No Smoke Without Fire (A DCI Warren Jones Novel - Book 2) (48 page)

Warren and Tony Sutton rang the bell. Eventually a middle-aged woman wearing her hair in a bun and a Royal Mail uniform entered through a door behind the reception desk.

“If you have any queries about parcels, you need to speak to that desk. This is for visitors only.”

The line was practised and well worn; she was clearly used to self-important members of the public trying to avoid waiting their turn.

Warren flashed his warrant card. “We’re not here to pick up a parcel. I wonder if we could speak to the person in charge of your vehicle fleet, please.”

The woman blinked in surprise. “Oh. I suppose that would be Mr Carroway. Let me see if he’s in today.” Picking up a phone on the desk, she dialled a three-digit number.

A few seconds later, after explaining who the visitors were, she cupped the mouthpiece. “May I ask what it’s about?”

“A minor traffic incident,” Warren lied smoothly.

After a few more seconds, she hung up. “He’ll be down in a moment to pick you up. In the meantime, could you sign the visitors’ book, please? You’ll also need to wear these visitor badges. Please return them to Reception before you leave.”

Warren signed the pair of them in as North Herts Police, purposely leaving ‘nature of business’ blank. The two men accepted the badges and hung them around their necks on bright red lanyards. At that moment, the doors to the right of Reception opened.

Angus Carroway was a short man, with a shock of bright red hair and a pale, freckled complexion to match. Middle-aged, he had the remains of a Scottish accent. After introductions, during which Warren stuck with the line that they were investigating a minor traffic incident, the fleet manager led them through the double-doors into a maze of corridors. A rattling noise permeated the fabric of the building.

“That’s the automated sorting machines. Believe me, it’s a lot noisier on the main floor.”

Finally, they emerged into a huge, enclosed garage. A number of loading bays were occupied by a variety of vehicles, from the familiar small red vans to large, articulated trucks; some with Royal Mail livery, others with Parcelforce. A dozen or so men in red polo shirts were busy loading the vehicles, either by hand or pump-truck. At the far end, open shuttered doors revealed the road outside, an icy wind blowing fat, wet snowflakes through the opening. Nevertheless, the garage stank of diesel fumes. Carroway led them to a steel and wooden door to the right of the garage, marked ‘Fleet Manager’.

Inside, the office was a cluttered affair, the large wooden desk a mess of in-trays and pieces of paper jostling for space with a vintage-looking desktop PC. A full-height, steel-framed bookcase against the far wall was filled with dozens of red and blue A4 folders, each with its spine neatly labelled with what looked like a registration number and vehicle description. A small window behind the desk provided the only natural light. A much larger window overlooked the garage area from which they had just come. To the left of the room a connecting door led into a small anteroom, in which a young woman was sitting at a far tidier desk, using a hands-free telephone headset and tapping away at a more modern-looking computer. There was only one visitor chair in Carroway’s office, so he reached through to the anteroom and borrowed hers.

With the three of them settled, Carroway leant forward. “So what can I help you with, Officers?”

As the person in charge of the Royal Mail’s fleet of vehicles in the local area, Carroway had probably had numerous dealings with the police. A traffic violation by any of his drivers would naturally come across his desk first, as the police tracked down the person responsible. However, he would almost certainly have been dealing with the traffic division. It was unlikely that he had much to do with CID.

Warren pushed across the clearest images of the two suspect Royal Mail vans taken from the CCTV footage examined by Mags Richardson and her team. The vehicle registration numbers were clearly visible.

“Are these two vans part of your fleet?”

Carroway glanced at the images; he clearly knew the registration numbers of his fleet off by heart. “Yes, they are both part of the local fleet that I manage.”

He licked his lips nervously, Warren noted. He remained silent, waiting for Carroway to fill the void.

“Have they been involved in some sort of incident? Nothing was reported in the log or spotted by the mechanics.”

“We’re more interested in their whereabouts over the last few weeks. This van—” he pointed at the picture of the vehicle spotted near the leisure centre “—was spotted on CCTV at half-past nine in the evening on Thursday the eighth of December, near the Middlesbury Sports and Leisure Centre. This is a local delivery van, I believe. Isn’t it a bit unusual for it to be out so late at night?”

