Diane Fry stared at Ralph Edge, wondering why he was laughing so hard at the idea of his friend Glen Turner getting killed. And what did he mean by ‘over and over again’?
Edge just laughed even more when he saw her expression.
‘Team building,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘We were taking part in a team building exercise at the weekend. They took us to a place up in the north of the county. It’s an enormous site, with all kinds of activities, and we stayed there the whole two days. Motivational talks, orienteering, lots of role playing. Even blind driving. You know the sort of thing.’
Fry did. Except for … ‘Blind driving?’
‘You don’t know how that works? Well, they put two of you in a car, and the driver is blindfolded.’
‘What’s the point of that?’
‘The idea is that if you’re the one driving you’ve got to have complete trust in your navigator. If you’re acting as navigator, you have to be able to communicate clearly. It’s a metaphor for a good relationship in the workplace. Or something like that.’
Fry recognised the slightly jaded tone of someone who’d taken part in too many team building exercises, been sent on too many personal development courses. She’d heard the same tone in police locker rooms.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Irvine. ‘I know that place. Did you go paintballing too?’
‘Of course we did. They have a massive paintballing set-up. About a dozen different arenas. A paintballing session is always part of these things. You’re working as a team under pressure, focusing your efforts on achieving a collective goal. And getting to splatter your boss with paint at the same time. It’s brilliant.’
‘And Glen Turner took part in this?’
‘Everyone has to join in. In fact, we were on the same team. Green team, the claims adjusters. Glen was completely useless, of course. He got shot to bits by the red team. Some of those women in Sales are merciless. I bet he was sore for days afterwards.’ Edge began to laugh again, then coughed to a halt. ‘Well, I mean…’
‘Yes. He was only sore for a couple of days. And then he died.’
Diane Fry looked at Nathan Baird. He appeared to be shocked, even outraged – which pleased her more than it should have.
‘We need a list of the claims that Glen Turner was working on,’ she repeated.
‘You’re … you’re suggesting one of our policyholders might have been responsible for Glen’s death?’ said Baird.
‘I’m sure you get plenty of dissatisfied customers, don’t you, sir?’
‘Well, of course. It’s in the nature of our business.’
‘People who believe they’ve lost out on quite a large amount of money they were expecting to receive on an insurance policy?’
‘We do have some large claims to deal with, of course.’
‘Yes, large amounts of money that might make all the difference to someone’s life, whether they can cope with their problems and carry on.’
‘That’s not our concern, though.’
‘Exactly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it probably becomes very clear to people that you don’t feel it’s your concern, that you just don’t care about them.’
‘It’s very unfair to portray our company like that.’
‘Maybe. But I’m sure it must be a perception.’
‘So much for the torture theory,’ said Irvine a few minutes later when they were back in the car. ‘Turner had multiple paintballing injuries on his body, that’s all. He obviously wasn’t wearing enough padding.’
‘It sounds like a dangerous activity. Are we sure it’s legal?’
‘Properly organised venues are. They give you helmets and face masks. Padded gloves too. Most of the serious injuries have happened when someone gets a paintball in the face at close range. You can lose your sight that way. But if you’re wearing the right gear, all you risk is a bit of bruising. And you have to be unlucky for a ball to hit you somewhere unprotected.’
‘Turner was hit more than once. Mrs van Doon recorded fifteen injuries on his body.’
‘True.’
Fry was on automatic pilot as she drove back through the centre of Edendale towards West Street. She found herself stopped at traffic lights on Buxton Road.
‘I know it’s all supposed to be about team building. But Mr Edge dropped in a comment about being able to splatter the boss with paint. So it’s surely an opportunity to take out grievances on each other. And to create new ones too?’
Irvine nodded. ‘Was Glen Turner very unpopular, do you think?’
‘It’s starting to look as though he was.’
