Warren felt as if he’d been kicked. He sat in Grayson’s office, drinking coffee. It all made sense now. Joey McGhee, the homeless man who kipped behind the massage parlour had claimed that a man with a northern accent had turned up after the killing, promising to ‘sort everything out’. He’d then been given what they believed to be Stevie Cullen’s work phone. Kourtney Flitton had claimed that the person who bought the drugs from her that contributed to Joey McGhee’s fatal overdose had been a ‘northern man’.
Both of them were now dead. Grimshaw was at the heart of the case, and his broad Mancunian accent marked him out very clearly as northern. That couldn’t be a coincidence. What else had he tried to cover up?
Next to Warren sat Ian Bergen. His fellow DCI was similarly pale and shocked.
‘Christ, I worked alongside Shaun Grimshaw for years. He wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but corrupt?’ He took a long swig of his coffee.
‘Now it’s bloody obvious, isn’t it?’ Putting his coffee cup down, he enumerated the points on his fingers.
‘Last year we raided the Cullen farm, alongside HMRC and Home Office observers. There were only a half-dozen workers, all with the correct documentation. The bastards knew we were coming. I managed to persuade the bean counters to cough up enough money to sit someone at the end of their drive for a month and photograph everyone coming and going. Not a bloody dicky bird. The same goes for every other dirty little business we suspected they were involved in: car washes, nail bars, cleaning firms.’
‘And Shaun Grimshaw would have been privy to that information?’ asked Grayson.
Bergen flushed slightly. ‘Yeah, the Cullens were so far down the food chain, they were talked about openly in the office. Anyone on the task force would have been aware of what was happening.’
Grayson diplomatically chose to say nothing; Bergen and his team would have plenty of questions to answer about their operational security.
‘And we think he was on the take?’ said Grayson.
‘The envelopes of used twenties hidden in his desk suggest so. Forensics are fast-tracking the fingerprints as we speak, to see who else handled them,’ said Warren.
‘What about that pile of fifty-pence pieces you sent off?’ asked Grayson.
Warren looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I think he was also raiding the communal coffee honesty jar. Since I am the only person who ever puts money in there, if my prints are on the coins, we can probably assume that he stole those as well.’
‘Anything a little more relevant?’ asked Grayson, a slight edge to his tone.
‘That neatly folded jumper in his bottom drawer had some tiny stains along the cuff that might be blood,’ said Warren. ‘We’ve sent off for fast-track DNA analysis. Smart money’s on Kourtney Flitton, the drug dealer who supplied Joey McGhee, and later “Northern Man” with the drugs that killed him.’
‘And was brutally killed in her flat, in what at first glance looks to have been a robbery gone wrong,’ supplied Bergen.
‘Wasn’t the murder weapon found at the scene?’ asked Grayson.
‘Yes,’ replied Warren, ‘although I’m not too hopeful we’ll find anything useful. The killer was smart enough to stage the scene; I’d be surprised if they were sloppy enough to leave any obvious evidence on the murder weapon.’
‘Every contact leaves a trace,’ quoted Grayson. ‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed.’
Bergen shook his head again. ‘I just can’t believe it. Shaun Grimshaw not only corrupt, but also involved in two murders.’
‘He also tried to get me thrown off the case,’ said Warren quietly. ‘He was standing in reception when I gave that money to Joey McGhee. Who else would have known to report it anonymously to Professional Standards? Or that there was CCTV footage?’
‘Christ.’ Grayson’s voice was tight with fury. ‘He was playing us all.’
‘That burner phone we found in his desk was switched on just before we raided the farm,’ said Warren. ‘It was located within fifty metres of the centre of this building. The text tipping off Paddy Cullen wasn’t responded to immediately. If it had been, Paddy and the workers would have been gone before we even got there.’ Warren paused. ‘And Shaun wouldn’t have been shot.’
‘We also wouldn’t have known who Northern Man is,’ said Bergen. ‘Serves him right if you ask me.’
Warren bit his tongue. Nobody in the room had slept for more than a couple of hours, and they were all stressed and tired. He doubted Bergen truly meant his harsh words.
Warren tried to think back to what Grimshaw had been doing at the time of the phone call. Had he popped outside for one last cigarette before the raid, and made the call then?
‘Rachel Pymm is correlating the phone’s historic location data with Shaun’s personal phone. It’s a match so far,’ said Warren.
‘So, where does Stevie Cullen’s murder come into all of this?’ asked Grayson.
‘Very bad timing,’ said Warren.
