BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel. Mark Sennen
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kit to luxury motor yachts, exactly the kind of boats which the Princess factory produced. Given a tour of a huge gin palace – now to be equipped with the latest radar, communications hardware and security systems – Riley had calculated how long he’d have to save to afford such a beast, shaking his head when he realised retirement would loom long before he reached the sum required. To his uneducated eye the business seemed on a sound footing, with half a dozen craft in for antifouling or engine maintenance and a number of charter boats bobbing alongside a pontoon, prepped and ready for corporate days out.
‘Bizarre,’ Riley said, thinking aloud. ‘I still can’t get my head around it. When I was there everything seemed above board.’
‘They always do. That’s the point.’
It turned out that Gavin Redmond, the managing director of Tamar Yachts, was anything but above board. Discrepancies in his financial affairs had led to the tax authorities alerting police to the possibility that the business might be washing drugs money through its books. The economic crime section of Major Crimes soon realised what Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs had not: Tamar Yachts not only provided a means for money laundering, it was also the perfect cover for a smuggling operation. Proving it was another matter entirely. Which was where Kemp came in.
Kemp had spent the previous eighteen months inveigling his way into the Plymouth underworld, playing a Scouse drug dealer keen to find new supplies. He’d spent tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money convincing local middlemen he was genuine, all the time waiting for the big fish to take the bait. The big fish being a villain named Kenny Fallon, who just happened to own fifty per cent of Redmond’s business.
Depending on how you viewed him, Fallon was either a visionary property developer, entrepreneur and investor with a knack of always being in phase with the market, or a lowlife scum who funded his legitimate businesses with a web of illegal activities ranging from protection rackets to scams to drugs. Every city had a Kenny Fallon, a piece of dirt that somehow managed to climb from the gutter and establish itself as the kingpin. The skill they all shared was to stay one step removed from the dodgy activities and hold the shit they dealt with at arm’s length. Fallon achieved that through a mixture of shrewd decision-making and creative accounting. So far neither the police nor HMRC had managed to make the necessary connections to trap him.
‘We’ll get him,’ Kemp said, almost as if he’d read Riley’s mind. ‘The delivery is due soon. A big one, according to my contact. He’ll text me, we swoop, Fallon goes down. Fairytale ending.’
‘Can we trust your contact though? When push comes to shove will he come good?’
‘He wants out, doesn’t he? He either helps us …’ Kemp scuffed his foot on the ground, kicking a small stone out through the railings. The stone hit the mud, sending little splatters of liquid out around it. ‘Or he’s a dead man.’
An hour later and the owner of the building company turned up at Lester Close. Peter Serling drove an immaculate bright red Audi TT with plastic covers on the seats, the material crackling as he eased his bulky frame out of the vehicle to speak to Savage. If the car was an unusual choice of transport for a builder, the man’s attire wasn’t; he wore a lumberjack shirt, a dusty fleece, jeans and tan boots. Specks of sawdust clung to scraggy brown hair and white paint flecks on the back of his hands contrasted with a healthy tan. Serling apologised for not arriving sooner, explaining he’d been up on a roof without his phone.
‘Susie from the office had to drive round and get me. Right state she were in. Can’t say I blame her, if what she told me is true. I nearly fell off the roof when she shouted the news up. I’m hoping she got the wrong end of the stick and there’s another explanation.’
Savage said there wasn’t and asked about the mix-up. Had his men got the wrong address?
‘No, love.’ Serling looked over to the house where two CSIs were carrying a large box of equipment round to the rear. ‘I was here last week speaking to Mr Evershed. Went into the back garden and he explained exactly what he wanted doing. He’d been let down by another builder, apparently, and needed some groundwork done quick in preparation for a conservatory. The company were coming to erect it later this week and he’d told them the patio would be cleared and the area readied in time.’
‘Mr Evershed denies that,’ Savage said. ‘He says he never asked you to do any work. In fact he denies even knowing you.’
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Considering what my lads have found.’
‘And you’re positive there couldn’t have been some mistake?’
‘Yes.’ Serling closed his eyes and kept them shut. ‘There’s a patio round the back. Stretches the width of the plot. Kitchen door’s pale green with a glass panel, in need of a paint. I noticed some rising damp to the right of the kitchen window, probably caused by the downpipe from the guttering not discharging into the drain properly. I asked Mr Evershed if he wanted me to fix it. He said “no”, he was quite capable of doing that himself. He said he would have lifted the patio slabs, but at his age he needed to start to take it easy. I said “me too” and we had a laugh about that.’
‘At his age? What sort of age would that be?’ Savage replied.
‘Hey?’ Serling opened his eyes. ‘About mine. Mid-forties. Looked pretty fit to me. Short and stocky, not much hair, but plenty of muscles, not running to fat like most of the rest of the world.’
‘What about payment? Contact details?’
‘He gave me a mobile number and he paid cash, upfront.’
‘Isn’t that unusual these days?’
‘Yeah,’ Serling smiled. ‘But not without some advantages.’
‘Tax?’
‘Yes. Forget I told you.’ Serling raised a hand and brushed his hair. A few pieces of sawdust fell on to his shoulder like flakes of oversized dandruff. ‘Mr Evershed said he was going to be away for a while and thought it best to settle up beforehand. Seven fifty in an envelope. He said he was trusting me and that I wasn’t to mess him around. The job had to be done Monday, come rain or shine. Well, I thought, for seven fifty you could add in hell or high water too.’
‘Wasn’t it over the odds? Seven hundred and fifty?’
‘Yes. Although to be fair it was going to take my lads all day to lift the slabs and dig out to the required depth.’
‘Have you still got the envelope or the money?’
‘What? You want it back?’
‘For fingerprints. You’ll get a receipt.’
‘Yes. It’s at home.’ Serling smiled again. ‘I wasn’t going to bank it, was I?’
Savage thanked Serling and directed Calter to go with him, retrieve the money and take a full statement. Then she went back to the rear of the house where the entire panoply of police resources were now in evidence. Three of Layton’s team of CSIs were working on excavating the rest of the patio, carting barrow-loads of soil round to the front of the house where they were sieved into a skip. A photographer recorded any item recovered as it was removed and an exhibits officer bagged and catalogued those of interest. Away from the patio a woman pushed what looked like a small grass mower back and forth over the lawn.
‘Ground-penetrating radar,’ Layton said when Savage asked. ‘Should tell us if anything else is buried there. Let’s hope she’s wasting her time.’
‘And inside?’
‘We’ll see.’ Layton turned to look at the house. ‘The place is due for a refurb which means, luckily, the decor hasn’t been touched for years. We should be able to ascertain if anything has been disturbed recently. And before you ask, no, nothing in the loft. Thank God.’
DCI Mike Garrett turned up an hour later, looking, as always, as if he had arrived direct from an upmarket tailor. Not so much as a piece of fluff on the dark surface of his suit, his