The Wharf Butcher (2 page)

Chapter Three

Several weeks later

David Carlisle’s morning wasn’t getting any easier. It had started to snow, and a biting cold wind was blowing straight in off the North Sea. He’d not felt this cold in a long while. Wearing a thick woolly hat, a Nanavik black Parka Jacket, frayed jeans, scarf, gloves and a sturdy pair of leather gun boots, he was chilled to the marrow. His hat now pulled down over his ears, Carlisle arched his athletic frame against the raw biting wind, and glanced out across the River Tyne. The temperature had plummeted rapidly over the past twenty-four hours; it was now minus two. When he spoke, his warm breath condensed into tiny water vapour droplets, sending out thick clouds of white fog. Everything seemed surreal.

Earlier that morning, a police helicopter attending a road traffic incident had spotted a submerged vehicle lying in four metres of water. Close to Dunston Staithes and barely visible from the road, this was the fifth vehicle incident the police had dealt with in as many days. Although the tide was out, the River Tyne was still heavily swollen. Less than a week ago, most of the surrounding fields had been under three-foot of water and a major clean-up was now in operation. The whole area had been cordoned off from public view, with several police vehicles parked up at either end of the approach road.

Fast approaching forty-two, David Carlisle had never intended to be a private investigator: it had happened by chance. Having studied Behavioural Psychology at The Open University, he’d joined the Metropolitan Police, working his way up to Detective Sergeant. Most of his time had been spent busting drugs rings, prostitution and small-time smuggling syndicates in and around the city limits. It was nothing exciting, mainly repetitious and at times utterly frustrating work. After his selection to the Murder Investigation Team (MIT), the job came naturally to him. Starting at the bottom as a criminal psychologist, he soon found himself involved in hunting down psychopaths, serial killers and the occasional hostage-taker who threatened National Security. It was a hazardous job but he’d managed to stay focused, building a reputation as a risk-taker, which suited the senior backroom staff.

Sadly, a bunch of Westminster politicians – the infamous men in grey suits with very few brains and no respect for the subtle differences of national identity – finally put paid to it all. Within weeks, his tightly-knit team had been unceremoniously disbanded in favour of a multi-national force. Transferred to the Northumbria police, he spent his next five years stagnating. It was soul destroying, and Carlisle hated every minute of it. When voluntary redundancies came along, he was the first in the queue to apply. It was then he’d teamed up with his current business partner, Jane Collins. Having set up office together in the heart of South Shields, it was nothing ambitious, just enough to earn them a decent living – or that was the theory.

Chatting to PC Manning from Gateshead police, Carlisle suddenly spotted the reappearance of the police launch. Five minutes earlier, two divers from the River Police Team had plunged from the side of it, and into the sub-zero depths of the river. Wearing specialist breathing apparatus and blue wetsuits, they’d trawled the riverbed ever since.

Then one of them broke surface.

‘Anything?’ an officer called out.

The diver gave a thumb up signal, and pointed down at the murky waters below. All eyes now turned towards the large Atlas crane, as its long orange boom arm slowly swung out over the river. When its hook reached out directly above the diver’s head, it stopped with a loud clunk. Suddenly, the riverbank was a hive of activity.

Drawn up alongside the Atlas crane, the driver of the Mercedes Sprinter recovery truck began positioning his two rear tail ramps. After checking the winching gear, he laid out a series of straps down either side of his truck. Dressed in their distinctive yellow high visibility jackets, several road traffic officers gazed on in anticipation. One of them, the senior officer, began dishing out instructions to the crane driver. Nearby, Carlisle picked out the portly figure of Carl Jones, the crime scene photographer. Standing beside him was the smartly dressed Sharon Dexter, a new member of the Forensics Team. As the crane-driver winched the submerged vehicle from the bottom of the river, anticipation levels heightened. Boot first: two thick yellow lifting straps had been attached to its rear axle. Suspended out above the river, murky brown water now poured out from every available orifice. The car’s roof was flattened, and both passenger doors appeared badly buckled and dented.

