The news of a suspicious dead body spread around Tottenham ‘nick’ and well beyond like wildfire thanks to loose-lipped people and social media. The forensic team had hardly arrived on site when the first TV News crew mobile broadcast unit arrived on the scene and immediately began broadcasting live.

That was the signal for Roberta to step back into the shadows. Sergeant Mitchell saw her reaction to the TV crew.

“Is there something I need to know?”

“Sarge?”

“I don’t need to impersonate Sherlock Holmes or any other TV detective, to observe your clear reluctance to appear on TV. Care to explain why?”

Roberta closed her eyes and counted down from 10. She knew that this was going to happen the moment she smelt the dead body.

“Sarge, there is something that you need to know but this is neither the time nor the place for that discussion but you are right, I want to keep out of the public eye as much as possible.”

The Sergeant smiled,
“Yet… fate seems to have a knack of shining the limelight on you?”

Roberta was about to answer but he raised his hand to stop her.
“If you can try to get one of the SOCO’s white suits, I’ll get the TV crews to stop filming us when the coroner removes the body out of respect or something like that. I’ll talk to the coroner’s people and get them to let you ride along with them, but your excuse had better be a good one. Ok?”

Roberta was under no illusion about how serious he was.

“Thanks Sarge…”

He sighed,
“I’d better call for reinforcements. Sergeant Tomlinson is not going to like this. Spurs are playing at Wembley tonight and he was hoping to get off duty to go to the match.”

Roberta was about to answer him with a quip about the Sergeant’s bit on the side but she refrained from doing so. Roberta was normally the subject of police station gossip and was not going to start spreading rumours. That was just not her style.

---

Roberta managed to get away from the crime scene a few hours later while DCI Major, the nominated SIO, was giving a press conference. He was flanked by an official from the Home Office. The death of a foreign national was the reason for their involvement. Because Mr Velasquez was a citizen of another country, the diplomats of that country would be involved along with the Home Office but DCI Major was deliberately circumspect about which nation that was despite several questions about it from the media. He trotted out the stock phrase, ‘Investigations are continuing and until any possible next of kin are informed, it would be wrong of me to speculate on the identity of the deceased let alone their nationality’.

Back at the station, Roberta started writing up the day's events and what she thought should happen next. ‘Should’ was the worrying word in her mind. The appearance of the National Crime Agency had thrown a huge spanner into her thought processes.

She was making herself a cup of tea when Sgt Mitchell arrived back with a smile on his face.
“Is there enough water in the kettle for another cup?”

Roberta smiled.
“As long as you have it in a normal sized cup and not your usual builders’ mug?”

Chris laughed.
“Ok. Ok, I’ll take a normal sized mug.”

---

“Here you are,” said Roberta a few minutes later when she put a cup of tea on the Sergeant's desk.

“Thanks.”

“Sarge? You seem to be in a good mood? How did the meeting with the DCI and the NCA go? Are we going to be given the elbow?”

He chuckled.
“You can read my mind Constable Galbraith. No, we aren’t going to be given the elbow for the time being at least and we are to be the lead in this. The DCI will be moving here from Islington on a temporary basis. The NCA are quite happy to give us whatever technical support we need but that does not include bodies on the ground. They will keep the diplomats and the civil service jerks at the FCO[3] at bay. That is the situation right now but… they are subject to change at any time.”

Roberta looked a bit puzzled so the Sergeant carried on.
“I got the distinct impression that the people at Met HQ and the NCA, have a lot more on their plate at the moment. That attack on the MP from Belfast at their London home last week is still the lead item on the news as you well know.”

Roberta did know all about it. Her father’s House of Lords committee had that very MP give evidence about his claims of corruption in the PSNI, to them the day before the attack.

She sat down and composed herself mentally for the inevitable conversation with the Sergeant.

He saw her nervousness and decided to try to defuse it.

“I know that I said that you’d have to tell me why you were not keen on being on camera but this is not the place to have that discussion. Perhaps we could meet later away from this rumour factory?”

Roberta’s relief was palpable. She nodded her head.

“How about the car park next to the river Lea that is behind the depot at Northumberland Park?”

“That sounds as good a place as any. What time?”

He looked at the clock on the wall.
“Give me an hour to write up my report on the day and then we can head off.”

