Chapter 2

I was up with the lark on Monday morning, and dressed in my leather jeans, high boots, wool-knit sweater, and leather jacket. Today, I was Polly, the hard-nosed PI. I started with the car showroom in Arcadia Road, getting there as a young lad was washing the weekend grime off the cars on the lot.

I was able to sit down with the manager and talk about Bernard. He was, so I was told, a good worker and a good salesman, letting his knowledge do the selling without any overbearing tactics. He was the one salesman who would have the repeat business and there would be a lot of customers who wouldn’t be happy that he wasn’t around. He had a knack of finding out what a customer really wanted and was often able to source something through the trade that fitted the bill.

I could see where he found some of those customers who would pay for a restored vehicle. It was also evident that no-one here knew about his side-hustle. I asked if he was particularly friendly with anyone in the business and was told to go and speak to Jeff, the spare parts manager. Jeff was reticent, at first, but opened up when I let on that I knew about Bernice. He then led me outside, where we couldn’t be overheard, and laid it out for me, and my recorder.

He, and Bernice had been having regular sex for some years, and had been with her on the night of her death. He hadn’t been asked anything, by the police, but had been fearful about getting arrested. He told me that they had been together, for sex, early Saturday evening, but Bernice had rushed off, just after seven, after getting a phone call that obviously excited her. I got him to spit into a sample container and he wrote his name on the label. I assured him that his truthfulness was in his favour and that the police may talk to him later in the week.

I then went off to keep my appointment with CI Dawlish. He was an impressive man, chunky and hard but with a soft touch. He took my hand and smiled.

“I am so happy to meet you, Polly. I was seconded to Derby when you had your unfortunate meeting with a crazy woman and a box cutter. Your supervisors were sorry to see you leave the force, they had you pencilled in for a fast-track movement to Inspector and above. I’m glad that you’ve managed to overcome the setback and have embraced your new life. I’ve read reports where your finding of runaways have let us close several files in the area. Now, George tells me that you’re looking into the Williamson case. I would be happy to reopen that one if you can give me some reasons to do so. I believe that you knew Hutchins when you first joined and think that he is an idiot. I have to tell you,” he grinned. “That I think the same.”
We sat down in two easy chairs in his office and a cadet brought us a pot of tea. As we drank, I told him what I had thought that Hutchins had missed finding out. I said that I would be going to talk about Bernard and Bernice to the repair shops this afternoon. I played him the interview from this morning and gave him the sample container to test against the sperm found in the body. I told him that I thought that I had been told the truth. I asked if a phone had been found on, or around, the body. He pressed a button and asked the cadet that came in to go and get the evidence box from the Williamson case.

When the box was brought to us, we both put on forensic gloves to look through it. I bet that, if the contents were tested, they would be loaded with Hutchins’ DNA. There wasn’t a phone, but I took the opportunity to look through the clothing, making notes of the makers and likely outlets that carried them. When we sent the box back, we removed our gloves and shook hands.

“Polly, thank you for your help, today. Let me know if you find anything else and I’ll reopen the case. After looking at the file I’m sure, as you are, that we are looking at murder, but, unless we get more evidence, it will have to remain as accidental death. Like you, I want to see that phone and the changing room. Find either and give me a call, I’ll send out a forensic team.”

I gave George a wave on the way out, then went to have a sandwich at the café that Angela told me she ate at every day. When she came in, she came and sat with me and I gave her some of the information that I now had, asking her to stop pestering the police as they now need only a little more information to reopen the case as a murder investigation.

That afternoon I went to Wainfleet Road. The industrial area is huge, with factories alongside lockups. The first place I went to had never heard of Bernard, but Bernice, the woman who could find cars, was well known. As I went, from place to place, I realised that she had been on a very good deal and was sorely missed. At every one, I asked about the likelihood that she had a shed, somewhere. Most thought that she might have a place with cars garaged, as she could often come up with a car inside an hour. No-one had ordered an S Type Jaguar last year.

My feet were hurting, and my voice was failing when I struck lucky. I was nearly out of places and was at the last repair shop on my list. The mechanic told me that he had wanted a part for an old Rover and Bernice had taken him to a newish shed at the far end of Hassall Road, where it ran into open land and Holly Road. Inside was set up like a parts store, with boxes of bits for old cars. He had been given the part and she had returned him to his workshop.

I followed his directions and found myself at what had once been the edge of the industrial estate. One building stood out, newish and unmarked by any signs. The Yale that I had opened the lock on the gate, as well as the lock on the building. I parked my car away from the building, pulled on my gloves, and went in. The power was on, so I turned on the lights. The description was spot-on. The part I was in was packed with shelving, all carrying boxes marked with car names.

I moved further into the shed and through a door to a large garage, with ten cars lined up. There, at the far end, was a grey S Type Jaguar. There was also a very tidy TR6, which I expected was her own transport. There was another door, which took me into a bedroom, with an ensuite. It was packed with wardrobes, all filled with good clothes. A large vanity was set up like one you would find in a theatre, with lights around the mirror. There was a phone on it, which I didn’t touch.

I went outside and called Dawlish, then waited until he, and his forensic team showed up. As they put on the protective suits, I told them where I had gone, and that I hadn’t touched anything. I told them that the S Type needed a good look at, and that the phone was down the far end, in the changing room. I stood with Dawlish as an unmarked car pulled up and I was introduced to the Detective Inspector Carson, who ran the murder squad. He, and his sergeant, donned the suits and went in.

Before I was asked to leave, I was told that the Jaguar may match the description of one seen at a bank robbery, in Sheffield, many years before. Carson admitted to collecting old ‘Wanted’ posters, and this case was still open. I was invited to a meeting, at the police station, on Friday morning, seeing that it would take the rest of the week to sort this lot out. On the way home, I dropped in to see Angela and gave her enough information to make her smile. It was good to make her happy. Whether she stayed that way when the details of her husbands’ life came out was another thing. One thing was certain, if all the cars and parts were free and clear, she was going to earn a pretty penny when they went up for auction.

I spent the next three days working through other cases on my books. On Wednesday evening I was in Manchester, at a gay nightclub, talking to one of the runaways. She, as it certainly looked like a girl I was talking to, didn’t want to go home and face her father. Having spoken with him, myself, I didn’t blame her. I gave her a burner phone which had one number in the phonebook and explained that her mother was anxious to speak to her and would help in any way she could. All it would take to keep herself in contact was to ring that number, which was a similar phone that her mother had. The father would never know.

Thursday, I busied myself with making sure the books were all correct. The cheque that Angela had given me was in the bank and, as far as I was concerned, I had done what she wanted and got the case re-opened. Friday sent that idea right out of the window.

Friday morning, I took extra care with my outfit, opting for an office look, with a skirt suit and heels. As I drove down to Skegness, I wondered what may have come out of the investigation in his shed. If the TR6 ended up in an auction, I might have a go at getting it. Most of the production run was exported, so the number on British roads was small. A nice, in-line two and a half litre six would be lovely to drive. On top of that, it was painted yellow. If original, that would put it into the mid-seventies.

When I arrived at the police station, there was another desk sergeant, who asked me to wait a moment, while taking my picture and making me a pass to wear. George came into reception and led me into the building, until we arrived at a conference room. When we went in, I was surprised to see Angela and another civilian, already at the table. I joined them and was given a cup of ‘police coffee’ by a female officer, who, by the notepad and recorder next to a chair, would be recording the conference. I had only just found out that the man with Angela was a legal officer from her bank when we were joined by the rest of the attendees.

George stood as the big boss came in. He was not in any uniform, but the authority came off him in waves. He went to his seat at the head of the table, next to the meeting secretary. We also had Dawlish, DI Carson and his Sergeant, and a guy who, by his non-uniform hair, was the police surgeon and head of the forensic laboratory. The big boss rapped his knuckles on the table, and we quietened.

“Ladies and gentlemen. I am Chief Superintendent Strachan and am in charge of this station. If you haven’t yet been introduced, we have Chief Inspector Dawlish, who is in charge of the administration and allocation of resources, and next to him is Sergeant Smythe, our desk sergeant. Then we have DI Carson, in charge of homicide, and his Sergeant Roberts. This other gentleman is Colin Thredbolt, our head of forensics. The female officer is Cathy Chatterton, who will be recording this meeting. I would like to thank Angela Williamson and her legal representative from her place of employment, for coming along. I’m sorry, Angela, but you will hear some things, this morning, which may be upsetting. Ask us to stop, at any time, should you need to. Last of all, I have to welcome Polly Ibbotson, the Private investigator who has caused this meeting to take place. Dawlish has shown me her record as a Detective Sergeant, and I am sorry we couldn’t keep her in the force. Now, down to business, Dawlish, you start.”

