“You heard about the murder in Garforth yesterday?”
Sammy shook her head. “I had other things going on.”
“Some bloke shot dead in his car in the early hours. Professional hit.”
“Anything to do with these two girls?” Sammy lifted the photocopies from the side of the breadbin. “You left these on the worktop last night.”
Souter took a slurp of tea and considered whether to tell Sammy anything about Jennifer and Mary. After a few moments, he decided to give her the edited highlights.
“So,” she said when he’d finished, “you think they may be hidden in the farmhouse?”
“Incredible I know, but it needs investigating. But before the police can get involved, I need to check a few more things out. I could do with tracking down their families.”
“I could do that for you,” she said.
“Thanks Sammy, but you just can’t go striding up a path and knocking on the front door. Besides, they could have moved or died or anything.”
“I didn’t mean go knocking on doors. That’s your job. I’ve got a friend who’s a genius on computers and the internet. Leave it with me.”
“I thought you had other priorities?”
“Hey, us girls can manage more than one thing at once, you know.”
24
Strong had much to mull over on his drive back from Millgarth police station in Leeds. Halliday had called a briefing that morning and brought together his squad officers. Strong had also been invited, reluctantly, he thought. But DCS Flynn had told him to stick with the enquiry regardless of Halliday.
The post-mortem confirmed the cause of death as a single gunshot to the head, 9mm calibre. Nothing too unusual in that. Most weapons of choice used by criminals for this type of operation use 9mm calibre ammunition. The oddity in this instance though, was the use of a semi-jacketted wadcutter round. As the ballistics expert so eloquently put it, ‘once the round passed through the skull, the lead fragmented and basically turned the brain to mush.’ The fragments were still contained inside the skull, which was why there was no exit wound. He’d explained that it was most likely to have come from the old Eastern Block area, as these rounds are outlawed under the Geneva Convention because of the damage they can do, One other source could be the U.S.A. He was working on piecing the round back together to obtain the forensic evidence to enable comparisons to be made should a suspect weapon be located.
Great play was made of the discovery of Gary Baker’s prints on the driver and passenger door handles, as well as in the passenger side interior. There would now be an intensive hunt for him and, by implication, Steve Chapman. The other thing that interested Strong was the discovery in Baker’s inside jacket pocket of an invoice from Dave Pratt Transport, made out to Yorkshire Exports covering the latest run to Felixstowe. The address for Yorkshire Exports was Baker’s home in Outwood. This tied in with the previous copies Stainmore had obtained from the lorry driver the day before. According to Mrs Pratt who kept the books for her husband, previous invoices had been settled in cash, hand delivered through the letter box in the evenings. She had never actually seen who had dropped the envelopes off.
Baker’s wife was distraught. Halliday had allocated a female Family Liaison Officer to the house and his team had conducted several short informal interviews with her. She didn’t appear to know anything about transport invoices nor had she heard of Yorkshire Exports. Strong got the feeling that, if anything, Halliday seemed intent on keeping her away from his team.
Strong confirmed he had officers speaking to Baker’s work colleagues at the Olympia Insurance call centre. He was pursuing Baker’s younger brother, Gary and his associate Steve Chapman, both of whom had not been seen since Thursday morning. He had also outlined his interest in the activities at Meadow Woods Farm which brought his thoughts back to the conversation he’d had with Souter the night before.
When he pulled in to Wood Street car park, he was stlll wrestling with the logic of how Susan could describe to Bob what the girls were wearing. That enigma would have to wait. For now, the priority had to be to establish a motive for the shooting of Chris Baker.
He climbed the stairs to the first floor and walked into the CID room. Stainmore was studying her computer screen and Ormerod was on the phone at the next desk.
“Ah, guv,” Stainmore called, as she spotted her boss, “I think we might have something.”
Ormerod concluded his call. “That’s one more,” he said to Stainmore.
“In which case, we definitely have something,” she said.
Strong wheeled a chair from a vacant desk nearby and sat down between them.
“When we started talking to Baker’s work colleagues,” she began, “it started us thinking … where better to obtain details of vehicles than an insurance company.”
