Money Can Kill

Book 6: DCI Phelps

by Wonny Lea

Genres: Police Procedurals

Synopsis

A school trip to the National History Museum of Wales at St Fagans ends early with the disappearance of a child. Is he just playing hide and seek ?  or is it the work of a criminal? Perhaps a kidnapper with designs on the boy?s mother and her recently-acquired millions? DCI Martin Phelps and his team are back together just in time to take on the case ? one that starts off as a possible kidnapping but soon descends into something even more sinister ? As the investigation exposes the complexities of family relationships, another long-standing mystery is solved ? all while Martin and his colleagues anxiously await the results of a major police review that may result in them losing their jobs ?

Release date: March 27, 2014

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 350

Sample

 Chapter One
School Trip

It was twenty-five minutes past nine and the teachers on the second of three coaches did a final head count of the children and the adults accompanying them.

‘We’re still missing two,’ shouted Claire Masters as she looked through the list on her clipboard.

‘’Course you are,’ called back Angela Roberts, one of the parents. ‘No sign of Jason and his mother yet, is there? She’ll be arriving in her taxi and will expect the bus to be waiting even if she’s ten minutes late.’

Miss Masters refrained from making any comment but she could see that Mrs Roberts was right, as Jason Barnes and his mother Christine, better known as Tina, were the names not yet crossed off her list. The general conversation that ensued in the bus ranged from mildly abusive to positively vitriolic as most of the adults and even children as young as six had something to say about the people behind the missing names.

‘I bet it’s quite a struggle having to decide which of their designer labels to thrill us all with today,’ suggested a grossly overweight woman who occupied the best part of two seats, overlapping into the aisle and squashing her young son’s head against the window. She had nothing more to say on the subject and turned her attention towards the boy, who was taking too long to open a large pack of bacon sandwiches.

Claire squeezed past their seat and the smell of bacon caught her attention. ‘Mrs Hall, as you know, we have been asked not to eat on the coach. It’ll only take us about half an hour to get to our destination and there are plenty of picnic areas there.’

Mrs Hall couldn’t reply, as her mouth was now stuffed full of what would be the first of many bacon butties, and shrugged her shoulders as Miss Masters moved towards the front of the coach. She sat down next to her colleague and voiced her frustration. ‘We’ve brought black bags for the rubbish and vomit bags for those who are sick from travel or over-indulgence, but we’ve been told that if any of the coaches are left in a mess today this will be yet another travel company that blacklists our school.’

Holly Road Primary was a typical inner-city school, with five hundred pupils aged between four and eleven and from every conceivable ethnic and religious background. Claire Masters had only been teaching at Holly Road since September and was already thinking back fondly to the small school with just two hundred pupils in Llantrisant, where she had taught until the end of the last school year. She had left because she was ambitious and knew that in order to be eligible for some of the more prestigious teaching posts in Wales she would have to be able to demonstrate experience in a variety of educational settings. She would have to be able to show that she understood the meaning of diversity and was capable of developing strategies that would enable every child to get the best from the system.

According to the latest thinking, a big part of educating the children holistically was to get them and their families away from the school environment and introduce them to opportunities for learning within the local community. Today’s excursion was the first of four arranged for this school year and Claire prayed that they would be less challenging than the accounts of last year’s outings, related by her colleagues in the staff room. These ranged from the usual teasing and spats between the kids to very public verbal abuse and even full-blown fights amongst some of the parents. A trip to a local working farm had resulted in the death of two chickens and a seven-year-old girl being tied to the wheels of a tractor.

The school changed its policy after that visit and now each child had to be accompanied by a named responsible adult, but looking around the bus Claire doubted the efficacy of that arrangement. One of the so-called responsible adults was already on her third bacon sandwich and a young dad appeared to be singing songs more suitable for a rugby trip – and the coach hadn’t even left the school!

