Greed: A DI Scott Baker Novel Page 7

  “Abby and Mike, I want you to both pull off everything we have on Victims one and two. Get their bank records and phone records. Also get over to Victim two’s house and gym and seize any paperwork, computers, and mobile phones. If there’s anything of interest, get them off to the high tech unit; let’s see what they can pull out for us.

  We need to see if there’s any cross over. They’re both suppliers and would have been known to each other. Let’s see if they were friends or foes ok? This could be tit for tat.” He briefly nodded at both of them.

  “Sian, can you bring in Stone’s fiancé tomorrow morning? We need to see how much she knows.”

  “Will do, Guv.”

  “Ok everyone, call it a night for now, I’ll update the DCI first thing in the morning and then I’ll interview Vicky Bright with Sian.”

  Chapter 11

  The PM report on the second victim hadn’t come through overnight. Scott made a mental note to go over to the mortuary later for the results.

  The briefing with the DCI had been a colourful exchange. DCI Harvey had expressed in no uncertain terms that she wanted the investigation speeded up as they’d get a few extra brownie points with the Chief Superintendent. However to balance out her argument, DCI Harvey was quietly pleased that two undesirable shits had been taken off the street and saved the force considerable time and money. She was hoping that their removal had put a large hole in the supply chain in Brighton.

  On the one hand, Scott liked the fact that the DCI never minced her words, but on the other, he felt she was sometimes a little too close to the wind for comfort. He felt her political incorrectness was best left within the four walls of her office. He’d left her room with her last comment, “Scott, get a bloody result fast,” ringing in his ears.

  I’ll just rub my fucking magic lamp shall I?

  ***

  Vicky Bright had reluctantly agreed to come in to the station. She’d protested all the way. Sian had done her hardest to placate the woman. When she hadn’t shut up, Sian decided silence was her best solution to stop that droning, whiny cockney accent boring into her skull.

  She was seated in one of the station’s interview rooms with a cup of tea. Sian and Scott were greeted with a glowering scowl as they sat opposite her.

  Sian set up the tapes in the recorder set on the table, hit the record button and did the introductory formalities.

  She barked at them, “Thank fuck for that…am I under arrest?” Her eyes darting from one officer to another.

  Scott held up a hand to stop her dead in her tracks.

  “Ms Bright, no you’re not under arrest, you’re just helping us with our enquiries into your fiancé’s death. We’d also like to talk to you about the evidence we’ve retrieved following searches of your property and the clubs. However I do need to caution you. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

  “Is that clear to you?”

  She nodded her reply.

  “For the tape, could you speak your replies, please,” Sian asked.

  “Yesss.” She hissed.

  “Of course you can have legal representation should you wish, and you’re perfectly entitled to leave whenever you want.”

  “Just get on with it,” she replied impatiently.

  That seemed to pacify her venomous attack, but her glare remained fixed. Her eyes shone a cold lack of trust in those sitting opposite her.

  “Ms Bright, what do you know about Edward Stone’s business affairs?”

  Vicky eyed them both with suspicion, either reluctant to comment or unsure as to what she should be telling them. “Not a lot, he ran two nightclubs…successful nightclubs, I’ll have you know.”

  “Did you know of any other business dealings that he may have been involved in?” Sian interjected.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything other than his clubs…did he have a vested interest in anything else?”

  “Nope,” was the curt reply back.

  Scott was silent throughout the exchange, observing Vicky’s facial expressions carefully as Sian continued to question her.

  He’d been fascinated with human behaviour since his days at university. Not long after leaving, he’d formally learnt about patterns of verbal and nonverbal communication, eye accessing cues, linguistic structures, and voice control methods. Many of which had proved invaluable in recent years and were coming into play now.

  As the saying went, The eyes are the window to the soul. The mouth the door. Scott never really found the true origins of that saying. They’d been much debate over the years. Some attributed it to Shakespeare, others to Leonardo De Vinci and even Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  He reflected that whoever had arrived at that conclusion had a fascinating perspective of human evolution. In reality the interpretation that Scott concluded for himself was that, the intellect and will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth.

  “Was Edward dealing in drugs?” Sian resumed.

  That question seemed to light the touch paper and incense the woman.

  She raised her bloodshot and puffy eyes to meet Sian’s gaze directly. She screamed, “Do you take me for some fucking idiot?” Her whole demeanour changed as she leant forward, both arms spread across the table, her words accompanied by spittle rocketing from her mouth.

  Sian abruptly leant back in her chair as it made contact with her cotton shirt.

  Vicky continued to erupt, “Are you looking for the fucker? No. Instead you’re here harassing the one person who loved Eddy. How am I going to manage now?”

  “I’ll ask you again, was Edward dealing in drugs?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “So how do you explain the large quantity of class A found in your wardrobe?”

  Vicky hesitated for a moment, enough for Scott to notice. “No fucking clue, maybe he was looking after it for someone.”

  “That’s still possession,” Sian replied calmly.

  “Why you telling me? It’s got fuck all to do with me.”