“Thanks Sarge.”

---

[at the Car Park by the river Lea]

“Sarge…” began Roberta.
“I don’t bite so just give it to me straight,” he said interrupting her before she’d really started.

“I want to keep a low profile for a number of reasons. All of them have to do with who I am.”

“My father is Lord Regis. I don’t need to tell you who he is.”

“Shit…” muttered the Sergeant.

“I am by birth, his son.”

“Fuck. I never saw that one coming.”

“Only a few people in the force know the truth about me. Can you… can you understand why I didn’t want to appear on TV?”

“I can… and thanks for being honest with me.”
Then he sat gently shaking his head.
“I would never have believed that you could have ever been a… a boy or man.”

“Thanks Sarge. I was never really a boy. Mum and Dad knew about Roberta from when I was five years old.”

“Don’t worry Roberta I’m not one to spread rumours. Besides, you are far too good a cop for that. But it all begins to make sense.”

“Sense?”

“Yeah. The inspector gave me the lowdown on your background. You know… how you deliberately didn’t come top of your class at Hendon. Naturally, he didn’t include your gender. It all makes sense now.”

Roberta looked a bit shocked.
“In case you don’t know it, the top brass, have had their eye on you because of that. A few of them were tipping you for great things and a place on the fast-track stream. Not coming in the top 10% put more than a few noses out of joint. My guess is that they don’t know about your history.”

“I know. That’s why I messed up my exam. I don’t want to ride on my father’s coat tails or anything like that. With… with me being trans anything I did would be front page news. Some people might like their fifteen nanoseconds of fame, but that is not me. I want to achieve something on my own merit before my history inevitably comes out in the public domain.”

“I think I get you on that. The DCI does as well if I can read what he told me about you.”

There was silence between the two of them for well over a minute.

“Now that I know about you, I can take your wishes into consideration when we are working.”

“Sarge… stop right there. I don’t want any special treatment because of who I am. That’s the whole reason for me… well everything that I am trying to do with my life.”

He looked at her for several seconds before replying.

“Sorry Roberta. I didn’t say that very well. What I meant to say that because of your desire to not be in the limelight, I will make allowances for that and only that. Is that better?”

She smiled.
“Thanks Sarge.”

He smiled at her.
“Roberta, from the short time that I have worked with you it is perfectly clear to me that you have what it takes to be a great detective. I’ve already seen that you mind works in ways that others can’t even grasp. You are also like a Mountie. They are reputed not to give up. That, is you down to a ‘T’. I saw your report on your visits to those wine retailers. You got everything we needed out of them without even can I ‘Call my lawyer’ from the retailers. That takes skill, a lot of skill and as far as I know, they don’t teach that at Hendon.”

Roberta managed a small smile. She'd sussed the retailers right away and talked to them as an equal. As they were all former public school ‘inmates’, she knew how to deal with them besides, her knowledge of Bordeaux wines was probably better than any of them thanks to the vineyards owned by her family. She could talk to them as business equals. Once they concluded that she was no threat to them from a business point of view, they opened up and told her everything that she needed to know.

“There is a long way to go on this case. Go for it, Roberta. This is your chance to shine and shine on your own merits.”

“And fall flat on my face?”

He smiled.
“Too late for that. Discovering the dead body makes that an impossibility. The only way from here is up!” he said jokingly.

Roberta went home happy that she had at least one ally on the ground at Tottenham nick.

---

Two days after the discovery of the body, the autopsy report arrived. It didn’t tell Roberta anything that they didn’t already know. She sat wondering what to do next.

“Penny for them?” said a voice that ended her pondering.
She looked up and saw Sergeant Mitchell. She was sure that he hadn’t been there a minute before.

“Oh sorry. The autopsy report arrived. The crossbow bolt penetrated the heart. He must have died within seconds. The lack of blood at the scene pretty much told us that.”

“Just what we surmised. Anything else?”

“I think… that I’d like to go back to the warehouse. We didn’t get much chance to examine the contents of it once we discovered the body. His habit of flying abroad and coming back by road is puzzling. It just does not make sense to me. SOCO are good but seeing the whole scene in person is far better than photographs. He ran the business from there. I want to try to get into his mind and get a feel of how it operated. For starters, I want to look at the wines he has in stock. The people he sold too down in the city were very satisfied with the wines he sold them. That does not even begin to explain why he was killed like that.”