Carroway squirmed in his seat. With the blanket coverage in the local media of the recent murders, he had to recognise the date in question.

“This van,” Warren continued, “was spotted up near the high street on Friday the second of December at about six p.m. Over an hour after the last pickup for the post boxes in that area. Is that normal?”

Carroway looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Suddenly, he got up, crossed the office and closed the door to the anteroom. Sitting back down, he took a deep breath.

“If I tell you something, can I rely on your discretion? This could very well cost me my job.”

“I can’t promise anything, particularly if any laws have been broken. However, we are not in the habit of causing trouble unnecessarily,” replied Warren cautiously.

Carroway sighed and massaged his temples; his face had turned a pale, sickly colour.

“I always knew this would happen,” he mumbled to himself.

Pointing out of the window and into the garage, he gestured to the various vehicles parked in there.

“Middlesbury is the regional depot for the local area. As such, we maintain the various vehicles that service the area. As you can probably imagine, demand for deliveries fluctuates throughout the year and the volume of letters being delivered each year is reducing all the time. So it isn’t unusual for many of our vehicles to remain unused at any one time. We have nine red delivery vans in total. At peak demand, immediately before Christmas with very bad weather, when we wouldn’t have the bicycles out, we need up to eight on the road at any one time, plus a spare.”

Warren had an inkling of where this was going, but said nothing, letting the man continue. He did so reluctantly. The look on his face was one of a man clearly signing his own P45 and resignation letter.

“Posties don’t earn very much and the overtime isn’t what it used to be. Some of the lads do a bit of business on the side to help ends meet, you know, a bit of building work on the weekend, a bit of kitchen-fitting. A couple of the guys have kids at uni and they help them move house at the beginning of term. They don’t do enough to justify buying a van and it costs a fortune to hire one, so I help them out.”

He started speaking quickly, trying to justify his actions. “It’s not like it costs the Royal Mail or does any harm. They fill up the tank before they return it and it’s not as if they’re using it for anything it wasn’t designed for — what’s the difference between sacks of letters and parcels and sacks of builder’s sand or a flat-pack fitted kitchen?”

“And, presumably, you take a small commission for your trouble?”

Carroway blushed. “Yeah, a few quid.”

“So how does the system work, then?” asked Tony Sutton.

“Well, it’s pretty much under the radar, as you can imagine, just a few trusted lads. The keys to all of the vehicles are kept in that lock-cabinet there—” he nodded to an open gun-metal key cabinet attached to the wall “—but the key to open it is in the bottom of this pencil pot. If one of them wants to borrow a van, they pop in when it’s quiet — and help themselves. They usually stick a few quid in the honesty jar in the desk drawer.”

Tony Sutton smirked at the irony of an ‘honesty jar’ under such circumstances, but said nothing.

“It’s not a big deal and they know not to abuse the system. It’s just helping out a few mates. It doesn’t do any harm.”

The whining tone in the man’s voice was starting to grate on Warren’s nerves.

“Either way, can you tell us who borrowed these vans on those dates?”

Carroway shook his head, helplessly. “Sorry, I don’t keep records.” He smiled humourlessly. “I’d be — what’s that phrase? — ‘hoisted by my own petard’. It’s all done on trust.”

Warren was starting to feel his patience wearing thin with this little creep.

“Then perhaps you could give me a list of those included in your little circle of trust.”

Carroway groaned quietly, but he clearly knew when he was defeated. Picking a pen out of the pot, he tore off a sheet of paper and, with a look of concentration, wrote down a list of eight names.

“I can’t promise that there aren’t one or two others that have heard about the system and joined up informally, but these are all the ones that I know about.”

Warren and Sutton looked at the list, before looking at each other with a grim smile. Fourth name on the list — Alex Chalmers.

* * *

Warren and Tony Sutton stood outside the closed door of Carroway’s office. The noise from the diesel engines and the workers shifting parcels easily drowned out their conversation. Through the window, they could see Carroway slumped at his desk.

