Love Story, With Murders (22 page)

‘She’s off checking your records with the head nurse. Wants to know if you’ll live.’ I look hard into his eyes. ‘And you will, will you? You’re
okay?’

‘I’m
grand. It’s nice to be back in the saddle, actually. I’ve never minded taking some knocks.’ He gives me a twisted grin. It’s odd the way people work.
Maybe a near-death experience was what he needed.

On a sudden impulse, I say, ‘Brian, before you went to London, when you were still a copper here in Cardiff, who was the best officer you worked with? The best detective, I
mean.’

‘Why?’

‘Just let me have this one. I can’t tell you why.’

He gives me some names. Most of them I don’t recognise or, if I do, I discard them because they’re too long retired or because their careers took them in different directions from
the one I want. But one name works for me: DCI Jack Yorath. Spent his whole career in the South Wales CID. Retired only a few years back. Specialised in organised
crime.

‘Yorath,’ I say. ‘He’s good, is he? You’d trust him?’

Mischief hovers round Penry’s mouth, but doesn’t quite take possession. He says simply, ‘I’d trust Jack anywhere. He’s got brains, guts, and integrity. A good
copper.’

A good copper: the ultimate police-ish compliment.

‘Thanks, Brian. That’s helpful.’

Watkins comes in. She’s got a long coat on, a warm one, and I
suddenly remember that I’d meant to get myself a proper winter coat when I went shopping with Kay. Got myself an
expensive and unnecessary suit instead. Ah, well.

Watkins struggles to find the right tone with Penry. She can’t be horrible to him, because he doesn’t have to talk to her, because he isn’t a copper anymore, and because
he’s got a gash in his skull so bad that he was rushed
to hospital, given a blood transfusion, and is being held for observation. At the same time, he’s a former police officer serving
a prison sentence, so Watkins can’t quite bring herself to make nice.

‘Mr Penry. DI Watkins.’ She gives a stiff semi-bow from the neck.

‘Yeah, nice to meet you. How’s Gethin these days?’

Gethin: DCI Gethin Matthews. Penry’s only using the name to remind
Watkins that he knows some of her more senior colleagues. Those little power plays are more or less compulsive with
him.

‘I’m sure he’s fine. I understand that at the request of DC Griffiths, you were making preliminary inquiries into the suicide of Mark Mortimer?’

‘DC Griffiths?’ Penry sounds baffled. ‘You mean Fiona here?’

‘DC Fiona Griffiths, yes.’

‘And
preliminary
inquiries,
you say? There must have been an inquest, surely. I don’t think my inquiries were exactly
preliminary
in nature.’

Watkins isn’t enjoying this at all, but there’s not a lot she can do about it. What could she threaten? That she’ll throw him in jail? Crack his skull open?

‘Maybe you could just tell us what happened?’

‘Of course, but be a love, would you, Rhiannon, and fetch me a cup
of tea? I’m parched, I am.’

Watkins glares at him, then at me in case I’m colluding, but she can see she won’t get an answer unless she submits to his crap, so off she goes to hunt down a cup of tea.

As soon as she goes, I look at Penry and laugh.

‘Fuckwit,’ I tell him.

‘I’ll send it back if it’s too weak.’

‘Did you learn anything?’

‘No. Somebody just hit me from behind
with a brick. Lots of blood, because it was a head wound, but looks worse than it is really. I’m not even sure who did it. I mean, I might have
a guess, but I’m not too sure I want to. Ignorance is bliss sometimes.’

‘But the attack was definitely connected with Mortimer?’

‘Yes. I asked around. People knew I was asking. I wasn’t trying to keep it especially quiet, because in prison you
never really know who knows what. I wanted to get the word
out.’ Penry shrugs. There’s something sad in his face for the first time. For all his macho posturing, it can’t be that easy being a policeman in jail. Not that fun being
half-murdered just because you’ve been doing a favour for a friend.

I put out my hand and rub his upper arm. Not normal for me, that kind of affection, but it
feels right. He gives me grateful eyes, then adds, ‘After I was hit, I was down on the floor,
with blood in my eyes. Someone kicks me in the ribs and says right up close, “Keep the fuck away from things that have got fuck all to do with you.” Then he kicked me again. Then after
a bit he stopped. End of story.’