“Yes, sir. The case file was opened in February, and I gave the case to Constable Hutchins to look at. It first looked like a simple case of accidental death, due to intoxication. The victim, Bernard Williamson, was found, face-down, in the Fairy Dell Paddling Pond. Hutchins did nothing more than compile the record, upset the victims’ wife, and write the case off. I believe that it was his revulsion of cross-dressers and gays that was the reason behind his actions, or lack of them. He is now working in the Merseyside Division, where his lack of empathy has no bearing on his workload.”

“Exactly right, Dawlish. He was an odious man, used to bully the female staff. Carry on.”

“When our desk sergeant told me that an investigator was going to look into the case, I took it as an opportunity to have Angela Williamson stop taking us to task. Hutchins had filed the reports as completed. It was only when I looked at them myself, that I saw that we had dropped the ball on this one. I authorised the file to be copied and given to Polly, with the hope that she could shed some light on the case. That was a week ago, on Friday. On Monday, I saw her, and she gave me a container of spittle that matched the residue found in the victims’ anus. Not only that, but it also had the donors name written on the label and she played me a recording of her interview with that man. He has been interviewed, officially, and I believe that he can place the victim here, in Skegness, up to about seven on the evening he died. The man told us that the victim had received a phone call and gone off then.”

“That was quick work. So, what happened after that.”

“I received a call around three thirty that Monday, from Polly, who gave me an address in the Wainfleet Road Estate, where she claimed that she had found the victims premises. I called Carson to meet me there and alerted Thredbolt to get a team there. Polly had entered the building, looked around and left it without touching anything, so we sent forensics in.”

“How did you get in, young lady?”

“I had found a key, in the glovebox of Bernards’ car, that matched the serial number on the one found in the handbag at the scene of the crime, sir. I did not use any force to gain entry.”

“Very good, carry on Dawlish.”

‘Right, sir. Here is where it gets complicated. The shed was a long one, with one end being a store for old car parts, and the other being the victims changing room. The middle section was a garage with nine cars that are runners, and one in need of restoration. All the cars are older vehicles, and collectors’ items, which ties in with his second life as a source of old cars for special customer orders. He would supply cars to the auto-repair shops to put back into roadworthy condition for customers. We found his, or should I say, her books, as all of this was carried out in the name of Bernice Williamson. We also found banking details, in that name, with a reasonable sum in a business account under the name of Bernice Motors, which has a credit card and chequebook in that name. We have checked, and all taxes and fees have been paid, so there are no caveats attached to that money, which will become part of the estate. For the rest of it, I believe that DI Carson should continue.”

“Thank you, Inspector. Homicide were never brought into this case, and, when I looked at the file, last week, it would have been classed as suspicious had we seen it. The place where the body was found, the totally bizarre circumstances surrounding the timeline, as well as the fentanyl in the system, was obvious that the body had been placed in the pool, no-one, with that level of drug in the system, would have been able to get there under their own steam.”

“So, the case would have moved forward three months ago had you seen the file?”

“Yes sir. Now, the shed was a genuine Aladdin’s cave, if you like old cars. We looked through the boxes of parts and there is enough there to start a genuine business. The cars were mainly collectables, properly purchased and all written up in the records. There was a sports car which was registered to Bernice Williamson, a Triumph TR6. She could have carried on doing the same for many years to come. The one stand-out was a Jaguar S Type. It has a couple of dents that match the description of a getaway car from a bank robbery, in Sheffield, back in ’82. The records showed it to have been stolen in early ’82. The engine number matches the stolen car, but it was purchased, by Bernice Motors, without plates or papers. It would have made an idea restoration, only to have been taken after the engine numbers had been checked. The previous owner has been interviewed, and claims that he had bought the car, cheap, at an auto-jumble, for cash. They had done nothing to it before on-selling it to Bernice Motors.”

“So, no chance of tracing it back to a vendor at the auto-jumble?”

“No sir. Thredbolt has had that car in his laboratory for checking and can offer more insight. However, we did check the phone found in the end room. It is registered to Bernice Motors, and the last call on it was at seven-o-five, the night she died. We are still trying to track back with the provider to find out who placed the call.”

“Good work. Now, Thredbolt, what do you have for us?”

“Sir, we have been very careful with the car. It gave us traces of four different DNA samples in, and around the driving seat. One is definitely the victim; one is definitely the previous owner. One other did give us a result, and that was ‘Speedy Sam’, otherwise known as Samuel Arthur Johansen, a career criminal who died, in the Scrubs, in ’96. He was a well-known getaway driver, ex-racer, who was suspected of being part of the Sheffield bank robbery, but never arrested for that one. The S Type was his favourite and had been since it had been released. His DNA was on file as part of an old paternity case. There was remnants of banknote wrapping behind the back seat that matched the takings from Sheffield. The boot gave us six different samples of old blood. Four of them have been DNA matched with kidnapped people, where ransom had been paid but the person never returned. The old mud, under the wheel-arches, match soil that can be found all along the east coast, between Norfolk and northern Lincolnshire. However, there was a decent amount of a different soil, close to the body, so a bit older. It was the red chalk, found around Hunstanton. The car was purchased from a property, near Peterborough, where it had been in a shed for three years, and the auto-jumble was at Donnington, so whoever had the car after Sheffield, it has been local for a lot of years. We are asking for funds to search pits and deep water around Hunstanton just in case we can find any remains.”

“Looks like you have some ongoing work there. Anything else?”

“Yes sir. In a drawer of the end room, we found some photocopy sheets. They looked like the contents of a persons’ wallet. They carry the name and details of a man who is well-known among the business fraternity in Skegness. I will not name that person in the presence of civilians, sir.”

“Quite right. What’s your take on this, Carson?”

“We think that the person named on the photocopies may have been the one who phoned the victim. A likely scenario is that Bernice saw a chance of a little blackmail. Perhaps she found the wallet behind the seats, or in the boot, putting two and two together and making four. She may have just contacted this person and said that she had found the wallet in the car, offering it back for a reward. There must have been something else if she was attempting to blackmail him. She must have made the delivery of the goods on the night she died and was murdered instead of being paid. Her shed is a long way from where she was found. It’s only coincidence that her body was so close to her actual residence. Investigations are under way, sir, but have to be done with a lot of care. The person named can do a lot of damage to our careers if they get wind of it.”

I sat there, taking it all in. The last statement opened up the whole can of worms. The only people who can wreck a career in the police is either a senior officer, or a highly placed politician. That, alone, gave me enough to work back from, should I want to do so.

Angela then asked a question.

“Superintendent Strachan, I have not claimed any insurance for my husband’s death, nor have I had the will read. He left me well enough off to live without need of extra funds, my own job helping. His employer has paid out all of his accrued holidays and wages. What is the situation with this shed?”

Stachan looked at Dawlish, who looked at some papers in front of him.

“Angela, we have checked, and Bernard was doing very well as Bernice Motors. The property is fully owned and, when cleared, will probably sell for a couple of hundred thousand, at the very least. We can release the contents, except the S-Type, to you as soon as Thredbolt is happy he can’t get anything else. The bank balance will form part of his estate, the last payment in was for a Sunbeam Rapier that was delivered in the week after we found the body. The last payment out was by credit card to the company he used to move the cars around and was for delivery of that car. I can give your representative all the paperwork to take control of the account. As I said, the building will have to wait until we’re finished. You can take the other cars out, if you want, or even use the place to store other things. I know it will be hard for you to clear out the clothes, but I’ve been told that it’s all good quality and could be welcomed by vintage resellers.”

“Thank you. I’ll have to think about what I’ll do. After so many weeks trying to get things moving, this has all happened so quickly I find it hard to take in. I knew Bernard was a cross-dresser, and we hadn’t had sex for some years, but the breadth of his other life is hard to reconcile. I never had an inkling of all this. Polly, if I continue to pay you the going rate, will you help me with the details. I really can’t face it alone. Steve, here, can take over the financial side of things. If I can state that my husband was murdered, we should be able to do something with his estate.”

“We will organise a coroner’s session, next week,” said Strachan. “With a finding of death by actions of a person or persons unknown, it will allow you to move forward on that one.”

Steve nodded and wrote in his notebook. I could see Angela was well supported there. It was her emotional side that would need some support. It was a good job that I had nothing urgent to do for the next few weeks. And then Strachan looked at me.

“Polly, it was your detective work that opened this up. We will need someone, from the outside, who our suspect has never met, to help us work through the rest of the case. If I add you to our Division as a consultant, will you stay with the case?”

Marianne Gregory © 2023

Chapter 3

“If that gives me direct access to the computers and records, sir, I’m in!”

The Superintendent then called for a break, and I helped the WPC make some tea. She had found some biscuits and we handed them around as the others conferred between themselves. That done, we both sat down with our own cups as the others came to a decision.

Then Strachan tapped on the table, and we all waited.

