Two

Detective Inspector Tim Yates dragged on a pair of latex gloves and tipped on to the sheet of plastic he’d draped across his desk the contents of the Ziploc bag that Detective Constable Ricky MacFadyen had just handed to him. The bag contained what appeared to be five United Kingdom passports. He picked one up and carefully turned over its pages, one by one. The stationery that had been used to produce it was either genuine or a very good fake. The passport itself was obviously counterfeit, since it contained no name or photograph. Putting it down, he worked through the other four red-covered booklets. Each was identical to the first.

“What do you make of these, Ricky?”

MacFadyen shrugged. He’d been called out very early to the house in Sutterton where the passports had been found, having been awoken from a bare four hours’ sleep after celebrating the birth of his friend Charlie’s daughter the night before. His hangover was relatively mild, but the effort required to keep his eyes open intensely painful. He stifled a yawn.

“Somebody’s obviously working some kind of racket. It’s a pity they didn’t get a bit further with what they were doing with these. We might have had more of an idea of what they’re up to. Aliases for criminals, most likely. Generally, criminals only need fake passports if they’re planning on travelling abroad with false names. If that’s what they’re for, there’s something big going on.”

“I’d say it’s definitely big, given the quality of these. I’ll need to get them checked over by a Home Office expert, but they look pretty good to me. I know something about this Kevan de Vries, the character whose house they were found in, but I’ve never met him and had no official dealings with him or his company. I understand he’s on holiday in the Windward Islands. Thornton, who does know him personally, has spoken to him on the phone, told him he needs to come home immediately. I understand he cut up pretty rough about it.”

“I’ve not met him, either, but I should think most people in the area know something about the de Vries family. Kevan’s grandfather came here from Holland in the 1930s. He was part of a group of Dutch bulb-growers and market gardeners who all settled in the Fens at around the same time. I think they got grants from the Dutch government to move here. There were too many farmers in the Netherlands, so the authorities offered sweeteners to get rid of a few.”

“Sounds like a forerunner of EU interventionist policies!”

“You could say that. Seems a bit Stalinist to me, shipping people out of the country – like collectivisation in reverse – even if they came here willingly and got paid for it. Anyway, old man de Vries did all right. He was easily the most successful of the lot of them. He practically owned Sutterton and land stretching for many miles around it when he died. By then he was much more than a farmer. He’d built canning plants and freezer plants; food-packing plants, later, when the supermarket chains started to want pre-packed produce. And acres of fields of tulips. He turned into a local tycoon.”

“All above board?”

“As far as I know. My great-uncle worked for him for a while. Said he had a reputation for being a bit of a slave-driver, but he paid quite well. That made him a better employer than many round here, then or now.”

Tim nodded.

“So has Kevan de Vries inherited all of his grandfather’s empire? Or is Kevan’s father still alive?”

“I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll find out. I don’t actually remember hearing much about Kevan’s father. Kevan’s listed as the MD and CEO of de Vries Enterprises, whatever that is. It may not include all of the companies. I’ll check that as well.”

“Tell me in detail how the passports were found.”

“There’s a woman called Jackie Briggs who cleans at Laurieston House, Kevan de Vries’ home. She’s actually called the housekeeper, but I think that’s a bit jumped-up for what she does. She lives close by and has to pass it on her way to another job that she has, cleaning the inside of ice-cream vans.”

“That a de Vries business, too?”

“I don’t think so. She cleans out ambulances as well, apparently. She has to finish cleaning the ice-cream vans before the drivers start their rounds, so she gets to the depot early. She was passing Laurieston House at about 6 a.m. this morning when she saw two men there. One of them was emerging from an opening in the conservatory roof; the other was standing in the garden. She knew the de Vries family were away, so she went to fetch her husband, who called the police. The bloke on the roof had only just jumped to the ground when the husband turned up and caught him with a rugby tackle. He was still holding on to him when the police arrived. The other one had scarpered, of course.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Terry Panton. Local kid. He had a bag of stuff he’d taken from the house. Nothing of great value. He’s already on probation for breaking and entering. He’ll have to do time now.”

“A petty thief, though? Not likely to be a passport forger?”

MacFadyen gave a short laugh.

“Hardly! He hasn’t got the brain. Besides, why would he want to plant the passports there, if he was involved in some way?”

“I’ve no idea; and you’re probably right that he knows nothing about them. A bit unfortunate for Mr de Vries, if he’s engaged in some kind of scam, to be exposed by a bungled burglary.”

“You say if he’s engaged. Can there be any doubt that he’s mixed up in this in some way?”

“My intuition says that he must be; yours too, probably. But stranger things have happened. He wouldn’t be the first rich man unwittingly to play host to someone’s little sideline. Talking of which, what did you make of the Briggs woman?”

“She seemed pleasant enough. A bit flustered, a bit in awe of the situation. And worried about her husband. Panton gave him a nasty bite when he was trying to get away from him.”

“Vicious little bastard! So you think she’s straight up?”

“I’d say so. She seems quite loyal to the de Vries family. She was concerned they might have lost something valuable.”

“But she didn’t think they had?”

“No. Something that struck me was that she didn’t like the bloke who showed up when we were looking round the house with her. Sentance, his name was. Some kind of senior de Vries henchman. Oily so-and-so.”

“That’s interesting. And you say she didn’t come down into the cellar with you when you found the passports?”

“No.”

“What about this Sentance character?”

“Oh, he came all right. He wouldn’t let us out of his sight.”

“He saw the passports?”

“Yes.”

“How did he react?”

“He said that he was sure that Mr de Vries would be able to give us an explanation.”

“Did he? I wonder what kind of explanation he was thinking of.”