“Go with the flow DC Galbraith. Let your mind take you into his mind.”

She smiled.
“Thanks Sarge.”

He hesitated for a moment.
“I’ve got a report to finish. Then I’ll join you… if you don’t mind that is?”

“I don’t mind Sarge. The more the merrier.”

“Sergeant Phelps at the front desk has the keys. Don’t forget to sign them out.”

She smiled.
“I know about the rules pertaining to evidence. I will be careful to do things by the book.”

---

[two hours later, back at the warehouse]

Roberta was starting to go through the stack of invoices and shipping documents that were in the filing cabinet. She’d started with the last shipment of wine that had come from France. The shipment was a mixture of Bordeaux and Loire Valley wines. She cross-referenced the wine that had been imported against what had been shipped to resellers. Then she went through the stock that remained in the store. That proved to be a bust. It all checked out as did four other separate shipments. That almost made her give up when she remembered a word that the Sergeant had said about her…’Mountie’.

Roberta decided to take a break and after locking up the warehouse, she walked to the supermarket and used their Café for a Coffee and a slice of cake.

When she returned, she carried on working backwards with the shipments.

The sixth oldest shipment was when things started to get interesting. The stock of Bordeaux wine that remained should have been ordinary St Emillion and Entre Deux Mer appellations. She could not find them anywhere in the stock. The records had them coming into stock but not going out.

What wine that was labelled as coming from the Bordeaux Appellation, was from the Medoc and Paulliac regions. Neither of these were shown on the inventory but the numbers of bottles tallied exactly. It was clear in her mind that he’d been smuggling wine, very good wine. Then another thought crossed her mind. The dates on the cases were not recent. The newest vintage was more than ten years in the past.

She used her phone to look on the internet for the quoted wines and found that they retailed for between £10 and £15 per bottle. The better quality wines would retail for around £30 per bottle.

That presented a problem in its own right. She estimated that each ‘dodgy’ shipment would net the seller an extra £4,000 to £5,000 in revenue. In her opinion, it was not worth the trouble to smuggle such a small volume of wine for so little extra return. If the shipments were say, the size of even a 20ft container the venture would have been a lot more profitable.

She was contemplating this when her phone rang. It was Sgt Mitchell.

“Hello Sarge.”

“Yes, I’m still there.”

“Oh. I didn’t realise. I’ll lock up and head home after I clear up here.”

“I’m not finished by any means but I did find another problem. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

She hung up and shook her head. She’d been so engrossed in what she was doing that she’d not realised that it was well after eight in the evening.

Roberta recorded her findings on her phone and put everything away where she’d found them. Twenty minutes later she locked up the premises and headed home. The increasing complexity of the case weighed heavily on her mind. It was even later in the evening when she decided that talking things over with the Sarge was the best way forward.

---

[the next morning]

“That’s all I can think of at the moment. What do you think?”

Roberta had explained her findings to Sergeant Mitchell. He’d listened without comment.

“Well done for bringing that to light but I think that you are right… The returns for the wine smuggling are hardly worth the trouble and that you are correct when you say that there has to be something else to justify his murder especially with something like a crossbow.”

“Thanks Sarge…” replied an unconvinced Roberta.
“The only thing I can think of as regards the smuggling was that the profit covered the costs of going abroad and renting the vans used to transport the goods back here.”

“What other leads do we have?”

"Very few. We are waiting on a response from Interpol about possible crossbow-wielding hitmen as well as ownership details for several of the artifacts we found at the house. The solicitors that handled the sale are being very reluctant to release the details of the deal other than what is already available on the Land Registry website.

“Then I had better escalate it a bit, hadn’t I?”

“If you could that would be great.”

“I sense a but coming?”

“I just get the feeling in my stomach that we are missing something. By we, I mean me.”

The Sergeant smiled back at Roberta.
“That… DC Galbraith is all part and parcel of being a detective. It happens to all of us most of the time in this line of work. It is very, very rare for everything to fall into place just as it should. Most of the time we get many pieces of evidence that at first glance, appear to be totally unrelated. Then… something else happens that links it all together. All part of the crime jigsaw. Like with a conventional jigsaw, there is no single right or wrong way to complete it. Some start at the edges. Others, just put together the pieces that are to hand.”