“So it looks as though Alex Chalmers had access to a van whenever he needed one. Bloody clever set-up — who the hell takes any notice of a post van?” said Tony Sutton.

“And it supplied Darren Blackheath with a perfect alibi. He could drive into that alleyway in that ridiculous car of his and wait for Sally Evans calm as you please, then they stuck her in the back of the post van and drove her out,” continued Warren.

“Reckon we’ll have to get a warrant to impound the vans for forensics. At least we know why the victims all had that cardboard dust on their clothes. The inside of those vans are probably covered in it. Forensics will have a field day; even if they can’t find any trace from the victims in the back, they’ll be able to match soil and mud from the tyres to the dumping spots.” Sutton was looking excited.

Warren was looking less so however, as he walked over to one of the vans parked by the side of the garage. Walking around the vehicle, he squatted down by the back wheel, looking under the wheel arch.

“Don’t get your hopes up too much, Tony. Take a look at these wheels — what do you see?”

Sutton crouched down beside him. He saw it immediately.

“They’ve been cleaned. Bloody things look practically factory new.”

Standing up, the two officers surveyed the bright red van. In the lights of the garage, it positively gleamed.

Walking back to the fleet manager’s office, Warren entered without knocking.

“Those vans. How often do you clean them?”

“Three times a week. We have a lad who does them with a power hose to earn a bit of extra money.”

“We’ll need to speak to him.”

Chapter 63

Speaking to Robbie Cartwright wasn’t as straightforward as Warren had hoped. First of all they needed to wait until his father arrived as a responsible adult.

Pat Cartwright was a short, balding man in late middle age. Shaking both officers’ hands, he sat in one of the visitors’ seats in Carroway’s office. The fleet manager was now bending over backwards to help the police, probably still hopeful he could avoid losing his job. Nevertheless, after finding some extra chairs, he’d been sent to stand outside like a naughty schoolboy.

“We found out that Robbie would have Down’s syndrome when Molly was six months pregnant. Fortunately, Robbie is on the milder end of the spectrum. He’s physically healthy and he went to a mainstream comprehensive school. The thing about Robbie is he has a real work ethic. We’ve always been open with him about his condition and he’s determined to overcome it. When he was at school, they used to send him home with extra reading and maths practice. When I finished his homework with him for the evening, he’d go upstairs and badger his older brother to carry on practising. He finished school with GCSE passes in English, Maths and Art and then went to the local tech college to do a workplace skills course.”

“So how did he get the job at Royal Mail?” asked Tony Sutton.

Pat Cartwright smiled. “They’ve been bloody good to him here. He came here on work experience placement a couple of years. They started him off doing routine jobs, like cleaning the sorting office floor, sweeping up scrap paper and elastic bands. He also became the office tea boy, I suppose you could call him. He’s always had a pretty good memory and he learnt how everybody in the general office likes their coffee and tea. He’s got his older brother’s charm and everyone loves him. When his course finished, they took him on. He’s only on minimum wage, but he’s earning his keep.”

Cartwright looked sad, glancing out of the window at where his son was waiting, chatting to a couple of postal workers. “My wife and I realise that with all the medical advances these days, there’s a good chance he’ll outlive us. His brother and the rest of the family have always promised they’ll look after him, but the more independent he is, the better. We hope in a few years’ time for him to move into his own flat and to live independently, with a minimum of supervision. This job will help him do that.”

“So what about the vehicle cleaning?”

“Well, they can only offer him so many hours a week working inside. He’s always been mad about cars, absolutely obsessed with them. He used to love cleaning my car with me on a Sunday morning and his attention to detail is bordering on the fanatical. The old boy who used to wash the vans here left last year and so they gave the job to Robbie. He loves it. It really makes him proud. Mr Carroway tells him that the Royal Mail vans are like the Royal Mail posties — they’re the bit the public see and a clean van is like an ironed uniform. He’s really taken him under his wing.”

The older man looked worried. “Look, I hope there isn’t a problem, Officers. It’s just that Royal Mail have been really good to Robbie, Mr Carroway in particular. I’d hate for him to lose this job. With the way the economy is at the moment, it’s hard for anyone to get work these days, least of all somebody with Robbie’s challenges.”