The call from Ridley had been another bollocking.
“Why am I calling you?” Ridley had asked rhetorically. “Tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock. You’re first up.”
It was now ten o’clock and Jack was standing in the center of his spare room, looking at his “evidence wall.” It displayed dozens of photos of Trudie: some with him as a baby, some without; black and white photos of a very young-looking Jimmy Nunn, standing with Formula One heroes such as Jackie Stewart and James Hunt; his own birth certificate, change of name deeds and foster papers from the day he was signed away by his Aunt Fran.
On a separate wall, were three photos—Tony Fisher, Harry Rawlins and Dolly Rawlins. These three seemed directly connected to Jimmy Nunn’s past. The photo of Harry Rawlins was the best of a very bad bunch—he was at a racetrack, shades on, standing behind a woman who hid the bottom half of his face.
Maggie walked in with two glasses of red wine and handed one of them to Jack. She looked around the walls and her eyes stopped on the mugshot of Tony Fisher.
“He’s who you’re going to see in prison? He’s not an embezzler, you bloody liar! He’s a . . . What is he?”
Jack faltered. “He’s in for manslaughter.” Maggie glugged her wine. “He used to run a club in Soho with his brother, Arnie.” As Jack explained in more detail, Maggie couldn’t believe that he actually sounded excited. “They took over Harry Rawlins’s patch when he died the first time—the time he was supposedly blown up in the Strand underpass armed robbery, not the time his wife shot him. They got forced out eventually and when Arnie died, Tony had no one to hold on to his leash, so he very quickly ended up inside.”
“No, he doesn’t look like the brains of the operation,” Maggie remarked. “He looks like an awful man, Jack—those horrible beady eyes—and I don’t like the idea of you going to see him.”
“He’s pertinent to the investigation.”
“Which one? The one you’re actually getting paid to work on, or the search for your birth dad?”
“Both.”
He leaned in and kissed her. This affectionate act meant two things: “Don’t worry” and “Stop talking.” But Maggie wasn’t going to do either. She wasn’t sure she understood Jack anymore.
“So, the fact that your birth dad is connected to some of the worst gangsters London has ever seen doesn’t bother you? Because it bothers me. And I’m sure it’d bother Ridley if he knew what you were doing.”
Jack didn’t look at Maggie because this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. He just kept thinking, please don’t ask me why I’m tracking Jimmy Nunn, because he honestly didn’t know the answer, he just knew that he had to do it.
Maggie talked for a while longer about how Jimmy Nunn didn’t seem to be a man worth knowing, about how Charlie should be their priority and about how she didn’t want Jack to be hurt if Jimmy turned out to be even worse than he already sounded.
“These are dangerous people you’re mixing with now, Jack. I know that’s all part of your job, but when you’re on a case, the dangerous people stay in the office. These ones are in my home and I don’t like it. I don’t like Tony Fisher, although I do like her—what’s her name?—Dolly Rawlins. I think maybe I can empathize with her. Do you think perhaps she shot her husband because he was filling their spare room with his insane obsession?”
Jack suddenly laughed out loud. God, he loved Maggie! He threw both arms round her neck, pulling her head to his chest. She turned her head to the side and they both looked at his evidence wall.
“Just be careful,” she whispered.
Jack stood at the front of the squad room and led the briefing. Ridley stood just outside his office, legs wide and arms folded—he was a mix of emotions. He was pissed off with Jack’s disregard for his authority, but he was impressed with the information Jack was sharing now. As Ridley listened along with the rest of the team, he was deciding whether or not to give credit where credit was due.
Jack put a printed iPhone image of Connie up on the board.
“Crikey!” Anik blurted out, once again speaking before his brain had kicked into gear. “Look at the size of her!”
Laura threw him a stern look. “Nice.”
Jack began his handover. “Connie Stephens talked about the train robbery in exactly the same way as Ester Freeman did. She said the first they knew about it was the following morning when the police arrived. This tallies with the statements taken at the time. Nothing’s changed in 24 years.”