She sat there trying to get her mind working at least semi-coherently.

“What have you got on your mind map that needs work?” suggested DS Mitchell.

“There are a lot of loose ends but… none of them seem important or significant.”

“Why not go back over them and make sure that they are not important. Then at least they have been closed down…”

“Thanks Sarge, I’ll do that.”

“Good. I’ll get the DCI to give those solicitors a good talking to. They can’t talk about client confidentiality when the client is in the morgue.”

“Thanks Sarge.”

---

Roberta spent the rest of the day working patiently through all the fingers on her mind map and closing them down, one by one.

Once again, she worked late into the night. One significant thread remained unsolved other that the threads where they were still waiting on answers from other agencies such as Interpol.

Roberta kicked herself for not picking this thread up sooner. It had been staring everyone in the face for days. She chuckled when she grasped that 'everyone' was just her. No one in CID apart from the Sergeant had shown even the slightest interest in mind mapping.

One of them had even called it a ‘glorified list taker’, much to her angst.

Roberta’s outstanding issue was, where was the van or vans that had been used to bring the wine in from France, Spain and Italy. Mr Velasquez's car, a 2015 White Audi A3 was registered to him and was nowhere to be found. She prepared a request to check the location of the car on the nationwide network of ANPR[2] cameras. That was a wild shot and she knew it. She added the registration numbers for the vans. She’d located them in the paperwork from the ferry bookings. There were six different vans, two Renaults, two Citroens and two Fords, all with French registrations. If they had returned to France then the search would show that.

It was then that Roberta swore at the French Government for doing away with the old registration plates. The old ones included the issuing department in the number whereas the new ones only had it as a label on the plate. She’d have to go through official channels with the French Authorities to get the ownership details and that could take weeks if not months. The old plates would have allowed her to go directly to the departments without involving the Government in Paris.

She finally called it a day just before 23:00. It had been a long day without a lot of progress. While she was travelling home, she reflected that the sort of day that she’d just experienced was typical for her future in CID.

It made her only more determined to solve this case.

---

When Roberta arrived at the office the next morning, she was pleasantly surprised to find Sergeant Mitchell already there and making the first pot of tea for the day.

“Morning Sarge. Isn’t this a bit early for you?”

“Now, now Constable… I’m being kind to you.”

“Thanks Sarge but…?”

He smiled back at her.
“There has to be a reason for my early appearance?”

“Something like that.”

“We now know who the elusive Mr Velasquez really is. Interpol has finally come through with the goods.”

All the time, DS Mitchell was stirring the pot of tea. He poured them both a small mug, added some milk and gave her one of the mugs. Roberta knew better than to interrupt the solemn process of tea making. DS Mitchell would impart the news once that ritual was finished.

“The real name of Mr Velasquez is Lambret, Diego Lambret. He is Argentinian by birth and migrated to Italy in 2003 where he obtained citizenship. He moved to Greece in 2005 and then was arrested and convicted for robbery in Hamburg in 2006. He served three years and skipped the country before he could be extradited. He disappeared until 2012 when Mr Velasquez appeared with an Italian Passport and moved to London just before the Olympics. Mr Lambret has a criminal record in Argentina and Paraguay as well as Germany, but no outstanding warrants. The crimes in South America were fairly minor in nature and were committed when he was a child,” said the Sergeant as he summed up the information that had come in overnight.

“Not a nice guy but hardly a master criminal then?”

“That sums it up pretty well. The HMRC have come through with the records of his wine business. They are being couriered here as we speak.”

All of that information would help them build up a picture of the normal part of Mr Lambret’s life.

“If he has operated at least a semi-legit business for since 2012, then we have to find the links to the crime or crimes that resulted in his death. From what the HMRC said over the phone he filed his accounts well before the due dates and paid all taxes due to them almost by return of post. There was nothing out of the ordinary at all with his legit business.”

“A perfect cover then?”

“That’s what the DCI is thinking,” said the Sergeant.

The mention of the DCI made Robert feel as if things were being taken away from her. The Sergeant saw this.

“Don’t worry Roberta. He is very pleased with what we… or rather you have uncovered. We all had to start somewhere when it comes to working in CID. This case is giving you a great insight into how we work and also the resources that are available to us. Things don’t happen in seconds like it does on TV. What they show in an hour or 45 minutes takes us days, if not weeks.”