“This is what we’re going to do. Carson and his team will work the murder case without letting anyone know about the photocopies. Polly, you will have access here as a consultant and do your research on our suspect. You will report only to me. Cathy, only one hard copy of this meeting, and that’s in case any crap starts coming down from above. Dawlish, you, and the rest of the station carry on as if nothing is happening. We don’t want any hint of who we’re chasing to leak out, if any of our officers blab it will mean their job. Angela, I have to ask you and Steve to not talk about this to anyone else. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, today we apologised and told you that your husbands’ death is now a murder case. Thredbolt, all your findings need to be secured in regard to the Jaguar and all the links to the Sheffield job and the kidnap cases. If any wind of this gets out, we’ll have a hard time moving it forward. Thank you all for the work that you’ve done and good luck with the further investigations. Thank you, Angela, for you time and patience. Polly, follow me and Thredbolt to my office and he will tell you the name while I organise your authority. This meeting is now closed.”

I followed him, after telling Angela I would catch up with her before I went back to Boston. Strachan was a leader that I respected, ready to make decisions and prepared to take the flack and protect his officers. We went into his office, and he told us to get on with things while he organised my authority.

Thredbolt and I sat in the two chairs in front of the desk, and he grinned as he handed me the papers. I had been wrong; it wasn’t a politician or a high-level policeman. It was Jurgen Beyer, a very well-known industrialist who hosted parties that the others would attend, happy to have been asked. He was a man who, it had been said, was self-made, a millionaire and supporter of both the major political parties.

“That’s a copy of the copies, you will need them to start your research, Polly. I don’t want to be a nay-sayer, but you’re going to have a hard time linking him with the Sheffield case, he would have been in his late teens when that went down.”

“I realise that. I wonder if it was the kidnappings that are the link, it’s a long shot, I know, but somehow his wallet ended up in that car. I see that the latest date on these contents is 1994. When were the kidnappings?”

“The earliest that we have is ’89, the latest is ’95. In all cases, the victims were children of noted businessmen, with the police never brought in until after the ransom had been paid but the child not returned. The bloods we found were matched to details kept in the records. There’s a small group in the Midlands who are going through all the old cases where death is suspected and testing evidence to record DNA. It will speed up some of the cold cases in years to come, should we find decomposed bodies. In the four cases we now know of, the family was sent a finger, along with a picture of the child, showing a bandaged hand. In all cases it accelerated the payment.”

“What if the Jaguar had the left-over fingers? If he had been involved, it would be enough to kill, you can see where Bernice was going if she found an old finger. Did you look in the other cars in the shed?”

“Only a brief check, so far. If Bernice had a finger, along with the wallet, I bet that she hid it carefully. I’ll put the Jaguar out in the yard, under covers, and pull in the others, in rotation, to give them a good look in the inspection area.”

“Start with the TR6, it was her own car and I think that she’d want to have that evidence close.”

Strachan breezed back into his office and went to his chair behind the desk, sitting with a whistle.

“I never thought that I’d be looking into a person so well up with the upper crust. He’s a personal friend of our Assistant Commissioner and most of the Parliamentary Members within a hundred miles. Here’s your authority, Polly. If you go next door, Cathy can make room on the unused desk in that office. Good hunting.”

I took the laminated card that he offered me and then went to see Cathy. She had tidied the desk and found me a chair.

“Hello, Polly. Thank you for helping me, today. You would be the first DS who has even offered to hand out the teacups. I’ve been ordered to get you a computer, which you will be able to set your own password. That will come tomorrow. I’m told that it will be linked to all of our databases, as well as the internet. If you can’t find things with that lot, it doesn’t exist. The authority the boss has organised will get you through all of the electronic doors in the place, except the armoury. You’ve been given a lot of power; I hope that you live up to the trust the Super has put in you. I’ll help you wherever I can.”

“Thank you, Cathy. I was well known when I was in the force for being able to trace things on the computer, most of my arrests came about because of that.”

“You’d better look at that card, Polly. It seems that you are back in the force.”

I looked at the card for the first time. It was a genuine warrant card, with my picture and me as Detective Sergeant P. Ibbotson. Underneath was, in very small writing, the single word ‘Ret’d’ that was overwhelmed by the next line which had ‘Special Consultant’ along with my original identifying number that I had been given when I joined up. She gave me a lanyard, with a pouch, for me to use when in the station. I gave her the day pass. I could now flash the warrant card when talking to people but knew not to try and arrest anyone. That, I would have to leave to the real police.

The desk that I had been given had a lockable drawer, where I slid the paperwork in before locking it and putting the key in my bag, along with the shed key. I sat at the desk and asked Cathy if she had a building plan for me to study so that I didn’t get lost in the days to come. I took it and found my way to the forensics laboratory.

“Hello, Thredbolt, I wonder if you’ve cleared the Jaguar out yet. I’d like to have a look at it before you do.”

“No problem, Polly, it’s in the garage, next door. The entry is over there, that pass will let you through. Stop at the locker, there, and put on a protective suit, please.”

I did as asked and went to look at the Jaguar. It was now a shell of a body on the wheels. The interior had been stripped out and the boot was empty. There was nowhere left to hide anything. I made a mental note to ask about the original owner as I circled it. The two dents were quite evident, making me think that it had to have been hidden away for some time after the bank job. They were distinctive, a deep vee, high on the front left panel, with a smaller dent behind and below it. That made stop and think. That’s where I needed to start.

Thanking Thredbolt I went back to my new office desk. I asked Cathy if she could print me the case report of the Sheffield job, if I went to the canteen and brought back some tea and cake.

“Always ready to accept that kind of bribery, ma’am, I’ll have it printed by the time you get back.”

“WPC Chatterton, I am a civilian, no matter what that card says. I’m Polly and I’ll call you Cathy unless we are with other officers. I doubt that you saw my record.”

“No, Polly, but the boss seems impressed. What happened to have you retire? A pregnancy, perhaps?”

“Cathy, look at me carefully. I’m going to say this once to get it out of the way. The P on the card used to stand for Peter. The face you see, today, is the product of a very good surgeon, as is my female plumbing. The face was destroyed by a rounders bat; they had to rebuild my nose, both cheeks and my jaw. That was before my balls and most of my dick was taken with a box cutter. If you have a problem, let’s work through it, if not, I’m officially Polly. I had that name before the incident because I used to eat a lot of peanuts, something I don’t do now because they get caught in the metalwork along my jaw that hold my teeth in place.”

“Oh, you poor thing. I had no idea. You are incredibly brave to be still working in detection. I’ve just joined your fan club. If you want to called Polly, then Polly it shall be. Mines a white tea with two, now let me look for that case.”

When I got back with the teas and two cakes, the print-out was on my desk. I sat down and started looking through it. I was surprised to see that it wasn’t a bank job as you usually think of one. The bank had a rear access via an alley. A cash delivery truck had pulled into the rear area and the driver had got out and opened the side door. His mate had got out and was helping him unload the sack-truck they used to move the bags of coins.

The Jaguar had pulled in behind the truck, hitting the mechanism of the power tail lifter and the number plate bracket, so putting the two dents in the wing. Three guys jumped out, two wielding coshes, and hit both the delivery men, the mate was hit so hard he broke his left arm when he fell. A van must have followed the Jaguar and the money was transferred into it. The description of the Jaguar was given by a pedestrian, who came forward later on. He had seen it turn out of the alley after the van and into the main road. He remembered it because he had thought that it was a pity that such a classic car had that damage.

The investigating officers checked out the driver and his mate. The odd thing was that the mate should have gone to the back door and rang a bell to let them know that the cash had arrived. Normally, the door would have been opened in seconds. The mate was cleared because he was very new on the job, and this was the first time he had been on this particular run.

The fact that the Jaguar and the van had been able to just drive away was the biggest problem, the bank not finding the truck outside and notifying the police for at least five minutes after the robbery. In those days there wasn’t the coverage of roadside cameras that there is today. Back then, if you stayed below the speed limit, you didn’t get photographed.

A lot of the cash was in coin, and, although heavy to move around, impossible to trace. The notes added up to close to a quarter of a million, all but ten thousand in old notes, quite a good day’s work. The van had also been stolen, from a flower deliverer, and was found later in a layby, burnt out. The investigation went around in circles before it ended up in the unsolved basket. I made a few notes to follow up when I had the computer, put the paperwork on top of the rest in the drawer, told Cathy I would see her on Monday, and went off to see Angela.

She wasn’t going into work, today, so I went to her house. She let me in, and we sat down to talk, going over what she had been told this morning. She was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that her Bernard had a whole second life, and second business, as Bernice, and, not only that, had a regular boyfriend.

Being in a bank, she had been totalling the values of the building and contents in her mind. I said that her valuation would be well below what the final result would be, seeing the labels on the outfits. She wanted to see for herself, so I rang Thredbolt and asked him if we could visit the shed. He told me that it was all right, as long as we put on the suits that were in a box just inside the door.