Strong nodded. “Access through their computer system to registrations, owners, et cetera.”
Ormerod flourished the pad on which he’d just made notes. “And this one completes the set.”
“Go on.”
“That was Mr Jackson, owner of the Mercedes Sports Coupé nicked last Friday. Like all the others, he obtained a quote from Olympia Insurance at some point during the past three months. Not everyone accepted. Only two, the Range Rover and the Lexus owners did.”
Strong leaned back, hands on head. “Would have been a bit suspicious if every one of the stolen cars was insured by the same company.” He leaned forward again. “So what do we think? Baker knows where top end models reside; younger brother’s mate goes round and nicks them; up to the farm for a quick makeover, into the back of a container and off abroad.”
“Very probable, guv,” Stainmore said.
“How about,” Ormerod suggested, “with access to the database, Baker also comes up with registrations for similar cars, same colour and spec. and younger brother makes up plates for them to put on the nicked one. That way, any PNC check wouldn’t register as stolen.”
“Cloned, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“Sounds good, Luke. Although I’m not sure how much info an insurance company would have access to.” He turned to Stainmore. “What has the paperwork from Dave Pratt told us?”
“Only that he delivered containers to Felixstowe on behalf of Baker. I’ve got a call in to the authorities down there. I want them to track down their locations and seize any that haven’t yet been loaded.”
“All right, keep me up to speed with that, Kelly. In the meantime, is there any news on Chapman and Baker?”
“John came back just before you did.” Stainmore nodded to where Darby sat at a computer screen some twenty feet away. “He’s been down to Chapman’s workplace and his house.”
Strong stood and walked over to Darby’s desk, the detective tapping away on his keyboard.
“John, any signs?”
Darby paused and looked up. “Chapman, you mean? Not a bloody snifter. Seems to have disappeared. His boss at the garage reckons he hasn’t made contact and the last time he saw him was when he left work on Wednesday. But he must have left his company van outside the garage with the keys up the exhaust early on Thursday. He’s worked there for over a year. Always been reliable up to now.”
“What about his address?”
“Girlfriend answered the door. A bit rough.”
“Just the facts, John,” Strong sighed.
Derby looked indignant. “I meant she looked a bit rough as though she’d been crying. She was worried. My turning up didn’t help, especially after we’d had him in here overnight on Tuesday night. Anyway, she said he went out early Thursday morning. I mean like the middle of the night. Said something about a breakdown and not to worry. She went off to work as normal on Thursday and hasn’t seen him since. But she reckons he must have come back sometime during the day because a bag and some of his clothes have gone.”
“No note or contact since?”
“She said not and I’m inclined to believe her, judging by how upset she seemed.”
“And no signs at Gary Baker’s address?”
“Been round there too, guv. It’s a bedsit in some shit hole of a place just off Agbrigg Road. I only saw one bloke there and he said he didn’t know him and couldn’t say if he’d ever seen him. It’s that sort of place. But the interesting thing is, when I tried the door, someone had beaten me to it. Although the door was closed, the lock had been smashed off the frame. No signs of a disturbance but it looks like he’d left in a hurry. The place was empty.”
Strong was thoughtful for a few seconds. “Early hours of Thursday morning you say Chapman went out?”
“Yes, guv.”
“With Gary’s prints on the driver’s door, I think he was with his brother on Wednesday night. How he escaped Chris’s fate, I don’t know. But I’ll lay money he contacted Chapman and the pair of them are frightened of something fairly heavy. I think they’ve cleared off. I hope they have, anyway. We need to find them before whoever’s after them does.”
Strong turned round to Ormerod. “Luke, can you go with John. I’d like you to return to Chapman’s girlfriend and take a formal statement. Gently probe and make sure she hasn’t heard from him. Also see if you can get any idea where he might go if he’s in trouble. Try and assure her he’s not in any trouble from us, well not any more than we charged him with on Wednesday. In the meantime, I’ve got another avenue to pursue.
“Kelly, let me know the minute you have anything else from Felixstowe.”