“Suggesting she’s telling the truth.” Anik was trying to redeem himself with Ridley. “I mean, lies are hard to remember so there’d be discrepancies in their stories if they were lying, either then or now.”
Ridley chipped in. “Sure. But ‘I never saw anything’ isn’t that hard to remember.”
Anik looked disappointed in himself. He needed patting on the head every now and then, and Ridley wasn’t really a “patter.” Ridley just looked back at Jack, indicating that he should carry on.
“Neither Ester nor Connie is living in a manner that suggests they’ve got thirty million lying around. Their bank accounts show nothing unusual, in fact Connie goes overdrawn at least once every month. Ester’s slightly better off, but that’s because the money she spends is Geoffrey’s. I think the original investigation was right to eliminate them as suspects.”
Anik’s mobile rang and he stepped to the side of the room to take the call.
Jack continued, “I’ll still track down and interview Julia Lawson and Angela Dunn, but I’d be surprised if they gave me anything different.”
Anik bounced to the front of the room.
“Sir!” He beamed. “I expanded the Missing Persons search, like you said, and my mate at Paddington Green nick just called. A lady by the name of Susan Withey reported her estranged husband missing two days ago.” Jack went to his desk to examine his notes as Anik continued, “Mike Withey is the same height and build as our murder victim from Rose Cottage. And he’s an ex-copper from this station.”
Ridley unfolded his arms quickly. “Anik, Jack and Laura. My office.”
Without another word, he turned on his heels. On his way across the room, Jack got out his mobile and started to search through all the notes connected to this investigation so far.
“Anik,” Ridley said calmly, once they were all assembled, “we need to be mindful of those around us when announcing information as potentially volatile as ‘the corpse in our mortuary might be that of an ex-copper from this station.’ Do you know when Mike retired? Do you even know if he retired? Or was he sacked? Did he work with any one of those officers out there?”
Anik understood his mistake. “I don’t know, sir.”
“Tell me what you’ve got.”
“That was pretty much it, sir. My mate’s sending me all the details now.”
Anik got out his mobile, opened his emails and refreshed the app. At the same time, Jack was rifling through his own mobile, trying to find the notes he needed.
“I’ve heard the name, sir,” Jack mumbled. “Mike Withey’s already connected to this case somehow, I just can’t . . . Bear with me . . .”
Anik was desperate for his email to come through before Jack could steal his moment of glory, willing the page to refresh.
“Ah, right,” Jack said finally. “Mike Withey is the son of Audrey Withey and the brother of Shirley Miller, the model shot dead during a diamond raid in ’84. That raid was planned and carried out by Harry Rawlins, husband of Dolly Rawlins, who bought The Grange back in ’95.”
Ridley rocked back in his black leather ergonomic chair and rubbed his eyes. Jack and Anik, both with mobiles in hand, looked at each other. Then at Laura. They all waited for Ridley to finish thinking whatever he was thinking.
“If our murder victim is Mike Withey,” Ridley said after some consideration, “we need to tread very carefully indeed. Anik, seeing as this is your information, I want you to come with me to see Susan Withey. We need a DNA sample for comparison.”
“Wouldn’t Mike’s DNA already be on file for elimination purposes?” Anik asked.
Ridley thought his question was logical, even if it was naïve.
“Not if he left before 2006, because it wasn’t mandatory till then. Jack and Laura, while Anik’s waiting for Susan Withey’s home address to come through from his friend at Paddington Green, I’m going to request permission to see Mike Withey’s service file. Once I’ve got that, I want you two, and only you two, to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. Until we get a positive ID on the body, Mike Withey is just a person of interest . . . but let’s find out a bit more about him. Tread carefully.”
Anik’s mobile pinged.
“I’ve got an address for Susan Withey, and one for Audrey Withey.”
Ridley picked up his desk phone. “Anik, you’ll lead when we arrive at Susan’s home. Go and prep how you’re going to handle it and you can run it by me in the car.”
Anik couldn’t believe it. He was going to lead the interview of a case-breaking individual, in the company of his DCI. He almost ran from Ridley’s office, completely forgetting to say “Thank you” or “Yes, sir” or anything at all.
