Rest Assured (28 page)

It was the one with the thinner face who said, ‘You're lucky, Mr Martindale. We have watched your efforts and we like what we have seen. You sell well and you sell quickly. And you know how to keep your mouth firmly shut. You realize the importance of silence in our work. If the police of this land ever question you, you will have the sense to keep completely silent.'

It was an injunction as well as a compliment. The man spoke good English, but with the light lilt and soft consonants which betrayed his origin. George said, ‘I'm happy where I am. I'm happy to take what I get and to ask no questions. I don't need more money and I don't think I can handle promotion. I'm not good at authority.'

It was the best excuse he could offer at short notice. He'd tried to deliver it with a smile, but had signally failed in that. There was no smile from the stony faces opposite him. The thin face said coldly, ‘You do not have a choice. You would be very unwise to refuse this splendid offer. The man who controls us and who controls you will not be pleased if you refuse.' He picked the words and spoke them carefully, as if he wished to be precise in a second language.

Martindale looked at him steadily, striving to reveal nothing of the fear he felt. He tried to pick his words as carefully as the Asian had. ‘I have a full-time job with the council. I have just been promoted in that. It is important that I carry on with this legitimate work, if the police are not to suspect what I do when I am away from it.'

‘I expect that is so. Legitimate work is important. But the other work you do is so much more lucrative, eh?' The narrow features smiled a mirthless smile, denoting that he had made a kind of joke.

‘I thought I'd been doing all right. I'm shifting the stuff. I could do more coke, if you want me to. And Rohypnol. I could—'

‘Ah, Rohypnol, yes. The sex drug is always in demand, is it not?' The man behind the desk laughed outright at the thought, but it was not a happy sound. His voice hardened. ‘You have done well with the drugs. Now the master has in mind a more ambitious role for you. You would be most unwise to refuse it.'

George said desperately, ‘I don't know Bristol. I wouldn't be anything like as effective operating here as on the patch I know. I really—'

‘You will not be operating in Bristol, Mr Martindale. You have been brought here solely to be briefed on this new and exciting assignment. The people you select and groom for us will be operating in the Oxford area. But you do not need to know that area, either. You would be a supplier. You would recruit in your own area.'

‘Recruit?' An even deeper shadow fell across George's mind. ‘I don't want to bring in other people to sell drugs. I wouldn't—'

‘Not drugs, Mr Martindale.' There was both impatience and contempt in the man's tone. ‘There is one industry which all British men and some British women find more irresistible than drugs. Sex, George. They can't get enough of it. So it's up to us to supply the goods, don't you think? We're businessmen, aren't we, and we must meet the demand.'

‘I don't know anything about the sex industry. And I'd be no good working in it. I—'

‘We supply what is needed, George.' It was as if Martindale had not spoken. ‘We give people what they want. And what they want is girls. The younger the better. They have to be prepared, of course. Grooming, it's called. But we do most of that. You supply the goods and we'll present them to the customers. The younger the better, George. We have more control of the young ones. We find that they do whatever we ask them to do without too many complaints.' He looked at the broader-faced man beside him and they exchanged knowing smiles. ‘Kamar here has groomed a few in his time. Thoroughly enjoyed the process, I believe.' This time the smiles became sniggers.

‘But I simply wouldn't be any good at this. I've never—'

‘You black blokes have a great reputation, haven't you? Big dongers, everyone says. But we haven't time now for you to demonstrate that, George. We're here on business. And business says we need black girls in our sexual portfolio. There's a demand for them, see? It's a niche market, black girls. But a lucrative one: you'd be surprised how many white and brown men want to try a black girl. Maybe lots of times, or maybe just once, to see if they really do go like steam engines! No offence intended, and none taken, I'm sure. But you're being offered a great opportunity here, George. You'll be in on the ground floor. You'll supply us with, say, half a dozen black girls, to start with, and then there's no knowing where you might go. We'll give you guidance, to get you started. There must be black girls in a care home somewhere near you: that's always a good place to start. A dozen next year, then maybe twenty or thirty. You could eventually have other people working for you. The sky's the limit. We aim to supply all tastes.'