‘I reckon Grimshaw had a very nice, cosy little relationship going on with Stevie Cullen and almost certainly the rest of the family,’ said Bergen. ‘He kept an eye out for any trouble; he let them know about upcoming raids and probably used his position as a police officer to threaten any of the workers with dire consequences if they didn’t play ball.’
‘Which would explain why Silvija Wilson and her two nieces are too scared to speak to us,’ interjected Grayson.
‘Or Annie Vuković,’ said Warren. ‘Bloody hell, that poor woman. I sent Shaun up to Manchester to bring her back after her arrest. She must have been terrified when he turned up.’
‘Well we weren’t to know,’ said Grayson, firmly.
‘From the call logs, it looks as though Wilson had Grimshaw’s number. She must have been beside herself when her nieces phoned and told her what had just happened to Stevie Cullen,’ said Bergen.
‘And so in sweeps Shaun to help tidy everything up,’ said Warren.
‘Although he wasn’t daft enough to offer to dispose of the clothing and murder weapon,’ noted Grayson. ‘The last thing he’d want is any trace evidence from Cullen ending up on his clothes.’
‘Mind you, holding on to Stevie Cullen’s business phone was a bit of a misstep,’ said Bergen.
‘Cheeky sod was first on scene after the uniforms,’ said Warren. ‘No wonder the two sisters kept their mouths shut.’
‘Any theories about his involvement in the killing of the farm worker Emil, and Annie Vuković’s escape?’ asked Grayson.
Warren thought for a moment. ‘Limited, I would have thought, at least at the time. I can’t see why he would have been there the night that Emil tried to escape and was shot. I’ll bet they never even told him. I figure they will have thought that a few quid for turning a blind eye is one thing, but that whole cock-up wasn’t something they’d want a police officer involved in.’
‘Which makes sense,’ said Bergen. ‘Grimshaw wasn’t an idiot. The Cullens probably reckoned both Annie and the other farm worker escaped and so when they got scared off by the police helicopter flying over the A506, just let it go. Grimshaw would have never taken that chance. He’d have gone back in the woods and searched until he was satisfied that there were no embarrassing dead bodies lying around waiting to be stumbled over.’
‘He must have been as surprised as anyone when those bodies turned up,’ said Warren. ‘He couldn’t get inside the investigation to derail it, so the best he could probably do is go and tell Ray Dorridge to keep his mouth shut about what happened that night on his land.’
‘Which is probably just as well for Annie Vuković,’ said Grayson. ‘If Grimshaw knew that Wilson had started employing some young Serbian woman who appeared out of the blue, then it wouldn’t have taken too much detective work to put two and two together and realize that she was one of the escaped farm workers.’
‘Do you think Stevie Cullen would have recognized her in the massage parlour?’ asked Bergen.
‘Who knows?’ said Warren. ‘But from what we’ve pieced together so far, Annie didn’t usually work that late. She and Stevie’s paths wouldn’t ordinarily cross.’
‘Which does raise some questions concerning what really happened that day,’ said Grayson. ‘The story so far is that Stevie Cullen was forcing himself onto Biljana Dragić. What if Annie just happened to stumble across Cullen having a massage and decide to rid herself of a potential problem?’
‘So murder, rather than self-defence?’ said Warren, the words bitter in his mouth. As a detective, it was his duty to go where the evidence led him, not to hope for a particular outcome. However, the story of what had happened to Anica Vuković, and the workers kept in slavery by the Cullens, had moved him and his team. The rules on what constituted self-defence under law had recently been changed, but even so, stabbing a man without any immediate provocation would be a hard sell to a jury.
‘At least with Shaun dead, the witnesses have nothing to fear anymore. Let’s hope that they finally tell us what really happened that day,’ said Warren. The other two men agreed.
‘So why was Grimshaw killed then?’ asked Grayson.
‘I imagine that he knew too much,’ said Bergen. ‘If Paddy really did only receive that text message minutes before we raided, he must have panicked.’ He paused. ‘Well we know he panicked; he took a pot shot at an armed response unit as he tried to escape. That’s not the reasoning of a man with a plan. There’s nothing Shaun could have done to stop our investigation after we raided the farm, so he was just a loose end that needed tidying up.’
Grayson shook his head sadly. ‘He set up his own death. If he’d not tried to warn them, and then joined in the raid, presumably to help hide any evidence, then they would all have been arrested and he’d still be alive.’
The three men contemplated that thought for a while.
Poetic justice or a tragedy?
Warren wasn’t sure.