Black Quarry Farm Read online

  ‘Before I respond, I’d just like to say I’m sorry for your loss. I know it must have been very hard for you to come here today.’

  ‘Thank You.’

  ‘On the subject of the investigation, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but it’s a very complex–’

  ‘Don’t try and flannel me with your excuses, Inspector. I have no wish to hear them.’

  ‘If you would only let me finish. I was about to say, this is a very complex investigation. We have examined the location where your parents were killed, the workers at the vineyard, the background of your parents, and we–’

  ‘This is exactly what I mean, you’re making no progress whatsoever, are you?’

  ‘Ms Beech, if you continue to interrupt me, I will have no alternative but to terminate this meeting immediately.’

  ‘This is my mother and father we are talking about. You can’t ride roughshod over their lives and expect me to take it lying down.’

  ‘I’m not trying to ride roughshod over anything. You’ve asked about the investigation and I’m trying to explain to you where we are. If your father or mother had a murky past, or were trading in guns or drugs in their spare time–’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous–’

  ‘–then we would surmise there was a legitimate reason for their murder and investigate appropriately.’ Her mouth opened to speak but he ploughed on. ‘As it is, your parents lived exemplary lives, so we must look further afield to find the motive behind their deaths.’

  ‘I told your colleagues what they were like. Where will you look now?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to share that information with anyone at this time.’

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’

  ‘You’re trying to put words into my mouth.’

  ‘I don’t have to, I can tell.’

  Henderson’s blood was rising. He needed to calm down. Even if he knew the precise direction of where they were heading in the next stage of this investigation, no way could he share it with a close family member such as Kayleigh. For all he knew, when she had finished talking to him, she could walk into a coffee bar in Lewes or Brighton and be met there by a journalist.

  ‘Ms Beech,’ he said, ‘your confrontational attitude is helping no one.’

  ‘Confrontational, am I? You should see me when I really get going.’

  ‘I imagined the only confrontation you would see in your line of work would be between warring couples, but this has proved me wrong.’

  ‘You’re trying to do my job for me, are you? Hey, there’s a good idea. Maybe we could swap. I’ll do yours and you do mine. I could make a better fist of it than you’re doing so far.’

  ‘That’s quite enough. This is a serious investigation occupying the time and expertise of over twenty police officers.’

  She stood, her chair making a loud scraping noise. ‘I came here today full of hope, thinking by now you’d have made a breakthrough to end this nightmare, but all I hear from you is excuse after excuse. This isn’t the last you’ll hear about this.’

  ELEVEN

  Henderson left the car in a parking bay in the basement of his apartment building and walked up the hill towards Eastern Road. At this time of the afternoon, many roads in the area were busy with delivery vans, motorists looking for a place to park, and the occasional delivery lorry trying to negotiate through narrow streets. It was too early for the majority of kids from Brighton College to be going home, but he still saw a few in uniform, most likely heading off for a doctor or dentist appointment.

  He walked through the gates of the Royal Sussex Hospital and headed towards the main entrance. It never ceased to amaze him how busy this place could be, day or night. For sure, it was one of the three major hospitals in the Sussex area, equipped with the staff, facilities and equipment to handle every sort of emergency and trauma, those conditions requiring more care and attention than would be available at smaller, local hospitals.

  He found Gerry Hobbs sitting up between crisp white sheets reading The Argus.

  ‘Hi there, Gerry,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Hello Angus, it’s great to see you.’

  ‘I brought you the things you wanted,’ Henderson said, depositing a bottle of Irn Bru and some bananas on the bedside unit, ‘and something we don’t want the nurses to see,’ he said, hiding a half-bottle of rum in the cupboard. He pulled a seat over and sat down.

  ‘So, how’s the patient?’

  ‘Going stir-crazy, if you must know. I’ve been in here just under a week and already it feels like a month.’

  ‘I think you might be in here just a little while longer, what with a broken arm, three smashed ribs and a face looking as though it’s gone through a car windscreen.’

  Hobbs moved, trying to get comfortable, but at some cost as his face contorted in pain. ‘I tell you,’ he said a minute or so later, ‘being laid up in here doesn’t half make me feel old.’

  ‘On the plus side, your presence here does bring down the average age a bit.’

  ‘Compliment accepted, but it’s not just feeling old, it’s the helplessness, you know? Nurses helping me to sit up and, for the first few days, feeding me as well as I couldn’t move either arm. Not to mention going to the loo.’

  ‘You were in pretty bad shape.’

  ‘Did Barry tell you about it?’

  ‘He gave me the gist of it. What actually happened?’

  Barry Marsden, the CI of Hobbs’s unit, had called Henderson when the accident happened, but nothing could beat the recollection of the person who had been affected most.

  ‘It started with us staking-out this disused factory in Newhaven. The intel we had, told us it was a place where drugs imported from Holland were being sold in bulk to middle-tiered drug dealers.’

  His voice had a whistling quality about it, sounding like a dental patient as the Novocaine wore off after some serious treatment, but with Hobbs it was related to the puncture he’d received to his lung.

