Somebody Told Me (31 page)

‘Evidence, John.’ Hobbs managed his condescending best. ‘You’ll need evidence. Gold-plated, bombproof evidence.’

I looked back at Ackroyd. ‘I’ll need to interview all the officers on your dedicated source unit.’

Ackroyd, shaking his head, goaded me.

‘If you stand in my way again I’ll take this investigation straight to the chief constable. I’ve got a murderer to catch. I don’t give a fuck about the niceties of your dedicated source unit.’

Ackroyd glanced at Hobbs. I turned to look at him. ‘And Acting Detective Chief Inspector Hobbs, I expect your complete support … sir.’

I left Superintendent Cornock’s room praying I’d ruined their cosy lunch.

*     *     *

Alvine stood by the board in the Incident Room staring at the images of Walsh and Kendall when I marched in.

‘The forensic report on the property we recovered from Kendall’s home makes interesting reading.’ She held up a sheath of papers in her right hand.

I nodded towards my office. Inside I shrugged off my jacket, draped it over the coat stand and sat down, gazing at the report Alvine dropped onto the middle of my desk.

‘Page five,’ she said.

I flicked through to the right page as she made herself comfortable. Once I finished reading and the significance had sunk in, I looked over at Alvine. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Of course. It seems that your friend Martin Kendall has a collection of glass paperweights. Personally I wouldn’t have thought that master criminals like him would have collected anything.’

‘And you’re certain that Yelland’s fingerprints are on one of them.’

‘It’s quite a collectable item apparently. I did a quick Google search on it.’

‘So we’ve got another link between Yelland and Martin Kendall.’

Alvine stood up.

I heard movement in the Incident Room and shouted for Lydia. She passed Alvine on her way out.

‘Alvine’s got a smile on her face,’ Lydia said, vaguely surprised.

‘Don’t take your coat off,’ I said.

It was after eight that evening when Lydia and I had finished speaking to Sharon Yelland. She had confirmed that her late husband’s godparents had given him a valuable paperweight as a graduation gift. The only explanation was that Kendall had stolen it as some macabre memento. I had called Cardiff jail and arranged to interview him the following morning.

*     *     *

The message from Cornock suggesting we meet that evening was unusual and unexpected. There was something on his mind, but he had a friendly enough demeanour when he settled into one of the leather sofas in a quiet corner of Lefties, cradling a pint of Brains best bitter. ‘I haven’t been here for years.’

Colour had returned to his cheeks, and it struck me he had put on weight. His eyes had a contented, relaxed appearance.

‘How are things going, sir?’

He took a mouthful of beer. ‘This job can take over your life. You live and breathe policing until you can’t enjoy anything else. And it takes its toll on family.’

‘Are you likely to be returning to work?’

‘I’ve got another meeting with the medics next week. But I feel much better.’

‘And how is your wife?’

‘She’s enjoyed having me around but I think she’s getting bored of seeing me all day. And our daughter is back on an even keel.’ He paused, taking another swig. ‘You probably know that she got herself involved with a bad crowd. She was treated for drug addiction. She came back to live at home and in the past month she’s been working with a charity. And it’s all going very well.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ I sipped my orange juice.

‘I hear you had an exchange of views with Dave Hobbs and Malcolm Ackroyd.’

Now I realised a reprimand was likely.

‘I appreciate this case has been very difficult with your family getting involved. But you need to keep perspective. Other people can do the finger wagging. If Hobbs or Ackroyd are at fault the WPS will deal with it. In our own time and in our own way.’

I wasn’t about to contradict Cornock. But the WPS had a habit of doing very little, and knowing that Hobbs and Ackroyd would still be around didn’t fill me with confidence for the future of policing in Cardiff.

‘Tell me about the investigation.’

I explained about the paperweight that meant Kendall had been inside Yelland’s property. Then I summarised Chris Taylor’s eyewitness evidence and told Cornock we had images of Kendall and Yelland together. Cornock nodded at the relevant times and made approving noises. ‘I’m going to interview him again in the morning.’

‘And have you made any progress with the Bevard inquiry?’

