Flawed (15 page)

‘And the guy at the other end of the line must have thought he was kidding because Walsh said,
No, really - I tried to talk to him but he wasn't prepared to be reasonable. So we shot him and tipped him over the side.’

At which point, continued Vernon, Caroline Walsh had happened through the hall, and gave a puzzled smile at the white-faced accountant standing by the office door. So he felt to have no choice but knock, and enter when he was told to.

‘Terry was putting down the phone. He looked surprised to see me. I waved the form and stammered an explanation. He signed it, we said goodbye again and I left. But he was wondering even then. I could tell. Wondering how long I'd been there, how much I'd heard. He knew what he'd been saying on the phone, Mrs Walsh knew I'd been standing outside the door, but neither of them was sure if I could have heard anything through three inches of oak.

‘They must have decided I couldn't, or I doubt I'd be here telling you about it. At the same time, it underlined the risk of
having people around him who weren't on his own payroll. That was when he decided to swap me for a tame accountant whose discretion could be counted on in any circumstances.’

Voss felt as if someone had slapped him round the ear with a sock full of gold-dust. He had to make himself concentrate long enough to finish the interview. ‘But that isn't what he told Mr Findhorn.’

Vernon gave a little snort. ‘Of course it isn't. He accused me of being indiscreet - he said information about his business was reaching his competitors, information that could only have come from me. It wasn't true so of course I denied it. And I tried to tell the old man that Walsh wasn't the kind of business he wanted, but he thought I was trying to wriggle off the hook. I should have told him what I'd heard, but frankly I was scared what Walsh would do if he found out. So Findhorn decided that in fact Walsh was exactly the kind of business he wanted - the profitable kind - but I was the kind of accountant he could do without.’

Nothing Voss knew about the man suggested Terry Walsh would deal with professional competition by shooting his competitors and dumping them in the English Channel. But then, nothing Voss knew had been enough to put Walsh in the prison cell where he richly deserved to be. There was another side to him, darker than the one he showed the world. Darker than the one that involved tricking gullible punters. Dark enough, possibly, to include murder. Voss thought and thought, and didn't know. But he knew someone who might.

All the way back to Dimmock he was weighing the
alternatives. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say he was juggling them.

There were three. To say nothing to Deacon - because this wasn't his case but also because there was now at the back of Voss's mind that nagging unease about Deacon's loyalties and he didn't want his suspicions confirmed. After Alix Hyde went home, with or without Terry Walsh's head in her briefcase, Voss would be Deacon's sergeant again. He hadn't always liked the man but he'd always respected him. He wanted to be able to think it had been a misunderstanding, that Deacon hadn't deliberately let him make a fool of himself over Susan Weekes.

Or he could tell Detective Inspector Hyde what Vernon had said and let her discuss it with Deacon. That got him out of the firing-line, but other than short term it altered nothing. And it introduced an additional complication, in that Deacon and Hyde didn't like one another. The Superintendent was more likely to help Voss than the high-flier from SOCA.

Or he could go direct to Deacon, without saying anything to Hyde first, and say what he'd been told and ask Deacon's opinion. In which case either he'd help or he wouldn't. If he didn't, Voss would never know for sure if this was because he knew nothing helpful or because he didn't want to help. But at least he wouldn't be hearing Deacon's response filtered through Hyde's mistrust. He drew a deep breath, and went and knocked on Deacon's door.

‘Achille Bellow,’ said Deacon, deadpan.

Voss nodded.

‘Achille Bellow, trafficker in drugs, girls for the sex trade and babies for illicit adoptions, whose career came to a
dramatic if fitting end on a Normandy beach this summer. That Achille Bellow?’

Charlie Voss hung onto his patience. ‘That's the one, yes.’

‘And your question is: Did he have a branch office in Dimmock?’

Put like that, it didn't seem terribly likely. But Dimmock was only a dowager duchess on the outside: at heart she was a bit of a floozy. ‘It's not that improbable,’ insisted Voss. ‘The removal of internal European barriers was always going to lead to a kind of Common Market in crime. Hell, we've been arguing for years that we'd need extra funds to combat the spread of Mafia-type operations out of eastern Europe. Operations run by people exactly like Achille Bellow.