As they drove on, Fry glanced at Irvine. He still looked too young for the job. He had a bit too much of the adolescent about him to give much confidence to the law-abiding public. He’d yet to gain the self-assurance that came from experience, though he must have dealt with a wide range of incidents during his time in uniform. But he had enthusiasm, didn’t he? A sharp eye, a few new ideas to offer? A different interpretation to share?
‘What did you think of Ralph Edge, then?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t like him.’
Fry waited, but nothing else was offered. ‘Is that it?’
Irvine blinked. ‘I don’t know what else you want me to say.’
‘Great.’
She found herself wishing that Ben Cooper was in the car with her, instead of Luke Irvine. If she’d asked Cooper for his opinion, he would have given it without hesitation. In fact, he would have shared his views even if she didn’t ask. Stopping him was the problem. And it would have been a thoughtful, considered opinion he’d formed of the man they’d just interviewed. He might have had an instinct about him … Instincts weren’t always right, but sometimes they were. A balanced judgement, a useful insight. That was what she wanted. Fry was surprised how much she’d come to depend on it. Irvine couldn’t hope to compete, or didn’t want to. Perhaps he was too nervous to express an honest opinion when she gave him the chance. Was she so intimidating? Surely not.
Back in the office, Fry opened the personnel file that Nathan Baird had given her at Prospectus Assurance.
She could see from a glance at his CV that Glen Turner had been very serious about a career in insurance. Much more so than some of his colleagues, probably. It was the same in every profession. Some people just coasted along, doing the job and nothing more. But others were ambitious, always stepped forward to volunteer for new opportunities, and liked to get the appropriate training under their belt, just in case. Fry could sympathise with that.
But this was different. She wasn’t sure why, but she got the impression in Turner’s case that he might have been too obsessive, a man so focused on the job that he didn’t have time for a social life, or any outside interests. That wasn’t healthy. Lack of balance could lead an individual down the wrong path. It was possible to get things out of proportion, or out of perspective, and forget what was truly important in life. She’d seen it in so many case files, heard it in the story told by perfectly ordinary people who’d ended up in an interview room trying to explain their actions. She wondered if Glen Turner had been one of those people.
It wasn’t clear at what point Turner had decided insurance was the ideal career. His father, Clive, had been a railway engineer. But it must have been quite early on in his education that he started to drift in that direction. Following an HND in Business and Management at the University of Derby’s Kedleston Road campus, Turner had gained an MSc in Insurance and Risk Management from Glasgow Caledonian University, a three-year distance learning course, which had no doubt allowed him to remain living at home with his mother.
Then, while working at Prospectus Assurance, he’d received an Insurance Diploma from the Chartered Insurance Institute, and was studying for an Advanced Diploma when he died. He’d definitely been serious. He’d probably wanted to get on.
But qualifications weren’t everything. That was certainly true in the police service and Fry had no doubt it was the same in the insurance industry. You needed to demonstrate a lot of personal qualities. Drive, enthusiasm, initiative, an ability to work under pressure. And an aptitude for teamwork. You had to be the sort of person who got on well with your colleagues.
Was that the problem here? Turner hadn’t exactly been the life and soul of the party, by all the accounts. He didn’t chat to his colleagues much, and none of them knew anything about his life outside the office. He didn’t go to the pub after work, or socialise in the evenings. He was everyone’s target during the team building weekend. That wasn’t a picture of Mr Popular. That was the geeky guy who didn’t fit in and was laughed at behind his back. Turner really must have been good at his job to survive in that sort of environment, where it was obvious every day that he wasn’t considered part of the team.
Of course, none of that was in the copy of his personnel file she’d been given. There must have been a regular appraisal or performance review. Didn’t everybody do staff appraisals these days? Turner would have gone through one every twelve months probably. That would have been the task of Nathan Baird, or whoever had been his line manager before that. Appraisal reports were where this sort of issue would come up. Working as part of a team? Room for improvement there, Glen. I’ll have to rate you an E. Let’s set some personal targets, shall we? Any concerns on your part? Bullying? Surely not. But appraisals were confidential, and they’d been removed from his personnel file before it was copied.