  “Because you co-habit the apartment, so it implicates you.”

  Vicky was clearly getting incensed by the accusations flying her way; her shoulders were hunched, her body retracting to form an imaginary cocoon.

  Scott felt a level of respect for Sian as she carefully kept her voice neutral despite the vile responses. Scott could have interjected and taken over. However, he knew that as a junior officer, Sian needed to experience and learn how to handle a range of different reactions that she’d come across whilst interviewing witnesses and suspects.

  He gauged that Vicky’s outburst was either a genuine cry from the heart, or a calculated attempt for sympathy. Either way there was little they were going to get out of her, but he felt he’d have one more throw of the dice.

  He chose his words carefully. “How well did Edward know Dave Fraser?”

  The question seemed to halt Vicky in her tracks. Her mind having to furiously switch from the verbal battle she was having with Sian, to this probing question from Scott. The momentary pause was all he needed to confirm his suspicions.

  “Never heard of the bloke.”

  “I think you have, Vicky,” he challenged in a firm direct voice. “I reckon you know him very well.”

  “What? You fucking Derren Brown or something?”

  “No, I’m Detective Inspector Baker and you’re pissing me off,” he replied in a quiet measured way.

  Scott deliberately slammed his hand down hard on the table, the sound echoing around the small room. Vicky and Sian jumped in their chairs. “I’m here to catch the ’fucker,’” as you put it. The man who killed your Eddy, so if you don’t help I’ll assume you’re withholding information and obstructing a murder investigation.”

  His words were firm, his eyes locked in a battle of wills with Vicky. Scott wasn’t going to let this one go.
Her eyes were giving him all the information he needed.

  There was an extended silence as neither budged, Vicky’s eyes flickered just a little. “I don’t know him, but I heard Eddy having a row with him on the phone a few weeks ago.”

  “You said a row, what do you mean?”

  Vicky shook her head.

  “Did they often speak on the phone or meet up?”

  Again a shake of her head. “Not as far as I know, I never heard him talk about him or I never met him.”

  “Was Dave Fraser supplying the drugs we found in your wardrobe?”

  “No…no...no...,” was the reply. She kept shaking her head. “Eddy wasn’t into drugs.”

  “So how did they get there….early Christmas present from Santa?”

  Frustration was getting the best of her. She began to shift around in her chair, crossing her arms and then uncrossing them. Her pupils were dilating, a sure sign that her brain was working hard, his suspicion confirmed as she covered her eyes with a hand. Scott knew from his human behaviour training, that many people would literally put their hands over their eyes or mouths when letting an untruth out to cover up a lie or hide themselves from the reaction to it.

  Sian was furiously scribbling away on her notepad capturing her responses.

  “Are you sure, you’re not holding back? You see, I think you’re not being totally honest with me,” Scott pushed.

  Vicky tutted and looked up towards the ceiling, her eyes welling up again. “No,” her voice broke as her chin trembled. “Look, I never met the guy, all I know is he had an argument with my Eddy on the phone.” Her voice trailed off.

  Scott concluded the interview soon after, and arranged for Vicky to be taken home.

  “Didn’t get much, did we, Guv?” asked Sian as they walked back up to the office.

  “Far from it, Sian. We got exactly what we needed.”

  Sian shot him a quizzical glance.

  ***

  The case was bothering Scott. He knew he wasn’t far from making the connections that the DCI wanted, but was still missing the crucial link. He decided to accompany Mike and Abby to the search of Dave Fraser’s House.

  Reynolds Road was just an ordinary unassuming suburban street, with a mixture of average semi-detached and detached properties. As Scott got out of his car he noticed how one side of the street was predominately semi-detached residences, and the other side of the road was mainly detached properties.

  Dave Fraser’s property was a detached house with white UPVC double glazed bay fronted windows. It had a small front garden with off-street parking and a quirky little single window in the roof space.

  The officer standing by the front door was PC Oju. They both nodded at each other as Scott stepped inside. The house had been lavishly decorated with cream leather sofas in the lounge and a giant sixty-inch curved HDTV that took pride of place on one wall. Scott thought the TV was way too large for the room as he continued to walk around the ground floor. The kitchen looked newly fitted with marble tops and shaker style units.

  “Business must be booming, I must buy myself a gym,” Scott said to no one in particular as he looked around the empty kitchen, running his finger along the smoothness of the marble top.

  Abby walked in holding up an evidence bag.

  “There’s just over eight and half grand in here.”

  “Hardly pin money, is it?” Scott replied.

  “Hardly, and Mike’s just found about another five grand in the back bedroom behind a wardrobe.”

  The property search continued for the best part of the afternoon and yielded lots of potential evidence and clues.

  Among the items documented and bagged were £13,725 in cash, two laptops, three mobile phones, and a book with times and dates. Scott assumed these were related to suspect transactions. A crucial discovery was what appeared to be an identical black holdall to the one recovered from Ed Stone’s property. It contained several large, clear bags of white powder which no doubt once tested would be confirmed as a class A substance. This last find led to Scott calling in the sniffer dog to give the property a once over in case anything had been missed.