“I’ll find a private room to view the file, sir,” Laura reassured him as she closed Ridley’s door behind them.
Jack and Laura sniggered as they followed Anik out.
Ridley pressed the top button on his phone and waited for no more than five seconds before it was answered.
“Ma’am, I need you to authorize the release of an officer’s service file.”
Ridley leaned forward in the driver’s seat of his BMW and peered through the windscreen. Susan Withey’s house was set back from the road at the end of a gated driveway. The gate was open and a white Smart car was tucked almost out of sight under a tree. Anik sat in the passenger’s seat, using twice as many words as he needed to.
“. . . if they’re estranged, I’ll ask her for Mike’s current address. I’ll also ask if Mike has any children and if we can get a sample of their DNA to check against the cremated rem—” Anik checked himself. “I won’t refer to the body as cremated remains, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Ridley murmured.
“If there are no kids, then we’d need DNA from an object such as a hairbrush, or an old hat maybe.”
“See how much their house was bought for,” Ridley instructed.
The house was in the middle of a long, tree-lined street in Weybridge. Ridley guessed that the purchase price would have been around the £2 million mark and wondered how the hell an ex-copper could have afforded it—unless Susan Withey had been seriously rich before she married Mike. They knew Audrey Withey lived in a tower block in central London because Anik’s mate from Paddington Green had told them as much; they knew she was a retired fruit and veg stallholder, from the numerous police interviews she’d given over the years. The main one being when her daughter was murdered. So, it was highly unlikely that the money for this property had come from her.
Anik showed the screen of his mobile to Ridley.
“One point five mill, sir. It’s got a double garage, games room and covered swimming pool.”
Ridley closed his eyes in momentary, silent despair. Not only was Anik seemingly under the baffling impression that Ridley wanted to buy the house—but Mike Withey paying for a mansion with the proceeds of a train robbery suddenly looked like a possible scenario.
“What will you tell her about the body?” Ridley asked.
“I won’t mention the circumstances or condition of the body, sir. It’s currently just an unidentified male whose physical description is similar to that of her ex-husband.”
Ridley got out the car and headed toward Susan’s house. Once he heard Anik’s short steps scurrying after him, he locked his BMW.
Susan was an austerely beautiful woman—calm and almost serene in manner. Ridley thought she seemed like a person who’d seen bad times, but kept her emotions well concealed. Her jogging bottoms sat loosely on her hips and were rolled up once at the waistband; they looked more like Mike’s than hers. She wore a tight white tank top over her athletic figure. She wore nothing on her feet and her tiny toenails were painted bright red. Ridley thought she must be in her early fifties, but she looked ten years younger than that. Being single and Mike-free seemed to suit her.
The lounge was minimalist in its décor, with off-white walls, a dark brown wooden floor and white blinds at the windows. No frills, no fuss. Color was introduced by the red embroidered cushions on the white sofa, and the abstract paintings on the walls. Among the paintings were framed pieces of artwork done by a young child or children. It was as though Susan had very kindly surrounded her children’s artwork with that of adults who had little additional skill, so that all the paintings looked to be on a par with one other.
Anik carefully and delicately explained that they’d found an unidentified body that could possibly be that of her husband. He was tactful, respectful and, although long-winded, he was doing well, Ridley thought.
Susan’s imagination, understandably, ran riot.
“How did he die?” she asked, putting her hand to her mouth.
“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that at this stage, Mrs. Withey.”
Just as Anik started to relax, his eyes fell to a newspaper on the table and the front-page story headlined ARSON AND MURDER IN FORMER POLICE OFFICER’S HOME. His expression immediately gave him away. There was no doubt, if Anik ever played poker, he’d lose his shirt.
“No . . .” she breathed quietly.
She picked up the paper, dropped to the sofa and quickly scanned the article.
Anik looked at Ridley for guidance. Ridley turned away and let him get on with it. He had to learn.
Eventually, Susan spoke. “Is this the case you’re investigating?”
Anik had no choice. “Yes.”
“Did he . . . ? Did the fire . . . ? Was he alive when . . . ?”