  ‘A van turned up with the seller and, ten minutes later, a couple of cars with the buyers. We left them to get settled and then we hit them. Plans of the place were sketchy and it was more dilapidated than we expected. I spotted this guy and chased him upstairs and, I don’t know how he managed to miss it, but when I stood on a loose floorboard, it crumbled and I fell through the floor.’

  ‘Christ almighty!’

  ‘That’s just what I said, with a few profanities thrown in for good measure. With luck, I didn’t smack the ground below, which was concrete, but landed on a pile of foam insulation.’

  ‘You were lucky.’

  ‘I was, but with all the momentum of the fall, I bounced off the insulation into a heap of debris: wood, nails, bits of rusty machinery. I’ve had two Tetanus injections.’

  ‘Did they catch the guy you were chasing?’

  Hobbs laughed, eliciting another wince. ‘The daft bastard turned to see what had happened to me and ran straight into a concrete pillar. Knocked himself clean out. He was in a bed over there,’ he said with a nod of the head, ‘with concussion for a couple of days.’

  ‘When are you scheduled for release?’

  ‘End of next week if the recovery continues the way it’s going. Oh, look out, here comes trouble.’

  Henderson turned to see Hobbs’ wife, Catalina, and his twin girls, Milly and Alicia, hurrying towards them.

  ‘Hello Angus,’ she said in a strong Hispanic accent, ‘it’s great to see you.’

  She gave Henderson a powerful hug and a sloppy kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ve been so worried about him,’ she said, still holding him, ‘especially when he went into surgery. He’s not as robust as he thinks he is.’

  ‘Hey,’ Hobbs called. ‘Break up the snogging you two. I might be physically incapacitated but I can still feel jealousy.’

  Catalina pulled away from Henderson and reached over the bed to embrace her husband. She was a snappy dresser and, even at this time of the afternoon, was dressed in a woolle
n red dress that hugged her voluptuous figure, finished off with killer heels.

  Henderson left a few minutes later, leaving them to it. Catalina was a gregarious woman and would have been happy for Henderson to stick around a while longer, but he knew Hobbs and how he valued the time he spent with his family.

  **

  Henderson walked out of the Royal Sussex and headed back to his flat. He only had time for a cup of coffee and a quick bite to eat before going back out again to the car. He would have liked to have stayed a bit longer; even though he’d now completed most of the unpacking, he still hadn’t got the apartment into the shape that he wanted.

  He drove out of Brighton, north towards Crawley. Many of his favourite radio stations were into their afternoon programming, walks in the country on Radio 4 and phone-ins on most of the pop stations. He turned the sound down and listened instead to the hum and thump of his car tyres on the tarmac.

  Seeing Hobbs had taken his mind off the Black Quarry Farm murders for an hour or so, and now thinking about it again, he’d come up with an idea. He started out with the notion that someone other than the Beeches was the intended victim of the killers. Initially, he’d got hung up on Simon Radcliffe, as he was a high-profile person with a less than lustrous past industrial life, but what if the killers had got something right? What if they knew their victims were scheduled to stay at the Black Quarry Farm house, but due to a tip-off or a mix-up in dates, they’d killed the wrong people?

  Using the car phone, he called Vicky Neal and explained his thinking.

  ‘I think we’ve got a list of the previous tenants somewhere. Melissa gave us a whole host of stuff.’

  ‘Try to track down the last four or five. How long do people usually stay in the house?’

  ‘Most commonly a week, but some have taken it for two, and one man rented it for two months. An author, according to Melissa.’

  ‘You’ll need to use a bit of savvy here. The Beeches booked the second week in June, so look back at April and May. Also, look forward to July and see who was scheduled to stay there.’

  ‘I catch your drift, see if we can identify how the killers might have made a mistake. June and July can often sound the same over a bad phone connection.’

  ‘Right. Also, look for names similar to Beech; Leech, Veitch, for example, and try to find out if they’re holidaymakers or if they’ve booked the house for some other purpose. Run all the names against the PNC.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘See you in the morning, Vicky.’

  ‘Cheers, guv.’

  When he arrived in Crawley, he drove into the car park at the County Mall shopping centre. There were probably better and cheaper car parks in the town, but he knew this one and could usually get his bearings when he came out of the exit.

  He strode down The Martletts, his senses assailed by the smells of Lush and the noise from the music belting out of Sports Direct and HMV. He walked into Waterstones bookshop and climbed the stairs to the café.

  He spotted the man he wanted to talk to and headed over. Daya Gupta was a small man with a close-cropped beard, dark hair, and glasses similar to the ones Henderson’s father wore thirty years ago.

  ‘Mr Gupta?’

  ‘Ah, Detective Inspector Henderson,’ he said standing up to shake his hand, ‘good to meet you, sir.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No,’ Gupta said. ‘Too much coffee and I will not sleep tonight.’

  ‘Something to eat, perhaps?’

  ‘No, no, no. You get what you want. I’m happy with this,’ he said, pointing at the milky brew on the table.

