Somebody Told Me (13 page)

I spent half an hour listening to lots of legal jargon and his assessment of the evidence. Occasionally Lydia interrupted with a question, but Stockes handled the interview with ease. But I was still curious about why he had made the initial approach.

‘Have you made any progress with identifying who murdered Bevard?’

I shook my head. Stockes continued. ‘I suppose you consider Walsh to be the directing mind behind the murder?’

‘I’m sure you appreciate that we have to entertain the possibility Walsh was aware that Bevard was contemplating giving evidence against him.’

‘Of course.’

‘We’re talking to everyone involved.’ I looked over at Stockes. He didn’t avoid my eye – in fact he kept staring straight at me.

‘We believe there might be a link to the death of Brian Yelland, too.’

He couldn’t hide the anxiety in his face. He drew two fingers under his cheekbones as though he had a developing toothache.

Lydia cut in. ‘Yelland was killed with a gun similar to the one used to kill Felix Bevard.’

‘Can you tell me more about your relationship with Yelland?’ I said. ‘Did you see him regularly?’

‘We went out occasionally for a drink. After he and Sharon were separated I saw him more often.’

‘Did he ever tell you what happened between him and Sharon?’

Stockes shrugged. ‘Not really. I suppose the drinking didn’t help.’

‘Do you know if he had been seeing anyone else?’

‘He’d been using some internet dating sites and he’d been on some dates but nothing came of it.’

‘He didn’t mention anyone called Janice?’

He shook his head.

‘When was the last time you saw Yelland?’

He thought for a moment before answering. ‘We went out one night two weeks ago.’

‘What was his mood like?’

He shrugged but avoided eye contact. ‘He was in good form. He even mentioned going on holiday which surprised me when he always complained about money.’

‘Did he ever talk about work?’

‘The usual small talk. There was a lot of bad feeling at work. He was facing disciplinary proceedings and he was worried.’

‘Did he ever mention any prisoners by name?’

Stockes gave me a puzzled look. ‘No, why would he?’

‘Small talk I suppose.’

He narrowed his eyes, hardened his gaze.

‘When he was working in Newport jail a man made a complaint against him. Did he ever talk about that?’

‘He mentioned it but prisoners often make unfounded claims against prison officers. A lot of them know how to milk the system.’

‘Did he ever mention a man called Owen Norcross?’

Stocked puckered his lips and shook his head. ‘Not that I recall.’

A typical evasive lawyer-like reply only made me feel more suspicious.

‘Norcross was the prisoner who made the complaint about Yelland. Did Yelland ever mention James Walsh to you?’

Mention of Walsh bridled him. He made an odd sort of coughing sound and shook his head.

‘I’m sure you must realise that we have to look at every possible thread in this case. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here to see me. We believe that Walsh found out about the supergrass deal. He must have realised that it meant he was going to face a life sentence.’

‘I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that Bevard might simply have told someone. These people are toe-rags, Inspector, and they all swim round in a big pool of their own shit.’

I stared at him for a couple of seconds. Any initiative he had when he arrived had gone by now and it only made me more suspicious of Stockes. When he left he handed me a business card with his direct line number and an assurance that if he could help in any way I should not hesitate to call.

After he left Lydia turned to me. ‘Do you think he told Yelland about Bevard?’

Contemplating that a Crown Prosecution lawyer had lied to me meant there was something much bigger at stake.

‘I don’t like coincidences especially when they’re linked to someone like Walsh.’

‘Maybe he thought we wouldn’t dig into his private life if he came to us first.’

‘Then he’s mistaken.’

Stockes’ appearance that morning wouldn’t stop me turning over every part of his life.

*     *     *

I sat in my car, Lydia by my side, nursing a double-shot Americano in one of those plastic beakers with a clever lid that was supposed to make drinking from it easier. I had worked ten days straight and part of me knew that I needed a day off although I wasn’t certain that my meeting in the morning with Uncle Gino and Jez at the solicitors counted.

Across the road from my car the ACE minicab firm occupied an old garage on a side street: convenient for the motorway and near enough to make it a short drive into the middle of town. Lydia and I looked over at the various cars parked untidily on the forecourt. A big sign over the entrance boasted it was a 24-hour guaranteed service – special rates to the airports of Cardiff and Bristol.