They both knew what she wanted to ask. Ridley took over.
“It’s possible, based on physical description, that the body found in Rose Cottage could be your husband. And we are treating the death as murder.”
Susan couldn’t get her head round why Mike might have been in Rose Cottage in the first place. She couldn’t think that he had any connection to the place, and this led her to hope that the poor, unfortunate dead man wasn’t her husband at all. Ridley understood that denial is about self-preservation at times of emotional distress, so he didn’t try and dissuade her. From here on, Susan’s demeanor became practical as she spoke about Mike as though he was very much alive, and just missing.
“Mike hasn’t lived here for almost a year, and he does go AWOL quite often, but he’s always in touch with me or the kids every couple of days, even if it’s just a text message. That stopped about a week ago, which is why I called you in the first place. I’ll write down the addresses of his flat and his office for you. They’ll no doubt be in a terrible state, so apologies for that. The office is in a sort of compound shared with other units. There’s a warden who can let you in. It was one of the first places I went actually, when Mike stopped texting. The warden hasn’t seen him since last Wednesday. I’ve got a spare key to Mike’s flat if you want to go there as well. Please be careful. I mean . . . I don’t want him to think he’s been burgled.”
Whether or not Susan actually still loved Mike wasn’t clear but, as she bowed her head and turned her back, it was obvious that the possibility of him being dead was very upsetting.
“Take anything you need,” Susan muttered.
And then she jogged up the stairs to fetch Mike’s flat keys.
The lounge fell silent. Ridley saw Anik open his mouth at least two or three times to speak, and then think better of it. He was clearly the kind of person who was very uncomfortable with silence; Ridley wanted to train this out of him because police work was more about listening and looking than it was about talking.
“What do you think of the house?” Ridley asked.
“Smart, yeah.” Ridley turned to Anik, who instantly knew that his answer had missed the point. Then the penny dropped. “Mike Withey was a DC. I couldn’t afford this house in a month of Sundays, so how could he?”
Ridley’s slight smile told him that was the right answer.
Susan came back into the lounge carrying a single front door key and two scraps of paper. One was the address of Mike’s flat and the other was a scrappy-looking business card with the unimaginative name “Withey Security.”
“This is Mike’s current mobile number?”
Susan nodded.
Ridley moved and stood in front of a wall of family photos, showing Mike and Susan with two girls at varying ages, from babies to young women.
“Mrs. Withey, in the interest of obtaining a comparative DNA sample for the purpose of identification, the best way would be to get a sample from a child. Would that be possible?”
“The girls don’t live here anymore. They’re grown. I . . . How would I explain what you’re doing? How would I explain why you need it? No, I don’t think that’s . . . What else can we do?”
“We could use an item, such as a toothbrush . . .”
“Claire’s got clothes and toiletries here for when she visits.”
Susan left the room slowly, giving herself time to comprehend the magnitude of going to collect an item that would tell the police whether her husband was dead or alive. When she got back, Anik was waiting, evidence bag at the ready, gloves on. Susan dropped the sparkly pink toothbrush into the bag.
“Thanks, Mrs. Withey.”
Ridley nodded to Anik, meaning it was back to him to question her about the house.
“You have a lovely home,” he started . . . and the information he needed flowed easily from Susan. She wasn’t thinking about Mike anymore; she was thinking about her girls and this made her talk without caution.
“Thank you. Audrey sold a villa in Spain some years ago and gave the cash to Mike. I said if he gambled it away, I’d leave him. So, he bought this.” Susan shook her head as she remembered how unreliable Mike actually was. “From one extreme to the other. He had no idea what actually mattered to me and the kids. He thought this lovely house would solve all of our problems, but that’s all it turned out be in the end—a lovely house. It wasn’t ever a family home, regardless of the pictures on the wall. Nothing more than a façade.”
“I’d suggest you don’t tell Audrey that we’ve been to see you. Let’s do the DNA test first,” Anik suggested.
“She knows he’s missing, but . . . Well, it’s not unusual for Mike to go off for a while so she’ll not be worried yet. She’s concerned—but not ‘worried,’ you know.”
