Written in Blood Page 17

  None of the other customers paid him any attention.

  The waitress came back a second time. Drake offered the same excuse and glanced at his watch again. Ten minutes were almost up. Norman Turnbull would have to stop this cloak-and-dagger stuff if he wanted to be serious.

  Drake made to leave as his mobile rang.

  It was the same number again. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

  ‘Seashore Café in ten minutes.’

  Drake protested but it was pointless. The line was dead. He left the café and got back to his car. The Seashore Café occupied a small booth, no more than a kiosk really, on the seafront. His irritation with Norman Turnbull built to the point that unless the journalist appeared immediately Drake wasn’t going to wait around.

  He passed the Seashore Café, staring at every stationary car along the promenade. Turnbull had sounded tense, so Drake searched for somebody who looked hunted, troubled by the weight of the world. He parked a little distance away and took his time to walk over to the café. The proprietor was setting out metal tables and chairs outside, clearly hoping to encourage custom. Drake tapped out a message on his mobile to Turnbull’s number. ‘You’ve got two minutes to arrive.’

  The café was empty. A woman behind the counter smiled at him, encouraging him to order. He trotted out his explanation about waiting for someone. He pulled out a stool from under a bench near the window and waited.

  Moments later Norman Turnbull appeared, a disturbed, agitated look on his face, his eyes darting back and forth. His round, open face hadn’t seen a razor recently; his clothes were dishevelled, as though he had slept in them. A battered canvas satchel hung over his shoulder.

  ‘Have you ordered?’ Turnbull said after demanding to inspect Drake’s warrant card.

  Drake shook his head and asked for a two-shot Americano. Turnbull rejoined Drake after ordering.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ Drake said.

  ‘I wanted to be certain.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I had to be certain you’d be alone. I don’t trust anyone.’

  ‘So why trust me?’

  The question floored Turnbull. He sagged. ‘I don’t have a choice.’

  Their coffees arrived, and Turnbull took a hungry mouthful. The caffeine hit settled the journalist.

  ‘I’ve been investigating Tom Levine and his business dealings over the years. He was a gangster, a thoroughly disreputable evil person.’

  ‘So, you won’t shed a tear at his passing?’

  Turnbull gave Drake a sharp, reproachful glance. ‘You’ve got no idea.’

  Drake needed an explanation. ‘What do you mean?’

  Turnbull ran the back of his hand over his mouth. He gave the staff in the café a glance, ensuring that none of them were paying them any attention.

  ‘Tom Levine has dabbled in various nefarious activities for years.’ Turnbull’s quiet voice trailed off. ‘He got into property development using a Midas touch to buy up tenanted homes cheaply. He then gives the tenants notice to quit and if they become awkward; he has a legion of unsavoury thugs to make life difficult for them. Eventually they decide to give up and leave.’

  ‘Was he ever reported to the police or local authorities for that sort of intimidation?’

  Turnbull raised a finger. ‘That’s where it gets interesting. The local authorities were in his back pocket, or certainly the officers involved in enforcing the regulations he broke. And he was always on very good terms with police officers, in particular one Laura Wixley.’

  Drake didn’t respond. Reference to Deputy Chief Constable Wixley made it more compelling to hear Turnbull out.

  ‘Levine owns a string of nightclubs and I’m convinced Nicholas Wixley was involved as an investor in Levine’s business.’

  Now he had Drake’s complete attention.

  Turnbull continued. ‘There was a case a few years ago when the vice squad in Manchester were looking into a prostitution ring being organised by Tom Levine through one of his nightclubs. The rumour was that Levine brought in girls from Eastern Europe.’

  ‘Do you mean he was trafficking women into Manchester?’ Drake gave his voice a steely tone.

  ‘I never got that far with my investigation. The vice squad inquiry never got anywhere. The whole thing was closed down because of operational priorities, resources having to be reallocated. Tom Levine was in the clear and from the intelligence I gathered he cleaned up his act. It helped of course that Laura Wixley was the officer in charge. She made it go away, she made certain that any possible embarrassment from her husband being involved with Tom Levine would never see the light of day.’