‘We know the guy expanded as far as Marseilles. That's only one country removed from here. And England, like France, is the kind of prosperous middle-class state where traffickers want to traffic
to.
They wouldn't make much money smuggling into Romania, would they?’

‘But - Achille Bellow?’ objected Deacon. ‘Achille Bellow setting up shop in Dimmock would be like the Pope turning up as parish priest at St Simeon's, Edgehill.’

‘I expect that's what the chief of detectives in Marseilles said when people first reported seeing Bellow on his manor. He had an operation in France, England was his natural next move. And if he wanted a base in England, why not Dimmock? We're on the south coast, handy to some big ports but probably just off the Interpol radar. I can think of worse places to work from.’

‘I'd have heard about it,’ said Deacon with certainty. ‘Achille Bellow setting up shop in Dimmock? Every villain
from Bournemouth to Dover would have been bleating about it!’

That was a valid point. Every pond has little fish and big fish; but introduce a barracuda and they all get in a flap. ‘So maybe he was doing it the smart way. Working through someone who was already established in the area. A partnership - Bellow's money and contacts, the local guy's setup. We wouldn't necessarily hear about that. At least, not for a while.’

‘The smart way wasn't smart enough to stop him getting killed,’ Deacon pointed out.

‘Well - if he was trying to move into this area, however discreetly, the local thuggery would know about it before we did. They were going to feel it in their pockets. If Bellow was bringing in cut-price working girls, the guys behind our resident toms - Joe Loomis on the one hand and Terry Walsh on the other - were going to notice a drop in profits. They weren't going to be pleased. They might have been displeased enough to do something about it.’

‘Like kill him?’

‘Like kill him,’ agreed Voss. ‘According to my witness, Walsh took Bellow out on his yacht, shot him and dumped him in the sea.’

‘I don't buy it,’ rumbled Deacon. ‘Why Terry? If someone was going to kill someone, Joe's the one with the record of violence. Hell's teeth, we both know that! Terry's a crook -Joe's the thug.’

‘You mean, he's the one we've caught at it.’

Deacon conceded that. ‘Your witness.’ He'd noticed that Voss had avoided giving him a name and made a point of not
asking for one. ‘Does he say he was there when Terry shot Bellow - that he saw it happen?’

‘No. He overheard him boasting about it a few days later.’

Deacon's eyebrows rocketed. ‘Oh come on, Charlie! Terry's certainly a criminal. He just might be a murderer. But a guy who boasts about it in front of people he doesn't know he can trust? He's smarter than that. You
know
he's smarter than that.’

Voss felt the sting of criticism. ‘Maybe smart enough to guess that would be your reaction?’ He saw astonishment in Deacon's eyes and hurried on. ‘Look, I'm asking you because I don't know whether it's plausible or not. You've known Walsh a lot longer than I have. We both know he's a crook -the question is, what kind of a crook? How far would he go?’

‘Not that far,’ insisted Deacon. ‘Not unless he was cornered and fighting for his own survival.’

‘Achille Bellow wasn't a pillar of anyone's community,’ Voss pointed out. ‘He was a nasty and deeply dangerous man. Maybe Walsh thought he
was
fighting for survival.’

Deacon gave an elaborate shrug. ‘I suppose it's possible. Almost anything
can
happen. Most things that could happen don't happen, but some things happen that you wouldn't expect. The Prince Regent's supposed to have slept off a blinder in my house when it was the town jail. I don't know if that's true but I could believe it. I'm not sure I believe that a conflict of interests led Terry Walsh to shoot Achille Bellow and sling him off his boat. And I definitely don't believe that Terry was overheard boasting about it by someone who was then prepared to talk to you. This witness. Is he credible? How much do you know about him? Can you trust what he
says? You're playing with the big boys here, you can't afford to harness your reputation to a flawed witness. Can you put him close enough to Terry to overhear what he says he overheard?’

Voss was circumspect. Just in case…well, just in case. ‘He's a professional man. He was advising Walsh until just after Bellow died, then he was sacked. We have independent confirmation of that.’ Findhorn had furnished him with the date on which Leslie Vernon was paid off.

‘Could that be a motive? Terry fired the guy and he saw a chance to get his own back?’

‘It's a possibility,’ admitted Voss. ‘Another is that Terry realised he'd had a close call and got rid of him before he overheard something that could be proved.’