An image formed in his head. Carlisle detested water, especially fast flowing water. Ever since his beautiful wife Jackie had been taken away from him in a tragic, freak ferry accident, he had struggled to come to terms with her loss. Only now was he coming out of the fog.

Still grappling with his emotions, he spotted Sergeant Kevin Morrison, one of the old-school Road Traffic Officers, moving towards him.

‘What brings you to this neck of the woods, my friend?’ the Sergeant asked.

‘Certainly not the weather,’ Carlisle replied.

The Sergeant flapped his arms about in a vain attempt to keep warm. Standing six-foot two, Kevin Morrison was a good four inches taller than him.

‘What a mess!’ the Sergeant said, pointing up at the mangled Mondeo.

‘How long has it been in the water?’

‘A few weeks I suspect, it’s hard to say.’

As the police launch pushed back in the water, all kinds of emotions tugged at him. Trying to solve a crime scene was hard enough, but the emotional strain was even worse. Why must he always blame himself for his wife’s death? It wasn’t his fault, surely. Feeling sick in the pit of stomach, he took another deep breath.

‘How’s business nowadays?’ the Sergeant asked.

‘Money’s tight, and I could do with a few good cases–– ’

The Sergeant returned his notebook to his jacket pocket, and stared up at the Mondeo. Now stationary, the car’s grille was ignominiously pointing back at the river. Water now trickling out from the radiator grille, the bonnet lid clanked in the breeze.

‘Does Jane Collins still work with you?’ the Sergeant asked.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘It’s just that I’ve seen her at Police Headquarters a lot lately.’

The Sergeant was in a talkative mood, informing him that an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) had already been carried out on the Mk3 Ford Mondeo. Reported stolen in Gateshead, its occupant was wanted in connection with a murder concerning a forty-six year old male. Whoever Ernest Stanton was, he’d been viciously stabbed to death in a frenzied knife attack at his home in North Shields.

They chatted a while, before the Sergeant’s radio crackled into life again. Answering the caller, he gave him a friendly salute and moved off towards the recovery truck. Over the years David Carlisle had got used to the dead being described as ‘celebrities’– it came with the job. Yesterday’s headlines were tomorrow’s history as far as he was concerned. Staring up at the wreckage again, he was half expecting a body to slide out through the open passenger door. Some things never changed; he could never take anything for granted nowadays. Soon forensics would be crawling all over the place, picking up the pieces and looking for the minutest scrap of evidence. Somehow he doubted they’d find much in the way of DNA samples. The river had made certain of that.

Bracing himself against the cold, Carlisle checked his surroundings before moving back towards his parked car. It was strange how some people spent their entire lives avoiding trouble, whilst others got more than their fair share of it. That was the way of the world, life was a lottery and if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Times were hard and money was tight. Had it not been for a recent spate of petty crimes, his business would surely have gone into liquidation. It was a bizarre state of affairs, and the irony never ceased to amaze him.

It was mid-afternoon when he finally pulled his Rover P4 100 into the last available parking space at the back of the office building. It had stopped snowing, and a low wintery sun was casting long slanting shadows well into the heart of Beach Road. An observant man, Carlisle watched as a heavy roller shutter door came down on another day’s trading. Like most shopkeepers around here, they were struggling just to pay the extortionate council rents that were being meted out. And that was another thing: they were already three months in arrears themselves. What a mess, he cursed.

Opening up the office, he made coffee, answered a few e-mails and checked for missed phone calls. Not that he was expecting any, but at least it made him feel wanted.

‘I’m back!’ the female voice called out.

Carlisle turned sharply away from the window and back towards the open door where his partner, Jane Collins, now stood.

‘Ah! It’s you, Jane.’

‘Who else were you expecting to see?’ she teased.

Carlisle looked up. ‘The last thing I need right now is someone with a sense of humour. I’m chilled to the bone, having stood around all morning in the perishing cold.’

