No justice
FROM HIS OFFICE window, Bliss shared his breakfast with Sonia the seagull and watched the city manifesting out of the fog, nothing high-rise to hide the hills, the only visible towers attached to churches, still misty-pale.
Almost serene, like the council hadn’t been developing Hereford, hadn’t taken the cattle market out of town, replacing it with a concrete canyon accommodating chain stores and a cinema. A big cinema with drab grey walls like the Bastille, brutalizing the entrance to the city centre. Apparently, this was where the new police HQ would be, when they eventually left Gaol Street, somewhere behind the Bastille.
Somewhere Rich Ford, the uniformed inspector, would never work.
‘Been thinking where we could move to, me and the wife, when I’m out of here,’ Rich said. ‘Little barn conversion maybe, over towards the Black Mountains, from where all you ever need see of the city is the distant fireworks on New Year’s Eve.’
He’d be gone soon after new year. Couldn’t come soon enough, he kept saying that.
‘Actually, I hear parts of Eastern Europe are very desirable now,’ Bliss said. ‘Lovely scenery. Clean, unspoiled towns with terrific cathedrals. Friendly people. Very little crime.’
‘Yes, very amusing, Francis.’
Bliss yawned.
‘You said something about quad bikes?’
‘Easy to move around, easy to dispose of. Always a ready market for quad bikes.’
‘You know what, Rich?’ Bliss said. ‘I’m bored already.’
Seemed a couple of uniforms had found a selection of these farmers’ toys in the back of a vehicle-repairer and dealer’s premises out on the Rotherwas industrial estate. Jag’s Motors, owned by one Wictor Jaglowski, about whom there’d been rumours. His brother, who had a half share in a Polish deli, was doing time for big-time ciggie-smuggling.
‘It gets more interesting, Francis,’ Rich said. ‘Least, that’s what my instincts are telling me. Actually, quad bikes come into the story again. Or one, anyway. Not that you’d get much for that, except from a scrapyard.’
Bliss stared at him, putting it together.
‘This is the one on which the farm guy died?’
‘That’s why we went down the Rotherwas. The feller who ran into him worked for Jaglowski. Sort of.’
Bliss sat down behind his desk. ‘Take me through it again, Rich.’
He always felt bad about it, but links with a death, even accidental, added a certain texture to a case.
A lot of new drivers on the roads of Herefordshire, and not all of them had a British licence. Including Lukas Babekis – and that probably wasn’t his real name either.
Lukas was twenty years old and Lithuanian. He’d been people-smuggled, one of a bunch of Lithies secretly accommodated on a caravan site over towards the border with Worcestershire. All young lads, working their passage. Euphemism for slavery.
‘He got lost while making a delivery for one of those cut-price couriers that employ freelance drivers with their own vehicles,’ Rich said. ‘Jaglowski was one of their operatives – fingers in more pies than the Pukka production line. He’d sub contracted Lukas, providing the van. Well, I say sub contracted…’
‘He wasn’t paying him.’
‘I think he got free sarnies from Morrisons. Anyway… country lane, part of that network south of Leominster connecting villages nobody ever goes to. Very few signposts. So Lukas has lost his way in this maze of little lanes. No other vehicles in the vicinity, no witnesses.’
‘Remind me about the victim.’
‘Farm bloke. Farmer’s son. Coming out of field gate on his quad bike. Off-white van comes whizzing round the corner, smack. His face was mush.’
Bliss winced.
‘Not much chance on a quad bike, have you?’
‘One reason we don’t like them on the Queen’s highways.’
‘I’m not entirely sure of the rules, Rich. Are they ever allowed on a public road?’
‘Only if taxed, insured and registered with the DVLA, number plates front and rear. Mr Lloyd’s vehicle met none of these requirements. All right, he was only crossing from a field on one side to a field on the other, probably done it thousands of times. He bears a percentage of the blame. Or would if he was still with us.’
‘But?’
