Chapter 5

We allowed the couple some time to get their act back together. Margaret pointed us to a downstairs powder room while they went upstairs to freshen up. We all looked a lot better when we sat at the dining table for lunch. The talk was now less emotional, but no less serious, as we discussed possible outcomes.

The AC knew more than us about those who would range against us, from politicians to newspaper editors. The most dangerous ones were discussed. Most of it went over my head, my job was finding the evidence, not conducting a court case. That would come down to the force, once we get enough, and then it would be the prosecutors who will have to weather the media storm.

By the time we left, we two girls were firm friends with Margaret, and more than passing acquaintances with Gerald, who hugged us both as he thanked us for our work and diligence. Margaret hugged us all as she thanked us for bringing her closure. Cathy and I were in the car as Strachan and Gerald shook hands, again, then pulled together in a man-hug. I heard Gerald thank Charles with a great deal of sincerity, as our Super got in the back. We left the house and were back on the road before anyone said anything.

“Girls, thank you for being there with me. As you may have guessed, I’ve known Gerald a long time. He was my predecessor as the Chief Super in Skegness. I haven’t seen him so untroubled for a long time. I wish that he had reached out, but he always had that iron bar up his butt.”

Cathy giggled, quietly, before he carried on.

“This visit is totally off the books, girls. Only the three of us know it happened. The AC will be updated, by me, as it becomes required, but no-one else should even get a whisper of what transpired while we were there. I’ll bring Thredbolt into some of it, so he can get his team to keep a lid on it. If we keep moving on as quickly as it’s been going, we should be ready to go public in a month or two. And, finally, if either of you calls me Charlie at the station, it’ll be overnight in the cells on bread and water!”

We both said, “Yes Sir!” in unison. Dropping him back at his house, we went back to the station for Cathy to leave the car in the garage. When we got out, she turned to me and gave me a hug.

“I can’t believe that an AC called me a young lady and gave me a hug. I reckon the last WPC that had that happen was having an affair with one.”

I drove home with a lot of thoughts running through my mind. We had a lot of threads to follow. Monday, I decided I would look through Cuthbertson’s record, as well as his school records, to try and find out who his friends were. I knew a couple of officers who were in Sheffield, so could email them to see what they had once I had more details to format my questions. The Heacham side of things was now under the murder squad control and Thredbolt’s investigations.

I spent Sunday writing up my accounts for the cases that I had worked on, the Saturday before. I rang the two numbers for the mothers and got the good news that both teenagers had rung their mothers and would be meeting. Both agreed to pay me the amount I had quoted. On Monday, before I left for Skegness, I went into the beauty salon and told them I wasn’t taking cases for a little while and got them to pull the ‘P.I.S.S. Upstairs’ sign down.

When I got to the office, Cathy was there, already, and smiling when I walked in. On my desk was a cup of tea, still steaming, and a slice of cake.

“WPC Chatterton, what’s the meaning of this? Trying to butter up a lowly DS, eh!”

“Just a big thank you, Polly. Friday, this was just an interesting job, today I see, for the first time, what we can do to make the world right. I can see, now, just what motivates the better officers I meet, and you’re the best one of those. It’s not going to happen, every day, though. It’ll be your turn tomorrow.”

I grinned at her as I sat down and turned the computer on. Logging on, I took a sip of the tea and started work. Today I wanted to find out as much as I could about Cuthbertson, starting with his brief police records. What I found was that he had been a typical teen of the late seventies, a little wild and stupid. There were a few drunk and disorderly cases and one which was a bit odd. It had been while he was still at school and involved certain items of women’s clothing and a school flagpole. The school was named so I rang them and asked for the school admin.

I told them that I was looking into Malcolm Cuthbertson, a student from the mid-seventies, in regard to an historical case I was looking at. They asked for my name and warrant card ID. I waited for a few minutes and then the person I had spoken to came back.

“Malcolm was a good student, if a little wayward, according to his card. He was a stand-out student in maths and computers but a bit shorter on his other marks. There’s a note here which I can’t explain, something about a flagpole. If you want to know more, you should talk to Arthur. He was in this job before me. He’s retired and will still be sober at this time in the morning. Doing this job, I can see why he took to the drink.”