  Henderson walked to the counter and ordered a small Americano, as he wanted to sleep tonight as well. He couldn’t blame Gupta for not wanting to eat anything, as in common with every other coffee shop he had been in, they sold a good range of tempting but sugar-laden snacks. He didn’t mind a muffin or a pain au raisin now and again, but when using these places as often as he did, eating there could soon add on some extra pounds.

  He returned to the table and sat down. Gupta didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

  ‘The reason I called and wanted to talk to you, Inspector Henderson, is when your officers came to Galen to see Doctor Phillips and Julia Robinson, I knew he wouldn’t tell them anything. Julia told me as much afterwards. I feel it is my duty to help you in any way I can.’

  ‘Are you taking a risk talking to me?’

  ‘A little. The company is paranoid about leaks, you understand, but as I don’t intend telling you anything that will compromise our competitive position, or national security. My conscience is clear.’

  ‘That’s good. You said you were John’s direct line manager?’

  ‘Yes, I was, Doctor Phillips is in overall charge of the Business Unit. We work as a team most of the time, but some projects require separate development.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Gupta went on to talk for a few minutes about John’s role, more or less repeating the information Vicky Neal had reported after her trip to Galen.

  ‘Would any of this be of interest to a foreign power?’

  ‘Yes, of course. The improvements to the propulsion system of submarine missiles had become John’s forte for a number of years and, at the time, many military organisations around the world were wrestling with the same problem. If John had been killed at that point, it would have set this program back at least two years.’

  ‘You think he may have been murdered because of this?’

  ‘I took care choosing my words, Inspector. I said, ‘at the time’. This all happened over six years ago when John worked in the missile systems area. Nowadays, the Chinese have undersea and air missiles which are far faster and with longer range than anything in our arsenal. John’s improvements have been superseded, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘Another door closes.’

  ‘Ah yes, I’m afraid it does. I think I’m confident in saying that nothing John was working on before he died was important enough to get him killed.’

  ‘I’m assuming you didn’t ask me to come here just to tell me this?’

  ‘No, I did not. Let me tell you the nub of what I wanted to talk to you about. You see, to some in the office, me included, John’s best years were behind him. He seemed to have grown tired of what he was doing. He had lost interest.’

  ‘Perhaps he needed a new challenge.’

  ‘Yes, you could be right, but something was on his mind and it was affecting his work. When I asked him about it, he told me. He couldn’t believe it, he said, but he suspected his wife was having an affair.’

  ‘I haven’t heard this.’

  ‘I don’t expect many people talk to the police about such things.’

  ‘How long had it been going on?’

  ‘Some time, he said. This is why he was so upset.’

  ‘Do you know who with?’

  ‘A neighbour was all he said. He didn’t say which one, nor whether it was a man or woman. You can’t be so sure nowadays.’

  ‘You’re right, you can’t, but I’m not sure it gives us a motive for why John and his wife were murdered. Unless of course, she refused to leave her husband and this person thought, if I can’t have her, no one else will.’

  ‘Yes, this is what I was thinking, but there is something else.’

  Gupta stopped to finish his coffee, which to Henderson looked stone cold.

  ‘John had fallen out with another employee of the company, an engineer called Andy Gilchrist. It started when a circuit board Andy gave to John had an error in it, costing John a month’s wasted effort. Such things happen from time to time in a development environment like ours, and it was an excusable mistake. You see, Gilchrist was using a new system for the first time, but it kicked off a series of some quite regrettable events.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, it first began as a war of words, but it soon escalated. John complained about his car being damaged, said he had been accosted in
the street by Gilchrist, had received silent phone calls in the middle of the night, and only a week before his death, said Gilchrist had threatened to kill him.’

  TWELVE

  Kayleigh walked into the pub, stopped, and looked around. She was surprised to find it so busy for a Wednesday evening, but as she didn’t come into Brighton too often at night, she hadn’t known what to expect. The area around the bar was crowded with brawny, smiling lads sporting smart haircuts, body-hugging t-shirts, expensive jeans, and eyeing up any woman who walked in the door. Some of them turned to look at her, gave her the once-over, and looked away. She didn’t fit the profile of any of the females standing beside them in the throng. They were younger, wearing short, tight dresses with loads of make-up, and had a fire burning in their eyes suggesting they would either get drunk or laid tonight, and with a bit of luck, it would be both.

  She spotted the man she was looking for. He wasn’t hard to find as he’d sent her a photograph of himself. She walked over and, when he became aware of her approach, he stood up to greet her.

  ‘Kayleigh Beech?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rob Tremain. Thanks for coming.’ They shook hands and sat down.

  ‘Did you find the bar okay?’

  ‘I don’t know Brighton well. I live in Crawley and work in Redhill, but the app on my phone directed me here.’

  ‘Good. What can I get you?’

  ‘Something soft, please. Orange or apple juice will do.’

  ‘No problem. Back in a moment.’

  Rob Tremain, the Chief Crime Reporter of The Argus, wasn’t what she was expecting at all. Television dramas had led her to believe he would be mid-fifties, washed-up, with thinning grey hair and a tatty old raincoat.