They set off across a large expanse of grass, somewhere between a lawn and a field, Patricia expressing bitterness that a man of only moderate talents had acquired such a vast property.
It was Gordon who first picked up on the smell, when they were some twenty or thirty feet from the barn. He gave Patricia a querying glance. She in turn looked at Stemper, who frowned but said nothing.
The side door was padlocked. Stemper found a suitable key to use with his Brockhage bump hammer, and had the padlock open within seconds. Patricia emitted a sigh of admiration as the shackle popped up.
He opened the door and the acrid stench rolled over them, causing Gordon to recoil, gagging and spitting. Inside, the air was stifling, the block walls cracked in places where the tremendous heat had buckled the roof trusses and shifted the entire building on its foundations.
The source of that heat still smouldered in the centre of the barn: the burnt-out remains of a small car.
****
Taking care to avoid the oily residue that blackened the floor, Stemper and Patricia studied the wreck up close, their hands covering their mouths, while Gordon hung back, bobbing on his toes like the lookout man at a robbery.
‘There’s been quite an effort made to destroy it,’ Stemper observed. ‘They’ve pummelled the bodywork with a sledgehammer.’
The registration plates had melted, and although he was able to find one of the VIN plates, only part of the number was legible. There would be little chance of identifying the owner.
‘What’s it doing here?’ Gordon asked.
Stemper mused on it as they retreated to the exit in search of fresh air. ‘In my view, this is the car that killed Hank.’
Patricia nodded astutely, but Gordon looked sceptical. ‘How do you reach that conclusion?’
‘Robert Scott. We believe he was one of the men in the pub on Tuesday evening. He was at the accident scene the following night, when Jerry got the photograph. And he was here yesterday morning, with Hank’s sister. As such, I think we can assume that he’s behind this.’
‘But why?’
‘Because it’s the perfect place to dispose of the evidence.’
‘You’re saying that Scott did this last night?’ Patricia said, and he knew what she was thinking:
If we hadn’t been sidetracked with Jerry Conlon ...
‘He can’t leave it here, though,’ Gordon pointed out. ‘Not where Hank’s sister can easily see it.’
‘Unless she’s already signed the property over,’ Stemper said. ‘But I tend to agree. Chances are, he’ll be back to move it before long.’
Patricia cleared her throat. ‘Let’s return to the immediate problem, shall we?’
Stemper nodded. ‘The paperwork. Yes.’
****
They marched across the grass to a pair of timber sheds. Stemper immediately noticed that the door of the smaller one wasn’t latched properly.
He opened the door, then held it to let Patricia go in first. The shed was filled with discarded furniture and appliances, with barely enough room for the three of them to stand inside.
A heavy bookcase stood out at an angle from the wall. Patricia stepped around it, and swore softly. Stemper and Gordon each took a turn to ease past and see what she had found: a large space beneath the floor, lined with thick plastic waterproofing. The perfect hiding place for a stash of incriminating documents.
But it was empty.
‘This is where he kept it,’ Patricia gasped, one hand on her chest, as if winded by the discovery. ‘It was here. And somebody beat us to it.’
‘But who?’ Gordon said. ‘Robert Scott again?’
‘It must be,’ Patricia said.
‘How did he find it? More to the point, how did he even know to
look
?’
Stemper sighed, loudly enough to capture their attention.
‘I fear I was wrong,’ he said, and made no attempt to disguise how much the admission cost him. ‘Perhaps it isn’t two separate conspiracies, after all. Perhaps it’s just the one.’
Robbie arrived home in a stinking mood. Pity Jed was out; otherwise Robbie might have found the nerve to evict him there and then ...
Except he couldn’t, because Jed’s buddy hadn’t yet collected the Fiesta. It made him want to scream, all these obligations: Jed, Bree, Cate, Dan. Dragging him down.
He checked that Hank’s money was still in his safe, and celebrated this minuscule victory by helping himself to fifty quid. The document boxes were on top of his wardrobe. He took them down and transferred the contents to a big old sports bag. Then he walked round the corner to a pub, the Palmeira. Ordered a cheeseburger and a pint of lager.