Martindale tried not to show the revulsion which was rising within him. Any sign of weakness would be a mistake with these men. He was sure of that, but of nothing else in this nightmare scenario. He fought down his nausea and said, ‘I haven't the contacts. I wouldn't be any use to you in this sort of—'

There was a sudden tremendous noise on the stairs he had recently climbed so carefully. Then the door was kicked open, so violently that it crashed against the wall beside it, and a voice yelled, ‘Don't move. Stay exactly where you are!' The light which now suddenly blazed into the dimly lit room was blinding. Yet Martindale was conscious only of the black muzzles of the two weapons in the doorway: he could see nothing of the men behind them. The voice said, ‘You are under arrest. Lie flat on the ground on your bellies. Move slowly. Any attempt at resistance could result in your being shot.'

They were handcuffed and frisked. The plump Asian was relieved of a pistol, the thin one of a wicked-looking knife. George Martindale was flung with them into the police van.

His arrest brought to him a strange feeling of relief.

J
ohn Lambert gave the murder team their assignments for the day, then called DI Rushton and DS Hook into his improvised office at Twin Lakes.

‘New developments overnight. George Martindale was arrested in Bristol last night. It's part of the investigation into a sex-crimes ring based in Oxford. They think it has connections with the gangs already exposed in Rochdale and Telford and Derby. Vulnerable teenage girls being taken from other places and touted around the back streets of Oxford, as well as subjected to all kinds of other abuse. It's well organized: men are travelling by prior arrangement from considerable distances and paying big sums for their pleasures.'

‘And Martindale was involved in this?' Bert Hook could not keep the surprise out of his voice.

‘He was arrested with two of the Asians who've been directing operations and have been watched now for many months.' He glanced at Rushton. ‘Mark Patmore was working undercover and was instrumental in exposing all this. He's now been withdrawn and sent to a safe house well away from his scene of operations.'

Chris Rushton said curtly, ‘He's a good man, Mark Patmore. I couldn't do the things he's done.'

He had trained with Patmore many years earlier. They had been companions in distress during the rigours of cadetship, had compared notes on the problems presented to them and the ridiculous expectations of the powers that be. They had kept in touch for a while after they had become full-time officers, united by the common experience of training and their early-career steps in the police service. But they had been very different personalities. Rushton's determination to play by the rules and take the logical route to an inspector's job had contrasted with Patmore's more maverick and unpredictable approach to authority and to the whole ethos of police work.

Lambert grinned. ‘Not many people could do the things Patmore's done, Chris. Under-cover work demands a special kind of personality. You have to be brave and resourceful. You could manage that. You also have to be unscrupulous at times, and it helps if you're not quite sane. You and I wouldn't be much good at that.'

Chris felt consoled by the great man's words. He had always envied the initiative, resourcefulness and naked courage of men like Patmore. They made him feel very puny. Chris was intelligent, very thorough, and he had an absolute integrity which Lambert recognized and valued but never mentioned. Rushton was dimly conscious of his own strengths, but they seemed very humdrum against those of his erstwhile colleague. It takes all sorts, he told himself unconvincingly.

He addressed himself determinedly to his own problems. ‘So we now know that Martindale's a villain. Can we add murder here to what he's been up to elsewhere?' There was satisfaction in his voice: he hadn't taken to the popular George Martindale, the family man who was so extrovert and approachable as to be almost the opposite of how Chris saw himself.

‘We shall keep an open mind on that. We don't know exactly what he's going to be charged with yet. He's admitted to being a small-time drugs dealer, but nothing more as yet. Apparently Mark Patmore, who's been getting nearer and nearer to this sex-grooming ring over the last six months, knows nothing about Martindale and has never come across him before. He thinks the men involved might have been trying to recruit him, but that's still to be established. I've had a long conversation with the Serious Crime Investigation superintendent down in Bristol and explained exactly where we are up to in a murder investigation here. He's agreed to release Martindale on bail and send him back here. He was a little reluctant, but I think he's far more interested in the two Asians who were arrested with him.'