We left the car and headed over towards the entrance. Behind a counter, a woman with leathery skin and a sun-bed tan peered over at us.

‘Where to, love? Only it’s our busy time now. There might be a bit of a wait. There’s a coffee machine by there.’

I held up my warrant card and she squinted over. ‘You after that dirty bitch who stole Robbie’s money last week? Only he’s not here.’

‘What’s your name?’ Lydia said.

‘Sonia.’

‘We’re investigating the death of Mr Bevard.’

Suddenly her mood changed. She straightened and approached the counter. ‘You had better come through.’ She nodded at the door in reception.

A large whiteboard dominated one wall with the names of all drivers and vehicle registration numbers. It looked an unintelligible jumble. The smell of oil and grease and dirty food hung around the place.

‘How many drivers have you got working here?’ Lydia asked as she looked at the board closely.

‘There are twenty different drivers. Some of them work part time, some own their own cars.’

I stared at the tangle of names. ‘Do you know a man called Jack Ledley? Big, lots of tattoos and a ponytail?’

She frowned. ‘Sorry, love.’

‘Do any of the drivers live up in Cwmbran or Pontypool?’

‘Don’t think so. So you haven’t found who killed Felix?’

Lydia persevered. ‘We’ll need a list of the drivers. Are any of them here now?’

‘There are five of them on their break. Is it true he was killed with a machine gun, like one of them Steven Seagal films? I like them.’

I stepped over towards Sonia and lowered my voice. ‘It’s all a bit confidential. A need-to-know basis.’

Her mouth fell open, her eyes wide with astonishment.

‘Now … How about that list?’

She sat down at her desk and started rummaging through paperwork. Lydia sat next to her.

‘Do you know if Felix Bevard had any enemies?’ Lydia said.

‘What, like someone who’d want to kill him?’ she murmured.

‘Someone who might have threatened him. Business rivals or disgruntled employees.’

She curled her lips into a frown. ‘Don’t think so.’

It surprised me how quickly Sonia was able put her hands on the necessary records in the midst of such chaos. Then she walked over to a photocopier, piled sheets of paper into the top of the machine and waited until it had pinged out all the copies. She handed us the various sheets and we left through a side door before heading towards the restroom at the back of the garage.

Five men sat around a table drinking from large dirty mugs. One of them was picking at fish and chips from a plastic container, another flicking through a men’s magazine. They all scanned Lydia from head to toe when she followed me in.

I flashed my card at them, and Lydia did the same. ‘DI Marco. We’re looking for someone who knew Felix Bevard. We believe his name was Jack Ledley. He had long hair and tattoos on his arms.’ There were blank stares mostly; two of the men shook their heads and as Lydia ticked off their names from Sonia’s list I had the impression they were telling us the truth. But there were fifteen more names on the list. Somebody must have known Ledley.

A car drew up in the main body of the garage and the atmosphere inside the restroom changed. They craned to look outside, some frowning. ‘That’s Gloria,’ one of them said under his breath. I followed Lydia outside. She reached Gloria Bevard before me.

She peered over at us. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘We need to trace Jack Ledley,’ Lydia said, using her most diplomatic tone.

‘Don’t come back here unless you notify me in advance. I mean … I want to know what’s going on. I want to know who killed Felix.’

It was difficult to make her out. I paused and stared at her. Was this the natural reaction of the grieving widow?

Gloria seemed out of place amongst the old cars, the oil and the grime. Lydia repeated the description of Ledley, but Gloria ignored her. She looked over my shoulders to the back of the garage and then over to the office.

Adopting a casual tone, I said, ‘What will you do with this place now?’

She scowled at me as though the answer was obvious.

‘I’ll keep it of course. It’s my business now and my livelihood. Felix loved this place. He built it up from scratch with just one car, you know. I’d never sell it if that’s what you mean.’

Habit made me reach for my pocket to give Mrs Bevard one of my cards. ‘Please contact us if you think of anything else or you see Jack Ledley.’ She read it with a perplexed look and we turned to walk away.