Today’s excursion was to take Years Two and Three to the Museum of Welsh Life in St Fagans, and in particular to get the children to look at the tools used by farmers throughout the ages. The youngsters had been looking at how their food got to the table and the majority had been quite amazed to discover that it had not all just come from the shelves of the local supermarket.

Claire was offering a silent prayer that all the equipment would be nailed down when the taxi that had been anticipated pulled up alongside the coach and Jason and his mother got on board.

There was an uncanny silence as they made their way down the central aisle looking for a double seat, and although no one looked Christine Barnes – Tina – in the eyes, most of the adults took in every detail of her appearance. Bling was the order of the day for a number of the women and some of the men on the coach, but everyone knew that Tina’s bling was the real thing. She had no concept of the idea that ‘less is more’, and although she wore designer jeans and a leather jacket, nothing was coordinated, and the overall effect, topped by her black and blue streaked hair, was tarty.

Pushing Jason into the only remaining pair of seats Tina recalled how different it had been on the school trips last year, when she had been one of the girls and would have been seen laughing and joking with everyone on the bus. Her clothes and chunky jewellery would have come from the market and Jason’s clothes would, at best, have been some cheap copies handed down from her neighbour’s son.

It had been just after the Easter holidays when Tina had come up trumps on the Euro lottery, winning tens of millions of pounds and having only Jason to share it with.

She initially gave generous hand-outs to friends, but instead of showing some gratitude they had just become greedy and wanted more. Some of those friends were on the coach today, but she had been crossed off their Christmas-card lists and they were now the leaders when it came to slagging her off. Part of her wished that she could wind the clock back; wished she had never won the money; wished she was still part of their world.

It didn’t help that Jason was showing off his new black Kickers boots to a boy whose trainers were falling apart and the boy’s mother was openly voicing her opinion of people who thought they were better than anyone else. There is a general misconception that money will solve problems whereas in reality it can bring more than it takes away. In Tina’s case it had taken her out of her social comfort zone and left her completely isolated. Although she had tried to adapt to her fortune, she simply didn’t have the ability to do so. She was thirty years old and for most of her life she had been a hard worker, often holding down a full-time job and then doing part-time bar work in the evenings. Tina was not bright, and had left school with no qualifications; she had still been living at home with her father when had become pregnant at twenty-three. Her father hadn’t worked in years and had been more than happy to live off Tina’s money, and when he found out his daughter was pregnant he tried to persuade her to have an abortion.

It was one of the few times in her life when Tina did exactly what she wanted to do, and from the moment that Jason was born he became the very centre of her existence. She left home and for the first six and a half years of her son’s life she struggled, with the help of state benefits, to make ends meet. They had been housed in a two-bedroomed maisonette in Llanedeyrn, surrounded by families in similar situations, and for the most part they were very happy there.

When Jason started school Tina had taken on several jobs as a cleaner, and when she looked back now it was with a longing to be still in that little house and not rattling around in the five-bedroomed property she had been persuaded to buy.

The coaches had left the school and were driving in convoy along Eastern Avenue and just as the ten o’clock news announced the death of Dame Joan Sutherland, the driver slammed on his breaks and swerved to avoid going into the back of the coach in front. There was uproar as women screamed, men swore, one little boy was propelled down the centre of the bus, and two girls were sick.

The driver spoke into his microphone. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I had no choice as some idiot in front of our coaches suddenly changed lanes. Still, it’ll teach some of you to wear your seat belts and let me remind you that County Coaches will not be responsible for any injuries if you don’t follow the rules.’

Miss Masters felt she had no alternative than to break the rules as she got up and returned Tomos, the human cannonball, to his seat and belatedly handed out sick-bags and generous amounts of wipes. The atmosphere was already getting heavy as the smell of vomit mingled with what was now a variety of sandwich fillings and definitely cheese and onion crisps.

Claire returned to her seat and on the way heard the hiss of a can opening and got a definite smell of cider. She would have preferred not to have witnessed the occurrence but having done so she couldn’t ignore it. ‘Mr Ponting,’ she said. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that the school does not allow alcohol on school trips.’

