Demolition, page 26
At nine fifty-five a.m., Eddows texted Henry to say Grundy had arrived at the station and was being booked back into the custody system.
‘Let them do it,’ Blackstone cooed. ‘Let them get on with it.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘And in any case, I want to show you something that might just keep you occupied for an hour or two. It might be nothing of value, but see what you think.’
‘Is this what you were being all mysterious about?’
‘Yep. Follow me.’
They were in the SIO’s office, and she led him out into the MIR to the back of that room to two tables she had shoved together to form one big one. On one corner of the table was a small stack of files containing the documents seized from Twain’s and Durham’s offices, which Blackstone had been studying for the last few days when she got the chance.
She picked up one of the folders and began to lay out the papers from inside it along the length and breadth of the two tables.
‘Chronological order,’ she mumbled as she placed the last sheet out. ‘Bear with me,’ she said as she scanned them all again to make sure they were correct. Satisfied, she said, ‘Right, pin your ears back, matey.’
Henry stood behind her, watching as patiently as he could.
‘First thing,’ she said, pointing to the sheet of paper in the top left corner. ‘Almost ten years ago, you arrested Marcus Durham for a botched, amateurish kidnap job, yeah? This is a copy of the original crime report.’
Henry nodded.
‘That whole shebang,’ she continued, ‘related to an argument that Durham had with a guy called Josh Price over the purchase of a house at auction, which Price bought against Durham’s wishes.’ She looked at Henry. ‘You remember that, don’t you?’
‘I do. I led the job, but it was quickly over, and when Durham was locked up, I had to delegate it to a local DS. I was running a murder at the time.’
‘Phew. Right, now, the property in question was called Nine Elms,’ she said – and Henry’s eyes narrowed because the name meant something to him, but he wasn’t sure why. It was on the edge of his memory and it was annoying him. Blackstone looked at him, also with her eyes narrowed, and asked, ‘Does that ring a bell at all?’
‘Sorry, being dim here,’ he admitted.
‘OK, no worries. We’ll come back to that. So, Marcus gets locked up and goes to prison for eight years and he’s out after four – fuck the system and all that – but he’s ankle-tagged for another two years … However, in that period he and James Twain meet and become on-off business partners, doing a few renovations together in and around Clitheroe and the Ribble Valley: farmhouses, normal houses, shops, all sorts of things.
‘Durham’s tag comes off and then here’ – she pointed to the next sheet of paper – ‘we have a missing-from-home report of a certain Josh Price who disappears into the ether from his home in Clitheroe. Despite lots of media, social media and the usual bog-standard police enquiries, he was never seen again, and the assumption is/was, because he was in financial difficulties, he took his own life. Body never found, which is unusual but not unknown. However, my question here is: was Durham involved in that? Did he snatch, kill and dispose of Josh Price? Maybe, maybe not, but knowing what we do about Durham, he was definitely capable of killing, certainly, and bearing a grudge, definitely.
‘Now’ – she picked up the next sheet along – ‘it gets interesting. This’ – she waggled the paper – ‘is the name of a company set up by James Twain. It’s called Vale Holdings and did not do very much business at all, other than buy a property in a private sale and sell it on to another company called’ – here Blackstone picked up another piece of paper – ‘Supermarine Holdings, which in turn sells the property on to another company called CTJT Holdings. With me so far?’ she paused to ask. ‘Buy – sell – buy – sell, yeah?’
‘So far, so good.’
‘It’s pretty basic stuff, really. I mean, we’re not talking about multinational companies or anything like that, but what we are talking about are shell companies all set up by Twain, and they existed for one purpose, which, I believe, was to cover something up – that’s often what shell companies are for.’
‘The “something” being the purchase of a property?’ Henry guessed.
Blackstone nodded. ‘I’ve had our financial people have a quick look at this too and they’ve found’ – she held up the next sheet of paper – ‘a list of payments, first for the property and then payments made from each of these shell companies to the other, all via bank accounts owned by James Twain, one of which is offshore in Jersey.