I paused. ‘We have no idea who pulled the trigger. But Jimmy Walsh was responsible for directing the murder – I know it.’

‘How did Walsh know that Bevard was going to grass him up?’

‘Yelland and Roger Stockes, the prosecutor involved in the supergrass deal, knew each other. We suspect Yelland may have got information from him. He then shares details with Walsh in return for generous contributions.’

Cornock shook his head.

A silence filled the space between us although behind me the bar was getting busy. Men with expensive-looking suits and open-necked shirts mingled with women in pencil skirts and high heels.

‘Are you certain it was Stockes and Yelland?’

I shrugged and held out both palms.

‘So what was the motive?’ Cornock finished his beer, stood up and made for the bar, returning with a second pint and more orange juice. It gave me time to dwell on my answer.

‘I believe Brian Yelland got greedy and demanded more money from Walsh.’

‘Perhaps, but it doesn’t help with the Bevard case. Would Walsh have killed Yelland just because he was blackmailing him?’

It surprised me Cornock sounded so certain.

‘Walsh is a sociopath, sir,’

Cornock finished his second pint by the time I had rehearsed all the evidence we had accumulated.

‘You’ve missed something straightforward, something obvious.’

‘And in the meantime I’ve got Jimmy Walsh running around on bail.’

‘With the possibility the case against him might collapse.’

Every time that possibility entered my mind I tried to dispel it into a dark recess but it kept coming back to haunt me. I offered to buy Cornock another drink but he shook his head, gathered up his jacket and left. I left the rest of my orange juice and headed for home.

A prison officer with hands the size of shovels escorted Lydia and me to one of the interview suites at Cardiff prison. Like so many of the Victorian jails, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries had developed around it until it stood next to one of the biggest shopping malls in the United Kingdom.

Lydia dragged over two chairs to one side of a table; a tape recorder sat at the other end safely screwed to the wall. I sat down and opened my papers.

I slipped the photograph of the paperweight under some papers when I heard footsteps approach. A prison officer opened the door and Martin Kendall strode in with a young solicitor from Glanville Tront’s legal firm in tow. The officer joined his colleague outside and they stood, expressionless, looking in at us through the thick Perspex of the window.

‘Mark Doyle,’ the lawyer said, reaching out a hand.

Once the pleasantries were dispensed with, I opened the cassette tapes and popped them into the machine. I cast a glance at everybody present. ‘Let’s get started. This is a supplementary interview as part of our investigation into the murder of Brian Yelland.’

Martin Kendall had lost that well-fed muscle-pumped aura. He looked paler, unshaven. Prison clothes didn’t suit either; I could imagine him complaining like hell about his badly sized shirt and ill-fitting jeans.

‘Brian Yelland was a prison officer at HMP Grange Hall. He was responsible for the billet where your boss Jimmy Walsh had his cell.’

Kendall narrowed his eyes.

‘Did you pay Brian Yelland to provide favours to Jimmy Walsh whilst he was in prison?’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I would remind you that we have photographs of you meeting Brian Yelland.’ I flicked through my papers and pushed over a photograph.

Kendall kept staring at me. He said nothing.

Doyle scribbled in a legal notebook. I couldn’t understand what he could possibly be writing.

‘Now is your opportunity to explain to me why you had a meeting with Brian Yelland.’

More silence.

‘You know from our first interview that an eyewitness describes a person matching your description being present at Yelland’s home in the early hours of the morning he was killed.’

‘Haven’t you covered all this before, Inspector?’ Doyle said. There was a hint of West Wales to his accent, maybe Pembrokeshire.

I gave him a smile without parting my lips.

‘How long have you been collecting paperweights?’

He frowned at me, obviously puzzled.

I flicked through some of my papers. ‘You have thirty different paperweights. The crime scene investigators who finalised the search of your home made a list of them. And photographed each one.’ I placed an image of one paperweight after another in front of him.

‘If these are not your property now is the time to tell me.’

I put one hand on top of another and placed them on my papers giving him a kindly, I-am-here-to-help look. It didn’t work, he didn’t reply. He looked through me. So I sorted through my papers until I found the important photograph.