  ‘Can you substantiate any of this?’

  Turnbull reached down for the satchel. It had a large canvas flap that he unbuckled to produce a green folder. He held it tightly by both hands.

  ‘This is part of the file I have. There are details of the companies Tom Levine owns. Nicholas Wixley was involved directly in one as a ‘general counsel’. Go after the money – there’ll be cash coming into Nicholas Wixley’s bank accounts from Levine.’

  ‘If Tom Levine is dead why are you so worried?’

  ‘The Levine family have lots of friends, lots of associates and no doubt plenty of reasons to avoid me printing stories about them.’

  Turnbull pushed the folder over at Drake. ‘I made copies of everything on a memory stick. I don’t trust computers. They could easily hack into my computer and destroy everything.’

  ‘There’s no way I can use any of this information unless I can get evidence.’

  Turnbull nodded, as though he had been prepared for this question. ‘There is a detective sergeant, former detective sergeant I should say; he’s retired.’

  He reached for his mobile and, finding a number, scribbled on a Post-it note from his satchel. ‘His name is Jack Warmbrunn. He’s expecting your call. And you should be aware that it’s one of Tom Levine’s limited companies that owns the office building occupied by Britannia Chambers.’

  ‘Why would Mrs Wixley want to kill Tom Levine?’

  ‘He was the last person that could have embarrassed her. You probably know that she wants to be a chief constable more than anything else in the world. It consumes her; it’s her mission in life not to take orders from anyone. And with her husband out of the way any embarrassment he causes has disappeared. I’m guessing Tom Levine has a detailed folder on all the Wixley family shenanigans.’

  Drake nodded. Turnbull had anticipated the question.

  ‘All you have to do is extract a confession from her.’

  It amazed Drake that Turnbull could contemplate such a possibility. When Turnbull left, Drake sat for a moment, a heavy shadow dragging its way into his mind, that Laura Wixley was involved somehow.

  Chapter 27

  Friday 4th April

  9.30 am

  Drake arrived back at headquarters, his mind on edge. He made straight for the board, ignoring the greetings that followed him from the team.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Norman Turnbull. He’s the journalist on the Stockport Times who ran a story on Levine.’

  ‘Did he have anything useful?’ Sara said.

  Drake tapped Nicholas Wixley’s photograph. ‘We need to trace the person in the red car urgently. She was with him the night he died. She could be the killer and perhaps she even killed Levine too.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to all of the shops who stock the Michael Jason brand,’ Luned said. ‘No luck so far but there are members of staff that I haven’t been able to contact. They should be available on Monday.’

  Drake responded, still gazing at the board. ‘Make it a priority.’

  He turned his attention to the image of Levine next to Wixley. Both men were connected through the business Levine ran selling courses to aspiring property millionaires.

  Drake sat down at the nearest desk and scanned the team’s faces, bringing to mind his meeting with Cornwell the previous afternoon. ‘I think Cornwell was a
loner despite what Ramsbottom thought. He looked surprised when we mentioned David Eaton, and the suggestion he needed an accomplice riled him.’

  ‘So do we ignore the Zavier Cornwell link? Do you think it was a copycat killing?’

  It seemed the likeliest solution. ‘We put the Cornwell link to one side.’ Drake got up and moved Cornwell’s image to the far side of the board. He was still part of the investigation but for now he’d be in the shadows.

  Drake’s gaze drifted down to the face of Laura Wixley before he retook his seat at the desk.

  ‘We don’t know where Laura Wixley was on the night her husband died.’

  ‘Or the night Levine was killed,’ Luned added.

  ‘So, we need to know why she was evasive about her whereabouts. Turnbull suggested she covered up her husband’s involvement with Levine and that she would do anything for promotion. I’m going to requisition the City of Manchester force’s file. It might make interesting reading.’

  Drake turned to face the other images on the board. ‘Selston was in the sailing club the night Levine was murdered and we know that he hated Wixley, who was appointed ahead of him as a judge. He is an odd character…’ Drake glanced at the image of Wixley and his university friends that Mrs Thorpe cherished. ‘I wonder what went on between them at university. We didn’t get to the bottom of their relationship.’