As I drove her into the industrial estate, a police truck was coming out with the TR6 on the back. Angela decided, on the spot, that if it was serviceable after the examination, that would be her car and the Herald and Mayflower would be in the clearing sale.

At the shed, I unlocked the gate and parked. She was amazed at the size of the place. I opened the door and fished out two suits, which we put on, then gloved up before entering. We spent a while looking through the parts boxes and then moved on to the central area with the cars, now minus two. The project car was a thirties Hillman in ‘as found’ condition, the interior still covered in chicken shit. Now I could look closer, there were two Jaguar Mark Fours with sheets over them, and a Mark Ten.

“Your calculations have just gone through the roof, Angela. I think that the early Jags sell for about forty thousand in restored condition, these would have to be at least twenty thousand, each. The Ten looks good and may get five thousand, easy.”

The rest were run-of-the-mill collectables, early Austin, Rover, and a Raleigh three-wheeler. There was no way that the S Type would be returning, now it was evidence in a number of cases, but she would probably see the TR6 again, even if it had something hidden in it. After a look at the cars, we went through to the end room, where she almost fainted at the sight of all the clothing, now laid on the bed, the wardrobes standing empty.

“It looks as if they have finished in here. If you want to go through the outfits and hang them back, I’ll just have a look around.”

Angela started with the pile on the bed, sometimes holding up an outfit to her and looking at her reflection in a big mirror. I thought that she was now over the shock, and some of those suits and dresses were classics. There was a big chest of drawers which had bowls on top, with bangles and necklaces, as well as three wig stands. One, the shortest, was empty and I recalled that Bernice had been wearing a short wig when she was killed. It was now, bedraggled, in the evidence box.

I went through each drawer. They held good quality underwear and had been looked through by someone who obviously knew good stuff when she saw it, as it was all reasonably neat. The bottom drawer had the sexiest things, corsets, and leather, along with a range of bondage wear and sex toys. When I stood, the long wigs caught my eye. Both being a slightly different shade of brunette. I could see that they were expensive and well looked after. Even though I had thin gloves on, I reached out to stroke the one closest to me. Then I froze.

As my fingers had passed over the crown, I had felt an indentation. I felt more carefully and there was a distinct hole, or depression, about an inch in diameter. I went to the other wig, and it felt the same. I went back into the garage part of the shed, where there was a workbench along the back. I found that Bernice had a set of spade drills and a hand drill among the tools. Bending down and looking under the bench, I saw fragments of expanded polystyrene. I asked Angela not to go anywhere near the wigs and went outside to call Thredbolt.

“Thredbolt, it looks like you had a female technician working the chest of drawers, am I right?”

“Yes, that would be Jessica, did she miss something?”

“Ask her if she checked the wig stands.”

There was a break while he went to find Jessica and then he was back.

“Yes, she did. She says that there was nothing under them as she had picked them up and checked.”

“If you bring her to the shed, there’s something that she will learn and will look good in your final report. Tell her that I found it, by accident. Don’t go pulling that TR6 apart until you have a look.”

They arrived, about twenty minutes later. Jessica went to the wigs and looked a bit closer, then picked each one up and checked the underneath.

“Stroke the hair and you’ll find what I did. I haven’t looked any further, so it may just be a wild goose chase.”

She stroked the hair, then froze, just as I did. Angela was looking on with a quizzical look, which turned to amazement as Jessica unpinned the wig and took it off the head, exposing a hole, about an inch in diameter. She shone a light into the hole, then went to the other wig to repeat the process. She pulled an evidence bag out of a pouch and turned the first head upside-down over the opening. Out slid a wrapped item, about an inch long, along with some flecks of poly. The second head only produced poly and some threads. She checked both with a strong light, replaced the wigs and then came over to me to hug me and whisper her thanks.

Thredbolt just nodded to me as they left. Angela still hadn’t got the gravity of the situation.

“Are you going to tell me what it was I just witnessed, and why you were all so serious?”

“Angela, we think that Bernice found that wallet, along with other evidence, in the Jaguar. She must have taken the wallet, and one of the pieces of evidence, with her the night she was killed. I expect that she thought that it was her big payday and that she would be able to extract a second round with the item she still had. That car had a lot of different bloods in the boot, most of them matching kidnap victims who had a finger severed to help the family pay up. We had matched four of the six samples, and I think that the finger that we just discovered, may match one of the remaining two.”

That’s when I had to help her sit on the bed and put her head down to her knees. When she had got her colour back, she just asked to be taken home. We went out, stripped off the gloves and suits and put them in the bin for destruction. I then backed out and locked everything up before taking her home. On the way, she suddenly brightened up.

“Polly, to thank you for everything that you’ve done, I want to take you somewhere nice for a meal. Today, I’ve had some shocks, but the biggest was that Bernard left me a great deal of money, with more likely from the clearing auction. A little over a week ago, I was banging my head against a brick wall to get the police to do something; today they’ve opened a murder case and have also started investigating something that my Bernard stumbled across and was stupid enough to get involved in. I’m going to keep the TR6 as my own car; it will remind me of what a lady Bernice was. I’ll get an auction house to look at the rest, if what you say about those early Jaguars is right, they would get more money in a specialised sale. That Raleigh is a little gem, as well, much more character than the later three-wheelers. I thought that I wouldn’t want any of the clothes, but some of those dresses and suits would look good on me.”

“The underwear is worth looking at closely, as it’s all good stuff. Don’t bother about the bottom drawer, though, unless you get an inkling to do something kinky. Where are you taking me?”

We ended up at a good restaurant in Boston, where I had been before. We had a pleasant meal and I stayed off the drink so I could take her home. She did get a little squiffy, but who could blame her. She had been through almost every sensation there was in the last twenty-four hours. I took her home and she hugged me and thanked me for everything. I told her that I would be in the police station for several days, should she want to get in touch.

Back in Boston, in my little apartment, I stripped off and got under a hot shower. It had been a big day for me, as well. This morning I had been Polly, the P.I., and I now had a warrant card again, along with a desk and a good reason to be behind it. In my nightie and dressing gown, I checked my phone for messages and then turned on my laptop to check there. I found two emails from contacts of mine that would keep me busy over the weekend but would effectively clear my decks of cases. I had sent out emails to all the vice-squad guys I knew, in the surrounding big towns, to keep watch for any new faces in the pink areas. Whenever I had a new case, I would send them a description, with a photo of the boy, along with a photo I had created of the boy trying to look like a girl.

These two emails meant that I would be spending my Saturday night in clubs, both, happily enough, in Peterborough. That noted and the replies sent, I put together the two packs with burner phones, ready for use tomorrow. I went to bed, happy in the knowledge that there wasn’t anything else I needed to do today, and slept, once again, like a baby.

Saturday, I tidied up my laundry and had a clean around, before dressing for a night out in a gay club and going off to Peterborough to try and save a young person, or two, from making the biggest mistake of their life, losing touch with those who loved them, no matter what they looked like.

Sunday, on a whim, I went for a drive to Hunstanton, just to have a look around. I had driven right through the town when I came across a big building site. There wasn’t any machinery working, but I saw that the gate was open, and a car was parked by a cabin. I drove in and stopped next to it. As I got out, the cabin door opened, and a man stepped out.

“Can I help you, miss?”

“Yes, you can. I’m working on a case.” Showing my warrant card as I said it.

“It involves the red sand that is only found in this area, how deep do you have to go before you hit it?”

“That depends on where you are along the coast. Up on the cliffs, it’s a good three metres deep, but back from there it may only be a metre or so under. Come and have a look at what we have to deal with.”

He led me behind the cabin to a place where I could see across his working area. There were little hillocks with a white chalk top, and the rest was a red, sandy, mud. He was laying out roads and putting in services for a new housing estate.

“Were there any places, like this, that was going on in the late eighties to middle nineties?”

“That would have been one of the big tourist parks at Heacham. My dad would come home looking like he’d been working on Mars.”

He gave me the name of that park, which I wrote in my notebook. I thanked him and went back to my car. I drove to the tourist park and went in. There, on the wall, was a big board with the history of the place in photos. As I looked, I saw one, taken very early in the development, of a line of cabins, just erected by the look of the ground around them. In front of one was a grey Jaguar, with a dented left wing.

Marianne Gregory © 2023

Chapter 4

I got my phone and took a picture, close up, followed by a couple showing the whole board. When I got back home, I uploaded the pictures to my laptop and added them to an email to Strachan. Well, he did say to report only to him, didn’t he?

Monday morning, I was up and out, picking up a breakfast on my way to Skegness. Using my new card, I entered the station and found my way to the office. My desk now sported a big screen, with a computer alongside the desk, cables nicely bundled, and it all looked neat. I sat down and turned it on. There was a note on my desk with a password, that got me onto the system. I changed the password to ‘boxcutter’ and then started with Google Earth. Looking at Hunstanton, I zoomed in and found the building site I had visited, then located the tourist park, among a whole swathe of cabins. It looked like you could house a whole town there. I was looking around that area when Cathy came in.