She turned another sheet, and discovered that Glen Turner had earned twenty-six thousand pounds a year. Less than a detective sergeant’s pay. So all his hard-earned qualifications and his twelve years’ experience in the insurance industry hadn’t got him very far up the ladder.
There must be individuals in his company pulling in a much higher salary than that – even in Edendale, which wasn’t known for its high pay levels. If she had to take a stab, she’d guess that the Chief Executive of Prospectus Assurance was getting a better remuneration package than Derbyshire’s Chief Constable, who was said to be paid around £140,000. There would be perks too. A company car, private health insurance, a final salary pension scheme. And bonuses? Ralph Edge had mentioned that bonuses were no longer paid to the staff. But did that apply to senior executives?
In Fry’s experience, there was a different rule for the bosses. The individuals with the highest salaries and the best benefits also got the biggest bonuses. That was always the way, wasn’t it? She couldn’t imagine a more effective recipe for creating resentment.
‘Where’s Becky Hurst?’ she said, without looking up.
‘I’m here, boss,’ said Hurst.
‘Check out this paintballing centre. Luke will give you the name.’
‘The Eden Valley Adventure Centre,’ said Irvine.
Hurst didn’t look happy at the assignment, but she repeated the name.
‘Yes, I know it,’ she said.
‘Find out what they remember about the team building weekend for Prospectus Assurance. And in particular the injuries sustained by Glen Turner.’
‘Okay, no problem.’
Fry unclipped a photograph of Turner. It confirmed what she’d already observed at the crime scene, before his body was removed. He was a stone or two overweight. He’d been carrying a layer of fat over most of his torso, marking him as flabby and unfit. Too much of Mum’s cooking, she supposed. Mrs Turner had probably stuffed her son with home-made cakes and cooked him pie and chips on a regular basis. Anything to keep him content, and less likely to strike out on his own, to hanker after living independently, when he might have to cater for himself.
All at once, she felt a pang of sympathy for Ingrid Turner. The loss of her son might have taken away her main purpose for living. Suddenly she would have no routine to follow, no structure to her day, no requirement to see him off to work in the morning and watch for him to return in the evening to a meal ready and waiting for him in the oven. There must be a huge hole in her life – a void that no amount of WI meetings would be able to fill.
Fry put the photo back and closed the file. She might be reading the situation wrongly, of course. It was possible she was misjudging these people, making false assumptions based on her first impressions. At this stage, she would value a different opinion, a sceptical voice to question her judgement.
She looked around the CID room again, feeling that she was constantly searching for something that wasn’t there. No questioning voice came to her. Just Gavin Murfin’s tired rasp.
‘What are you lot talking about?’ he said as he ambled into the room and looked around at the assembled faces. ‘You look a bit too flippin’ serious for my liking. All those long faces are scaring me.’
‘We’re not talking about you, Gavin, anyway,’ said Hurst.
‘That’s a relief. For a minute there, I thought I might be dead or something.’
‘No such luck.’
‘You’ve got yourself confused with Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense,’ said Irvine.
Murfin sat down and poked through his desk drawers. ‘Well, it’s an easy mistake to make.’
Fry was watching him impatiently. ‘Have you got anything for me, Gavin?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll want to know. I’ve got a result on one of the cars seen by the motorist on Tuesday night. It was a BMW 5 series, with two people in it, a man and a woman. The registration number included the letters KK. The lady noticed that particularly because she’s Irish.’
‘Because she’s Irish?’
‘Apparently, in Ireland a number plate tells you which county a car was registered in. And KK stands for Kilkenny, which is where our witness is from.’
‘Do we have any matching vehicles in this area?’
‘Only one,’ said Murfin. ‘A red 5-series model with TKK in its reg. I’ve just got a name and address from the Vehicles database on the PNC.’
‘Wasn’t there a red car seen in the area at the time?’ asked Fry.
‘Yes, there was.’