“I know you mentioned that the text messages stopped but . . . was that the only reason for you reporting him missing this time?”
Ridley noted how Anik was starting to question intuitively.
“He’d been distracted. I assumed it was by work, or the lack of work. I don’t know. He’d been . . . off. Mike wasn’t the deepest of people so he was easy to read. Something had been wrong for a while.”
The conversation was rounded off by Ridley asking the harder questions. Questions he knew Anik wouldn’t think of.
“Mrs. Withey, could you tell me if Mike still wore his wedding ring?” And then came the biggie. “And do you have the contact details for his dentist, please?”
A single tear rolled down Susan’s shocked face. The burnt body, whoever he was, wasn’t visually identifiable.
Back at the station, Jack and Laura were huddled round the same desk in a small, rarely used break room. There was an ancient, unplugged coffee machine in the corner, which was why Laura had requested an urn of hot water, sachets of tea and coffee, disposable cups and a selection of biscuits.
Mike’s extensive personnel file was scattered all over the table and Jack was randomly showering each sheet of paper with biscuit crumbs as he read. As Jack leaned forward, reading intensely while devouring a chocolate Bourbon, Laura sat back sipping her tea. Their knees just about met underneath the narrow table, and all of Laura’s senses focused on the tiny area of skin at the tip of her knee that brushed against the tip of Jack’s.
“Do you think he knew Norma?” Jack asked, snapping Laura out of her trance.
“I can’t see how he could have. Mike was Met, she was Thames Valley. Their paths could have crossed on a security detail in London maybe, ’cos her mounted division was brought down for large events.” Laura set aside her teacup and leaned forward across the table. If Jack looked up now, their noses would almost be touching. “But there’s no record of their teams being on the same detail for anything.”
“He was liked and respected for the majority of his career. Never reported. Never disciplined. Until 1995, when he was hauled over the coals for not revealing a personal connection to a case he was working on.
“The case was the retrieval of the stolen diamonds. Mike gave his boss, DCI Craigh, a tip-off that Dolly Rawlins knew where the diamonds were, and that she was going after them when she was released from prison. Turned out to be a load of crap, and the tip was nothing more than Mike’s hunch based on his hatred of Dolly Rawlins. He blamed her for the death of his sister, Shirley, and wanted to see her back inside. Mike retired at the beginning of the following year.” Jack let his hands and the sheet of paper drop heavily into his lap. “We’re coming in late on what look like some very old scores being settled here, you know. Our 2019 arson and murder is linked to a 1995 train robbery and the murder of Dolly Rawlins, which is linked to a 1984 diamond robbery and the murder of Harry Rawlins. I just don’t know how.”
“Well, I’ve got enough to show that Mike’s probably definitely dodgy.”
“Probably, definitely? Ridley’ll love that.” Jack laughed.
“His phone records show that, in recent months, he’s been in contact with his mum, his ex-wife, a guy called Barry Cooper and . . . wait for it . . . a burner phone.”
Laura held her hand up, palm toward Jack and he high-fived her, ending with laced fingers.
“Definitely dodgy.”
Jack stood up and headed off to make two celebratory cups of tea.
When Jack first arrived at the Met, Laura had thought he was moody and standoffish but once they became partners, she began to really like him. He was naturally tactile and, somewhere along the line, she’d become confused by that. She knew he was with Maggie, but she also knew that affairs happened all the time in stressful, potentially violent jobs. It was the uncontrollable adrenaline, the heart pounding, fight or flight situations, it was knowing that your life was in someone else’s hands. Jack turned to her.
“Bourbon?”
Even mumbling through a half-eaten biscuit, Laura thought his mouth looked lovely.
Tea and biscuits were put on hold when Ridley called Jack’s mobile and instructed them both to go and search Mike’s place of work. There was a search warrant waiting for them to collect at the court building.
