“You just be careful, Bob Souter,” Alison warned. “These guys could be desperate.”
Souter and Sammy exchanged glances and smiled.
57
Saturday
Baker’s detached property on the Studley Road in Ripon lay hidden from view behind trees. A sweeping tarmac drive led up to a pair of garages attached to the house. Strong looked at Stainmore as they turned off the road and up towards the house. They stepped out of the car. He took in the property while Stainmore’s attention was caught by the slightly open garage door. Slowly she walked towards it. Strong saw her and strolled over to join her as she bent down to lift the door open.
“Shit,” Stainmore gasped as she saw the hosepipe leading from the Jaguar’s exhaust to the driver’s window. There were no fumes and the engine wasn’t running. Strong bent down and looked through the rear window. The car appeared empty. Stainmore walked up by the side of the car, and with a puzzled expression, shook her head in confirmation. She rejoined her boss and they made their way to the front door.
Strong raised his hand to ring the bell but paused. The door was ajar. Again, they exchanged concerned glances. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. The hallway was wide with an elegant timber staircase leading up to a galleried landing. A few steps in to the left, an open door led to a lounge.
A still figure sat in an armchair.
“Mr Baker,” Strong said quietly.
Baker sat motionless, staring through the broad window looking out over the front lawn. “I was expecting you,” he finally said. “Not sure when, but I knew you’d be here.”
Strong walked over to the settee opposite him, Stainmore close behind. “Can we?” he asked.
Baker nodded and they sat down.
“I couldn’t do it, you know.”
“The car?”
Again Baker nodded. “If it was only me … but … Gary’s still missing.” He looked at Strong, eyes moist. “He is still missing, isn’t he?”
“We haven’t been able to trace him. Have you any more ideas?”
Baker shook his head. “He must have found somewhere to lie low. You’d have found him by now if anything had happened to him the night Gary … well.”
Strong interrupted his melancholy. “You know why we’re here, Robert?”
Baker wiped his face with the back of his hand, then pinched his nose and sniffed. “I thought it would only be a matter of time before you joined the dots, unlike that other lazy bastard. Just marking time for retirement that one.” He pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose.
“Halliday?”
“Acted like he couldn’t find his arse with both hands.” Baker glanced at Stainmore. “Sorry.” He looked back to Strong. “The questions you were asking at Janice’s, I knew you’d be back.”
“So what can you tell us about Chris and Gary? What had they got themselves into?”
Baker put his head in his hands, rubbed his face then sat back in the chair. “I was only trying to help Chris. Stupid idiot, letting his … well, getting involved in that place.” He drew a deep breath and exhaled. “They’d been having some problems, Chris and Janice.” He looked up at the detectives. “You know she couldn’t have kids?”
They both nodded.
“He told me he had been bored for some time. I did ask if he was seeing someone else but he said he wouldn’t want to do that. A little later, he told me he’d been tempted to try one of those massage parlours. He thought he could enjoy different women with no guilt. However, he developed a favourite.”
“Mariana?” Strong asked.
“Yes.”
“Although, you know that’s not her real name.”
“I never thought it was. A pity the idiot didn’t do the same. For some strange reason, he told her a lot about himself, including the problems he was having at home, where he worked, Gary’s wayward path and other stuff. The next thing, what started out as doing the manager of the place a favour with an insurance quote leads onto something else.”
“Szymanski?”
“He never said a name. But when you showed me those photos and mentioned them, I knew who they were.” Baker sighed and altered his position slightly in the chair.
“So knowing where Chris works, he gets requests for information from Szymanski regarding certain makes and models of car and their owners’ details, yes?”
Baker nodded. “That was bad enough, but the next thing I knew, he’d involved Gary. Him and his mate, Steve. They were paid to rent that barn, you know? Chris’s name was on the contract but it was those other men who funded it. He’d be asked to match up vehicle identities. One local and one the other side of the country. Always top models. Then Gary and Steve would have to lift the local one.”