‘Well, get out there and bring the owner in, Gavin. And take DC Irvine with you.’
Forty minutes later, Luke Irvine was sitting in the CID pool car on The Dale in Wirksworth. Gavin Murfin was in the driving seat. And from the scuffed look of its interior, Murfin had driven this car before.
‘So what do you say, Gavin?’ asked Irvine.
Murfin scowled at him and gave a petulant yank at the wrapper of his Snickers bar, ripping the plastic away from the chocolate like a man who wanted to commit murder.
‘I’m your mentor, not your minion,’ he said.
‘I’m just asking you. I’m appealing to your … well, your better nature.’
‘You don’t appeal to me at all. You’re not my type.’
‘Come on, Gavin. You’re being a pillock.’
‘That’s more like it. Now I know you mean it.’
Irvine slumped back in his seat. Was he the only one to be concerned about Ben Cooper? That night in the pub, Diane Fry and Becky Hurst had been nominated for the job of checking him out but had returned without any information. Hurst had seemed more worried about whether the cat had been fed. And of course Fry was just relieved to have gone through the motions, as if that excused her from doing anything else. Now Murfin was proving a washout.
They were waiting for a red BMW to appear. They knew they had the right house for the owner of the vehicle, because they’d spoken to his wife, who’d told them he was expected back home any time. When they got back to the car, Irvine had suggested to Murfin that she might phone her husband on his mobile and warn him not to come home while the police were there.
‘No,’ Murfin had said. ‘Didn’t you notice the smile on her face? I bet she can’t wait to see him in handcuffs in the back of a squad car. There won’t be any tears from her as she waves him off to the cells.’
‘What, her own husband?’ protested Irvine.
Murfin had snorted derisively. ‘You kids,’ he’d said. ‘You know nothing about marriage. Trust me, she’ll be the last one to think of warning him.’
They’d been waiting almost a quarter of an hour since then, and Irvine was starting to get impatient. Murfin wasn’t exactly fascinating company. In fact, Irvine wasn’t entirely sure he was awake most of the time. He seemed to have developed an ability to sleep for a few minutes at a time, with his eyes wide open. At first glance it looked as if he was fully alert, until you tried to make conversation with him. Then it was obvious that his brain was switched off. Irvine supposed it was a trick he might learn after another ten or fifteen years doing this sort of job.
Murfin grunted and began to fish around in his pockets for something. Evidence that he was present in spirit as well as body.
‘Do you know Wirksworth, Gavin?’ asked Irvine.
‘Nope.’
‘I thought you knew everywhere and everything. You’ve been around long enough.’
‘Oh, yeah. Since I landed off the Ark.’
‘So why don’t you know this place?’
Murfin glanced around the houses in The Dale. ‘Probably because they don’t have any crime.’
‘There was the counterfeit currency case,’ said Irvine.
‘Forged notes? Not my speciality.’
Irvine remembered the case because the counterfeit banknotes had been Scottish. The inquiry had involved several businesses in Wirksworth after fake currency was used at shops all along St John’s Street. It turned out to be a technique used in a number of towns up and down the country. A few months later, a counterfeiter in Glasgow had been arrested with fifty thousand pounds’ worth of fake tenners in his car. He’d used digital images of genuine notes from his iPhone and reproduced them on an inkjet printer.
With a sigh, Irvine wiped condensation off the passenger window of the car. Now, shopkeepers in places like Wirksworth were suspicious of Scottish currency. Well, even more suspicious than they’d been before. If Scots voted in their referendum to become independent, those Bank of Scotland notes would probably cease to be legal tender in England anyway.
‘Some of these houses are quite nice,’ he said.
‘Parking,’ said Murfin.
‘What?’
‘There’s no damn parking. Look where I’ve had to stick the car. Every time something comes past it nearly takes the wing mirror off on your side.’
Irvine glanced automatically into the wing mirror.
‘Heads up, Gavin,’ he said. ‘There’s a red BMW coming.’