Rushton reflected that there were advantages after all in having a celebrity detective in charge of your team, however reluctant John Lambert might be to accept that role. ‘Last night's arrest and questioning should have softened the bugger up for you. You might get a confession out of him today.'

‘Only if he did it. We shall keep the open mind I mentioned.' Lambert felt very priggish with his iteration of that principle. ‘The Serious Crime Unit superintendent gave me some much more interesting information. They think that Richard Seagrave is one of the big men behind this sex-grooming business, which has been going on in northern and midland towns as well as Oxford. There's big money in it, but there's also big money needed to set it up. It sounds like the most evil and despicable business you could envisage and the network is extensive and efficient. It's needed brains to set the whole thing up and money to finance it. Seagrave has both. He also strikes me as completely amoral. Does that sound like a better candidate for murder than Martindale?'

‘Definitely. But of course we must keep an open mind.' Rushton didn't make many jokes. He wasn't even sure that this repetition of Lambert's injunction qualified as a joke, but he'd enjoyed it. ‘We've checked the alibis of everyone else on site. Unless we care to assume a mass conspiracy, your suspects are confined to the ones you've been concentrating on. Which means the people that Walter Keane was trying to blackmail. Have you managed to eliminate any of them?'

Lambert looked at the silent Hook, then shook his head. ‘We plan to see Martindale and Seagrave again today. Wally seems to have known as much about Seagrave as the Serious Crime Squad. Of course, they have to prove things, whereas Wally could operate on mere suspicion. It looks as if he succeeded in taking Seagrave for a very large sum of money.'

‘Which would also be highly dangerous, from Wally's point of view. Seagrave isn't the sort who'd meekly accept paying out money to a blackmailer.' Bert Hook spoke up for the first time. He knew whom he favoured for the killer, whatever John Lambert said about open minds.

Lambert nodded. ‘Seagrave says he spent all the key hours of Friday night with his partner, Vanessa Norton. Whatever we think about alibis provided by spouses and partners, they're very difficult to break.'

Bert frowned. ‘A man like Seagrave doesn't do his own dirty work. He has people to do it for him.'

‘True enough. But this death doesn't on the surface look like one perpetrated by a contract killer or professional muscle. This looks like something improvised on the spot – perhaps whoever met Keane on Friday night didn't initially intend to kill him. The victim was hit over the head and strung up on a rope, which was almost certainly already on site. The bullet through the back of the head is more the method of the man or men hired to kill.'

Rushton said thoughtfully, ‘You're right about that. The MO in this death looks like the work of an amateur.'

Lambert nodded thoughtfully. ‘We're almost all of us amateurs when it comes to killing, Chris. It's possible that even Seagrave, whom we now know as a vicious criminal, has never killed a man himself before. He has other people to do his dirty work.'

Rushton frowned. ‘What do you think of the idea that this killing could be a joint effort? Most of the people you've been interviewing are paired. Most of them had a joint interest in seeing Keane off the face of the earth.'

‘That's true. The pairs who are providing each other with alibis are also possible joint murderers.'

‘And with most of the pairings, at least one of them seems capable of violence. Martindale and Seagrave we already know about. Jason Ramsbottom almost killed a man when he was much younger and is clearly desperate that he shouldn't lose his wife and family. Freda Potts has her marriage and her career at stake after sleeping with one of her pupils, and her husband is SAS trained, which means he has been taught how to kill. Tiler and Norrington don't have a history of violence, but they are very concerned to conceal Norrington's past abuses under another name. If we accept the idea that whoever met Keane on Friday night didn't initially intend murder, one or both of these two might be the likeliest candidates.'