‘That’s not proof positive.’

‘I haven’t been asking about anything else.
And it’s not the kind of jail where people get beaten up for no reason.’

I nod. I believe him. It’s not me but Watkins who’ll need convincing. Just then, she comes back with a cup of tea. There’s tightness all round her mouth and anger lines above
her eyes. It’s funny really. I’m with a guy who’s been violently beaten while serving a four-year prison sentence and a woman, with a good income
and a respected job, who’s
been asked to fetch a cup of tea. One’s happy, the other’s really not.

Penry takes the cup, peers at it all disappointed, and says, ‘Oh, sorry, Rhiannon, I should have said –’

I have my hand out to take the tea before he can even finish his pointlessly needling comment. I take the cup and leave the two of them alone together. Penry will end up telling her what
he told
me, he’ll just make sure he annoys her all the while.

I don’t do anything with the tea. I don’t drink it. Don’t find somewhere that will serve a stronger cup. Just find a window with a view to the south.

The prison. The sea. And a pale blue light that has no limits.

When Watkins finally comes out, she looks grim and says just two words. ‘Let’s go.’

Barry again. Frigid green water in the dock. A cold northern wind has forced a floating throng of industrial refuse up against the concrete walls. Discarded plastics, chunks of
polystyrene, broken pallets. Because it’s no longer the weekend, there are no locked gates at the entrance to the property. Watkins parks her BMW in a free space
overlooking the dock. I park
next to her. We’ve come in two cars, so Watkins can get away quickly and I can stay on if need be. Getting out, we can hear the slap of water against the dock, the moan of wind. Barry
Precision’s blue shed rises like a tent against the elements.

‘Nice place,’ I say. ‘Pretty.’

Watkins opens her mouth and closes it again, primly. We march across the car park
to reception. We sign in, are offered ‘refreshments’, are taken through to Jim Dunbar, Barry’s
chief executive. He’s got that Welsh physiognomy. Short, strong, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Give him a few acres of upland field and he’d look the part right away. Here, in suit and tie,
he’s trying to look all executive and still smells of the farm.

Watkins does the intro. Double murder. Drug deals.
A prison suicide. One of the murder victims known to have had close connections with Dunbar’s former employee. Dunbar takes this all with
composure, but he’s also careful. Vigilant. After speaking for two or three minutes – no more – Watkins shuts up and lets me get on with my questions.

Mortimer’s dates of employment. His speciality. His job performance.

Dunbar’s impressions of him
as an employee. Mortimer’s reputation within the work force.

Any notably close connections with clients or suppliers?

Any previous evidence of drug habits?

Dunbar deals with some of those questions smoothly and easily. Mortimer had been with the firm six years. He was a skilled engineer. Well respected, internally and by clients. Never known to be
a drug user. Never known to have
had drug issues.

When I get to the questions I’m most interested in, though, Dunbar slows down. Goes carefully.

‘Did Mortimer cause you any managerial problems?’

‘No. No, I wouldn’t say problems. Mark was a careful man. He had high standards. But we’re a precision engineering company, so we trade off high standards, and I don’t
have a problem with that.’

‘But . . .?’

‘Well,
in some ways, I think Mark forgot he worked for a commercial enterprise. It sometimes felt like he wanted to work in a research institute or university. Working here, you
work
. You have to hustle. If a client wants something, it’s your job to deliver it, not find reasons why the client shouldn’t want it.’

There’s a sudden emptiness in the room. Big enough that I find myself glancing at Watkins
who is simultaneously glancing at me. It’s the same emptiness that I felt at the university
with McKelvey, but bigger. And closer.

I push away at the silence. ‘Can you give me an example of Mortimer not wanting to deliver on a job?’ I bring my chair as close to the desk as I can. Partly I want to see his face
close up. Partly I want him to feel pressured. Partly I want to get my leg into
a tangle of computer wire.

Dunbar stares at me. He’s teetering on the edge of telling me something. Teeters, then pulls back.

‘He tended to get into dialogue with clients. They’d ask us to make something to such-and-such a specification. He’d want to know how they evolved those specs. Sometimes
he’d end up persuading them they could achieve the same performance with an off-the-shelf
solution. Which wasn’t exactly good for our sales.’