Withey Security was nothing more than a run-down modular office trailer in the middle of a gated lot. Fourteen such trailers occupied the space, overseen by an ancient warden who was keyholder to them all. The warden stepped into his own trailer to find the keys to Mike’s. This trailer was more like a caravan, complete with a small TV, a tatty armchair that looked as if it had been re-covered several times, a three-shelf bookcase, and a selection of yachting magazines to pander to the warden’s daydreams. A half-eaten packed lunch sat on top of a miniature fridge and there was a bowl of children’s sweets on a salvaged coffee table. The bowl of sweets was momentarily confusing, until Jack saw the photos pinned to a wooden noticeboard. The warden had a football team of grandkids.
While the warden searched for the key that unlocked the box of keys bolted to the wall, Jack couldn’t help but focus on a large hole in the top of the right arm of the tatty armchair. He quickly decided that this hole had been made by hundreds of beer bottles sitting in exactly the same spot, over decades of TV watching. Through the uppermost, flowery cover on the armchair, Jack could see snippets of all of the previous coverings—a couple of velour patterns, fake suede, tartan, monochrome stripes, solid black—years of wear and tear that mapped this man’s life. Jack swore he could actually guess the moment that the warden started living with the woman he loved; that move from fake suede to velour was a declaration of his life-long commitment to her.
Laura watched Jack as he longingly stared, all gooey-eyed, into the trailer.
“That’s what separates men from women,” Laura whispered. “You see a man cave—I see a shithole.”
As the warden led the way to Mike’s trailer, Jack could see he had something seriously wrong with his lower back. He stooped almost in half and paused every now and then to look up and see exactly where he was heading. Jack had offered to just take the key and unlock it himself, but the warden had insisted on escorting them to the door because he took his job very seriously and refused to allow any keys out of his sight. As they progressed at a snail’s pace, Jack got some background information.
“How long’s Mike Withey had this office?”
“Since 2003.” The warden had a surprisingly high voice with a North London accent. “Business took a serious dip in the 2008 recession and I hardly saw any of these businesses for almost a year. Mike still kept his partner on, mind—didn’t lay him off or anything like that. I think they go way back.” Jack was just about to ask about Mike’s partner when the warden continued, unable to see Jack’s expression because his eyes were turned down toward the ground. “Barry Cooper, his name is. Nice and easy to remember, ’cos of the legend that is Gary Cooper. Barry’s been with Mike from the beginning. They’re not partners, strictly speaking. Mike employs Barry, but they’re clearly friends on account of the number of empty bottles I clear out of their bin. Proper boozers, both of them. Whisky’s their go-to drink, and cheap crap it is an’ all.”
The Yale lock on Mike’s trailer, and the wood on the door surrounding it, were both scratched from where the warden repeatedly missed the keyhole. Laura was pulling her hair out as he missed the lock with the key, time and time again. Once the door was open, he backed off, perched on the edge of a stack of tires and waited.
Across London, Anik was feigning composure as he instructed a uniformed PC on how the search of Mike’s flat was going to go and what they were looking for. Ridley had gone back to the station, leaving Anik with this weighty responsibility. He waved the search warrant round ostentatiously and was a little bit disappointed that he had no one to actually serve it to.
Mike’s flat was a typical, grubby-looking bachelor pad in dire need of a very deep clean. The carpet was worn thin in a T-shaped pattern, showing that Mike walked most frequently from the kitchen, to his favorite armchair, to his bureau. The bureau was stuffed full of paperwork in no kind of order—bills, bank statements, ownership documents for a Range Rover and some payslips for Barry. This bureau gave Anik two vitally important pieces of information—Barry’s mobile phone number, and the only vehicle registered in his name.
Mike’s expendable cash each month amounted to nothing more than pocket money which, judging by the four empty whisky bottles down the side of his armchair, was mainly spent on booze. There was a block of several years when Mike’s bank transactions occurred in Spain rather than in the UK, so that was presumably where he was living.
The uniformed PC entered the lounge, holding an evidence bag containing an obviously well-used toothbrush with splayed bristles. Anik nodded his approval at the toothbrush being an appropriate DNA source.
“Can you also bag all of this paperwork, please?” Anik requested, waving his arm vaguely over the bureau before heading toward the kitchen.