“I know that but… The DCI?”

“He is watching what you and to a lesser extent I do on this case. If we get to a point where we need extra resources then he’ll make the decision. That’s why I like him. Other DCI’s don’t keep themselves up to date on all the cases on their patch and then they swoop in and take over in the hope of getting in front of the TV camera and making a name for themselves. Our DCI plays fair and that’s all I can… we can hope for.”

“But… Sarge, the role of the SIO as explained to us at Hendon is not like what he is doing.”

The Sarge smiled.
“That is because we are the team, the whole team and nothing but the team. We don’t need all the others that a large-scale murder investigation would require. We can thank the attacks on the MP for that. That is more political and newsworthy than our little crime. That said, if we need more bodies then the DCI will make sure that we get it. In that event, the DCI will formally assume the role of SIO for the case.”

Roberta drank her tea in silence. Thanks to the information from the HMRC she was even more certain that she’d missed something back at the industrial unit.

“Sarge? I’m going back to the warehouse. There has to be something that we’ve all missed that will give us a lead. Without a new address for Mr Lambret this is the only place that we can look.”

“Those solicitors are still baulking at releasing the details where the money came from and went of his purchase and sale of the property. I discussed this with the DCI before you arrived. He’s going to get a court order to force them to release the data. The head of the practice is well known for being very obstructive to the police. A good number of his clients are of the criminal fraternity. It would not do their credibility with the rest of their clients to be seen to be too keen on helping us.”

Roberta smiled.
“In other words, they are as bent as a paper clip?”

“You said it not me…” joked the Sergeant.
“But, yes they are.”

---

The Sergeant’s words were still echoing in Roberta’s ears when she let herself into the scene of Mr Lambret’s murder. She was even more determined to get on top of this case before it was taken away from her and given to a larger team of officers which would diminish the role that she could play in the investigation.

She didn’t go into the office as she had done the last time that she had visited the building. This time, she went straight into the warehouse section.

The hundreds of cases of wine were very tempting. They reminded her of the cellars back at her home in Dorset and their home in France. No one in the Police knew that her family business owned twelve vineyards in six countries. The vineyards were managed by her cousin Felicity who was based at their home just outside Duras, to the east of Bordeaux. The wholesale side of the business was run by her cousin Jack from Paris. He’d grown the company into a serious player in the European Wine Wholesale Business over the past fifteen years. Roberta had spent many summers as a child at their Duras estate 50km from Bordeaux. Those were the days when with her mother at her side, Roberta was allowed to blossom. She missed her mother each and every day.

After mentally chastising herself for daydreaming, she began her work in earnest. The place was very neat and tidy. For a moment, the words 'too neat and tidy' crossed her mind. Once again, she chastised herself for assuming that Mr Lambret was not such a person. The organisation of papers in the office told her that he was almost OCD with things being in their proper place.

The only thing in the warehouse that was out of place was a pile of used wooden pallets. Compared to the rest of the property, this stuck out like a sore thumb but only if you were looking for abnormalities. She could see three distinct types of pallets.

Who would think to look at a pile of pallets? They had served their purpose and the next step for them was probably the recycler. There were several large recyclers in East London. She made a mental note to give them a call to see if the wine business was a client of theirs.

Roberta began to move each one, and in the process, sort them into types. The majority were painted blue. A smaller number were green and four were bare wood. It was then that she saw one difference apart from the colour. The ones that were painted green were 4cm thicker than the others.

She soon saw the reason why those pallets were thicker than the other ones. Each one had a hidden compartment. The space was almost 3cm deep. That was more than enough to provide a very nice compartment for smuggling contraband, stolen goods or drugs.

Feeling elated, Roberta called the Sergeant.

“Sarge, I think that you should get over here pronto. I have found something significant.”

“Yes, and the SOCO team needs to be here as well.”

“How about hidden compartments in shipping pallets? Is that good enough for you?”

[to be continued]

[1] NCA: The UK National Crime Agency. Sort of like the British version of the FBI.
[2] ANPR: Automated Number Plate Recognition
https://www.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/rs/road-...
[3] FCO: Foreign and Commonwealth Office