“Boss wants you in his office in ten minutes, Polly, for a short meeting.”

Thanks, Cathy, how was your weekend?”

“After all the secrecy of Friday, it was nice to be with the family. I went out with some school friends on Saturday evening. How about you?”

“Just did some chores on Saturday and cleared up a couple of cases I had, runaway kids. Sunday, I had a drive to Hunstanton to get a fish and chips to eat on the seafront.”

She picked up her notebook and we both went into Strachan’s office. He told us to sit, and we were joined by Thredbolt and Carson. When we were all seated, Strachan cleared his throat.

“Officers, we have a couple of things to discuss, this morning. Thredbolt, you can start.”

“Thank you, sir. On Friday afternoon I, and one of my technicians, went back to the shed, where we discovered the hiding places that Bernice had used to hide her finds. One contained nothing but threads that matched the material found in the other. That material was wrapped around a desiccated finger of a small child. The DNA matched one of the blood samples found in the back of the Jaguar. We didn’t get a match with any other people until Jessica, my technician, had the bright idea to put it up on the public website Ancestry. There was a ninety-five percent match with our Assistant Commissioner. We looked him up and he had a daughter who would have been the right age. He had reported her as a missing person in ’93 and that case has never been closed. Until now.”

“Thank you for that, Thredbolt. I’ll set up a visit to the AC and I’ll have to let him into our little circle. I’m sure that he never suspected who it was that kidnapped his daughter. Knowing him, he would have wanted to keep it quiet, he was up and coming at that time and being the centre of a kidnap case wouldn’t do his career any good. Now, have a look at these, you two. Polly sent me this last night.”

They looked at the photos and Thredbolt pulled out a magnifying glass to look at the car.

“That’s got a set of plates on it! If you send me the picture, I’ll get it enhanced.”

“Better still, I want you to go to the tourist park with Carson and his men, and we’ll commandeer the whole board to bring back here to look at properly. Carson can ask the questions about the when, where and who were around during the construction. If we can date this picture, it will date when the car got the underbody layer. You did say that the Jaguar had been washed before it got that red sand layer?”

“Yes, it had been, sir. If we can put the car in that area, in the late eighties to early nineties, it would then match the timing of the kidnaps. This is fantastic. When you’re ready to go, DI, give me a call and I’ll follow you. I’ll want to go and have a look at the other sites where the red sand is showing.”

“That’s at the eastern end of Hunstanton, it was the foreman there who sent me to the tourist park, yesterday. I went out for a seaside lunch and caught more than a fish!”

“Good work, there, Polly. Can you and Cathy stay. Gentlemen, I think that you have work to do!”

We stayed sitting as the others left.

“Polly, this is a breakthrough, as well as handing me a very sensitive call to make. If I get an appointment with the AC, will you come with me? Cathy, you can be our driver. It will have to be out of office hours, so it would mean overtime, but I think that having two strong women with me will help, especially if we can talk to him and his wife, together.”

When we agreed and left him to his task, we went back to the office. Inside, Cathy closed the door and gave me a hug. Then she asked me how I liked my tea and went off to the canteen to see what she could find. I sat at my desk and pondered what I should look for, first. For the moment, I had nothing to look for with our chief suspect, so, on a whim, opened up Ancestry to see what happened to the delivery driver and his mate, just to close off that line of investigation.

With the driver, it was straight-forward. Looking at the census records, he remained living at his address until he retired and then died, of a brain cancer, perhaps brought on by being coshed. The mate, however, was another kettle of fish. His name was Malcolm Cuthbertson and he had been twenty-one at the time of the robbery, having joined the company some two years before. He was in hospital for a few weeks after, so that his broken arm could be reset, and the swelling around his brain allowed to recede. He was at that same address on the next census but there wasn’t a trace of him after that. I checked the shipping and airport records to see if he had left the country but came up without a hint of his whereabouts.

The police records showed him as a victim of crime and there was also a short record of misdemeanors. It looked like he had been a naughty boy, but not bad enough to preclude him from delivering money. We needed to talk to his family to find out where he went. The pattern wouldn’t have been apparent to the officers of the day, and there were no photos saved. I drafted a report for Strachan to send on to the Sheffield divisional headquarters.

Still on Ancestry, I looked up our main suspect. I found his birth certificate and noted his date of birth and parents’ names. I then looked further and found that his parents had died, in a car crash, less than a year later. Given the names, and the date, I checked with police records and found the report of the accident. What I read there made me sit back and mop my brow. Cathy looked over to me.

“What’s up Polly, you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

“You’re spot on with that one, Cathy. I’ve just discovered that our main suspect, whose name you don’t know, was killed in a car accident, with his parents, when he was a few months old.”

“That’s the old trick, isn’t it? You look in a graveyard, find the grave of a baby and use the name and date of birth to get a certificate. If the child is under a year old, there wouldn’t necessarily be a death certificate, even if there is, once you have the birth certificate, you can start building a life story that become more real with every passing year.”

I added this information to the email I was going to send to Strachan but then printed it off without sending it, then erasing the draft.

“Cathy, can you please set me up with a short talk with the boss, he has to know this.”

Ten minutes later, I was leaving Strachan’s office after giving him the next shock of the day. He had told me to dig as deep as I could, but not say anything to the others. He would get on to the Sheffield station to get them to talk to the family and associates of the mate and would get on to Nottingham to get us pictures of a certain gravestone in the main cemetery, along with a copy of the burial records.

Back on the computer, I looked for anything I could find on our suspect. What did surprise me was that company records showed that he was the biggest shareholder in one company, and one company only. This, for a man reputed to be in development, transport, electronics, whitegoods, and a whole host of other things. The company that he ran, though, was an accountancy business, and, looking at their website, AGM records and Company House gave me a long list of businesses that the accountants worked with, looking after all of their financial business, for a fee. If the fee was anything near others I had known, they were a very successful business.

It took all day, but I ended up with a stack of notes; lists of companies in all the areas he was noted for, but with him being a minority shareholder in all of them, and a director of most of them. The guy was clever, I’ll give him that. He was a high-profile poster boy who looked like he owned the world, but only owned a little bit of that world, even if he did have an influence on that whole world. I sat and thought a lot. If I was correct, he was earning a good return on his investments, but never had to lay out a lot to be where he is today. If he had created the accountancy firm, or even bought a small firm cheaply, it would have just meant that he needed his wits about him to build the company to where it is today, using his earnings to buy into the companies they began to look after.

I then started another list, with the timeline. From my notes, I listed the year in which he became linked to other companies, going back to the original listing of him owning the accountants. That was in ’87, five years after the Sheffield job, and the last listing of him in his birth name, except the birth certificate. In interviews, he had claimed that, after his parents had been killed, he had been sent to an aunt in Germany, where he was home schooled, only coming back to England in ’86, to make his own way in the world. He said that a lot. There were a lot of ‘making my own way’ statements among the interviews I looked at. My final thing, before I packed up for the day, was to check his claimed birth date against the drivers’ mate. They were only a month apart.

Tuesday was more of the same, checking and double checking the facts, finding interviews where he spoke about his earlier days, and trying to track his whereabouts in various times. He now had a property at Reepham, down in Norfolk, but had other places in Germany, South of France, and a shooting lodge in Scotland. He had done very well for a totally self-made man. His parties, at Reepham and in Scotland, were often written up in women’s magazines, which led me down another rabbit hole. Some of the afternoon was taken up by a short coroner’s court, where we got the expected ‘Death by person or persons unknown’.

It took another day of searching, but I finally had pictures, taken at his parties, of every father of our five kidnap victims. That led me to searching for the dates when these had first been brought into his web of companies. In every case, the kidnapping had taken place within six months of the parent being part of a company that had joined the consortium. The AC, however, was the odd one out. Perhaps that had been a chance encounter. He might be able to tell us when we spoke to him. What I did have, at the end of that day, was a list of other companies, and their directors, that had joined up between ’88 and ’95. Some further checking might give us the sixth body. It was a list of over fifty people, but, with a name and a time scale, I would be able to check the missing persons reports.

By the end of the week, I had a list of three of the directors who had put in a missing person’s report. I had all three case files sent to me and then passed them on to Thredbolt to check. Saturday, however, we had a lunch appointment with the Assistant Commissioner and his wife, at their country house near Alford.

Saturday morning, I dressed well and went to the station. There, I parked the car and then joined Cathy in the Chief Super’s car. She was trim in a skirt suit, as I was, and was excited to be part of something so important. We went to Strachan’s home, where we met his wife and teenage daughter. I reckon that the wife was a good twenty years younger and a beautiful woman. He got in the back of the car, and we were off to Alford. On the way, Cathy was brought into the circle, being given our suspects name, which allowed me to explain what I had discovered and the theory that I had come up with.