The first few papers bored him rigid, and had him wavering in his determination to read every word. But he knew he might not find the diamond in the rough unless he was prepared to be slow and methodical.
An hour and two pints later, his eyes were glazing over. The pub had a lively lunchtime crowd and Robbie felt like Billy No Mates, languishing in a corner with only memos and contracts for company.
And his phone stayed quiet, which struck him as odd. Maureen Heath was bound to have complained to Bree by now. Unless Bree was with Jim and couldn’t get away to make a call ...
He thought about another pint, then decided not to bother. Five minutes and he’d call it a day. Perhaps go to the gym to clear his head.
Pushing aside a pile of loose photocopies, he reached for a tatty A5 notebook and flicked through it, seeing a mass of handwritten entries in the form of a diary or journal. He opened a page at random and read it.
Mon 15 – Wednes 17 June 2009 – Dunstable, Bedfordshire
Auditing at TWinEx, Templeton subsidiary. Stayed till 1am on second night and managed to copy six invoices, memos and contract for Dept for Work and Pensions for data analysis and ID verification project running 2003 to present day. (Ref documents DWP081-97: shows true costs of projects inflated from approx. £336,000 to £681,000.)
Robbie read a couple more in a similar vein, then turned to the beginning. There he found an introduction of sorts, or a disclaimer. The first paragraph made him laugh out loud, drawing glances from several neighbouring tables.
This journal serves as the record of a project to gather evidence of long-term systematic fraud committed by the group of companies owned by my employer, Mark Templeton. What follows is strictly confidential. If you are reading it without my consent, I am probably dead. If my death occurred in violent or unexplained circumstances, the perpetrators are almost certainly acting for Templeton himself, or I was killed by my co-conspirators: Patricia and Gordon Blake of 8 Gadbrook Lane, Brockham, Surrey. The project was initiated at their suggestion, with the aim of extorting money from Mark Templeton. That sum is likely to run into tens of millions.
Robbie had to stop and read that part again, to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.
Yep. That was what it said:
Tens of millions
.
‘Oh, my sweet Lord.’
Robbie had always believed he was lucky; had kept faith that at some stage his life would take a spectacular turn for the better. It was this belief in his destiny that had prompted him to tell Dan that he didn’t really regret what had happened on Tuesday.
As if he’d already known, deep down, that he had something truly priceless here.
****
With the position between herself and Dan agreed, Hayley seemed eager to leave the cafe. Dan was in no particular hurry, so he stood up and offered her a quick, hesitant kiss on the cheek – not unlike the one he’d given Cate on Thursday night – by way of farewell.
‘Going home?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Into town.’ A pause. ‘I might see Tim, for a quick drink.’
‘Right. He’ll be waiting to hear how it went.’ Dan didn’t care for the sarcasm in his voice: a remnant of a wounded male pride that was frankly perverse in this context.
With Hayley gone, he sat and looked around the cafe, reflecting on how much he’d love to own a place like this: a great size, nice decor, plenty of passing trade, incredible views out to sea.
It reminded Dan that a whole world of possibilities was opening up. He was a free agent. A single man. Not only that, but the damaged car had gone; the threat of exposure no longer existed. A painful chapter in his life was ending; a new chapter was about to begin.
So why did he feel so miserable, even slightly cheated? It was completely irrational. The last thing he needed was to make an enemy of Hayley, especially now she’d come so close to guessing the truth.
The problem, he realised, was a bruised ego. It bothered him that she was already cosying up to Tim Masters, while her allegations of an affair between him and Cate were completely without foundation.
He finished his coffee and decided to walk part of the way back to Brighton along the undercliff promenade. As he emerged into the blinding glare of the midday sun, the parallels with a newly released prisoner couldn’t have been clearer. But still the unease persisted, a nagging feeling that this was all too straightforward, too painless.
He couldn’t be that lucky, could he?
****
Stemper had never seen Patricia so disorientated by a setback. Gazing, bereft, at the void in the floor, she kept repeating, ‘It was here for us to find. It was here for us.’
