Knight & Culverhouse Box Set - Books 7-9

Chapter 42

42

The mood in the incident room the next morning was one of frustration. They were used to their suspects giving them seemingly credible alibis, but these ones were watertight. The problem with that was they knew the criminal code of honour meant that they tended to protect each other. A good alibi could often be too good. Suspiciously good.

The difference here was that all the main suspects weren’t exactly the best of friends. They all suspected each other and didn’t seem to trust anyone. But was that all an act to throw the police off the scent?

There were far too many nuances and possible double- and triple-bluffs to even begin to make sense of the situation. All they could do was strip it back down to basics and look at the facts.

‘Right,’ Culverhouse said, addressing the team. ‘I think we might need to start looking outside the box. Let’s presume our suspects’ alibis are true and correct. All that means is they didn’t go up to Freddie Galloway’s house that night and shove half a gallon of petrol through his letterbox. It doesn’t mean they weren’t involved, though.’

‘You mean they could’ve paid someone else to do it?’ Steve Wing asked.

‘That’s exactly what I mean, yes. I think we need to look at the possibility that more people are involved somehow. Say, for instance, John Lucas is in prison and he gets talking to a fellow inmate about Galloway. He finds out they’ve got a mutual hatred for the man. His friend’s been done over by him in the past too. Or maybe he hasn’t, but he agrees to do him over in return for a bundle of cash.’

‘What bundle of cash, though?’ Ryan said. ‘John Lucas doesn’t have a pot to piss in. He was done out of the Trenton-Lowe money by Galloway too. And why would his hitman do it hours after Lucas is released from prison? Surely it’d make far more sense to do it while Lucas was still inside, so the suspicion was never going to be on him.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t Lucas who was involved, then,’ Wendy said. ‘Maybe it was Newell or Golds.’

‘Not Golds,’ Culverhouse said. ‘He had no reason to want Galloway dead, and in any case I met the guy. He sought me out. He was absolutely cacking his pants about what had gone on, so I don’t think he’s involved in a million years.’

‘Newell then. The timing makes sense too. Not only does Galloway end up dead, but Newell’s got the perfect alibi by having his pre-wedding drinks and he gets the double-whammy of the finger of suspicion being pointed straight at John Lucas, the man whose actions got him jailed in the first place.’

Culverhouse nodded slowly. ‘I’ve got to admit, that’s probably my favourite theory at the moment. Especially with the evidence pointing to Lucas. I said from the start it looked as if it’d been set up. It was too good to be true finding all that stuff in Lucas’s garage. It was almost comical.’

Ryan Mackenzie shuffled in her seat and shook her head. ‘Only problem with that is there’s literally no evidence pointing to Newell. It’s all completely circumstantial at best. The best we’ve got is that he punched a bloke at his wedding.’

‘He had motive,’ Culverhouse replied. ‘As for means and opportunity, paying someone to do it sorts both of those out.’

‘Yeah, but that could be said of anyone. If that’s enough to arrest and charge someone, where do you start? You’d be looking at anyone who’s ever fallen out with the victim.’

‘Look into his financial records, then. Work out his links and associates. There’s got to be a trail somewhere.’

‘More than happy to, sir, but it’ll be difficult. What’s the going rate for a hit? Low five figures? Maybe fifteen grand?’ Ryan pulled a calculator out of her desk drawer and tapped a few buttons. ‘He’s been out and working for eight years or so, so that’s less than two grand a year he’d need to have put aside. Eighteen-hundred and seventy-five pounds, to be precise. Or a hundred and fifty-six quid and twenty-five pence a month. I imagine most people probably draw at least that out of a cashpoint each month. It wouldn’t be a difficult amount of money to hide over that period of time.’

‘No, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try looking for it,’ Culverhouse replied, looking somewhat chastened. ‘Besides, that hundred and fifty quid a month would be extra on top of whatever he was drawing out to buy his weekly shop and his trips to the pub or whatever.’

‘I see what you’re saying, sir, and we’ll definitely look into it, but it’ll take a lot of time and I wouldn’t expect to find much. He could easily hide a grand a year through stashed cash withdrawals, plus there’s the usual methods like converting it to Euros for holiday spending money, but not spending it. Keeps it under the radar. I don’t imagine for one second we’ll get his bank statements and see a withdrawal of fifteen grand showing up last week.’

‘Let’s just get the financial information and see what we can find, shall we?’ Culverhouse replied through gritted teeth. That was the problem with new young officers, he thought. Always reckon they know more than the seasoned detectives who’ve been there and done it a thousand times before the newbies were even born. And too afraid of hard work, most of them.

He’d seen plenty drop off and opt for a change of career as soon as they realised policing was more to do with going through bank statements than running around the streets catching criminals. But the reality of it was — as much as he hated to admit it — that this was how criminals were caught. Having an arrest was one thing, but having incontrovertible evidence in black and white was something else altogether.

And it was that evidence they were sorely lacking.

Culverhouse’s frustrations didn’t last long, though, as there was a knock at the door, followed by a young uniformed officer, PC Karim Rashid, entering the incident room.

‘Sir, sorry for interrupting your meeting. But we’ve just been to John Lucas’s house to return some items to him after their forensic examination. We found something you might be interested in.’