* * *
Stella Hunter wore no make-up and looked to be in her mid forties. Dressed in trousers and a loose jumper, her jacket was on the back of her chair. She was sitting with a white wine spritzer at a table in a quiet corner of the Horse and Trumpet pub near the famous City Varieties Theatre in Leeds when Strong and Vince Denholme walked in.
Denholme sat down with Stella while Strong ordered two pints. He hadn’t been in the place for years but was glad to see it hadn’t suffered a make-over as some other establishments had. Set into the bar top, it still had a beautiful swan-necked brass water tap and drain. He gathered the drinks and joined them at the table.
“Stella, this is my old colleague Colin,” Denholme said. “He saved my life once, you know.”
Vince Denholme had become a DC when Strong was a DS at Wood Street in the early nineties. They had worked on a number of enquiries together and Strong held him in high regard, certainly capable of enjoying a successful police career. That had very nearly come to a premature end one night in 1991. They were searching a derelict warehouse building near the River Calder for an escaped prisoner serving a ten year sentence for GBH. Denholme was a little too keen when he opened a door to step into what he thought was an office. Just before he put his weight onto fresh air, Strong grabbed hold of his arm and managed to haul him back to safety. Successfully passing his sergeant’s exams, he transferred to Vice in Leeds when a suitable opportunity arose two years ago.
“Don’t embarrass me, Vince.” Strong took a sip of his beer. “Thanks for seeing us, Stella.”
“What’s this all about?” she asked. “I’ve got to be at work in Bradford in an hour and a half.”
“Would that be Shangri-La’s?”
“That’s right. But I only work as a receptionist. I don’t do any … treatments.”
“That’s managed by Stefan Szymanski, isn’t it?”
She looked at Denholme. “You know it is. What is this?”
Strong produced an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and took out a 6 x 4 picture of the Pole. “Is this him?”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
Strong showed her another photo, this time of Mirczack. “Have you ever seen this man?”
A frightened expression passed briefly over Stella’s face. She paused to take a drink. “He’s been in a couple of times over the past year or so,” she said. “Always with Stefan. I think he’s one of the owners.”
“
One
of the owners?” Strong queried.
“Yeah, I think there’s another one but I’ve never seen him or heard about him. It’s just the way they talk. Just an impression I get that there’s someone else involved.”
“They have two other places, don’t they? Over here in Leeds.”
“Yes. Sweet Sensations in Chapeltown and Butterflies in Morley.”
“Do you ever work there?”
“I do a couple of shifts in Chapeltown now and again but I’ve done more recently. They’ve been struggling for staff.”
Strong put the two photos away and took out another. “Have you ever seen this girl?”
This time she took the photo from him. “Yes. That’s Helena. Nice girl. From Albania she told me. Her English is pretty good. She was close to Stefan for a while.”
“But not now?”
“Well she’s not been around for a week or so. I think they fell out. That’s why I’ve been doing more shifts at Sweet Sensations. She was receptionist.”
“Receptionist? Not one of the girls?”
“No. Stefan took her on.”
“So how long was she working there.”
“Look, I don’t want to get her into trouble. I know she probably shouldn’t have been working with her status.” She gave the photo back to Strong.
“I’m not interested in that, Stella.”
She took another sip of her drink then played with the slice of lemon in the glass before answering. “Well I think she’s been there for a few months. She tries to help some of the girls, if you know what I mean.” She looked at Denholme.
He turned to Strong. “We think there might be a small problem with trafficking at some of these parlours.”
“Girls, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Helena would talk to them and look after them a bit better than Stefan would.” Stella finished her drink and began to put on her jacket. “I’ve got to go or I’ll be late.”
“Just before you do,” Strong said, “Can you take a look at this one and tell me if you’ve seen him before.” He slipped one last picture from the envelope and passed it to her.
“Yes.” She stood up. “That’s Chris. At least that’s what he called himself. He used to talk to Stefan a lot. He’s a regular at Sensations. Normally sees Mariana.”
“Not any more, he’ll not,” Strong said, putting the photo away. “He was our victim in Garforth yesterday.”