‘We did say that, all along,’ Gordon added, almost as if to goad her into an explosion. ‘We knew Hank would keep it close at hand.’
‘Thursday night.’ Patricia made a fist and thumped the top of the bookcase. ‘It should have been ours on Thursday night.’
‘But the search was curtailed by an intruder,’ Stemper reminded them. ‘Killing him would have attracted a lot of attention to this place. Remember that the barmaid knew the burglar was coming here.’
Patricia, steely-eyed, said nothing. It was Gordon who protested.
‘But after you’d sent him packing, why didn’t you—?’
‘He made threats about an accomplice. I didn’t believe him, but that’s not to say he wouldn’t have been capable of rounding up a few like-minded pals to return and settle the score. At that stage my brief was to go unnoticed. I didn’t think you’d welcome a bloodbath.’
‘Nobody’s suggesting a bloodbath.’
‘My point is that we’re discussing this with the benefit of hindsight. At the time it was prudent to abandon the search. Unfortunately, Hank’s sister arrived the following day.’
Patricia gasped. ‘Do you think she found this?’
‘I doubt it. There’s another consideration, too.’ With Gordon’s help, Stemper moved the bookcase back against the wall. They all shuffled round into gaps between the junk and surveyed the shed as it must have looked prior to the discovery.
Patricia saw what he was getting at. ‘It was very skilfully hidden.’
‘Exactly. I can’t say for certain that I’d have found it on Thursday night.’
‘And yet this man Scott had no such difficulty.’
‘The only explanation,’ Gordon ventured, ‘is that he knew where to look.’
Stemper nodded. ‘We can’t rule that out.’
‘So he’s our number one priority?’ Gordon turned to Patricia for confirmation. ‘And he should be back here for the car—’
‘Caitlin Scott’s our best route,’ Patricia cut in. ‘We already know where she lives. We can make her talk, can’t we?’
A savage glance at Stemper, who said, ‘She’ll be unwilling to betray her brother, once she appreciates the danger he’s in.’
Impatiently, Gordon said, ‘What are you getting at?’
‘After I’ve questioned her, she’ll probably have to die. She’s a young, attractive female lawyer. And the police already know of her link to Hank O’Brien. Her death is guaranteed to generate a huge amount of police activity, not to mention media interest.’ He looked at each of them in turn, his face solemn. ‘You have to be convinced it’s the right step.’
Patricia made a growling noise. ‘I’d dearly like to see all three of them hung, drawn and quartered, and to hell with the consequences. But what other options do we have?’
The question seemed rhetorical: certainly Gordon made no move to answer it. Instead they regarded one another for a moment, and Stemper had a sense of marital telepathy at work.
‘No. I’m not sure that we have any,’ Gordon said at last.
Patricia nodded vehemently. ‘Not with time running out.’ She addressed Stemper: ‘The way I see it, we’ve come this far – now we have nothing to lose. We do whatever’s necessary.’
Robbie hurried back to the flat, the sports bag slung over his shoulder. He had the twitchy, watchful paranoia of a man in possession of a winning lottery ticket, with a big neon sign above his head proclaiming that fact to the world.
But he made it home unscathed. Jed was still out, so Robbie bolted the front door to make sure he wouldn’t be disturbed, then emptied the papers on to the kitchen counter. He made coffee and fired up his laptop. Googled ‘Mark Templeton’ and came up with thousands of relevant hits, most of them relating to the group of companies that went under the name Templeton Wynne. A big business – and about to get a lot bigger, if the rumours of an American takeover were to be believed.
While he surfed, Robbie was simultaneously browsing through the journal. A strange scribbled phrase seemed to be repeated throughout the document, often placed close to an entry that pointed to massive overcharging or downright fraud. It said:
More in the box
.
An odd comment, given that the journal entries were carefully cross-referenced with the rest of the paperwork, each document marked in hand with a date and a reference number.
More in the box
seemed far too vague.
It plucked at his concentration until, after swiftly draining a mug of coffee, he hurried into the bedroom and retrieved the empty document boxes. First he held them, one in each hand, comparing the weight. Maybe there was a secret compartment.