‘Lukas was obviously travelling too fast for a single track road he admitted he’d never been on before. Being as how he was not long over from Lithuania. Admitted going too fast for the conditions – two other deliveries and he was late. Kept bursting into tears. Said it was all his fault and he never wanted to drive again. Clearly unaware that unregistered, uninsured quad bikes are not supposed to be on the road. The duty solicitor, however, was.’
‘Would’ve got him off, you reckon?’
‘Not impossible, though he was obviously scared he might be looking at a gaol sentence.’
‘Vanished?’
‘Probably back with his mum in Lithuania by now. Until then, we didn’t know he was an illegal. Jaglowski says he’s furious. But the boy had papers! Who can you trust these days?’
‘So Mr Jag, it was his van, right?’
‘Jag has three or four, available for hire or his own contract work. We’d finished with the van that killed the farmer, and when he didn’t show up to collect it, it seemed like a good excuse for an unscheduled visit. Jag was out, only a boy in charge. Opportunity for a little wander around in the back of the garage, where we clocked a variety of agricultural implements – three quads, collection of chainsaws, heavy duty hedge-trimmers, brush-cutters and the like.’
‘Jag’s fencing stolen kit.’
‘Well, yeah, but I’m thinking more than that. You know how many farm thefts there’ve been in the county this year?’
‘I know how many the bloody farmers say there’ve been.’
Big issue again this year. Another useful campaign for Countryside Defiance, the pro-hunting pressure group posing as a general rural-interests lobby.
‘You know what I’m thinking, Francis? Wictor Jaglowski with his little fleet of vans?’
‘Let me process it.’ Bliss leaning his chair back against the window. Sonia had left the building. ‘Fellers like this Lukas, out ostensibly on courier work, in plain vans, happening to get themselves lost…’
‘I reckon Jag’s sending blokes out into the sticks to have a discreet poke around, try a few shed doors, unlocked trucks, Land Rovers. Anything not padlocked to the wall goes into the back of the off-white van. And then he comes back for the Land Rovers.’
Bliss nodded. Made sense.
‘Or even the odd sheep,’ Rich said.
‘Anything found in the back of the van after the fatality?’
‘Nothing. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t get rid when he knew he was in trouble.’
‘We know any more drivers going out in Jag’s vans?’
‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find them. Think of the brownie points with the farmers.’
‘We never get brownie points from farmers, Rich, nobody does. Still… thanks for this. I’ll ask Ma’am if we can extend to an obbo. See how far up it goes. And then, if Jag’s part of something more extensive, we can offload it on the NCA.’
Might be another layer of cop-bureaucracy, but the one good thing about the National Crime Agency was the way it saved you having to deal with foreign police and spend money on interpreters.
Rich nodded.
‘Am I right in thinking you and the DCI are getting on better these days, Francis?’
‘Well, you know, Rich…’ Bliss carried on making a note on his pad. ‘I find sleeping together a couple of nights a week makes for a much easier working relationship.’
Pause for laughter. They both knew that at least half of Gaol Street was convinced Annie was gay.
‘Anyway,’ Rich said, ‘she en’t gonner be around for much longer if her old man gets the big one next year.’
Bliss said nothing. Still hoping Charlie Howe would see the madness here and pull out of the contest for Police and Crime Commissioner. Or the government would have a rethink, scrap the commissioners and bring back the old police authorities which hadn’t been up to much but at least there’d been a semblance of democracy.
‘Somebody was saying,’ Rich said, ‘that his early manifesto’s in today’s Hereford Times.’
‘Already?’
‘He don’t let the grass grow, Charlie. And he’ll win. He always does. I’ve sent out for a copy.’
‘He’s bent, Rich. He was a bent copper, a bent councillor and the chances of him not being a bent police commissioner…’
Rich smiled down at his boots.
‘Must’ve known four or five bent coppers in my time. I mean real bent, not just mavericks, real corrupt, free holidays at some old scrote’s villa on the Costa-whatever. And you know one thing they all had in common, Francis? They were popular. In the job and out of it. Every bloody one of them.’
Bliss sighed.
‘Jack the lad.’
‘Whereas Annie Howe… dead straight. Painfully straight. In that way, at least.’
‘And nobody likes her.’
‘No justice, Francis,’ Rich said.