“Up to Meadow Woods Farm, switch identities and into a container then shipped to Felixstowe, job done.” Strong continued.
“Yes,” Baker said quietly, looking down onto his lap.
Strong studied him for a second or two. “Except there was something you contributed to the whole set up, wasn’t there Graham?”
The man seemed suddenly older. Slowly, he looked up, tears streaming down his face. “Yes.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Thirty-two years I’d worked for them. Thirty-two years. A lifetime. I’d seen all that currency pass through the system. I’d even been involved in the design of some of the notes. All I wanted was for Alice to be able to enjoy life without any worries.”
“And Alice was your late wife, was she, Robert?”
Baker nodded once again and wiped away the tears.
Strong waited while the man composed himself.
Finally, he continued, “Inoperable brain tumour.” He looked across at Strong. “She was only fifty-nine.”
He suspected there was more Baker was about to reveal and he’d distracted him. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said. “But you were telling us …”
“Over the last few years there, I managed to obtain various papers. Specialist papers. I didn’t know what I’d do with them, I suppose I thought of them as souvenirs at first, but Chris is … was quite good with computers. And well … do you want to see?”
“Please, Robert. We need to clear all of this up.” Strong glanced at Stainmore.
Baker wiped his face with his handkerchief once more, then slowly rose to his feet. “I only did it to help Chris,” he pleaded.
Strong put a hand on his shoulder. “I know.”
Baker turned and led the way out of the room to the front door. Outside, he shuffled over to the second garage, the first one still with the door open and the rear end of the Jaguar on view. He turned the handle on the second garage door and lifted it open. Inside, at the rear was another door. He rummaged in his pocket for a set of keys, selected one and unlocked. With the door open, he switched on the light to reveal a complete office set up; desk with keyboard and computer screen and chair and along one wall a professional looking printing and copier machine.
Strong looked all round. “What are we likely to find on the computer then, Robert? Draft vehicle licence documents? Invoice letter headings in the name of Yorkshire Exports?”
Baker filled up again. “All of them,” he said. “And these.” He opened one of the drawers in a desk and pulled out a wad of mint condition five pound notes.
“Are these what I think they are?” Stainmore asked.
“Looks like we’ve solved Sam and Trevor’s case for them too,” Strong said.
Baker had been taken back to Wood Street, charged and was languishing in a cell until his appearance in the Magistrates Court on Monday morning. Strong was in his office checking through his messages when the phone rang.
“DCI Strong.”
“Colin, it’s Peter Walker here, over in Pontefract,”
came a familiar voice.
“Hello, Peter, how’s the investigation?”
“Steady progress. Just thought I’d keep you in the picture with events.”
“Appreciate that.”
“The DNA tests the boffins carried out confirm they are the bodies of Jennifer Coyle and Mary Duggan. They also found some other samples which we’re running through the databases to see if we get any sort of hit.”
“Sounds promising.”
“Well, we’ll see. That’s only any good if they’ve got form and had a sample taken in the past. The other thing was your tip about the pick-up.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Yes. We’ve been in contact with Swansea and they tell us the tax expired in 1990 and was registered to a Mrs Enid Collinson, address …”
“Meadow Woods Farm, I know,” Strong interrupted.
“That’s right. You’d spoken to the farmer neighbours, hadn’t you? Anyway, from DVLA records, Enid Collinson first bought the vehicle second-hand in 1980. She died in 1985.”
“The Clay’s told me that.”
“And her husband passed on in August 1990.”
“So the pick-up has been in that old barn ever since?”
“Seems like it. We’ve taken it off to the SOCO garage. They’ll pick it apart. If there’s anything to connect that vehicle with the girls, they’ll find it. We’ve gone back through the original witness statements from both missing person’s cases and you were right, there was mention by a couple of witnesses in both cases of a maroon pick-up seen in the vicinity of where we knew the girls were last seen. It might just be a coincidence but …”
“I know what you mean, Peter, there are no such things as coincidences.”