‘Anyway, the point is that, finally, another company set up by Twain then sells the property once more to another company called Poolside Holdings, which lists its one and only director as … go on, guess.’
‘Marcus Durham,’ Henry said as the pieces fell into place for him.
‘Poolside then sells the property – which, incidentally, has been sold each time for the exact same amount that Vale Holdings first bought it for – to the private individual who is none other than Marcus Durham. Each of these shell companies is then dissolved but Companies House and various other websites on the internet still have details of them, so they’re not that well-hidden for someone who’s a bit dogged and determined’ – Blackstone let her tongue loll out and she gave a few dog-like pants – ‘like me, but off-putting enough for most people.’
‘So the property first bought by Vale Holdings was Nine Elms?’ Henry said, beginning to get excited.
‘Correct, and in one of the later transactions – the sale between Supermarine Holdings and CTJT Holdings – the property is referred to as “the property formerly known as Nine Elms, now known as Chipping View”.’
‘Got it,’ Henry said, better late than never. ‘Nine Elms was the house that Josh Price outbid Durham for at auction, which is now called Chipping View. I remember looking at the gatepost when I went up to the scene of Durham’s murder the other day and seeing that the original name had been filled in and replaced by Chipping View, but I’ll hold my hand up: I knew it meant something, but it didn’t click then.’
‘Correctamundo!’ Blackstone said. ‘So Durham eventually gets the property he wanted but hid the trail of how he bought it, for whatever reason. And he got it cheap, too.’
‘How cheap?’
‘Well, Josh Price paid a hundred and seventy-five thousand at auction when he outbid Marcus – bearing in mind the place was a total wreck then, but with potential – and James Twain, via Valley Holdings, managed to purchase it for just under ninety grand, which is a stupid knock-down price.’
‘Who was the seller at the start of this chain?’
‘Margaret Price, Josh Price’s wife, or maybe widow – dunno.’
‘Wow,’ Henry said.
‘There is something else of interest,’ Blackstone said. She picked up another sheet of paper which had a news item copied on it from the Clitheroe Advertiser. She handed it to Henry.
‘Not good.’
It was the report of the suicide of a teenage girl called Hannah Price who had hanged herself in some woods on the outskirts of Clitheroe.
‘Another common denominator in this series of business set-ups, purchases and dissolutions is a solicitor in Clitheroe called Donald Warhurst who specializes in businesses and commercial property conveyancing. He did some work for James Twain and Marcus Durham for some of their renovation projects. I’ve checked him out, and, by all accounts, he’s a shit-bag. There are some customer reviews on a solicitor review site, warning folk not to get involved with him. These reviews are tempered by some very glowing ones, though, which I would say are false and have probably been posted by Warhurst himself.’
‘So what are you saying about all this?’ Henry asked her.
‘Maybe nothing.’ Blackstone shrugged. ‘I’m not saying any laws have been broken, but we’re investigating a murder, trying to find a motive, and it would be remiss of us not to go and have a chat with Warhurst and maybe see Josh Price’s wife, Margaret, at the same time. I’ve got her address. To me, it seems like a lot of work has gone into this from Durham’s point of view, kind of covering his tracks. Could it be something that got him murdered? If nothing else, it’ll give you something to do rather than skulking round here like a caged lion.’
The drive took just short of an hour, taking the picturesque route from Lancaster across the Trough of Bowland and dropping down into Dunsop Bridge before skirting into Clitheroe and looping round into the one-way system up the hill and into the town centre, passing the 1,200-year-old castle as they bore right into Castle Street, which was the main thoroughfare running through the lovely town, a place Henry knew well. He’d ventured there many times as a teenage lad with his friends, mainly to drink and carouse.
Warhurst’s Solicitors was on a road called Wellgate, which was on the right as they came back down the hill. Henry had driven and Blackstone had made a phone call on the journey to try to secure an appointment at short notice with Mr Warhurst, but had been told by his secretary he was busy all day, including going out to visit a client, and that he would not have time to see them – even when Blackstone told the woman who they were, though not what they wanted to see him for.
