Cleaver Square Read online

  The waiter dithered. He could see that the transaction had gone further than a simple wrong pin, one of the so-called 'soft declines'. It was a funding decline, the last hurdle before a payment was authorised. Restaurant policy dictated that this information wasn't shared. It would be a security risk. Worst still, the card could be stolen. That didn't seem to be the case here, as otherwise it would have been flagged by the system.

  The waiter decided to humour Morton, so he cleared then re-entered the transaction. Thirty seconds later the inevitable 'Card Declined' message popped up again.

  'Perhaps you have another card you'd care to use, sir?'

  'Fine,' Morton dug his MasterCard out of his wallet and virtually threw it at the waiter.

  'Card Declined.'

  'Again? There's got to be something wrong with your machine, son.'

  'It's been working fine all evening, sir.'

  'Can we try another machine?'

  'We've got a wired PIN machine in the back,' the waiter suggested. Other diners were beginning to turn at the raised voices. The owner would not be pleased if a simple card machine malfunction disturbed the ambiance.

  Morton stood, and motioned for the waiter to lead on. The waiter exhaled a sigh of relief at moving the debacle away from the patrons.

  Three credit cards later Morton gave up. Sod the card machines. He'd pay in cash, but they damn well wouldn't get a tip. As he counted out the coins, Morton grew progressively angrier. The thought that Sarah would so easily think him a philanderer after three decades together was a grievous affront. He had only strayed once, and that had been over twenty years ago while he was undercover. It had taken her years to forgive that indiscretion, and he had only committed adultery in order to avoid blowing his cover.

  'Thank you sir. Have a nice night,' the waiter said.

  CHAPTER 14: 1979

  Morton dodged a bullet with this one, Ayala thought with a grimace. In order to store all the paperwork seized at the Keppler Oechslan warehouse, Ayala had commandeered the conference room down the hall from the Incident Room.

  In an attempt to impose order on chaos, Ayala had created two piles. The first contained all the documents that were not from 1979. They would be logged and then returned as soon as possible.

  The second contained all the purchase records, invoices, tax receipts and warranty registration papers that did have the year 1979 printed on them. Ayala prioritised the work orders for engraving, as many of the watches were sold without personalisation. There was a chance the watch was bought and then engraved elsewhere, but Ayala hoped this would not prove to be the case.

  'Boss?' One of the new technicians to join the team, Stuart Purcell, called over from the far end of the room.

  Ayala strode over, walking slowly to assert his authority.

  'What?'

  'I've set up this.' He gestured to a webcam hung above what appeared to be a gutted laser printer.

  'What is it?'

  'I've stripped down an old laser printer. It's got a lightning-fast roller mechanism and a decent tray-loading system.'

  'Get to the point.'

  'Fine,' Stuart huffed, more than a little offended the detective had interrupted his stride. 'Paper goes in here.' He pointed to the tray. 'Goes through the roller, gets photographed by the camera, flipped over by the roller, the other side gets photographed, and the paper comes out here.'

  'So you can digitise the documents?'

  'Yes, but not only that. The camera is connected to some powerful backend servers. An algorithm I wrote then scans the page.'

  'What's it looking for?'

  'The serial number we found on the watch. Every bit of paper is labelled in the top right with the unique code from the back of the watch.'

  'So it'll find our documents for us?'

  'Maybe. Some of the records are printed. Some are stamped. Some are handwritten. If the sample is degraded or smudged, it won't find a thing. '

  'But it can exclude all the documents we put through it that don't pertain to the case?'

  'Yes sir, leaving us with just the documents we do need, and any smudged documents to sort through by hand.'

  'Great work. Call me when you've got a name.'

  ***

  'Available Balance £0.04. Another Service or Return Card?'

  Morton squinted at the ATM. It had to be wrong.

  'Sarah!' He called over his wife, 'Please tell me I'm reading this wrong.'

  Almost instantly, Sarah's skin paled. The card in the machine was for their main bank account. Only a few days ago, the balance had been over £30,000.

  'Don't panic,' David said. 'Let's go inside and check with the bank.'