The AC lived in a country house, on about four acres, and the gate was opened for us by a uniformed officer who checked our names against a list. Cathy parked in front of the house and the door opened as we got out, a stately lady coming to greet us.

“Charlie Strachan, it’s been too long, who are these ladies?”

“That it has, Margaret. These ladies are my PA, Cathy Chatterton, and Polly Ibbotson, a Special Consultant on a case I’m here to talk to Gerald about.”

“Come in, come in, I think there’s a pot of tea just boiled and I’m sure we can find some biscuits.”

We found the AC in the drawing room, looking at the Saturday paper. He stood and shook hands with Strachan and then turned to us.

“Charles, who is it that you’ve brought with you?”

“This is Cathy Chatterton, my PA, sir. And the other is Polly Ibbotson, a consultant.”

“Polly Ibbotson, eh! Now, where have I heard that name before. I’ve got it, the up-and-coming DS, and the mad mistress. I must say, Polly that they did a wonderful job in the hospital. I think my PA sent flowers.”

“I got a lot of flowers, sir, but it took some time before I could fully appreciate the gesture.”

“Yes, I can see that. Please, be seated and Margaret can pour the tea. Charles, you said that you needed to talk about a sensitive case and that it was important.”

We sat, the AC in an easy chair, his wife on a two-seater opposite him, and the three of us on a settee at right angles to the other two. She poured the tea into cups on a low table, able to be reached by us all.

“Gerald, I want to tell you about what looked like a simple case of accidental death but has turned into a bubbling cauldron of linked cases. It all started when a body was found, face down, in the Fairy Dell last November. At first glance you would have taken it for a woman, but when the body went to the morgue, it was found to be a man dressed as a woman. I had a new Admin CI, who gave the case to the name on the top of his available officers’ list. That was the one big mistake as the Constable in question is a rabid homophobe and just closed the case without properly investigating. The victim’s wife finally called in Polly to look into it as she was sure her husband had been murdered.”

“All right, I’m with you so far. What capacity were you in at that time, Polly?”

“I am a registered Private Investigator, sir. I bought a going business in Boston.”

“Right, carry on Charles.”

“Polly did what our officer should have and went to talk to those associated with the victim. Later, that day, she called my Admin CI and gave him an address where the victim had a large shed. He was carrying out a business, buying and selling collectable cars. In that shed, we found a Jaguar S Type that had been used in a bank delivery robbery in Sheffield, in the early eighties. It had distinctive damage that occurred during that robbery.”

“I see. How does that become sensitive?”

“The victim’s wife had told Polly that he had been quiet for a while since getting that particular car. From photocopies of documents that we discovered; we believe that he had found a wallet in that car. This is where it becomes sensitive.”

“Ah! The nub comes closer.”

“The nub, sir, is that the paperwork we found was items from a wallet, lost about ’93 or ‘94, and the details were all from Jurgen Beyer.”

“Jurgen! The man is beyond reproach, He’s a personal friend and has been very helpful in the past, putting me in touch with people who have helped my career. There’s no way he could have been involved in that robbery!”

I could see him getting redder, and Margaret starting to look very serious, so, seeing the chink, I went for it.

“Did his being helpful include loaning you the money to pay the kidnappers of your daughter?”

“What are you talking about, my daughter went missing she…”

“Just shut up, Gerald!” snarled his wife. “Your ambition and stupid pride has come back to bite you! There has to be more to bring Charlie to talk to us. It’s not about you, anymore. Now, Polly, tell me about my poor Mia, I felt that she had gone from us.”

I put my cup and saucer on the table, stood and went to sit beside her, taking her hand in both of mine. This had the added advantage of putting me directly opposite the AC. I looked at Strachan and he nodded.

“That Jaguar has been forensically examined and it gave up the DNA of a well-known getaway driver, who was suspected in the Sheffield case. In the boot, it also gave up six different blood samples. Four of those samples have been positively matched with the victims of kidnappings, where the parents didn’t report it until the child was not returned, even though the ransom was paid. In all those cases a finger was sent to the parents.”

I could feel Margaret gripping my hand, hard enough to hurt.

“Of the two samples left, we found the hiding place of the extra items that caused our victim to be murdered. We believe that he had taken the wallet, and a wrapped finger, to Beyer or one of his associates, after negotiating payment. He was killed, rather than paid.”

Margaret whispered.

“What about my Mia?”

“We found a wrapped finger, this week. It matched one of the two remaining blood samples. One of our technicians had the bright idea of checking the DNA against the public records and came up with a better than ninety percent match with you, sir.”

The AC visibly deflated; he was a beaten man. I just hoped that when he came back, he would be ready to move against Beyer, come hell or high water. Margaret lightened her grip, before any bones broke, and turned to me.

“Thank you, Polly. I knew that she wasn’t coming back after the first few weeks. Gerald couldn’t allow himself to believe he wasn’t in control of the situation. He did pay Jurgen back, but it took a while.” She looked at Strachan. “Have you come to arrest Gerald for making a false report and wasting police time on a known falsehood?”

Strachan saw his opportunity and ran with it.

“Certainly not, Margaret. This is a quiet visit between friends. I don’t know what I would have done in the same circumstances but I’m sure that Gerald thought he was doing the right thing. Because of the profile of the people involved, this case is being strictly controlled. Other than the three of us, there are only three others who know who we are investigating, and only us and our forensic team who have the knowledge about your daughter. One thing that I have to tell you is that the other four cases we know of all have links with Beyer and had met him about six months before their children were kidnapped and murdered.”

I was looking at the AC and could see him listening. His bluster had deflated, but he was coming back, and I could see the anger building. He suddenly stood.

“Chief Superintendent Strachan, if you want to arrest me, then do it now and I’ll go with you, quietly. If you leave me as you found me, today, I give you the promise that I’ll back you, all the way. If you find enough evidence to arrest Beyer, then I want to be the one to arrest him. It’s only by doing it that way can we keep his political friends from burying us, any lesser rank would be hounded out of the force.”

Strachan stood and held out his hand.

“Welcome to the team, Gerald. It’s going to be rough with you on board but could have been impossible without you. We’re all sorry to have brought you the information about Mia, this way, but there was no getting around it.”

They shook hands and then the two men had a man-hug as Gerald started to cry. Margaret and I stood, and Cathy joined us for a group girl hug. Gerald was whispering “It’s out in the open” over and over. I think he must have bottled it for so long, it was like popping the top of a shaken Coke bottle. He detached himself from Strachan and reached out to his wife. Saying that he was so sorry, he held her as they both cried. It must have been in the air as I felt myself tearing up and saw that Cathy was the same.

Eventually, we all settled down. I went back to the settee as the couple sat together, on the two-seater. Finally, the AC got his voice and looked at Cathy.

“You haven’t said much, young lady. What else is there which is going to turn my world even further upside-down?”

“Well sir, it could be the fact that we have discovered that, although Jurgen Beyer was born on the day his birth certificate says, we have a police report of a car accident, some three months later, where he died, along with his parents. The Jurgen Bayer you know, isn’t Jurgen Beyer, after all.”

“That’s more than I expected. That is going to make it even more complicated. You’re going to find out who he really is.”

“I think Polly already has a lead on that, sir.”

He looked at me.

“As you may be aware, sir, my police career was in white collar crime, a lot of that is research on the computer. If we go back to the Sheffield job, the drivers’ mate was a lad, just out of his teens, called Malcolm Cuthbertson. He wasn’t even suspected, but he disappeared off the face of the earth a few years later. The earliest known listing we have on Beyer is a few years after that. At the moment, the only thing we know about Cuthbertson is that his arm was broken during the robbery. I’m waiting to get the hospital reports to find out how bad it was.”

The AC went white.

“Beyer often rubs his left forearm when the weather is changing. He says that he broke it in a skiing accident as a teenager. Have you any idea why he’s involved with all of this?”

“That’s simple, sir. It’s purely as a cash injection into his business. I think that it was his cut of the Sheffield job that paid for his new life and his first, and only, company. The kidnappings all coincide with times he needed cash to keep expanding. I’m sorry to tell you this, sir, but you, and all the other parents, were just acting as his own private, bank.”

Marianne Gregory © 2023

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

Chapter 6

Back in our office I told her that it was her show now. I stressed that she had the knowledge and had to get the confidence if she wanted to move up in the force. I reminded her that she was ahead of most officers by being on good terms with her Chief Super and also on a first name basis with the AC, even if his first name was Sir.

I told her that what we wanted now, was any video from businesses in Skegness, between the Tesco and the Fairy Dell. She would need to go back out and talk to shop owners between the two places. We knew what we were looking for, now we had good pictures of the van, as well as a solid window, between ten twenty and midnight. She gathered up her things and made sure she had everything on her belt that she should have and was off to do serious detecting.