  Drake left the Incident Room, dumped Turnbull’s folder on the desk and rang the operational support department of the City of Manchester police force, who raised little objection to Drake’s request for the Levine file. As SIO he could requisition any file from any police force. Asking for it to be available that morning met with a sharp intake of breath and initial prevarication.

  ‘This is a murder inquiry,’ Drake reprimanded the person at the other end of the telephone. The real reason for the urgency was to ensure that nobody had the opportunity to warn Deputy Chief Constable Wixley that the WPS was poking around into the Levine file. ‘I’m sure I won’t have to take it up with Detective Chief Superintendent Roxburgh.’ Drake quoted the name of the senior officer in charge of the department whose identity an initial telephone enquiry had given him.

  Drake bellowed through the door of his office into the Incident Room once a time had been arranged. ‘Gareth, get in here.’

  Seconds later Winder stood on the threshold. ‘I need you and Luned to collect a file from the City of Manchester police force headquarters. And call this former officer.’ He held up a scribbled note with the number for Warmbrunn, Turnbull’s contact. See if you can track him down and find out what he has to say.’

  Winder turned on his heels and raised his voice at Luned as he made for the door. A telephone call to Superintendent Price’s secretary organised a briefing meeting later that afternoon. ‘And you’d better invite Andy Thorsen, the senior Crown prosecutor,’ Drake said to Price’s secretary.

  Drake sat back in his chair. Turnbull had certainly made him think. Clearly, something frightened Turnbull. Was it Laura Wixley? She came across as a tough, uncompromising senior manager. But was that really enough to justify making her a suspect and not merely a person of interest?

  Before starting, he adjusted the photograph of Helen and Megan a few millimetres, tidied the columns of Post-it notes, reminding him of telephone calls he had to make. Drake began with a pile of photographs. He flicked through dozens of different images of strangers in the street, sitting at table in cafés and talking around restaurant tables, and there was even a set of a man feeding birds in a leafy square. Drake examined the back, but Turnbull hadn’t been as fastidious as Mrs Thorpe with noting names. All Drake had was the date stencilled in one corner of the front of the image.

  Discarding the images to one side, Drake thumbed his way through various newspaper clippings and financial reports from Companies House. Turnbull had made spider diagrams on sheets of paper, marking sections in yellow and pink highlighting. It was impossible to make sense of all the interconnecting information – only Turnbull could explain the detail.

  In a plastic envelope Drake found a portable memory stick and he plugged it into his computer. He found more photographs. Hundreds of them. And then he noticed a folder entitled ‘Wixleys’. He clicked it open and found dozens more images of Nicholas and Laura Wixley. Some featured both of them in meetings and there was one with Wixley alongside Levine on a stage with a large poster behind them advertising the company, promising the secrets of making a million by investing in property.

  A second folder was called ‘Kennedy’. Michael and Pamela Kennedy had been snapped from afar in similar locations to the Wixleys. The images that caught Drake’s attention were a set with Holly Thatcher at a table near the window of a café. It wasn’t one of the main chains and all but the bottom of the letters had been obliterated making it difficult to identify it.

  A Google search against Tom Levine quickly showed Drake a dozen entries, all relating to individuals with that name, including several with Facebook pages. One man with the same name was a conductor based in a town in Germany, another was a basketball player in an unfamiliar American city. Dismissing most proved easy enough. Drake bookmarked those relating to Tom Levine. Nearly all related to his activities in the sailing fraternity. Tom Levine even had his photograph taken in a prestigious yacht club on the south coast of England. How many other high-flying barristers and judges had Tom Levine met, Drake pondered.

  Drake found the website of the various nightclubs Tom Levine ran. The company that owned them was called The Happy Hour Chain. It promised the visitor an unparalleled experience to relax and unwind in superlative circumstances away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. It sounded ideal; Drake was almost tempted to visit.