‘We’ll wait, then,’ she’d informed the woman curtly and hung up on her.
She sat back then to enjoy the ride in Henry’s courtesy car through some of the most glorious, unspoilt countryside in England.
‘Have you heard about your real car yet?’ she asked him.
‘Hoping to hear today,’ Henry told her. ‘Not sure they quite know what to do, but I guess they’ll have to write it off, which means a new car. Yay!’ he finished without enthusiasm. ‘Got a bit of “can’t be arsed” syndrome about that, as fun as it might sound. I’d just got used to that one.’
‘You could buy my Mini,’ she suggested.
‘As if.’
By the time they’d reached Clitheroe, Blackstone still hadn’t convinced him that buying her car would be a good move for someone at his time of life, plus she’d made him tune the car radio into some strange (to him) music channel playing stuff he thought had no melody. It turned out to be Radio 1.
Henry managed to find a space a couple of hundred metres away from Warhurst’s office but as he was about to get out, his phone rang: his insurers with an update. He gestured to Blackstone that he needed to take the call, and she gestured back she would go and see Warhurst and sauntered away without him.
Henry sat back and prepared to do battle.
A couple of minutes later, he spotted Blackstone strolling back just as he came to the end of his little bit of to-ing and fro-ing with Scott, the same insurance guy he’d given an earbashing to a few days earlier; it seemed that Scott was more than just a call taker.
Blackstone flopped into the car.
‘He’s out visiting a client,’ she informed Henry. ‘Should have been back an hour ago, and the lady behind the desk is getting a bit frazzled because she can’t contact him and there are three clients waiting for him, all getting a bit nowty. I said we’d pop back if we got the chance.’
‘No worries.’
‘Shall we go and see Mrs Price?’ Henry said.
Blackstone said they should and read the address from a piece of paper.
Ten minutes later, with the help of the satnav on her phone, they found the house in the Low Moor area, not far from where Edisford Bridge crossed the River Ribble. It was the middle in a row of terraced houses on an old, cobbled street that, Henry vaguely seemed to remember from a bit of local knowledge, were built to house workers in a nearby mill, long demolished.
He drew in behind a very nice-looking Maserati sports car that looked completely incongruous in this location.
Blackstone peered at the numbers on the doors. ‘It’s that one, just further along,’ she said and began to get out just as Henry’s phone rang once again.
It was Rik Dean calling.
‘Rikky Boy. I’d better take it,’ Henry said to Blackstone and thumbed the answer icon.
She shrugged, got out and walked down to the address.
Rik, now almost fully recovered from his Covid symptoms, wanted a detailed update on progress, and Henry settled in for a long chat. He didn’t mind much because, so far, it was all pretty good news, even adding – in order to gild the lily somewhat and keep Rik off his back – that he and Blackstone were out and about following a good lead in the Marcus Durham investigation. As he spoke, he could see Blackstone beyond the Maserati at the door of Mrs Price’s house. He saw her push it open and slowly step inside.
Henry began filling Rik in with all the details he was demanding. Apparently, the chief constable was on Rik’s back, and the crime commissioner was on the chief’s back, a situation Henry remembered well from his days on the force. Everybody was on everyone else’s back, and Henry guessed that in the current climate, when the cops were under so much scrutiny, it was even worse than ever.
As he brought Rik up to date – getting some nice, appreciative noises from him – his phone beeped to indicate someone else was calling, and when he glanced at the screen, he saw a message to say Blackstone was on the line.
‘Rik, hang fire just one sec, will you?’
Henry thumbed the icon and said, ‘Yep?’
‘Mr Christie, it’s DS Blackstone here … you, er, might want to come in here, please … there’s a bit of a situation …’ The line went dead, and Henry looked quizzically at his phone, wondering what the hell Blackstone was on about, calling him Mr Christie and herself DS Blackstone. A bit formal.
A lot wrong.
He flipped the phone call back to Rik Dean and said, ‘Got to go, mate … I think something’s up here. Call you back.’