While she was away, I connected the hard drive to the computer and downloaded the inside and outside sequences we needed. A bit later, Strachan put his head in the door and asked where Cathy was.

“I’ve sent her out to get security video, if there’s any still left, of the night of the murder, sir. We now have something else to add, next time we have a meeting and she’s looking for the final nail in Beyers’ coffin.”

“Show me, now.”

He closed the door and pulled a chair up next to me as I explained what he was about to see, showing him the outside view first, from the time the Rover pulled up, to the time the van pulled away. I pointed at the item left behind and showed him the evidence bag with the keys.

“Bernice had the Rover from the yard. It was left in the Tesco carpark, and we had it in the pound until the caryard paid to get it out. It’s still at the car yard and I’ve told them not to touch it as we’ll be coming by for it.”

I then showed him the interior sequence which clearly identified Bernice and, now I had a chance to see it quietly, also showed Beyer in full-face.

Strachan breathed, “Got the bastard!”

“I think so, sir. We will need to set up the arrests, so no-one gets spooked. We also need to raid his house and search it to see if we find the other finger, or anything else that will incriminate him. The van should yield some proof that Bernice was in the back. Oh, and we also have to find where they got the drug, that’s something usually held by vets but there’s a lot on the black market. These days.”

“Exactly, there’s a bit of detail to go. Tell me, Polly, do you think that Cathy can be as good as you at this stuff?”

“Sir, Cathy has had the proverbial epiphany in the last few days. Previously, she was working in a job that paid her a wage. She has taken the bit with this one and is fast on her way to being a crime fighter. She’s shown good aptitude with the things I’ve asked her to do, and, by the time we wind this up, she’ll be showing me a thing or two after I’ve taken her through all the searches I’ve done, so that she can be the one on the stand, giving evidence. With something this big, the last thing you want is a civilian contractor laying it all out and getting pilloried by the press.”

“Quite so. When she gets back, give me a call and I’ll get the team together, again.”

“Will do, sir.

After he left me, I went through my notes to see what Cathy would have to find for herself. It would, I expect, take a week. I sat and thought about my future. Here I was, doing real police work, again. It was exciting, it was fulfilling, and it was making me use my brain in a way the PI business didn’t. It would be nice to continue this, but I expect that I’ll be back in my little office in Boston, very soon. That was the thing. While Cathy thought she would go back to her mundane job, but was, instead, likely to be doing meaningful work, I, on the other hand, had been doing meaningful work and was likely to end up back in my mundane job. There were only so many unsure children out there and the bigger companies didn’t like a woman looking into their business.

When Cathy came back, she uploaded a couple of USB sticks onto my computer, and we looked at them together. One was from the front of the Ivernia Hotel, that showed their car park and a bit of the road. It showed the van going by at eleven ten, so they must have stopped somewhere quiet to search Bernice for the items they were there for. The other was from the front of the Laurels. They had a camera that overlooked the beach so that potential guests could see for themselves what the weather might be like. Just off to one side, you could clearly see the Fairy Dell, and, as we watched, a van parked just where I had on the first day, and two guys dumped poor Bernice in the water and drove away, the time shown was eleven twenty. This was gold and we were lucky that it hadn’t been destroyed. Cathy told me that it had been kept, at first, because of the cloudless night sky and the clear picture of the moon. The weather had been ideal for the freezing temperature, that night.

I got her to create a presentation, helping her when she faltered. It showed the movement of the van from that first sighting, through the other road cameras, to Tesco and then the Fairy Dell, followed by the pictures of it going back to Hunstanton, all time stamped.

“This will be the basis of your final presentation as you move forward. I expect that there’ll be a big meeting of the top brass, along with the prosecution branch. I think that, later on, there may be another one in front of a few MP’s. By the time you get to court, you’ll be thoroughly sick of it, but the main thing to remember is that it puts Bernards’ killers in jail.”

When we were ready, I called Strachan and asked him to gather the usual crowd in the conference room, where Cathy would show them what she had found. I told her that I would take any notes for later and we had a good luck hug and went to show them what a couple of girls could do.

Strachan had decided that it was time to open up the circle, so we walked into the room to see Dawlish and George, Carson, and Roberts, Thredbolt and Jessica, as well as the Chief Superintendent who was in charge of the prosecution office. Strachan gave us time to set up and opened the proceedings after ensuring that the door was closed, and no recording was being done.

“This will be a surprise to a couple of you here. What you’re about to see is the culmination of some weeks of hard work, and inspired research. Cathy Chatterton, could you please give our new faces a precis of the case, as it proceeded.”

I was proud of her; she didn’t faint on the spot but stood and went to the front and started with the words, “On February the fourteenth, a body was found, face down, in the Fairy Dell Paddling Pool.”

She had been present at all of the meetings and had absorbed it. Her presentation went smoothly until the point where she revealed the name on the photocopied wallet contents. That’s when the prosecutions officer had to be given a glass of water. He was totally entranced as she took us through the Sheffield job and the kidnappings, without revealing any of the names. She named the five Sheffield suspects and picked out Terry to highlight his possible involvement in burying the bodies at Heacham. She then took us through the likely movements of Bernice on the day she died, and then we were at the point where our little show put the icing on the cake.

As the pictures of the van were shown, she paused on one where the sun showed the two men clearly. We had blown that one up and it showed Beyer and another guy. She then said that Bernice had received a call just after seven and that she had left her companion and gone off. Then it was the outside vision from Tesco showing her pulling up and going in, followed by the van pulling up and Beyer going in. We had left that going until you could see the driver get out and go behind the van. Then it was the meeting, inside the store, and she paused it as Beyer turned, facing the camera. After that, it was back outside to see Bernice disappear behind the van and then the two men getting back in. I was watching Strachan as she then pointed out the keys on the ground and showed us the same keys in the evidence bag, letting Thredbolt know that the Rover was at the caryard, waiting for us to look at it.

“What you’ve just seen is an abduction. Thanks to the miracles of security vision, we now move on to the murder, itself.”

There was the short clip with the van going by, and then we had the vision over the Fairy Dell. There was a collective intake of breath as we saw the van park and the two men pull the body out of the back and put it in the pool. She paused the vision at that point and looked at us.

“This is the actual time of the murder, ladies, and gentlemen. The cause of death was drowning, the victim so full of a sedative she could not do anything about it. This was cold-bloodied murder.”

She restarted the vision which had the van driving off and the still pictures of its route back to Hunstanton. I was so proud of her; it was classic stuff, and she will stop them in their tracks in a courtroom.

When she walked back to her seat, there was a new spring in her step. I stood to give her a hug. Strachan stood in front of us and asked if there was anyone who had problems with what we had just seen. The prosecutor said that it was an open and shut case and that he would be happy to take it forward if the top brass were happy with it. Strachan told him that we already had the ear of the AC, and he would be able to put together an audience.

The prosecutor wanted to know what charges we were looking at. Strachan looked at Carson, who said it would be murder, conspiracy to kidnap and murder, bank robbery and about a hundred charges of violating the Company Law, having carried out business under a false name for over forty years. Whistler would be also charged with the murder, the kidnappings, and the bank robbery. The prosecutor suggested that the murder case would be relatively easy, seeing the evidence we now had. As far as he was concerned, nothing was circumstantial. He thought that once a guilty verdict was in, we could then put forward the other cases.

Strachan made sure that everyone was on the same page and that Carson knew what else to look for. He then told us to make sure nothing gets out and to pull together our evidence to, in his words, “Put those bastards inside!”

Over the next two weeks, I worked with Cathy to recreate my searches, explaining all of the reasons for each step as she took notes. By the time we had finished that, Carson had discovered that Whistlers’ daughter was into horse riding and that the vet in the area had suffered a break-in, late January. They couldn’t tell what had been stolen as the office was torched and almost totally destroyed. Drug gangs from Norwich were the chief suspects.

He also had clear pictures of our Terry, which matched the ones we had of the driver. We were getting close to the end game. The Rover, when brought into the garage, only showed that it had been driven by Bernice. She must have been certain that she would be paid and had done nothing to give her a fall-back. It had been returned to the caryard, who promptly moved it on to another yard some hundreds of miles away.

The Sheffield police had pulled the other two lads for questioning. Their report showed both being almost happy to be arrested, having lived much of their lives in the fear of the others coming back to get them involved with something new. They had both made statements, clearly stating their parts in the bank job, and had even been happy to give the officers pictures of the five friends, while still at school. The picture showed Cuthbertson as he was then, and we could see that there hadn’t been much alteration of his face before he re-appeared.

His family were not much help. Both parents were now dead, and his remaining sister could only remember him calling around to take any photos that she had of him. She said that he had gone to the family home, while everyone was out, and destroyed all pictures that were in the albums that showed his face.

