residues from one of the factories that had been operating there and we’d probably have to do a bit of a clean-up before we started building. I had no idea it was so serious, and once I had realised, I couldn’t admit I’d cocked up like that. Not when I’d been promoted on the strength of it, made head of department, and –’ He broke off, looking helplessly at Femur.

‘Right. So, you’d always known there was contamination, but you hadn’t taken it seriously and then you forgot about it. Have I got that right?’

‘Not exactly forgot, it just didn’t seem very important.’ Napton pushed his hands over his face and through his thick hair. ‘I’d never had experience of this kind of thing before and it had never occurred to me that it could be so expensive to decontaminate.’

‘Right.’ Femur was frowning. He’d like to have handed the questions over to Cally, but he thought she was probably quite as confused as he was himself. ‘And when you did discover …?’

‘It was too late to do anything about it. Goodbuy’s had been given permission for their megastore, there’d been the usual stink from all the local greens, but the council was standing firm. Everyone had got so excited by the prospect of building the social housing right slap bang in the middle of Kingsford that I was still flavour of the month for brokering the deal. I couldn’t give it all up and admit to being such a fool, so lazy, really.’

Femur was so lost that he turned to Caroline. She nodded decisively and put her clipboard flat on the table. Femur saw that she’d written three questions on it.

‘Let me make sure I’ve got this right,’ she said. ‘You omitted to warn the council when you put the deal to them that they were facing an enormous bill for cleaning the land Goodbuy’s had handed over as planning gain?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And somehow Sergeant Spinel – or was it Drakeshill? – discovered that you’d always known and could have saved the council this vast amount of money?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

Napton sighed. ‘I owed him one after he helped me save my son from drugs two years ago. He was picked up with a tab of E and Spinel put the fear of God into him. He’s been clean ever since. So when Spinel came to me, as a mate, to ask whether there was any reason not to buy a house that he and his wife particularly liked on the edge of the land, I told him he’d do better elsewhere because the land was contaminated. That was just after Goodbuy’s had offered it to us.’

‘I see,’ Caroline said, smiling at him as though he were an old friend. He responded and sat more easily on his hard chair. ‘So when news of the cost of the decontamination became public, Spinel put two and two together and realised that you faced a certain amount of embarrassment?’

‘Not quite.’ Napton closed his eyes. ‘I was fool enough to go to him and ask him to keep quiet about it. I trusted, him, you see.’

Femur opened his mouth to ask a question, but Caroline overrode him. He knew her well enough to let her get on with it.

‘So how did the blackmail work if it was only embarrassment you were facing?’

‘That’s what was so clever.’ Napton looked at her again, pleading for her to understand. ‘At first Spinel just asked for another little bit of information. It was about a planning decision, confidential but not fantastically important. And I felt I owed it to him for being so decent and keeping his mouth shut.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Femur, leaning forward. ‘What about Goodbuy’s? Why didn’t they publicise the fact that they’d warned you about the contamination?’

Napton shook his head. ‘Why should they? They’d got what they wanted, it wasn’t in their interest to rock the boat. But I wish they had. None of this would have happened then. Kara Huggate would still be alive.’

Femur didn’t trust himself enough to speak. Caroline smiled encouragingly at Napton.

‘As it was,’ he went on, ‘they expressed amazement and regret that the contamination was so bad. They even offered a goodwill payment to help us out. Of course it was nowhere near enough to make any difference, only a token, really, but it made them look good.’

‘Right.’ Femur gestured to Caroline to go on. He was beginning to understand, and the thought that Kara Huggate had been tortured and killed to save this weak fool a little embarrassment, even the loss of his job, was making it almost impossible to keep hold of his temper.

‘So after you’d handed over that first piece of confidential information, Spinel had even more of a hold over you,’ suggested Caroline.

‘That’s right, you see. And it got worse and worse. It got to the stage where I had to warn Drakeshill of all major planning applications, then arrange to block any that came from people he didn’t want in Kingsford – you know, potential rivals or people who’d crossed him.’

‘Rivals?’ Femur said, in the probably vain hope of getting everything clear in his mind. ‘What kind of rivals?’

‘Other people trying to horn in on his monopoly.’ Napton looked from one officer to the other, his eyes beginning to show suspicion.

‘The drugs, you mean,’ Femur said quickly, to stop Napton realising quite how little they actually knew.

He nodded. ‘It was ages before I understood what they were up to, and when I did realise, I didn’t know what to do. I
hate
drugs, but by then I couldn’t have got away. They’d never have let me go, knowing what I did.’

‘Which was?’ Femur smiled. ‘Exactly, I mean.’

‘That Drakeshill owns all the clubs in Kingsford and uses them as major outlets for smack, coke and crack. He also supplies a whole network of smaller dealers. No one who tries to sell drugs in Kingsford for anyone else lasts very long. Drakeshill’s bouncers in the clubs or his mechanics hear of it as soon as it starts. Drakeshill then tells Spinel, who has the dealers arrested and prosecuted. Anyone who protests, or who shows signs of being prepared to talk to the police, gets blackmailed or beaten up until they toe the line.’

‘Or die.’

‘Napton covered his face with both hands.

‘So how,’ Femur said, with real interest, ‘did you find the courage to tell him that you were stopping now?’

Napton looked hurt, which made Femur’s hands clench into fists. He kept them under the table so that he couldn’t give in to temptation. Thank God for Caroline, keeping him on the straight and narrow. ‘Well?’

‘When Kara Huggate told me she wasn’t going to rest until she’d found out who was responsible for the costings fiasco on the social housing, and then make sure that it was his budget that got clobbered in order to meet the costs so that hers could be saved for her clients. Everyone else had just taken it as “one of those things”, embarrassing but that was all. Only she was interested in a witch-hunt.’

‘So you went to Spinel and asked him to have her killed, is that it?’ Caroline said.

‘Christ no!’ Napton looked and sounded appalled. ‘How could you even think me capable of …?’

‘That’s what happened, though, isn’t it?’

‘Not like that. No, I went to Spinel and said it was all over, that I’d tell the whole truth about the contamination and resign. I’d never have got another job in local government, but that didn’t matter. Anything would be better than going on, day after day, waiting for it all to come out. And, you see, I thought if I went quietly, then no one need ever know what I’d been doing for Drakeshill or what
he
had been doing. I’d look a fool about the contamination fiasco, quite rightly, but no one would know the rest.’

‘I see,’ Caroline said, shooting a warning look at Femur. She knew him well enough to understand everything that was beating in his brain. ‘And what did Spinel say?’

‘As I said, at first he was aggressive, but once he’d talked to Drakeshill, he was very decent about it. He said they’d realised that I’d been under too much stress, that I ought to have a holiday, and that when I got back it would all be different. They’d never ask me to do anything more for them and all I’d have to do was keep my mouth shut and look around for another job. I’d probably find one before Kara Huggate got very far with her witch-hunt, and then I could move away from the area in peace and that would be it.’

‘And you believed them?’ Femur almost felt pity for the idiot in front of him. Almost. ‘When did you realise the truth?’