‘Sorry Miss, but I wasn’t thinking of giving it to the kids. Not much I can do about it now, so I’ll just down it quickly.’ The words were spoken by a skinny man in his twenties with a sculpted hair style that was copied by his two young sons. One the boys spoke in defence of his father.

‘Don’t have a go at my dad, Miss. He doesn’t like fruit and so he’s got to drink cider to get his five-a-day. It’s only apple juice, don’t you know?’

Claire made no comment as she watched father and son make a high five in recognition of their perceived victory over the teacher. When she re-joined her colleague, Mrs Locke, they mentally left the school trip and spent a few minutes discussing the recent death of Dame Joan Sutherland.

‘I’m not an opera buff but I have to agree with Luciano Pavarotti when he said her voice was like heaven. It sends shivers down my spine,’ said Emma Locke. ‘What a wonderful gift. It puts what I have to offer in a very poor light.’

‘Oh, that’s rubbish,’ insisted Claire. ‘I think that anyone who works with the mix of kids we get at Holly Road year after year deserves a medal.’

Their next words were drowned out as the driver turned up the volume of the radio controls and some of the responsible adults joined in the chorus of ‘Love Me Do’ and a medley of hits from The Fab Four. So, accompanied by The Beatles, and with the majority of the people on coach number two murdering ‘Eleanor Rigby’, the last ten minutes of the journey passed without incident. Soon the coach turned the corner and stopped alongside a number of other similar vehicles.

The National History Museum of Wales was among the best of Europe’s open air museums and allowed visitors to have life-size experiences of what life was like in Wales in the days before wide-screen televisions, iPads, and fast-food. For the past ten years entry to the museum had been free of charge and consequently it was an obvious venue for schools and large family outings.

Although there was a plan in relation to the perceived educational output of today’s visit, the teachers knew that many of the carefully prepared handouts given to each child would not even be read. Individual groups had already decided how they were going to spend their time at St Fagans and a few would not be going further than the children’s play area.

Claire used the driver’s microphone to ensure that everyone knew the arrangements for the day and encouraged the use of the worksheets. She reminded the children that the blacksmith was going to give them a special demonstration at eleven o’clock and told them to make sure they didn’t miss out.

‘The most important time for you all to remember is two thirty. That is when we leave here and we must be on time because the coaches will be needed for the normal school runs after we get back. Anyone who is not on the bus by two thirty will be left behind and will have to make their own arrangements for getting home.’

Claire looked at some of the glazed-over expressions and had serious doubts about how much of what she was saying was being absorbed, and so she concluded. ‘Have a great day. There are six members of the teaching staff here today so if there are any problems one of us should be able to help.’

Several people had already left the coach before she had even finished speaking and the ones that hung on to her every word were the ones that didn’t really need to listen. They were the adults whose children had already proudly written their names on the front of the booklets, and had pens and pencils poised to make sure that there would be a tick in every box before they returned to the coach. Claire recognised gratefully that they were the majority and they took up less than ten per cent of her time. She sometimes felt a bit guilty that she couldn’t give them more because the demands of the thankless few were overwhelming, but her job was to ensure that as many horses drank water as she could persuade.

Jason and his mother were the last to leave the coach and Claire noticed that they stood apart from the various groups, and the first thing Tina did was to light up a cigarette. She was a very heavy smoker, as the nicotine stains between the index and middle fingers of her right hand indicated, and she was one of the few people left who refused to smoke filter-tipped cigarettes. She had previously rolled her own but since she no longer needed to worry about the cost she had a constant supply of Pall Mall soft packs.

The driver had looked down the aisle of the coach and huffed and puffed, before telling Claire that it would be in the best interest of Holly Road School for her to have a quick clean up before he took the bus back to the company depot. It only took five minutes for Claire to half-fill a black bag with empty packages and a few cans and to clean up the sick patches, getting the driver’s nod of approval.

As she stepped off the coach she noticed that two of her teacher colleagues had been doing a similar clean-up in the other two coaches. She joined them with her black bag and the three of them looked for a large rubbish bin.