‘I’d like you to look at this.’ I pushed over an image of Yelland’s paperweight. ‘It was found in your home when we conducted a search after your arrest. Does this belong to you?’

I could see the arrogance draining from his eyes like an iceberg under a midday sun.

He stared at the image carefully, obviously calculating whether he could answer. Did he know we had fingerprints? I waited. He lifted his gaze from the photograph, glanced at Doyle and then over at me and shook his head.

‘Is that a no, Mr Kendall?’ No reply. ‘This paperweight belonged to Brian Yelland. It was given to him when he graduated.’

Doyle reached over and fingered the photograph.

Kendall remained completely impassive.

‘How did this paperweight come into your possession?’

I paused, and sat back in my chair. He knew that I was talking to a murderer. And to a man responsible for stalking my father and who probably enjoyed planning my mother’s hit-and-run.

‘I believe that you stole it from Brian Yelland’s home. It proves conclusively that you were in his home. Now is the time to explain. Tell me if there was anyone else involved. Because I believe that Jimmy Walsh wanted Brian Yelland dead, as he wanted Felix Bevard dead. And you’re part of the conspiracy to kill both men. There’s a big difference between one life sentence and three. How old are you now?’

Kendall was making an odd scratching sound in his throat.

‘Three life sentences? You won’t be released until you’re in your seventies. The world will have changed a lot by then. Now is your opportunity to cooperate. Why don’t you tell us what you know?’

Kendall folded his arms, propped them on the table and leant over towards me. ‘You have no fucking idea.’

*     *     *

I found a quiet table at Mario’s and ordered an all-day breakfast before spreading the newspaper on the table. The sports pages of the
Western Mail
had a large piece about Cardiff City’s game against Nottingham Forest the following evening. It profiled all the players, ranking them against their opposite numbers. Last weekend’s victory had taken Cardiff City into the promotion play-off places. There was a buoyant positive mood about the quality of the players and the article was full of complimentary comments about the quality of the football played that season.

I turned to the inside sports pages. With Wales playing in the European cup for the first time the newspaper had been running a series of interviews with some of the famous footballing heroes of previous Welsh teams. The face of Walter Underwood, Gloria Bevard’s father, peered out of the pages and it took my attention immediately. I had scanned the article before my meal arrived and pushed the newspaper to one side so that I could eat my bacon and eggs. After I’d finished I returned to reading the article a second time. It was odd seeing his picture. He made comments about how lucky he had been to play for Wales; he gave a detailed description of the goal he had scored. It brought back all the old memories of going to football with Papa. Underwood must have told the reporter about his family and how his daughters and grandchildren were so important and that he was blessed to have them living so close.

I finished my Americano, left enough change for the bill and headed for Queen Street.

It was difficult to imagine Gloria Bevard living an anonymous existence in a suburb somewhere. She wouldn’t have fitted in. She would have missed her sister, her nieces, her mum and dad. I was only now starting to realise how much I had missed being a proper father to Dean. I reached the entrance of Queen Street and punched in my security code.

How would Bevard have reacted when he was interviewed by the officers from the dedicated source unit? He had to be sure that Gloria would have gone with him. Taken their children from their home, from their extended family.

‘Good morning, sir.’ I didn’t recognise the voice. It was a uniformed officer. ‘I need to punch in my code.’ I looked over at him, puzzled, before realising I was still standing outside the rear door.

Something wasn’t right.

I had to think clearly. I had assumed that some casual drunken comment between Stockes and Yelland had been the source of Walsh’s information about Bevard. But I had nothing to substantiate it. How else would he have found the information? Then it struck me that everything about Gloria Bevard suggested she would have refused to move. Her parents, her sister and all her family lived in South Wales.

‘Of course.’ I stood to one side as the officer punched in his number and the door buzzed open.

I walked up to the Incident Room in a haze. What would Gloria Bevard have said had Felix Bevard told her? She would have refused. Inspector Ackroyd had told me that Bevard had not discussed the supergrass deal with his wife. But what if he had?