‘Did he have ethical issues with your clients?’

‘Ethical? Mark would have had ethical issues with a roomful of bishops.’

‘Which makes him not exactly your run-of-the-mill drug smuggler.’

‘No, but he did bring five kilos of cocaine into the country. I’ve no idea how he argued that one to himself, but I’m sure he found a way.’

‘Yes.’

I look at Watkins. She feels this thing I’m feeling. I can tell she does. A DI is the most senior active field rank in the CID. Go any higher, and you start to be a desk jockey.
Marshalling paper, not interviewing suspects. Watkins is a field officer, not a bureaucrat, and she feels the withholding too. Nothing that’s necessarily criminal, but an intriguing lack of
openness.
And Penry in hospital with an ugly skull wound.

There’s something awry here and we both know it.

She says, ‘Mr Dunbar, could you just give me a couple of moments with my colleague?’

Dunbar looks briefly surprised at being ejected from his own office, but he shrugs and leaves us. Goes out to talk with his secretary on the other side of the internal window. I roll back from
the desk.
My foot has become caught in his computer wires and I’ve pulled out a couple of leads.

Watkins points, unsmiling, to the tangle round my foot. I get down on hands and knees, repair the damage. As I do, I pull the keyboard lead from my keystroke recorder, put the recorder into my
pocket, replace the lead. Emerge, bum first, from the desk. The way every girl likes to be seen by her boss.

‘He’s not telling us something,’ I say as I rise to the surface.

‘I agree.’

‘And nothing about Mortimer makes him sound like a drug importer.’

‘Mortimer pleaded guilty. Didn’t even offer a defence.’

‘Which could cut both ways.’

If you don’t offer a defence, it’s because you’re either very guilty or very innocent.

Watkins nods. ‘Yes. Quite. Are you happy conducting further
interviews here on your own?’

‘Yes.’

She calls Dunbar back in, explains I’ll be staying around for a bit. There’s a bit of sorting out to be done. When it’s over, I walk back to the car park with Watkins. No
reason really. It just seems natural. It’s cold and windy and I’ve left my coat inside. My eyes start tearing up with the cold.

Watkins is saying something. I don’t catch the
first part of it, but then I do. ‘. . . well done. Your instincts here have been good.’

‘It’s a family thing. An interest in the criminal justice system.’

Watkins’s mouth moves at that, but not in a good way. ‘Don’t push it,’ she says, making an odd repeated hand gesture as she does so. A choppy, downward gesture, but more
nervous than that sounds.

‘Of course not.’

She gives
me a look of iron and steel, then relents. ‘Well then.’ She attempts a smile, except her face doesn’t really do smiles, so she just flexes some muscles in the right
general area and hopes for the best.

I return her grimace with a peach plucked from my very own orchard of smiles. Crinkly eyes, white teeth, plenty of dimply cheek action. And say, ‘Thank you,’ which doesn’t make
any sense,
but what she said to me didn’t make sense either.

Watkins is about to turn away and get into her car, when I say, ‘Ma’am?’

‘Yes?’

‘Khalifi’s family. I assume his mother or father will be coming over to deal with his personal effects?’

‘Yes.’

‘May I . . .?’ I suddenly feel weird. I don’t know why. I just say, ‘I assume you’ll be assigning someone to look after them when they’re
over
here?’

‘You want to do that?’

‘Yes please.’

Watkins nods. She turns abruptly and gets into her car. She’s cold too. I go back inside.

Someone has cleared a tiny conference room for me. An interview roster is being organised. I say who I want to see and who can wait. Someone brings tea.

I ask for a few minutes to set up. Drag out my laptop. Boot up. When it’s ready, I
pop my keystroke recorder into the USB port. My laptop says ‘New Device Detected’ and asks if
I want to import files. I do. There’s only one file, which opens as plain text.

A complete record of Jim Dunbar’s keystrokes from first thing on Monday morning to the moment I crawled under his desk just now. It’s not a long file. He’s not much more of a
desk-animal than he looks. But all I need
are the very first items of text.

jimdunbar@barryprecci
ision.co.uk
shelby57