  Mrs Levine struck him as an uncomplicated woman reluctantly drawn into a lifestyle alien to her. The stiff, awkward look on her face in the photographs from the newspapers, when they attended official functions, only underlined how uncomfortable she appeared. She would probably have been more at home in front of the television watching a soap opera quietly sipping on a gin and tonic.

  Norman Turnbull’s articles in the folder painted Levine as a slum landlord who took advantage of his tenants. Several reported cases, where Levine had sued tenants, featured Nicholas Wixley as his lawyer, and Drake sifted out the images, deciding to add them to the board in the Incident Room. Tom Levine’s face smiled out at Drake from a YouTube video offering to make people property millionaires within five years.

  It gave them several lines of inquiry – the mystery woman in the red car; David Eaton, who would have known all about the alphabet killings from Zavier Cornwell; Laura Wixley driven by her naked ambition; and perhaps even Selston. Drake suspected they had a lot more to learn about Levine and the way the tentacles of his business empire interlinked. Michael Kennedy and his wife needed to be talked to again. And now Holly Thatcher’s image had surfaced.

  Sara rapping her knuckles on his door interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘After Cornwell mentioned the orders of service I checked the prosecution file and a decision was made not to mention them at trial to avoid any hurt to the bereaved families.’

  ‘So the killer knew some of the details that hadn’t been made public?’ Drake waved her to chair.

  ‘Looks that way, sir. And the bank statements and financial background details on Nicholas Wixley and DCC Wixley arrived this morning.’

  ‘Excellent, you get started on Laura Wixley’s and I’ll deal with her dead husband, as soon as I’ve finished this.’ Drake patted Turnbull’s folder on his desk. ‘Turnbull had taken dozens of photographs of Michael Kennedy and his wife and of Laura Wixley. Some have them in restaurants and cafés with Tom Levine, and he took several in the sailing club. I also found others of Holly Thatcher.’

  Sara gave him a puzzled look. ‘Why did he keep them?’

  Drake shrugged. ‘Another thing that’s been on my mind is how the killer overpowered Wixley. A woman he knew might have tricked him into bed and then…�
�� Drake mimicked a slashing motion with his hand.

  ‘But it might have been a man.’

  ‘Yes, I know… The evidence doesn’t point to a struggle.’

  ‘I don’t think you can assume it was a woman. Do you think Holly Thatcher could be involved? She was quick enough getting us to listen to her in Nant Gwrtheyrn.’

  Drake nodded. ‘And we need to know what links Laura Wixley to Tom Levine. We’ll review again once we’ve finished the bank statements.’

  Chapter 28

  Friday 4th April

  9.23 am

  Laura Wixley hadn’t been able to account for her movements on the day before her husband was murdered or on the day he was killed. It convinced Sara that Laura Wixley was hiding something even though every part of her mind told her to be wary of suspecting a senior police officer. Tom Levine’s links to Nicholas Wixley certainly added a new dimension to the inquiry. But enough to notch up the pace of the investigation into Laura Wixley?

  Laura Wixley had several accounts with a high street bank in her own name and others jointly with Nicholas Wixley. Sums of money were transferred regularly between the accounts and Sara gawped at the amounts involved. How could anyone spend so much? Sara found herself daydreaming about her prospects of promotion and how far up the hierarchical chain of command she might aspire to. Detective inspector sounded very attractive, chief inspector even better, but she doubted many women made it as far as superintendent. Even with an inspector’s salary, she could afford a new car and a decent holiday every year, provided they didn’t clash with an inconvenient murder.

  For the first couple of hours she fell into a routine of identifying the monies paid into Laura Wixley’s bank account and the sums paid out. Quickly Sara realised that Laura Wixley didn’t spend a substantial portion of her income. The monthly transfers into various savings pots were more than Sara’s gross salary. There were direct debits to a wine company, regular purchases at a clothing shop in Manchester, as well as evidence of frequent visits to a restaurant Sara discovered had two Michelin stars and a waiting list of at least six months. Its fixed menu cost as much as Sara spent on food in a fortnight.