  Thankfully, the ATM was attached to the bank, and they were open over lunch.

  They hurried inside to find dozens of customers queued up, waiting to complete their transaction. It was a typical London branch with dozens of self-service machines, but only one cashier working. Bank employees shuffled around the queues, trying to avoid eye contact with the horde of customers.

  Morton grabbed the nearest person wearing a bank name badge. 'I need to report a fraud.'

  'Bass, t'at ain't my problem. I only do mortgages,' the man replied in an accent that blended East End with Caribbean undertones.

  'So who do I need?'

  The mortgage broker gestured towards the cashier. 'Just go to the cashier's desk, mon.'

  As he walked off, Morton capitulated and joined his wife in the queue.

  ***

  Detective Ayala sat waiting in the Incident Room. He was trying to avoid looking smug, but failing miserably. Over three hundred boxes of paperwork had been catalogued and digitised in less than two days, and he now knew who had bought the Keppler Oechslan watch back in 1979.

  Finding that alone was[or 'Merely finding that was'] more than justification for a little bragging, even if the hard work had been mitigated by efficient use of technology, but Ayala had gone much further.

  From the name, Ayala had been able to find a death certificate with relative ease. The old man had been gone for a while. A probate search was in the works to find out whom he'd left his estate to, and Ayala was confident that would reveal whom the initials engraved on the back of the watch belonged to. His hope was that someone willing to buy such an expensive watch as a gift would also remember the recipient in their will.

  A probate search usually took upwards of four weeks for a civilian, but police requests were prioritised. With his request on the top of the pile, Ayala would have a copy of the Last Will and Testament of Cecil Matthews by close of business.

  ***

  After reaching the front of the cashier's queue, David and Sarah were shown to a pair of thinly cushioned chairs and told that the bank manager would be with them 'in two minutes'. Twenty minutes later, and they were still waiting.

  'Look, it's just a mistake, Sarah. I'm not cheating on you. I didn't buy any jewellery,' Morton said for the third time.

  'David, let's save it. Until after we've spoken to the manager anyway. Ah, this must be him.' Sarah forced herself to smile as the bank manager came through the open door. He was in his late thirties, with tousled brown hair, and was wearing an elegantly cut suit. At the sight of Sarah, he returned her smile before offering a hand to David.

  'Good evening, Mr and Mrs Morton. I'm Lance Peters. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I've taken a look at your credit card statement. What I'm going to do is put these charges on hold while we investigate. To do that, I'll need you to sign a declaration that these you are not responsible for these charges.'

  'No problem, Mr Peters,' Sarah said.

  'As this is a joint account, I'll also need to see both your cards to verify you have retained possession of them.'

  Sarah pulled out her purse, and rummaged around until she found a tiny purse.

  'Here you are, Mr Peters.' Sarah held out her card.

  'Please, call me Lance.' Lance's fingertips brushed Sarah's lightly as he took her card.
r />   Morton threw his onto the desk silently.

  'Thank you both. I'll cancel these cards now to prevent any further charges being added.'

  'Will we be charged interest on the fraudulent charges, Lance?' Sarah asked.

  'No. Of course not. Once we've investigated, we'll either drop the charges if we find them to be fraudulent, or treat the charges as incurring interest from the date of finishing our investigation if they are not fraudulent,' Lance said.

  'Of course they're bloody fraudulent,' Morton said.

  'Well, then there won't be any problem. We'll call you once we have conducted our investigation. Thank you for coming in, Mr and Mrs Morton.'

  David eyed him, tempted to take offense at the summary conclusion of their meeting but Sarah stepped in too quickly. 'Thank you, Lance.'

  'No problem, Sarah.'

  CHAPTER 15: CECIL'S LEGACY

  'Thank you for holding. Your call is important to us. You are: first in the queue,' a robotic voice stated flatly at sixty-second intervals in between bouts of classical music. Ayala had been waiting for nearly an hour, and was becoming more irritated every time the automated system spoke, much to the amusement of Detective Vaughn, who took care to hide her smile behind her laptop screen.