He gave me the number to call so I sat back and rang it. After several rings a voice just said, “Yes.”

“Is that Arthur?”

“Yes, what do you want. My internet is perfectly good because I don’t have a computer, and I haven’t filled out forms for a holiday at my local supermarket.”

“My name is Detective Sergeant Ibbotson, sir. I’m calling from the Skegness police station. The reason for my call is that I’ve been given your number by your successor at the High School. He said that you might be able to fill in some details of a student that you would have known, a lad called Malcolm Cuthbertson.”

“That little toe rag, has he killed anyone? He was a brilliant student but easily led. I suppose that you heard about the flagpole. It was him and his gang that did that, the bra, and panties they sent up the pole belonged to the headmaster’s wife; they’d pinched them off her washing line. He had a little group that did a lot of vandalism around the place, but no-one caught them at it. Let me think. There was four others, Lee Jackson was a brute, had a lot of kids frightened; Terry Whistler was another hard lad, and the other two were Jim Carrington and Chase Marchment, both followers, rather than leaders. I saw, in the papers, that Malcolm had been injured in a bank robbery. I expected to read that he was one of the robbers and was surprised to see that he was one of the victims.”

I thanked him for his information and promised to buy him a drink if I saw him in the pub. Then it was back to the computer with the new names. Lee Jackson had a file as long as your arm. A lot of violence, a bit of larceny and a prison term for attempted robbery. The first ones before the bank job and the last one five years after the bank job. He had died, in prison, after a fight with a Hells Angel.

Carrington and Marchment were creamy white in comparison. Both had been arrested at a march and charged with public nuisance. After that, nothing. Looking on Ancestry found them both getting married and having, between them, seven children. The marriage certificates showed them both working as labourers and the march had been about workers’ rights.

Terry Whistler was different. His record was a page full of robbery with menaces, mostly being dropped because the victim refused to press charges. He dropped off the police records after the bank job. I looked on Ancestry and found a marriage certificate that had him as an earthmoving contractor, with the place of the marriage being in Hunstanton. I went into the Company Records and found his business. He had started a business called Terryforming, two years after the bank job. He now had a partner in the business. One Jurgen Beyer.

I had just come back from the canteen with sandwiches for us when Cathy got a call on the intercom that we were both wanted, in the Chief Supers office, in fifteen minutes. When we walked in, Carson and Thredbolt were sitting there, looking smug.

Strachan got us going with Thredbolt giving his report.

“We went down to Heacham and took the photo board as evidence. There was another where the Jaguar is seen, at a distance, so must have been a regular visitor. I took the original and enhanced it to show the number plates. They belonged to a similar car that had the plates stolen while it was parked at a football match in Ipswich. The material we collected in the region is a perfect match for the layer on the Jaguar. By the depth of that layer, I calculate that the Jaguar had been driving on the red sand for at least three years, which is how long the tourist parks took to be finished. The dates are between ’88 and ’91.”

“Right,” said Strachan. “Carson, what did you get.?”

“We needed to talk to the original owners, who told us that the Jaguar belonged to a local earthmover, who had several machines, and did the roads and trenches for services. There was a landscaper, after that, who brought in trucks of loam to cover over the exposed red sand. That makes a wonderful media for roses, I’ve never seen them so good. We don’t have a name for the earthmover, just yet.”

Strachan looked hard at me.

“Polly, I see a wicked grin looming there. What can you add to this? I expect that we will be properly amazed.”

“Be prepared, sir. Our drivers’ mate had four friends at school. He had a short, but scenic sheet, mainly misdemeanours, but his earliest was while still at school and included a bra and pantie set and a flagpole. This put him front of mind of the administrator of the day, now retired. He told me that when he read about Malcolm Cuthbertson being injured, he first thought that he had been one of the criminals. He described Malcolm as being a brilliant mathematician, but easily led.”

“OK, that’s good, I suppose he told you the names of the gang that pulled the Sheffield job,” snarked Carson.

“Glad you asked, DI Carson. The others who pulled that job were Lee Jackson, a hard lad who was one of the cosh wielders and who died in prison. Two others were Jim Marchment and Chase Carrington. Both led a mostly blameless life after the job and are married, with children. I’ll leave it to you to track them down. The driver, we know, was a professional, brought in for the job.”