The plan was for the six teachers to have a cup of coffee and then wander around in pairs, giving advice and assistance as required and rounding the pupils up for the two planned sessions. One was the blacksmith’s demonstration and the other was a short talk on the tools used by farmers during the past couple of centuries.

Claire told her colleagues that she would join them at the coffee shop and made her way to the toilets to wash her hands free of the smell of stale vomit.

Jason was kicking around the wrapping from an ice-cream cone just outside the ladies’ toilets and he saw her coming towards him.

‘It wasn’t me, Miss, I didn’t chuck the paper on the floor, it was there already.’

‘Hello, Jason,’ said Claire. ‘I wasn’t going to suggest that you had caused the litter but if you want to be a really big boy you could pick it up and put it in the bin.’

‘Somebody else chucked it down so somebody else should pick it up. My mother says we aren’t servants to nobody, Miss.’

Claire bent down, picked up the cardboard cone. and placed it in one of the many rubbish bins , hoping that her example would register. She looked back at Jason. ‘What are you doing here on your own anyway?’

‘I’m not on my own, Miss, my mother needed a pee so I’m just waiting for her to come out of the toilet – here she is.’

As Jason spoke his mother appeared and chastised her son for making a nuisance of himself before yanking his arm and dragging him in the direction of the children’s play area. Claire stared after them, wondering why she was feeling sorry for someone who had more money than she was ever likely to see in her lifetime, but she did feel very sorry for Christine Barnes.

Joining her colleagues for coffee she was not surprised to learn that Emma Locke had already entertained the group with the happenings from their coach, and she sat and listened to the stories from the other two coaches. The avoidance of a traffic accident had caused a nose bleed in the first coach and Peggy Lloyd told them that one of the dads was going to sue the coach company for the trauma his six-year-old princess had endured.

‘I’ll change coaches with anyone,’ said the youngest teacher, Kerri Powell. ‘Mandy Perkins’ mother has brought her two youngest girls with her and they have screamed non-stop, but that’s the least of my worries. Mandy’s mother, who is very pregnant, is looking decidedly uncomfortable and I don’t fancy playing the midwife on the return journey.’

This caused a great deal of laughter but no one volunteered to change coaches; all the plea did was to make the group of teachers realise that today was likely to be a long day and a round of assorted cakes was needed to gird up the loins.

Dragging Jason behind her, Tina walked up the path towards the children’s park but decided against going into the area when she saw some of the women standing around and staring in her direction. Jason let out a howl as he was spun around and left in no doubt that he would not be swinging from the climbing frame any time soon.

‘I want to go to the park,’ he shouted. ‘I want to play with my friends, I don’t want to see the animals, I want to play with my friends.’

‘Shut up, Jason, just shut up. You can play with your friends in school. I’m not going to the park and that’s that. Just stop shouting before I give you something to shout about.’

Tina was tall and thin to the point of looking gaunt and for every one of her strides Jason was forced to take five or six running steps and he pleaded to her to slow down.

‘You’re going too bloody fast,’ he told his mother.

‘Don’t you dare say bloody unless you want a smack across the face,’ replied Tina. ‘It’s a good job Miss Masters didn’t hear you swearing or you would really be for the high jump.’

Tina suddenly stopped and gave Jason a big hug. ‘Look, Jase,’ she said. ‘It’s just you and me since we won the lottery, or at least until I find you a new dad. That lot back there are just jealous and it’s for the best that we don’t bother with them.’

Jason looked horrified. ‘But I don’t want a new dad. Have I even got a dad? I didn’t know I had one. Have I got a dad?’

Realising she had opened a can of worms Tina ignored her young son as she didn’t really want to be reminded of Jason’s biological father. As far as she knew he was totally unaware that Jason existed. She had registered her son’s birth using her own surname and told the registrar that she could give no information about his father. The registrar had assumed that this meant there were so many possibilities that Tina couldn’t decide who to name, but the reality was very different.