  The hold music cut out, and Ayala snatched up the conference phone and motioned for silence.

  'And? What did you find?' Ayala demanded. He held the phone flat in his palm, with speakerphone mode switched on.

  'Sorry sir, there is no will on file for Cecil Matthews,' said the representative from Her Majesty's Probate Office.

  'So he didn't leave anything?'

  'He could have died intestate.'

  'So no will means no records?'

  'Have you got a death certificate? If he died recently, his will won't have been through probate yet. If that's the case, we can do a standing search to let you know when his will is probated.'

  'Cecil Matthews died at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on the third of December 1984. I'm pretty sure you'd have got round to it by now.' Sarcasm began to creep into Ayala's voice.

  'There's your problem then.'

  'Too long ago?'

  'No, sir. Wrong country. We only deal with probate records for England and Wales.'

  'Damn it!' In his ignorance, Ayala had overlooked that crucial detail, 'So who do I need to talk to?'

  'Usually I'd say HM Commissary... but their records don't go back that far. Let me check with my supervisor where records that old go. Mind if I put you on hold again?' He didn't wait for an answer, and Bach blared once more from the conference phone, filling the incident room.

  Now that he wasn't concentrating on the conversation, Ayala realised he had created a scene. Instead of working, the junior officers and techs were watching him with amused expressions.

  'What are you looking at?' he snarled, and his audience found they had urgent work to attend to.

  The music cut out without warning.

  'Sir, are you still there?'

  Ayala nodded, then realised the other person couldn't see him. He cleared his throat, 'Yes, yes I'm here,' he confirmed.

  'It looks like you want the Scottish Records Office in Edinburgh. Want the number?'

  'Please.'

  Ayala hoped he wouldn't spend another hour listening to tinny hold music. If he was forced to endure that again, then at least one of the techs would feel his ire.

  ***

  'Ah, Mrs Morton, thanks for coming in.' Lance Peters had foregone the suit he had worn the first time Sarah had met him. Instead he was wearing chinos and a v-necked sweater. Spotting Sarah's appraising eye, he explained half apologetically, 'Dress down Friday.'

  'It's OK. Your assistant made it sound urgent on the phone.'

  'Mrs Morton, my security team have investigated the contested charges. As you may have realised, they were all electronic transactions. My team found that the purchases, all in the name of David Morton, had been done using your husband's e-banking password, the one we issued him so that he could verify his identity online.'

  'So you're telling me that David made the purchases?'

  'I can't say for sure. Either he made them, or gave out his password, which would constitute authorising the charges. We won't be refunding the charges. I'm sorry.'

  'Don't be. It's my husband that will be sorry.'

  'Mrs Morton, I'm sorry that you had to find out about your husband like this. If there's anything I can do...' He proffered a business card which had a mobile number scribbled on the back. Sarah took it.

  ***

  David walked into his flat, oblivious to the impending screaming match. As was his custom, he hung his overcoat on a peg beside the door, slipped off his shoes, then made a right turn and headed along the corridor.

  By the time he reached the open-plan kitchen and lounge, he knew something was up. There was no tempting waft of dinner coming from the kitchen, and the lights were off.

  He entered, flipped on the lights and found his wife sat at their dinner table, a mug in her hand. She looked calm, but David knew this meant she was serious. She was beyond seething.

  'Hi,' he said simply.

  'Who is she?' Sarah demanded.

  'Who is who?'

  'Don't give me that. Who's the bimbo you've been screwing around with?'

  'Sarah, I'm not cheating on you.' Morton edged towards her, unwilling to move too close. He leant on a chair on the opposite side of the dinner table to Sarah.

  'I'm not stupid, David. I spoke to the bank manager today. He knows it was you.'

  'How in God's name would he know that?'

  'The transactions were yours. You bought jewellery, diamonds in point of fact. Who were they for, David?'

  'I told you! I didn't authorise any of those transactions,' Morton protested in vain.

  'Then how were the transactions done using your password?'

  'I... I don't know. Maybe some sort of technical glitch?'

  'It's not a glitch, David. I'll give you one more chance. Who is she?'

