Annie and Zoe had followed their visit to Parkin’s flat with a fruitful half-hour in the estate agent’s offices. Bryce Scott had been joined by a woman, seemingly scarcely older than himself, who’d introduced herself as Lauren Ransome, the branch manager. They’d gone through the predictable expressions of shock at the news of Parkin’s death, and questions from Ransome about the implications for the tenancy, which Annie had skilfully fobbed off. Finally, they’d got down to some useful discussions about the ownership of Parkin’s flat.
The buildings were owned by a company called Werneth Holdings, with a business address in the city centre. ‘I don’t know a lot about them,’ Ransome said, ‘except that they’ve been good for our business. They’ve gradually been buying up a fair number of properties around the city. Mix of usage, mainly depending on the location. Some student lets. Some, like Mr Parkin’s, more aimed at the professional market.’
‘Do they buy properties and do them up?’ Annie asked.
‘Again, it’s a mix. A lot of the student properties they’ve just bought as they are, usually from individual landlords who’ve been looking to realise their investment. In those cases, they haven’t generally done much more than a bit of renovation where necessary and the usual maintenance. But somewhere like Mr Parkin’s place would have been a conversion. They’d have bought a house and then turned it into flats. It’s amazing how much you can fit into some of those terraces.’
Zoe had seen the size of Parkin’s and Garfield’s flats, so she didn’t doubt it. ‘They must be investing a fair amount in all this?’
‘Must be. Property in Derby’s cheaper than a lot of places, but the city-centre places aren’t exactly going for peanuts. And the costs of the conversions won’t be cheap. For the professional ones, they seem to have done a good job, at least superficially. But then if you can attract the right clientele, there’s a lot of money to be made. You can build it up gradually if you’re smart, reinvesting the profits as you make them. It’s good business if you’ve the capital to kick it off.’
‘Bryce said that Parkin had been introduced to you by Werneth Holdings,’ Annie said. ‘Must be unusual for a landlord to recommend their own tenants.’
‘Well, sort of. It’s an odd set-up,’ Ransome agreed. ‘I don’t know the detail, but Werneth seem to have their fingers in a lot of pies. They’re got various hospitality interests around the county – bars, cafes, that kind of thing. And there are some other related businesses I don’t know much about. Every now and then, they ask us to sort out accommodation for one of their employees. Parkin was one of those.’
‘Generous of them,’ Zoe commented.
‘Up to a point,’ Ransome agreed. ‘But they charge them commercial rents, so I suppose it’s more a case of making best use of the assets they’ve got. If there’s a flat available and they’ve got a candidate for it, why not? Helps out the employee, and the money’s going back to Werneth rather than to some third party.’
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler for them just to provide free accommodation and deduct it from the salary?’
Ransome shrugged. ‘You’d have to ask them why they do it like this. I think it can become complicated in terms of the minimum wage because you’re only allowed to offer a fixed amount for free accommodation. My guess is that they just want to keep it simple. Parkin’s employer was some restaurant that was run as a separate company, though part of the grand Werneth empire. But, like I say, you’d have to ask them. We just do what they ask us.’
Afterwards, as they were walking back to their respective cars, Annie said, ‘Parkin seems to have been oddly popular for a lad with not much going for him.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Zoe agreed. ‘Boss at the cafe takes a shine to him. Then he apparently walks out and finds himself a job where the employers find accommodation for him. All seems a bit weird.’
‘The other question,’ Annie continued, ‘is how he was able to afford that flat. Ransome reckoned he was paying a commercial rent. Okay, it was a tiny place, but it was fairly upmarket. Even if he’d found himself something better than kitchen porter, catering at that level’s not the most lucrative of trades.’
They’d obtained contact details for Werneth Holdings from Lauren Ransome, and their first priority in the morning would be to visit their offices up in Chesterfield. Annie had felt that, given their unanswered questions about Parkin, it might be better to visit the landlords in person. ‘See the whites of their eyes,’ she’d said, ‘when we ask them where he was working and why they were so keen to have him as a tenant.’