Tina was not, and never had been, promiscuous. She knew exactly who had fathered Jason, and she still caught sight of him from time to time. There had been one occasion in the school yard when he had spoken to Jason and for a moment Tina had imagined that the light of recognition had flashed across his face, but it was unlikely he even remembered their brief sexual encounter.

Jason had not stopped firing his questions. ‘Why haven’t I got a real dad? I want a dad like my friends. Molly-Anne has got two dads. One of them lives with her mother and one of them lives with another girl’s mother. They all go to the cinema together, I know ’cos Molly-Anne told me.’

‘What are you going on about?’ asked Tina.

‘She did tell me, I’m not telling fibs, she did tell me.’ Jason suddenly changed tactics and told his mother that he was starving and wanted to go to McDonalds.

‘Don’t be stupid, Jason, there is no such thing as McDonalds here, and anyway we’ve brought sandwiches.’

‘I don’t like sandwiches. I want a burger and fries, not sandwiches.’ Jason sulked and plonked himself down on the path.

‘Get up,’ his mother shouted but he refused to budge and she walked on, thinking that he would soon get bored with sitting on his own and catch up with her. ‘If you sit there too long the pig-man will come and get you – and good riddance is what I would say.’ She called the words back over her shoulder. After a few minutes she stopped walking and waited to hear his footsteps running towards her but a few other children passed with their families and no sign of Jason.

The families that were walking past were not from her son’s school and were all speaking Welsh so she did not feel able to ask them if they had passed Jason. She made her way back to the spot where he had been sitting but he was not there. She wasn’t worried as hide and seek was one of his favourite games and she began looking behind trees and over the walls of the circular dry-stone pigsty. ‘Jason,’ she shouted. ‘Jason, that’s enough now. I give in, I can’t find you, so you’ve won and if you like we can get some ice-cream.’

Usually the very mention of ice-cream would see Jason running towards her but still nothing and now there were children from Jason’s school walking towards her so she confronted them.

‘Have you seen Jason? He was sitting on the path and must have decided to play hide and seek but he’s too good for me and I can’t find him.’

‘Mam, am I allowed to talk to Jason’s mam?’ asked the son of one of the women Tina had at one time considered to be her friend.

‘Best not or she’ll only think you’re after her money, like she thought your mother was.’ Smirking at another woman who was walking alongside her, Pam Woodland answered her son’s question, but now Tina was getting worried and so she ignored the intended insult.

‘Look, Pam,’ she said. ‘Forget about me and just answer the question. Have you seen Jason? He was sitting in this exact spot but now he’s nowhere to be seen and I’m getting concerned.’

‘Your concerns are no concerns of mine. I’ve got three boys to look after and I’ve managed not to lose one of them,’ retorted Pam. ‘We passed two of the teachers near the red farmhouse so I suggest you ask them.’

Claire and Emma Locke were listening to the history of the Kennixton farmhouse, and how the owners had lived in the red-painted house and farmed the land in the Gower over the centuries. Like all the other historic buildings it had been relocated to the museum and was a terrific example of a particular way of life. Their interesting history lesson was interrupted as Tina ducked her head to enter the low doorway.

‘Have you seen Jason?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘I can’t find him anywhere.’

A missing child was top of the list of incidents that must not happen on a school trip and only topped by the loss of more than one child, but it was never a permanent loss. Usually the child or children were being naughty and one of the other children could be persuaded to reveal their whereabouts. Nevertheless it was always a worrying time for the parents and teachers alike and Claire responded to the situation, treating the matter as serious from the outset.

‘OK, try to stay calm,’ she suggested. ‘I doubt he’s gone far; he’s probably gone to look for one of his friends. Mrs Locke, will you find the other four teachers and check if they’ve seen him, and I’ll go back with Jason’s mother to where she last saw Jason. We’re due to see the blacksmith in fifteen minutes, so I guess lots of the school will be on their way there and Jason’s possibly taggi. . .