  'Sarah, I'm not...'

  'Liar!' Sarah screamed as she flung the coffee mug at him. It missed by inches, hurtling past him to smash on the wall. Lukewarm coffee exploded from the mug, coating Morton.

  'Sarah, I'm telling the truth. You've got to believe me.'

  'Once a cheat, always a cheat. Get out.'

  'What?'

  'You heard me. Get out of my flat.'

  'Sarah, it's our flat.'

  'No, David, it's my flat. My parents gave us the deposit. I'm going to count to ten. If you're not gone by then, it'll be much more than a mug that'll get broken.'

  'But Sarah, I didn't.'

  'One...'

  David turned, kicked on his shoes, grabbed his coat, and was walking back out the front door by the time she hit ten. When he was gone, she sank to her knees, and began to sob uncontrollably.

  ***

  Ayala perched uncomfortably on the edge of the longest table in the Incident Room. A battered old projector hastily borrowed from the audiovisual forensic team was propped up on an evidence manual. It thrust a fuzzy image onto the wall, and Ayala jabbed his index finger at the projection as he spoke.

  'It took me a while, but I got the Will and Testament of Cecil Matthews. The watch he bought was a drop in the ocean for him. He left behind a huge estate.'

  'Who were the beneficiaries?' Morton asked.

  'His only son got most of it, but the will also provided for a trust fund to pay for his grandson's education.'

  'I take it he had no other children?'

  'No, not that we know of, sir. Everything went to Mr Eric Matthews and his son, Charles Matthews.'

  'Do we have an address for Eric Matthews?'

  'No sir. He's dead. I did an Internet search for the name, and a local news article popped up. He died in a car crash a few years back, along with his wife.'

  'And Charles?'

  'He got taken into hospital, and landed in the foster system. He should currently be w
ith a Mrs Brenda Lattimer in Kennington.'

  'Good work. Get all that formally recorded for your report.'

  Ayala slumped in defeat as he realised that Morton had no intention of taking him along to visit Mrs Lattimer.

  'But boss, why isn't there a missing persons report from the Lattimers? He's been dead for weeks. They must have noticed!'

  'That's what I'm going to find out.'

  CHAPTER 16: CLEAVER SQUARE

  'You want to talk about it?' Tina Vaughn asked as Morton drove.

  'Talk about what?' Morton kept his eyes fixed on the road.

  'What's eating at you? You've nailed a difficult case; you should be on cloud nine. Instead you're moping.'

  'I'm fine,' Morton lied.

  'No, you're not.'

  Morton sighed, and resigned himself to a long ride to the Lattimer residence. Once Tina zoned in on something, she was like a dog with a bone.

  'Sarah and I aren't talking. She's thrown me out.'

  Out of the corner of his eye, Morton could see how concerned Tina looked so he continued, 'Don't worry. I'm staying in a Travelodge, the one over by Euston Station.'

  'What happened? I always thought you guys were rock solid.' Tina placed a hand on his arm as she spoke, big green eyes fixed on his. Morton shuffled uncomfortably, but he didn't remove her hand.

  'Lots of little things. We've been hit by credit card fraudsters; I've been working long hours trying to crack this case. The usual.'

  'I know the feeling.' Tina's face was plastered with a wry grin. With two ex-husbands before thirty, she knew better than most the strain being on the job could put on a relationship.

  'How about you? How's your life?' Morton desperately tried to change the subject.

  'I'm fine. Still single.'

  Morton arched a cynical eyebrow, 'How's that happen? Pretty girl like you, thought you'd be fighting them off with a stick.'

  'I get attention, just not from the kind of guys I really like.'

  'Hold that thought, I think we're here. Is that number 36B?'

  Morton pulled his BMW over, and they stepped out into the square. The sun was beginning to set, and a chill was in the air. Morton knew they were only minutes from a major road, but Cleaver Square felt like a world apart from the rest of Kennington. Tall, handsome homes lined both sides of the Square and a green filled with trees shielded each half from the other. A dusting of snow lingered on the trees, coating their bare branches.