“Not generally in my book. Anyway, thanks for that little steer, I thought you’d be interested.”
“Always. Let me know how things go, and if I hear anything else like that, I’ll be on to you straight away.”
“See you, Colin.”
Strong replaced the handset and stared at it for a few seconds.
58
Sunday
“Hello, Bob,” Laura greeted, hugging him and giving him a kiss. “Haven’t seen you since that little scare at Calder Street.” She turned to the woman with him. “And this must be Alison. I’ve heard so much about you.” The two women embraced.
“All good I hope?”
“Of course,” Strong replied. “Go through to the lounge and let me get you a drink.”
Souter followed Strong into the kitchen. They helped themselves to a beer from the fridge, got a white wine for Laura and a glass of red for Alison then joined the women. There was a good twenty minutes of general chit-chat before dinner was ready and seats were taken around the table in the small dining room.
They were onto the main course before the subject came up.
“I hear you’ve adopted a teenage girl, Bob.” Laura said.
“Sammy, you mean? Oh, well …” Souter stumbled.
“She’s a good kid, really,” Alison said. “She certainly seems to have bonded with Susan. You know, Gillian’s younger sister who had that terrible accident out at that remote farmhouse.”
“Yes, Colin told me. A good job you found her, Bob.”
Souter just shrugged, Strong kept his head down.
“How is she, by the way?” Laura continued.
“Came out of hospital on Thursday afternoon.” Alison paused for a sip of wine. “She’s staying at Gillian’s for a while. In fact, Sammy’s gone over there to see her this afternoon.”
Souter turned to Alison. “Did you know they might look to get a flat together when Susan’s back on her feet?”
“When did she say that?”
“This morning when you were in the bathroom.”
“Would make sense, I suppose. Susan’s probably been lucky to hold on to that flat since her dad went into care.”
“I don’t think she told Housing. But yes, especially when she finally gets to start her course. And I think Sammy’s the sort of girl who needs company. I don’t think she handles being on her own too well.”
“It was great you could get her that job interview, Susan,” Strong said.
“She still had to impress, though. Is there any news on her friend, Maria?”
“Not a thing. I wouldn’t say it to Sammy but, it’s not looking too good. In cases like these, if they’d just gone off of their own free will, we’d usually have found them by now.”
“And no sign of that white van?” Souter asked.
“As you saw yourself, Bob, no chance of getting an enhanced image from the CCTV footage that would be good enough to read a number plate.”
“She hasn’t mentioned Maria for a few days though,” Souter said.
“Nor to me,” Alison added.
“Sounds like she’s had an awful lot to put up with in her short life,” Laura said.
“I also think Susan has in her own way.” Souter offered.
By the time Laura brought in her home-made apple crumble and custard, Souter was asking Strong about another subject.
“How are things progressing with your Albanian murder case?”
“We’re getting into all sorts of dark corners.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“But you know I can’t talk about it.”
“And that other murder, Baker. Are you still looking for his brother and his mate?”
“Not a sign of them. They’ve got to be lying low somewhere. We thought Chapman had a cousin he was close to growing up but, so far, we’ve not been able to trace him. Still, they’ll no doubt reappear at some point.”
“I thought Sammy …” Alison began, looking to Souter.
“So how’s your dad these days, Colin,” Souter interrupted. “I haven’t seen him in ages. Still going to Belle Vue regularly?”
“He seems fine,” Strong said. “Although I don’t think he’s as keen on seeing Rovers these days, not since they dropped into the Conference. That and I think standing on a draughty terrace isn’t his idea of entertainment at his age.”
“You know I can’t believe Doncaster are still playing at that run-down ground. But what about Amanda?” Souter followed up.
“We’re trying to get her to select which university open days she wants to go to,” Laura answered. “Before you know it, the deadline for applications will be here.”
“She’s a bright girl, she’ll do well.”
Before the conversation could move on, the phone rang.
Strong jumped up. “That’ll probably be Graham. He usually calls on a Sunday.”