As he left the lounge, he grinned to himself. He thought he sounded just like Ridley—authoritative, commanding, intelligent. Ridley was exactly the kind of copper Anik aspired to be. He wanted nothing more than to be able to dish out an order and then walk away from his subordinates, knowing that they’d do as he asked out of total respect . . . so it was a good job he didn’t turn around or he would have seen the PC, who was twice Anik’s age, making a “wanker” motion with his hand.
Anik knew Mike’s kitchen would probably be grubby, seeing as they were now nine days into the investigation, but the food in the fridge was way older than that. He gagged as he opened the fridge door and the smell of the cheesy milk hit his nostrils. In addition to the milk, there was a heavily sprouting red onion, half a bottle of white wine, several bottles of beer and a leaking breast of chicken in an open food bag.
The sink was piled high with dirty mugs, each patterned on the inside with several brown rings of varying shades, dating back weeks. Mike definitely wasn’t a man who could survive for long living alone. He needed to be looked after.
As Anik progressed through the flat, each room was a different degree of filth. There were no surprises and definitely no hidden millions. Less than one hour later, the tiny, one-bedroomed flat had been searched from top to bottom. Anik’s final instruction to the PC was to bag all of Mike’s shoes, so that their treads could be compared to any footprints found at Rose Cottage.
Then he bellowed, Ridley-style, “I’ll be in the car!” and left.
Once on the pavement outside Mike’s flat, he realized that “I’ll be in the car!” would have been a far more impressive exit if he was the driver and actually had the car keys.
Mike’s trailer office contained a gray metal desk with three drawers, a gray metal filing cabinet, two fake leather office chairs and a plastic yucca plant. The desk drawers were pretty much empty apart from the proverbial half-bottle of cheap whisky and two glasses. There was also a chewed pen lid and some paper clips, but nothing else.
Jack flicked through a desk diary, while Laura leafed through files in the cabinet.
“These are all clients. Low-end security, mainly night shifts. There’s a packing factory, a private hospital, a bit of door work. Nothing exciting. His last few jobs might be worth a look into—see if they could have got him into trouble with anyone.”
In the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet was a grubby old sleeping bag.
“He sleeps here sometimes.”
Laura stepped outside. Round the back of the trailer was a set of deep, wide tire tracks.
“Excuse me!” she shouted to the warden.
“Range Rover,” he said before she could ask. “Second-hand’s my guess, ’cos new you’d be talking fifty or sixty thousand and Mr. Withey didn’t have that. It sometimes sat back there all night, which isn’t strictly allowed but I assumed he’d had another row with the missus and they both needed a little bit of space, so I let it go.”
Laura smiled her thanks and stepped back inside Mike’s Portakabin.
“He’s on the ball for an old fella.” She sat on the edge of the metal desk, facing Jack. “No laptop. You think he never had one or did he just work from his mobile?”
“This diary’s mainly work related,” Jack mused. “When he writes down jobs, he includes a lot of detail. Full names, addresses, phone numbers, an outline of what’s needed. Which makes other pages with less detail stand out as maybe hiding something. On the day of the fire, he’s written ‘RC. 2am. Del.’ RC could be Rose Cottage. Who do we think Del is?”
Jack’s mobile pinged and a text message from Anik popped up. Jack read it out.
“No laptop at the flat. Must be there.” Jack quickly typed something back and waited for the ping. “Anik says it’s all paperwork at the flat. So I don’t think Mike’s got a laptop.”
From nowhere, Laura suddenly got all personal.
“How’s your dad?”
Jack suddenly felt very guilty for having not thought about Charlie all day, but he definitely didn’t want to have a conversation about him now.
“He’s going how he wants to go.”
Laura put her hand on Jack’s arm, looked deep into his eyes, gave him a sympathetic tilt of the head . . . but said nothing. He wondered what she wanted him to do—smile? Cry? Ask for a hug? Not knowing how else to get out of having an unwanted emotional exchange, Jack stood, scooping Mike’s diary up and moving away from Laura.
“Is this all we’re taking?” he asked.