*     *     *

‘I don’t like that Gloria Bevard.’

As police officers we weren’t paid to like people but Lydia was right in thinking that there was something odd about her behaviour. I flashed my headlights at a van that pulled out in front of me. The traffic into town was building up.

‘She seems to have gotten over her grief quickly enough,’ I said.

‘She’s distrustful of us which is worse. I guess that’s what I don’t like.’

I mumbled my agreement. Lydia continued. ‘And I cannot imagine her leaving her family and her way of life in South Wales.’

‘I wonder how Felix was going to tell her that she had no choice and that it was either a bungalow in Adelaide and a cleaning job in the local pizza restaurant or a bullet through the brains.’

I reached Queen Street and pulled into the car park.

‘Are we working tomorrow, boss?’

As always with Lydia it was what she implied in a question that was important. She probably felt as jaded as I did. I shook my head before reaching for the handle. ‘Recharge the batteries.’

She smiled her agreement.

In the Incident Room Wyn and Jane looked up from their monitors and I nodded an acknowledgement. I sat down and stared at the board, hoping for a miracle. There was something amidst all the images on the board that connected them. Some thread and all I had to do was find it and tug at it until I had enough evidence. Enough evidence to charge Jimmy Walsh. That afternoon I needed to review and revisit everything so that by Monday morning I’d have a fresh mind.

‘What do we do about the Kendall connection to Yelland?’ Wyn said.

Glyn Vaughan’s comments came to mind about his suspicions that Walsh was paying Yelland for favourable treatment in jail. The explanation for paying Yelland’s betting office bill was probably that simple. ‘It means we keep Kendall as a person of interest. Wyn and Jane go over the house-to-house statements again and then go through his mobile telephone records and his computer. There must be something, for Christ’s sake. And we need to find Ledley.’ I said it out loud, not expecting anyone to answer.

‘I’ve spoken to the detectives covering the Pontypool area and nobody recognises the name,’ Jane said.

I stood up and walked to the board. ‘There’s two hours in the middle of Felix Bevard’s day that we cannot account for. Maybe he made arrangements to meet up with Ledley later that night and that’s when Ledley killed him.’

‘But we don’t know what the motive might be, boss?’ Wyn said.

He was right of course. I was speculating. ‘We’ll need to chase the forensic lab for the results from Norcross’s clothes.’

I stared at the photograph of Jimmy Walsh and although his face was expressionless, I knew he was gloating. Walsh had been in other prisons, shared cells with various convicts. There must have been somebody with a connection to Walsh.

‘Have we had a list of Walsh’s cell mates, yet?’

‘In your inbox, sir,’ Wyn said.

‘Back to the start.’ I tapped Walsh’s image. ‘We need to establish how he knew about Bevard and the supergrass deal.’

I could sense the futility behind me from the sighs and unspoken criticisms.

‘We have no idea who Bevard might have told about the deal,’ Lydia said.

‘He might even have spoken to Ledley about it,’ Jane added.

All I knew was that somehow Walsh had the details of the supergrass deal and that he had been instrumental in having Bevard killed. The only suspects we had, Norcross and Ledley, stared down at me. And behind them directing everything was Jimmy Walsh.

I headed back to my office where I spent a restless two hours watching the coverage from the CCTV cameras on the night Bevard was killed from around the centre of Cardiff. I followed Martin Kendall as he traipsed from bar to bar and it was like looking at him auditioning for a part in some cheap real-life game show. It sickened me by the end because it was so obvious he was constructing an alibi. The same was true of Bernie Walsh although she kept the ham acting to a minimum.

Then I turned my attention to the list of men Walsh had shared a cell with during his time inside. Checking them all would take days. It was a mind-crunching task Wyn would enjoy. I read through the names of all those that had been released from Grange Hall in the last month and then cross-referenced them to the names of the prisoners who had been on the same billet as Walsh. It surprised me there were only six and I quickly dismissed five of them who had given addresses in various parts of England. I requisitioned a PNC check against the remaining name.

By mid-afternoon my boredom levels were getting dangerously high so I trooped out of my office. Lydia followed me out of Queen Street and we headed for Mario’s where we ordered coffee.