He ended the call without further explanation, got out of the car and walked quickly to the house, passing the Maserati. Because of the position he’d pulled in behind the Maserati, he hadn’t seen that parked beyond the sports car by the kerb was a very knackered-looking, muddy trials motorbike, which at that moment did not make him do a double take, but perhaps should have done.
The front curtains were fully drawn at the ground-floor front window, and Henry could not see inside.
Henry tapped on the door, which was traditional-looking with a fanlight design and a lever-type handle. He waited a moment, got no reply and knocked a little harder, noticing then that the door was actually open a fraction of an inch. He pushed it with his knuckles. It swung open with a creak into the narrow hallway of the two-up, two-down house, and although the hallway was probably less than a yard wide, it was plenty wide enough for the bulky corpse that lay there, face down on the linoleum floor, with a gaping wound in the back of the head and a large pool of deep red blood underneath it.
First thing – it wasn’t Blackstone.
It was a heavy-looking man dressed in a suit, and Henry had seen enough gunshot wounds to know he’d been shot in the back of his head and that the bullet had entered the cranium at such an angle it had skewered up through the occipital bone and exited through the parietal bone, making a terrible mess.
‘Debs,’ Henry called worriedly, ‘Debs.’
‘Henry … in here, front room … you’ll have to step over the body, I’m afraid.’
‘Debs, you OK?’ he called, remaining at the front door.
‘Yes, yes, but you need to come in, Henry, please … erm, or I’ll get shot, I think,’ she replied. ‘And, uh, don’t do anything silly like calling for back-up, eh?’
‘Fuck,’ Henry said quietly, then raised his voice. ‘OK, will do.’
There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre, but he managed to edge carefully around the dead man and take a few more steps to the living-room door, which was open. Inside, he could see Blackstone on a tired-looking armchair. She was sitting upright, rigid, and her fingers gripped the ends of the armrests, knuckles white with tension, nails digging into the fabric.
Henry stood at the threshold and whispered, ‘Debs?’
Blackstone’s head turned very slowly towards him, and he saw abject fear in her expression as she tilted her head to indicate for Henry to enter, which he did, slowly, and saw a pale-faced woman sitting on a dining chair directly opposite Blackstone, pointing a gun at her, then at Henry as he came into view. Behind her was the front window with the closed curtains.
‘Sit on the chair arm,’ the woman ordered him with a grating, unemotional voice, ‘next to your colleague.’
Henry moved across the room. Blackstone tucked her arm in, and Henry perched on the edge of the chair arm as instructed. Although he kept his eyes firmly on the woman and the gun, he did manage one quick scan of the room and saw a discarded forensic suit, white colour, on the two-seater settee, plus a hockey goalkeeper’s mask and a motorbike helmet.
The gun followed him, unwavering, and stayed on him as he settled down.
‘Good,’ the woman said.
‘Henry, this is Mrs Price … Josh Price’s wife,’ Blackstone said nervously. ‘Margaret, this is Henry Christie, my boss.’
She nodded. ‘We’ve met.’
Realizing she meant at James Twain’s workshop, Henry said, ‘Yes, we have, haven’t we? I obviously don’t know what’s going on here, but if you could put the gun down, might we talk?’ He made pacifying gestures with his hands, open palms.
Margaret Price sneered and shook her head. ‘I have no talk left in me,’ she said simply, and a tear rolled out of her eye. ‘I have nothing left.’
Henry looked at her. Her face was thin and drawn, and seemed to have a yellowish tinge to it, and he could tell she was a long way down a road that might not have any turning circles unless he could get through to her.
‘I’m sure we can talk, Margaret. We can always talk,’ he said gently.
Again, she shook her head and closed her eyes despairingly for a moment, but not long enough for Henry to even consider hurling himself across the room in an effort to disarm her. He was too old for that kind of shit anyway.
‘Who’s that in the hall?’ he asked, knowing it was probably not the best opener in the world, but that it was imperative to start a dialogue here, especially as he was trudging in dark treacle for the moment.