He knew he’d been rude, but if he wanted a heart-to-heart about losing his dad, it would be with Maggie. He didn’t know how to explain that, so walking away was actually the most polite response he could think of.
Outside, the warden still sat on the stack of tires with his head dipped and Jack couldn’t tell if he was sleeping until he heard, “Ready for off?”
Jack and Laura thanked him for his time, made sure that they could return if and when the identification of Sheila was confirmed, and left Mike’s sparse office in the warden’s shaky, but otherwise very capable hands. By the time they had walked back to their car, the warden was still trying to get the key in the door of Mike’s trailer to lock it.
“Sorry for making you feel uncomfortable,” Laura said.
Jack didn’t know what she was talking about. He stared at her, racking his brain, before deciding that she must be referring to when she put her hand on his arm. He shrugged and smiled a tight, fake smile.
“I wasn’t uncomfortable. I just thought we’d finished.”
When Anik returned to the station, the accompanying PC was carrying nine bagged and tagged pairs of shoes to compare to the footprints found at Rose Cottage. Five came from Mike’s flat, and a further four from Barry’s flat, which they’d also received permission to search.
Barry had not only been out, but his neighbors had confirmed that he hadn’t been seen for just over a week, approximately the same length of time as Mike.
Today had been hugely productive with regards to information about Mike and, although the DNA comparison between the bone marrow and the toothbrush would take between twelve and twenty-four hours to process, most of the officers on Ridley’s team now suspected that their murder victim from Rose Cottage was, in fact, Mike Withey. But Ridley knew that by answering the question of identity, a thousand more questions would need to be asked.
Why was Mike Withey in Rose Cottage? Did he know about, or was he involved in, the train robbery? Or did he stumble across the hidden money years later? Then the biggest of all the questions . . . who killed him? Ridley took Mike’s personnel file into his office and shut his door.
He pored over Mike’s file during this pause in the investigation, while they waited for DNA results. But he didn’t look at Mike’s case reports, as Jack and Laura had done. He looked at Craigh’s. Craigh had been Mike’s DI; therefore Ridley knew how his reports should have been written, so he was looking for anything out of the ordinary. Sure enough, around the time of the wrongful raid in search of weapons at The Grange, Craigh’s reports started to feel clumsy. They lacked detail or seemed incomplete and Mike’s name was often omitted altogether, making Ridley wonder if this was an attempt to distance him from the case. The information that led to the gun raid had come from Mike and was, after all, bogus. Maybe Craigh was protecting his own reputation by distancing himself from Mike? Mike’s personal vendetta against Dolly Rawlins certainly seemed to have influenced his actions and—in Ridley’s opinion—Craigh was covering his back.
The biggest alarm bell for Ridley was that Mike had retired from the police force eight months after the train robbery, spent some time in Spain and acquired enough money from the sale of a villa to buy a massive mansion in Weybridge. Or did he? Did Audrey’s villa sale make anywhere near enough for Mike to buy his £1.5 million house, or did he have money from some other source to make up the shortfall?
From his desk, Ridley could see the two crammed evidence boards in the squad room, and all the faces and names that had so far been connected to one or more crimes dating back as far as 1984.
Did Mike Withey know Norma Walker? And, regardless of Bill Thorn’s saintly opinion of her, was Norma the mounted rider who stopped the train on the night it was robbed? Did Mike help her? Did Barry? It certainly seemed far more likely that people with an inside knowledge of police procedure robbed the train, than a bunch of women setting up a children’s home, even if they were ex-cons. Once Ridley had got his head around everything, he stepped back out into the squad room with his instructions.
“Anik, go back and speak to Susan Withey. I want a detailed timeline of every move her husband made, from the moment he left the force to the day she reported him missing. And I want to know how much they paid for their house and how much Audrey got from the sale of the villa. Jack, find out everything you can about Mike’s family—Audrey, Shirley, and there’s a younger brother, Greg. And find those missing women from The Grange.”
The pace of this investigation had now increased—from this moment forward, Ridley knew that every little detail would have to be nailed down before he went to the Super accusing a possibly dead ex-copper of committing the biggest train robbery in UK history.