Jane slid her long elegant frame further into the office, running the flat of her hand down over the front of her dress as if to remove the creases. She was an extremely attractive woman, mid-thirties with long blonde shoulder length hair, deep blue eyes and a slim waistline that gave her the look of a model. If nothing else, her feminine touch had certainly brought another dimension to their ailing business. The clients loved her, she was a natural attraction. Single, Jane’s latest admirers – two Siamese cats lovingly saved from the local cat rescue centre – were the love of her life.

‘Before I forget,’ said Jane, ‘another client phoned, desperately in need of legal advice.’

More like the dregs of society, Carlisle thought, taking another sip of his coffee. Evading further questioning, he moved towards a large bay window and peered down at the busy street below. It was 3.46pm. Soon it would be dark. Apart from an appointment involving a false insurance claim, he had nothing else pencilled in his diary that day. There was, of course, his regular five o’clock Monday appointment with Mr Smallman, a ninety year old flamboyant bachelor who claimed his partner was having an affair with the chairman of the local squash club. He cringed at the thought.

It had been twelve months since their last major assignment. A vicious love triangle, as he recalled. Boy meets girl – girl disappears under mysterious circumstances – and doting father asks them for help. In the end, it turned out that girl left boy to live with her girlfriend. Not only did she fake her own disappearance, she did a damn good job of convincing everyone else into the bargain. Luckily, the girl’s father was a rich industrialist and his daughter’s timely disappearance had undoubtedly saved their business from bankruptcy.

‘So, where have you been?’

‘Dunston,’ he replied. ‘The police there have just pulled another car out of the river.’

‘Did they say whose?’

‘No, just that it was stolen.’

‘That sucks!’ Jane said. ‘It was someone’s pride and joy no doubt.’

‘Apparently the car was involved in a murder . . . a guy called Ernest Stanton.’

Jane stopped in her tracks. ‘If it’s the same Stanton that I’m thinking of, he was a real nasty piece of work. Wasn’t he recently acquitted for fraud?’

Then the penny dropped. Of course, Ernest Stanton had been involved in a massive fraud scam involving Flood Defence contracts. Having witnessed first-hand that morning the terrible devastation of nature’s wrath, how could he have overlooked that? Nothing, it seemed, was sacred in humanity’s desperate struggle against the ravages of global climate change. Whole communities were being swept away by flooding. It was a massive problem, and one in which the Government was willing to throw vast sums of money at in search of a solution. As Carlisle remembered, Ernest Stanton had made a small fortune out of other people’s misery. Working for the Environment Agency, he was notoriously known for taking back handers. Everyone knew the score, but proving it was another matter. Stanton’s untimely death had come as no surprise. Even to the police. No wonder they’d kept a tight lid on things earlier that morning.

Without giving it another thought, he closed down the lid of his computer and shuffled a few papers around on an untidy desk.

‘Tell me,’ said Jane. ‘What were the police hoping to find after the car had lain at the bottom of the river for weeks?’

‘Not a lot, I would imagine.’

‘I wonder who killed him.’

‘God knows!’

Carlisle took another sip of his coffee, and casually glanced down at the neatly folded newspaper laid across his desk. His attention was drawn to a short article tucked away in the small print, concerning the recent cold weather snap. As if he needed reminding. His legs were numb, and his back was still aching from having stood around all morning in the freezing cold.

‘So how did your meeting go?’ he asked.

‘I was wondering when you were going to get round to that,’ Jane said, looking somewhat miffed. Her eyes engaged with his for just a fraction longer than necessary, a warning signal. It was time to sit up and listen. ‘A friend of mine was saying there’s been an awful lot of change taking place at Police Headquarters. They’re reorganising the place . . . shuffling people around.’

‘Did your friend say why?’ he asked.

Jane straightened. ‘Seemingly, it’s all down to the recent government cutbacks. My friend’s husband is having a dreadful time of it. According to her, something very hush-hush is going on. They’ve drafted in several new faces apparently, specialist people, not your ordinary run of the mill coppers.’