Now, hours later, Zoe Everett was wondering what state she’d be in for that meeting. She looked over at the clock on the mantelpiece. It wasn’t yet 4:00 a.m., but she’d already been sitting here for more than an hour, idly searching the internet for something to catch her interest. She’d woken in the small hours, her sleep disturbed by some nightmare she couldn’t recall. Knowing she wouldn’t sleep again and not wanting to disturb Gary, she’d pulled on her dressing gown and made her way downstairs to make herself a coffee.
Through the kitchen window she’d seen it was a clear spring night, an almost full moon shining down on their small rear garden. It was a time of year she normally enjoyed – the clusters of bright spring flowers, the first green shoots appearing on the trees, the days gradually growing longer. It was a season when she normally felt optimistic, ready to face whatever new opportunities the year might have to offer her. Now, she just felt flat, bleak, empty. And anxious. Above all, anxious. With an indefinable sense that something bad, something serious, was lurking just over the horizon, just around the next corner.
She’d made the coffee and wandered back through to the sitting room. Her laptop was sitting on the small table she used as a desk when she worked from home, and, not thinking about what she was doing beyond killing some time, she booted it up and began searching aimlessly on the internet.
At first, she’d found little to interest her – just the latest news headlines, the weather forecast for the morning, a couple of forums she participated in. She’d logged into the force secure network and dealt with a handful of routine emails, wondering whether any of the recipients would notice the timing of her responses. She was conscious that, with the heating off for the night, the house felt cold, and she pulled her dressing gown more tightly around her.
Finally, with nothing much else to do, she started searching on Werneth Holdings. Slightly to her surprise, they didn’t appear to have a dedicated website. From the way that Ransome had described the company, she’d assumed they’d be large enough to have some kind of web presence. But perhaps there was no particular need for it. If their properties were all let and managed through the agents, they’d have no other obvious requirement for marketing themselves. If they owned bars or cafes, as Ransome had said, those would no doubt have their own sites.
She found a Companies House link for the company, and followed it through to see what information might be in the public domain. There were various sets of accounts, which were up to date. Zoe opened up the most recent set, but they meant little to her untutored eye except to indicate that the company appeared to be in robust financial health. Finally, she clicked on the list of people associated with the company.
The key directors were names she didn’t recognise, all with addresses in the county. She scrolled further down till she came to previous officers of the company, and then she paused.
It took her a moment to place it. A name that struck her as familiar, but she couldn’t immediately recall why or how. It was only when she looked at the address below it that she remembered.
Thomas James Miller.
Higher Wenlow Farm.
Higher Wenlow Farm was where they’d found the second body. Tom Miller had been the farmer they’d spoken to.
It seemed a hell of a coincidence. Unless of course it wasn’t. When she’d first transferred to CID, her DI had always been insistent that, in police work, there was no such thing as a coincidence. ‘If you stumble across a potential link,’ he’d said, ‘start from the assumption that it’s significant. Then work out why.’
Like most of the advice she’d received as a young copper, it was an exaggeration. Sometimes a coincidence was just that. But her gut was telling her this felt odd. It was strange enough that the investigation into Parkin’s death should have spiralled round so directly to link to the second body. But it also raised other questions. Like why the hell a sheep-farmer should ever have been a director of a property development company in the first place.
Her first instinct was to call Annie to let her know about the discovery. Annie had always insisted she was available day or night if it helped to progress an investigation. But Zoe looked at her watch and hesitated. It was only just after four. This was almost certainly something better left for the morning. She’d be feeling more clear-headed, and maybe in the cold light of day she’d see some more obvious explanation for the connection. In any case, nothing was going to change in the next few hours.
Even so, there was no chance now of her getting more sleep tonight. She might as well make the best use of her time. She returned to the kitchen and topped up her coffee, and then sat back down at her laptop, wondering what else it might be possible to discover about Tom Miller or any of the other current or past directors of Werneth Holdings.