  ***

  Scott was back in the office by late afternoon pouring over the records he’d requested for both victims. He’d hardly eaten all day and was munching on a tuna mayo baguette he’d grabbed from the canteen. It tasted bland and the bread felt like it was a few days paste its sell by date, making each mouthful hard to swallow.

  He was hankering after a hot meal, but the meals at the station were dubious at the best of times. The only thing they seemed to do well was a good breakfast dripping in fat. He always stared in amazement when Mike chose to sit there and polish one off in minutes, using a slice of white bread to mop up the remnants of his baked beans sauce and egg yolk.

  Scott had even succumbed on the odd occasion to experience the infamous gut buster breakfast at the twenty-four hour Market Diner, which was around the corner from the station.

  Despite valiant attempts to avoid the place like the plague, Scott had relented because it was one of Mike’s favourite hovels. It had left no doubt in Scott’s mind that each breakfast was knocking at least one year off his life, whilst adding an extra inch to his waistline. Mike a living testimonial.

  Scott stopped in mid mouthful when he noticed something. He had the bank records of both victims going back over the past five years. His eyes were rapidly scanning left to right, from one sheet to another. The closer he looked, the faster his mind was buzzing, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. There were a series of regular payments over the years going from Dave Fraser to Ed Stone’s account. They weren’t small sums either. Scott counted over twenty-five payments between £4,000 and £7,000.

  Normally that could have been reasonably explained as legitimate business transfers that happen millions of times a day in the banking system. However, the fact that the two people in question both had convictions and were now dead caused alarm bells to ring.

  Scott quickly grabbed his calculator and started working out some figures. He blew out a whistle when he released that at least £130,000 had been paid to Ed Stone over the past five years. That in itself warranted further scrutiny, but what piqued Scott’s interest was what he found going back to an earlier statement, a large entry of £76,000 paid to Stone from Fraser.

  Scott could feel his breathing becoming more rapid as excitement took over. He sat upright in his chair. Scenarios were now playing out in his mind. It was clear that both victims knew each other and were involved in some type of deal. He started to question his own assumption,

  Had we got it wrong all this time? Was it in fact Stone who was a bigger fish and had been supplying to Fraser? Had they got in too deep with an unknown third party, and things had turned sour?

  He also had to consider another possibility. With the explosion of the freedom of movement amongst EU citizens, a distinct lack of border controls, rising immigration and the financial strength of the City of London, there had been a rise of cross-border organised crime.

  Recently, criminal gangs from both the UK and Europe had been showing an interest in expanding operations to the South Coast to exploit the many entry points that it had to offer. This had become an area of concern for Sussex Police.

  So perhaps they had pissed off the wrong guys, if Eastern European gangs were involved, then Stone and Fraser were way out of their league, thought Scott.

  He’d only just read a report from Europol that as many as 1,500 gangs were actively targeting the UK, with the cocaine and heroin markets ranked among the highest in Europe. So it was plausible that Stone and Fraser had got in too deep, or tried to rip someone off, or even just been eliminated to reduce the competition.

  Scott had all these questions and many more rolling around inside his mind as he figured out what steps to take next.

  Chapter 12

  The sun was sitting low in the sky as Scott drove along the seafront. It was a crisp morning; the sea was still,
the pavements were decorated in a pure white sheet of frost that glistened in the sunlight. Even on a cold, crisp sunny morning, Brighton was absolutely magical.

  There was the usual throng of people heading off to work mixed in with the early tourists taking photographs along the seafront, capturing the essence of Brighton with Palace Pier in the background.

  It was views like this that reminded Scott of all the reasons he moved away from London and Essex. Out here there was freedom, fresh air and space. Even though his caseload was just as busy, being in Brighton and experiencing the laid-back atmosphere of the town helped to balance out and reduce the stresses and difficulties that the job placed on him.

  He made his way over to Lewes Road. His first call was to stop in and see Cara to get an update on the post-mortem that she’d conducted.

  ***

  As he made his way to the door he paused to watch a middle-aged lady with a younger man with his arm around her, accompanying her to the front door. Sadly he’d seen this many times before, the family of a recently deceased person coming to either formally identify or see their loved one in the chapel of rest.

  Scott held back, giving them the space they deserved as they waited for a mortuary technician to let them in.

  A few moments later he followed through the same entrance. The mortuary technician acknowledging Scott’s arrival as he carried on consoling the family. Scott went through to the observation room and could see Cara busy at work on the body of a young female, perhaps no older than seventeen or eighteen.

  Even though he dealt with the hard end of life, he held a certain amount of respect for the job that Cara did. In Scott’s eyes, the deceased was still a person, someone’s mother, father, daughter, son, brother or sister. However he guessed from Cara’s perspective, they were just a body. A body that she needed to open up, dissect and examine to ascertain cause of death, without any emotional component.

  He pressed on the intercom buzzer to get Cara’s attention. She paused midway to look up, her hands occupied with the dark red liver of the female.