Carson was grinning, ear to ear, by this time.

“Come on, Polly, you’re one short, now give, before I burst.”

“The last one is a gentleman called Terry Whistler. He was the other cosh man. He started a business and got himself married in Hunstanton. The business is called Terryforming, and he does earthmoving. He has a partner, one Jurgen Beyer.”

At that, Cathy couldn’t help but giggle and Strachan laughed out loud.

“That’s priceless, Polly. It puts our suspect close to the Jaguar at Sheffield and during the time of the kidnappings. If this Whistler is the hard man, he may be the killer in the group. At last, we have a name to work on.”

“I believe, sir, that some of those roses may have some child fertiliser to help them look so good. If Whistler was always dropping in at the worksite, it would be easy to dig a trench during the day and come back at night to drop off a body. It would only take moments to cover it over. That’s why he used the Jaguar. It would take years to find the graves, even if we threw everything, at it. Those tourist sites are the size of a small town.”

“Right, Carson, I believe that you have enough to move forward on this. See if you can locate Whistler and get him under surveillance, tag his vehicles and tap his phones, if you can. Now we have a solid link between Beyer and a suspected murderer, I’ll see if we can do the same with him. One of them rang Bernice, and one of them came to Skegness to kill her. Has anybody got any questions? No? Good, let’s get going with this.”

We left his office, together and Carson smiled, broadly.

“Polly, if I could have you on my team, I’d take you like a shot. You have one of the most brilliant minds I’ve met. If I ask you to tell my fortune, don’t do it! I want to go through life not knowing.”

“DI Carson, your future is assured unless you start speaking out of Uranus. Like the rest of us.”

He walked away, laughing. Cathy and I went back to our office. She closed the door and we sat at our desks, looking at each other. She finally broke.

“Polly, you have to show me how you do that. You’ve sat there, this morning, being quiet and getting the names of a gang of bank robbers from forty years ago that no-one had any inkling of. How do you do it?”

“It’s the machine that you got me, Cathy. It can find anything that’s in police records. It just takes a bit of lateral thought to move on from there. The rest came from a couple of phone calls and company records, as well as the hatched, matched, and despatched records that are being added to, as we speak. Anything that was officially recorded can be found if you find the right pathway. I did all this for ten years in white collar crime, it’s second nature to me now. What I didn’t do much of was the actual arresting or the interviewing, I was always too mild-mannered to look imposing, left it to the lugs with muscle.”

“So, what now.”

“Well, what we need to do is find other links between Whistler and Beyer, especially during that period of the kidnaps. The other thing is to find which one came to Skegness on the night of the murder. They both live on the other side of the Wash, so we need to call up all of the roadside cameras between Reepham and here and see if we can find them passing by. To do that, we’re going to have to find out what they’re driving now. We can start with the cameras on the A52, and then try the A16 and the A158. The other side of Boston it would have to be the A17 to King’s Lynn and the A149 that goes to Hunstanton.”

“Why haven’t we done that before?”

“Because we didn’t have definite names that we were looking at. Now we can see what vehicles we need to search for, it takes less time, and we don’t end up with a list a mile long. We start with the names and our friends at the DMV.”

She came and watched me as I found ten cars registered to Beyer. I could discount five that were Land Rovers and registered at the Scottish property. I then looked for cars registered to his company. There were fifteen that were garaged at the main office, and another two at his home. Whistler was easy, one at his address and two in the company name. That left ten to search for. I started with the cameras on the A149, with a window of twelve hours before the murder to four hours after.

Five minutes later we had a van, registered to Terryforming, going towards Kings Lynn at four on the afternoon of the murder. With the sun shining into the cab, we could see two figures. So, Beyer went to Whistler, and they were both going to commit murder. There was another, around two in the morning, of the van going the other way. We printed those pictures off, with their time stamp evidence then worked on the A17.

It took an hour, but by the time we were finished we had pictures of the van, that afternoon, going all the way to Skegness, as well as pictures of it heading home, with the first one on A52, close to the town, timed at just before midnight. It was clear evidence, as far as I was concerned, and I looked at Cathy, who, by now, was clearly hooked on desktop detecting.