We did get the medical records of when he was in hospital, and the arm was broken just above the wrist, with Gerald confirming that this was where Beyer would rub. What we didn’t have was any clue of where he was after leaving home, or where he got the cheap face job. Cathy had the bright idea of looking at the area where he started the Beyer story, the burial place of the real Jurgen Beyer. By this time, I was just a bystander and mentor, and could see that she had grasped the methods when she started with the request of the birth certificate.

With the date of when it was issued, and the address that they sent it to, we could shrink the search area and, finally, found a private clinic that had done cosmetic surgery on Cuthbertson, with all those records added to the growing file.

I had been visiting Angela, whenever I could, and had been helping her with what needed to be done. The shed had been released to her, along with all of the bank accounts and property of Bernice Motors. The TR6 now lived at her home and the Herald and Mayflower were garaged at the shed. She had contacted a car auctioneer who had come to have a look and was arranging to ship all the cars, and the spares, to his warehouse prior to a sale. He was very happy the see the two Mark 4’s, suggesting that wedding car companies would go mad over them.

Believe it or not, but Angela had transferred all of the good underwear to her own bedroom drawers, along with a lot of the outfits. She had given me a couple of suits that I had said I liked, and the bondage stuff had gone to rubbish. The furnishings had all gone to a charity that put them into homeless shelters. When the shed had been cleared, she put it on the market for lease. She knew that we were building a case but had no idea who we had in our sights, that would be a surprise for later. She was happy though, in the end, that we had enough to move forward and that she had been vindicated.

In the meantime, Cathy was in demand to give her presentation to various people, moving up the ladder. She did one at Geralds’ house, for Gerald and Margaret, along with the Commissioner and his main legal officer. Strachan and I were there to answer any questions. The Commissioner looked as if he was being taken for a fool until we got to the actual footage of Beyer and Bernice leaving Tesco, to the part where she is dumped. He had been to many parties and events with Beyer and this, he knew, would be a very hard time for himself and a lot of other influential people.

Two weeks after that, we were in London, where the Commissioner had put together a group of politicians that were part of the Beyer circle. It included the Police Minister and the Minister for Home Security. Before we gave the presentation, the Commissioner reminded all of the new attendees that if any word of what they were about to be told got out, the whole lot of them may be taken in for questioning. He was so forceful, they agreed to keep it to themselves. After the presentation, you could tell that they would all act surprised and would back us up. Anything else could be political suicide.

We already had Beyer and Whistler under surveillance and had put the word out to hold them if either of them wanted to leave the country. When we were all happy that nothing would be shot down in a courtroom, the talk turned to the arrest. Whistler was straight-forward, a swoop on his house by an armed team, arresting him and taking his wife and daughter to the local station so that the house, and outbuildings, could be searched. Beyers’ house would be also visited and sealed at the same time. The only thing to decide was when Beyer would be arrested.

Gerald was the one who came up with it. I could see that he wanted it to be somewhere public and in the glare of the media coverage. The place that he suggested was a large hall in London. The time was to be a Saturday evening in a month, where the business fraternity would be gathering for a dinner, one to give an award to Beyer. Our politicians would be there, and it would be just the sort of affair that Beyer would love. It was hastily arranged, the hall and caterers booked, and the press alerted.

Invitations were sent out, mainly to the companies that he had been dealing with, along with the politicians and the Commissioner. We had a table near the back, that night, for Cathy, Strachan, Thredbolt and Angela. Strachan brought his wife, while Angela brought Steve, her colleague. The Commissioner and AC were there, at the top table with their wives, as befitting their friendship with our target.

It was a glittering affair, the men all in dinner suits and the women in long dresses. Both Angela and I wore something from Bernices’ collection, with the hope that she would be looking down on us with a smile. The evening went along the usual path, until we got to the end game. The Commissioner and Gerald went up on the stage and Gerald announced that we had now reached the high point of the evening. The Commissioner asked the highest ranked person there, the Minister of Police, to join them to make the award.

The Minister asked Beyer to come up on the stage, and he left his table to some applause. When he was there, alongside them, he had some notes in his hand. The Minister then asked Gerald to say a few words. Gerald stood at the microphone and said, clearly, the words he had been itching to say.

“Jurgen Beyer, or should I say Malcolm Cuthbertson, I arrest you for the murder of Bernard Williamson, on February the thirteenth, this year, at Skegness. Anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence.”

At that, two, armed officers came out from behind the curtains and quickly handcuffed Cuthbertson, who was stunned. They marched him towards the door, and he started shouting that it was all a mistake and that heads would roll. It could have been said that you could have heard a pin drop. Actually, there was a loud thump as his wife fell off her chair in a dead faint. The Minister took the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you that this is not a stunt, I have seen the evidence against Cuthbertson and can tell you that he is going to prison, no doubt of it. We have teams arresting his accomplice as we speak, and a team is now in his business office. All of you who used his accountancy services will be treated fairly so as not to damage your companies. We have confirmed evidence that the man you knew as Jurgen Beyer is, in fact a person called Malcolm Cuthbertson who used the proceeds of a bank robbery to change his records and start his company. I don’t have to remind you that any directorships or other dealings he had will be subject to future misrepresentation and possible fraud charges. There will be a press conference tomorrow, at Scotland Yard. I’m sorry that the night didn’t turn out as you may have expected. Enjoy the desserts and thank you for coming.”

The Commissioner left the stage and came over to our table.

“That’s the hard bit done. Thank you all for your work on this. There are going to be some who would support him, but we had most of his circle here, tonight, and, by the looks of those leaving, I guess that he is going to be crossed off a lot of Christmas card lists.”

We all stayed for the desserts, a full table in an otherwise empty hall. The service was impeccable! Angela, who had been as surprised at the outcome as anyone, hugged us all before leaving with Steve on her arm. Before we left, the AC asked Strachan if he could put together the team at Skegness on Monday morning, as he wanted to thank everyone, personally. Margaret hugged us all before they strode towards the cloakrooms. We finished our glasses with a toast to the team and went off to our hotel rooms, supplied by a grateful Commissioner. Before I left, I looked at the notes that Beyer had been holding, now littering the stage. They had several mentions of him being a self-made man. That was now known to be the total and undeniable truth.

Sunday, the press conference was packed, and the basic evidence was offered, just that we had absolute proof that the man they all knew as Beyer was a fraud, and that there was irrefutable proof that he, and an accomplice, had murdered someone. The team was kept away from the spotlights to do our job. Today, there will be TV vans heading for Skegness and the cafes will do a roaring trade. I knew, from previous cases, that the various police officers involved will be hounded for information and that it all needed to be carefully conserved.

I was back in my own bed on Sunday night, thinking about my own future. I would have to be careful going into the station, so that I don’t get linked to the case. The others would have to fend for themselves. I would take a small bag to bring back my personal effects when I clear my desk. I was happy that we had made the arrests, but sad to see the back of that lovely computer and its links with the world when I left it behind.

It didn’t turn out how I expected, however. I managed to go in the main doors, hiding my lanyard, and found Cathy already in the office. I hugged her and told her that she would be the one at the pointy end, from now on. No more PA in the back room.

When we assembled in the conference room, I was surprised to see the Minister there, along with the Commissioner, AC and Margaret. When we were seated, with another WPC handing out the teas and biscuits, Gerald stood and gave us his heartfelt thanks for our work, which, he then revealed for the first time for many in the room, that caught the murderer of his own daughter. He told us that he had explained his links with the subsequent kidnap and murder cases to the Commissioner and had offered his resignation.

The Commissioner then stood and told us that Gerald’s daughter will not be part of the ongoing cases, and that we had enough with the four cases we did have to make the charges stick. He would allow the AC to retire, on a full pension if he still desired, with the approval of the Minister, who nodded. He stayed on his feet and then shocked everyone, especially me.

“I have been extremely impressed by the way this case has been brought to near fruition, and Chief Superintendent Strachan has briefed me on everyone’s input. I have discussed this with the Minister, and we have agreed that it was extremely brave to go with this case, seeing the high profile of the suspect. There will be promotions coming through the system but there is one thing that the Minister and I agree on. We want to reinstate Detective Sergeant Ibbotson to the force, as a Detective Inspector in charge of a research unit, here in Skegness, with a newly promoted Detective Sergeant Cathy Chatterton, to be our bloodhounds on their computers. The Minister has approved the funds to set it up with the best equipment we can get. This case has shown what can be achieved with the right equipment and lateral thinking. Will you come back on board, Polly?”

I stood and they all looked at me, Cathy with a huge smile.

“As long as Cathy leads in this case, sir, I thank you for the faith in us and I’ll be happy to re-join such a good team as we have here.”

That day, I went back to Boston to see a real estate agent about putting the office and my apartment on the market. I was to start my new job on the following month. I would be spending the time looking for somewhere nice in Skegness. On an Inspector’s salary, I could afford to buy, and I had a good friend in the banking business, who could help me get a mortgage.

Marianne Gregory © 2023