‘Could you pick him out if you saw him again?’
Medina nodded. ‘Sure. I don’t remember much about his face, other than that it was red and sweaty and that he had a big moustache, but he had a big vulture tattooed on his right shoulder. That was a one-off, and no mistake.’
‘Maybe we’ll take you on a tour of the gyms and health clubs, Mr Medina,’ said Donaldson, suddenly and sharply. ‘But let’s get back to the point here, okay?
‘You’ve said that Mrs Charles made false allegations against you, and had you sacked. You’ve told us that she fell out with you. You were the company book-keeper, and she was its finance director. If you were good at your job, as you say, why would she just “fall out with you”?’
‘Carl?’ The voice came from the hallway. All three heads turned and looked towards a slim, dark-haired woman as she appeared, framed in the doorway. She looked tired, concerned, and not a little puzzled as she frowned at them. The two men stood up, and Medina moved towards her.
‘Angie, love,’ he said, helping her out of her heavy, navy-blue woollen coat, ‘these people are CID officers. There’s been a death at the place where I used to work. The boss’s wife was killed in a fire, and they’re treating it as murder. It’s in the Evening News.’
Angela Muirhead looked at the detectives. ‘But why come here? It’s been years since Carl worked there.’ She turned to Medina. ‘How long is it since you were made redundant, Carl, two years now?’
The man looked at Donaldson, a plea in his eyes. ‘Look, Superintendent, can we finish this later?’
The detective shook his head. ‘Sorry, we either finish it here or you come down to the station with us right now, and we do the whole thing again, formally and under caution.
‘I think it best if Ms Muirhead knows the truth anyway, don’t you?’ Without waiting for a reply he looked at the girl. ‘Mr Medina wasn’t made redundant. He was sacked, so his former employer tells us, on grounds of dishonesty. Mr Medina denies that. He says that his boss’s wife, the victim in last night’s fire, fell out with him and made up evidence against him.
‘When you came in we were asking why she would do that. So, Mr Medina?’
The man looked from Donaldson to Angela Muirhead, who stared back at him, her frown deepening, then to Maggie Rose, who sat silent, returning his gaze, and finally back to the Superintendent.
‘Okay,’ he said at last, in a hard, bitter tone. ‘Carole Charles made a pass at me and I turned her down.’
‘Sure she did,’ said Donaldson, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
‘She did!’ cried Medina, insistently. ‘She liked the young lads, did Carole. She was always flirting when she came into the office. It was nothing that anyone else would notice, just the odd wink, the odd suggestive remark. It used to piss me off a bit, but I was hardly in a position to do anything about it.’
‘Except resign?’ said Rose.
‘Exactly, Chief Inspector, and I wasn’t about to do that. Angie and I were saving up for a new house, and jobs were even less thick on the ground then than they are now. So I put up with it. Anyway, Carole was nearly twenty years older than me. I thought it was all a bad joke.’ He paused.
‘Finally, one night I was working late, getting ready for the auditors, when she came into the office. We were the only people there. She came straight round the desk, pushed the books to one side, pulled up her skirt and sat on my lap, straddlin’ me.
‘She just went straight for my fly. She said, “I’m going to have you, son. No more messing around. This is your big night.” I’ll never forget it. All the time she was laughing at me.’ He looked across at Angela Muirhead, who stood staring at him, her right hand gone instinctively to her mouth.
‘What did you do?’ asked Rose.
‘I just lifted her off me, and sat her down, on her bum, on the desk. I said, “No way, Mrs Charles. I’m sorry, but I’m not daft enough to fuck around wi’ the boss’s wife.” I zipped myself up and I walked right out of there.’ He paused, and looked again at his fiancée.
‘I didn’t know what to expect when I went in to work the next day. But nothing happened, or was said. In fact, I didn’t see Carole for a week after that, till one afternoon she came in. She didn’t say a word to me. She just started going over one of the purchase ledgers, one I hadn’t opened for weeks.
‘After a few minutes she picked it up and went to see Jackie. Next day he called me in to see him. He said that Carole had caught me on the fiddle, and that I was fired. He said he was sorry, because he had always liked me, but his wife was adamant that I had been in the till and that was it.’
‘Did you deny it?’ asked the red-haired Chief Inspector.
The man shook his head. ‘What was I going to say? “Look Jackie, your wife made it up. She’s in the huff wi’ me because I wouldn’t shag her.” No, all I said was, “She’s wrong, but too bad.” Then I cleared my desk and I went home.’
‘Where were you yesterday evening?’ asked Donaldson, quietly.
Angela Muirhead answered. ‘He was here.’
‘All evening?’
‘Yes,’ said Medina. ‘Angie got in just before nine. I had the dinner ready to heat up.’
He smiled, then gave a soft laugh. ‘Look, I didn’t go anywhere near that garage. I’m not the vindictive type. But if I had wanted to sort out Jackie or Carole, I’d have taken a copy of something she left lying around in the office one day.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know what it was for sure, but it wasn’t about the car business. It was a ledger and it showed cash movements in and out, with dates, sources and recipients of payments, but with initials, not names. I scribbled a few notes at the time. It occurred to me afterwards that if I’d stuck the damn thing under the photocopier, I might have been able to use it to hang on to my job.’
‘Or you might have lost a lot more than that,’ said Maggie Rose, bristling inwardly, all of a sudden, with excitement. ‘You don’t still have those notes, do you?’
‘I might have. I’ve got lots of old junk in my briefcase. I’ll have a look through it. If I find anything I’ll let you have it.’
‘Okay,’ said Donaldson, sourly. ‘If you do turn up these mythical bits of paper, bring them with you to the St Leonard’s police office at four o’clock tomorrow, and ask for me. But be sure you turn up then even if you don’t find them. I’d like you to make that formal statement we mentioned.’
He nodded to Rose. ‘That’s enough for tonight, though, Maggie. I imagine these two will have some talking to do. Let’s leave them to get on with it.’
Angela Muirhead showed them to the door. It had barely closed before Rose looked up at Donaldson. ‘That was an interesting half-hour, and no mistake.’
The Superintendent’s eyebrows rose. ‘You thought so? The only thing that I could hear was a liar covering up the Porky Pie that he told his girlfriend when Jackie sacked him for cooking the books. Redundant, indeed!
‘As for the stuff about the man with the vulture tattoo; all that could just have been a half-hearted attempt to smear Charles.’
‘Maybe lies, maybe truth,’ said Rose, ‘but for sure, Carl Medina’s given us a few hares to chase. D’you think we should report this to Andy Martin tomorrow morning?’
‘Aw, come on, Maggie,’ said Donaldson. ‘I know that Martin’s in personal charge, but we don’t want to go running to him with every rumour we pick up off an informant, or a guy like Medina, who’s scared and tossing out crap.’
She stopped as they reached the top of the stairway. ‘I agree that the story about the man with the vulture tattoo was vague and a bit fanciful. But these notes that Medina promised us, that could be something else again. We’ve been looking for years for anything that ties Jackie Charles to the illegal activities which we know he runs or bankrolls.
‘Whether admissible as evidence or not, these scribbles that Medina says he made could be the first return we’ve ever had. Let me ask you something, Dave. If the Boss was running this investigation, would you hold something like this back from him?’