I got Cathy to put the photos, in order, into a file and added the registration details that showed ownership. I then told her that she could take it down to Carson and answer any questions he may have. When she came back, she looked flushed.

“Carson was very happy to see them but thought that I couldn’t answer his questions. When I told him to try me, he was surprised I could tell him the details he wanted. He told me that if I spent much more time with you, I could ask for a transfer to the detectives.”

“If you absorb the methods as well as you have, today, you’ll be all right. Now, we have one little detail more to detect. Where did the killing take place. With them using the van, it was simple to take Bernice to the Fairy Dell. She wouldn’t have let them know about her shed and her car was garaged there. That’s the one thing that has bugged me since we realised that there was blackmail involved. The Mayflower was at home, the TR6 was at the shed, she had been with her boyfriend for sex, but nobody has told us how she got around. If we can find her transport, we can find the murder scene. I’ll let you check with traffic to see if they impounded any cars in the week or two after the murder, and I’ll call Angela and ask her what Bernard was driving.

Angela told me that he usually had something off the caryard, and it changed every few days. The caryard told me that he had been driving a Rover V8 which they had to pay to get back from the pound, three weeks after he had been found. It was still in their yard so I told them not to touch it as we will send a truck to pick it up. I wrote down the details and took the sheet over to the other desk, just as she had compiled a short list.

The Rover had been towed from the Tesco Supermarket as it hadn’t moved in a week. I asked Cathy what time the supermarket closed on a Saturday evening, and she told me it stayed open to midnight.

“Right, my young detective, let the boss know that we’re going out for a while and that we hope to have some good things to show him when we get back.”

She drove us to the Tesco, and we used my warrant card to ask to see their camera footage, if they had any, for that Saturday in February. We were in luck, as they held the footage on a solid drive for six months, using one drive each month. The manager told me that they did that to help in shoplifting cases in the store, and car park altercations outside.

We fast forwarded the outside vision until we saw a Rover pull into the car park. A good-looking brunette got out and walked into the store. The time shown was ten twenty. We then stayed with the outside feed until our van pulled up and a man got out of the passenger side and went to the store. I could see, even though he had a hoodie, that it was Beyer.

We switched to the inside vision, starting from when she entered, and found her looking at a magazine rack. When Beyer came in, he went straight to the magazine rack and spoke to her. Together, they left the store and went towards the van. I asked the security guy to reverse the outside scene and it showed the other man getting out of the van and going out of sight behind it.

Then we were back with Beyer and Bernice going towards the van. I could imagine the conversation, him telling her that he had the money but that they needed to be hidden when they made the exchange. They went out of sight behind that van, and a minute or so later, the two men walked back to their doors, got in and drove away. There seemed to be something on the ground where the van had been, and we forwarded the vision until someone picked it up and came into the store.

I asked if they had a lost items box and there, in the drawer, lay the Rover keys. We put them in an evidence bag, signed for the hard drive, and went back to the station. The whole thing, except the injection of the fentanyl, was now in glorious pictures. It was a sign of the times, as nothing happened, these days, without someone getting pictures, whether it was security vision from shops or homes, or dashcams. Almost every night, on the news, you saw the recordings.

Cathy was quiet as we went back. I asked her what it was that worried her.

“Polly, since you turned up my world has become exciting. Now we’ve even got the murder to look at and you’ll be back in your own work soon. I’ll be back to just being the boss’s secretary.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I know how long it takes to go from what we have to making it stick, in a court of law. There’s a way to go before those two get put away. We now have to get you to recreate all the searches I’ve done, so it can be verified as police procedure. We have to find that van and examine it for DNA. We have to positively identify both men as the ones in the van. Who knows, the bandaged finger may still be around. We have to find where the drug came from. We have to find any more kidnappings. There’s weeks, if not months, to go before they stand in the dock. Today, though, we need to call a meeting in our office and bring the others up to speed on what we’ve found. I repeat, Cathy, it’s what we’ve found. The force need people like us for the future. People who can work with the technology. By the time you’ve recreated my searches, you’ll be one of those people and will likely be the one giving evidence.”

Marianne Gregory © 2023