‘So it's just one man's story? There's no corroboration?’

‘Not yet. But then, I haven't started looking. If Terry took Bellow out on his boat, someone may have seen them. If I can come up with a good enough reason I can get
The Salamander
checked for fingerprints and DNA.’

‘After eight months?’ Deacon knew it was possible. He also knew it was harder than the cop-shows make it look. If Walsh was the man they all suspected, he knew how to clean up after himself. ‘I wouldn't count on it.’

‘Because Walsh wouldn't kill Bellow? Or because he wouldn't leave any evidence that he'd killed Bellow?’

Deacon was getting exasperated. ‘Charlie, I don't know. If you were asking about an innocent bystander or the proprietor of a corner shop, I'd be pretty sure Terry hadn't killed them. Achille Bellow? – maybe. If he was ever here at all, and if he was muscling in on Terry's territory – maybe. We
know Bellow washed up on a beach across the Channel from here, and we know Terry has a boat. But…’ Deacon's eyes narrowed.

‘I'll tell you what the problem is, Charlie Voss. There's nothing clever about it. You grab your competitor, shoot him and dump him in the sea – yes, sure, pretty effective, but anyone could do it. From Terry I'd have expected something…more elegant.’

Now Voss's eyebrows climbed. ‘Elegant?’

‘Elegant,’ insisted Deacon.

Voss pursed his lips. ‘You've known Terry Walsh since you were boys. Maybe, deep down, you still think of him as a street-urchin with an eye to the main chance. But you grew up, and so did he. Maybe he's been playing rougher than you know for a while. Hell, we never managed to prove
anything -
why would we get lucky with murder? That doesn't mean he hasn't gone that far. This may not even be the first time.’

There was a steely edge to Deacon's voice. ‘You think, because I underestimated him, he's been getting away with murder?’

‘That wasn't what I said!’ But actually, it wasn't far from what he meant. ‘Chief, I don't know any more than you do. I've been given a lead and I have to follow it up. Before I started, I wanted to know if it sounded feasible to you or not.’

‘And I've told you,’ growled Deacon. ‘No, it doesn't. Not really.’

‘OK then,’ said Voss.

‘OK.’

When Voss got back from Worthing he checked what Vernon had told him with the one source he could think of that might be able to confirm it. And came up trumps. There was a glow in his eyes and a kind of suppressed excitement in his voice when he hurried round to DI Hyde's office.

‘I called the marina. Apparently, people file the equivalent of a flight-plan when they're going to be out overnight. It's a safety measure – it means someone would be missed if he didn't turn up where he said he was going to be around the time he said he was going to be there. Terry Walsh filed a sailing-plan for
The Salamander
for the weekend June 24
^th
to 26
^th
. He said he was heading over to Le Havre.’

‘Which is a distance of…?’

‘Less than a hundred miles,’ said Voss. ‘
Salamander
would do it under power in a day. Breakfast in Dimmock, supper in Normandy.’

‘Is there a record of who was on the boat?’ asked Alix Hyde, watching him closely.

‘Not a list of names, no.’ He hadn't finished: she kept watching. He referred back to his notebook. ‘They have it down as
Mr Walsh and guest, crew of three.’

‘Guest,’ echoed Alix Hyde.

‘That's what it says, yes.’

‘And Achille Bellow was found dead on June 26
^th
.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where, exactly?’

‘Midway between Le Havre and Dieppe.’

‘And is that feasible?’

The marina was run by experts, people with vast experience of boats and tides and weather conditions. Voss had quizzed them until he was sure of his facts. ‘If Achille Bellow was on
The Salamander
when she left Dimmock at eight-fifteen a.m. on June 24
^th
, he could have been well on his way to Spain by the 26
^th
. She's a serious sea-going yacht: she regularly makes passages between here and the Mediterranean. Terry could have taken Bellow back to the Balkans if he'd wanted to. He could sure as hell have taken him halfway to France.’

Detective Inspector Hyde looked like a woman who was trying not to get too excited. ‘So we have Walsh and a guest sailing for northern France two days before Bellow's found dead on a beach in northern France. It doesn't prove Vernon heard what he says he heard, but it certainly suggests he may have done.’