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  Sausage Hall

  Sausage Hall: home to millionaire Kevan de Vries, grandson of a Dutch immigrant farmer. De Vries has built up a huge farming and food packing empire which extends, via the banana trade, to the West Indies. But sleazy MD, Tony Sentance, manages to persuade de Vries to branch out into the luxury holiday trade. De Vries and wife, Joanna, take the first cruise out to explore the potentially lucrative possibilities. However, back at home, a break-in at Sausage Hall uncovers a truly gruesome historical discovery. And when a young employee of de Vries is found dead in the woods, D.I. Yates is immediately called in…

  Sausage Hall is the utterly compelling third outing for detective D.I. Yates, tackling the exploitation of African women in the nineteenth century and drawing sinister parallels with the exploitation of Eastern European women in the 21st.

  A must-read for those who love a sniffing out the clues in a forensically-detailed, suspense-filled detective novel - from the pen of a crime-writing master.

  Praise for Christina James

  “an absorbing and generously written book…a series to watch.” – EUROCRIME

  “If you don’t usually read crime thrillers, I urge you to read this…nothing short of spectacular.” HEART OF GLASS MAGAZINE

  “James has a gift in the sprawling, largely unpopulated, slightly spooky (almost by definition) Lincs/Cambs fenland” – THE BOOKBAG

  “this compelling new crime thriller…” – BOOKOXYGEN

  “a complex plot with some political and illegal undertones, plenty of suspicious circumstances and interesting historical content” – MEAN STREETS

  “The first thing you notice about this book is how well-written it is.” – CRIMEPIECES

  Sausage Hall

  C.A. JAMES was born in Spalding and sets her novels in the evocative Fenland countryside of South Lincolnshire. She works as a bookseller, researcher and teacher. She has a lifelong fascination with crime fiction and its history. She is also a well-established non-fiction writer, under a separate name.

  By the same author

  In the Family

  Almost Love

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © Christina James, 2014

  The right of Christina James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2014

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-84471-987-7 electronic

  For Emma, with love. I hope that you will visit Sutterton one day!

  One

  I lie dozing on my sun-lounger on my private patch of beach in Marigot Bay. I am sheltering under a large umbrella that Derek, my steward, has angled adroitly to protect both Joanna and me from the sun. Derek would do anything for us. The heat is pouring through the canvas, but it’s diffused by the fabric: bearable, pleasant.

  Joanna has placed her own sun-lounger almost at right-angles to mine, but she isn’t stretched out. She is hunched at one end of it, legs tucked under her, head and face covered by a great pink hat that resembles a plaited bucket. She has wound a pink chiffon scarf around the crown. She sits with her back to me. I can’t tell whether she is reading the book that rests on her bare thighs or simply brooding.

  It has taken all my ingenuity to get her here. I won’t let her spoil this now. I don’t want to be contaminated by the darkness of her thoughts. I’ve worked hard for this holiday – I’ve worked hard for everything – and Christ knows I deserve a break. I’m even working now, in a way. When Sentance came up with his idea of using the boats for luxury cruises, I knew I couldn’t trust anyone else to test it out. The experience on board, anyway. I draw the line at staying in that hotel he’s done the deal with. Four star – it should be OK, though I’d have preferred five. But still. My grandfather bought this beach house years ago and as a family we’ve barely used it. Work-life balance, that’s what we’ve never managed to achieve.

  Opa was a brilliant businessman, but not exactly imaginative. He called the beach house Laurieston, the same as our house in Sutterton. Sutterton: while I’m lying here it’s difficult to believe it actually exists. Sometimes I think I hate the place, with all the problems it brings: the farms, the packing sheds, the factories, the staff. Especially the staff.

  I stretch across to the little table that Derek has placed within reach and grasp my glass of piña colada. It is so chock full of ice cubes that they have hardly melted. I take a sip. The drink is so cold it makes my teeth ache. We could stay here, Joanna and I. She could spend the rest of her days here. How long does she have? Six months, a year? I need to talk to that quack again. Squirming bastard. He never gives me a straight answer.

  My mobile rings. At first, I don’t realise it’s mine. Joanna and I both use the traditional telephone ringtone. It’s a sign of quality, of class. I can’t bear the vulgar tunes most people choose. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or You’ll Never Walk Alone. Phones should sound like phones. I’ve told Archie that, too. Miraculously, on this point he seems to agree with me.

  Joanna turns, shoots me a dark look from under her hat.

  “Your phone’s ringing,” she says. “If you’re going to ignore it, can you switch it off?”

  “Sorry.” I lean my head out and peer under the sun-lounger. The mobile is lying on a folded towel and I grab it; seeing who the caller is, I realise I must take the call.

  “Sentance,” I say, “I thought I told you not to disturb me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Kevan. But you said except in an emergency.”

  “Are you saying there is an emergency?”

  “It’s not exactly . . .”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, cut the cackle, man. Why have you called?”

  “It’s your house. Jackie Briggs was walking past it early this morning, on her way to that ice-cream van cleaning job that she has, when she saw a man standing on the conservatory roof. She went to fetch Harry. He called the police, who called me. Harry managed to hold on to the man until they arrived. Jackie thought that there were two of them, but if she’s right the other one did a runner.”

  “So they didn’t get in, then?”

  “Yes, they did. We don’t think they took much. The guy that was caught was carrying a rucksack. He’d only managed to lift a DVD player, a camera and some small items of jewellery. Oh, and a Toby jug, for some reason. The other one may have nicked more. Jackie went round the house to see if she could spot anything else missing. She couldn’t think of anything. But you’ll know better yourself, when you come back.”

  “The house has been made secure?”

  “Yes. There was just one pane of broken glass in the conservatory. I’ve had it repaired. The police are going to keep an eye out until you get here, in case the other guy tries to return. If you don’t think that’s enough, I’ll go and stay there tonight myself, if you like.”

  “Well done. It’s all sorted, then. I don’t think you need to put yourself out, but thanks, anyway. Tell the police I’ll dea
l with it when I come home.”

  Sentance falls silent. I can read him like a book, even when he’s invisible and on the other side of the Atlantic. He hates to be the bearer of bad news. It’s not that he’s overflowing with fellow-feeling; it’s more the case that he’s afraid I’ll shoot the messenger. I’ve already dragged out of him more disagreeable information than he thinks is good for him. Craven little sod.

  “Well, what else is there? I can tell there is something.”

  “The two policemen that came insisted on going round the house with Jackie, to make sure everything was all right. They found the cellar door open. They asked her what was down there and she said she didn’t know; she said she’s never been down there. They left her at the top of the steps and went down for a poke round themselves. They found some stuff in there.”

  “What do you mean, they found some stuff in there? Of course there’s stuff in there. My wine’s stored there, for a start. I hope that nobody’s touched that. And my lathe. And quite a lot of old furniture. Which stuff did they mean?”

  “It looks like passports,” says Sentance in a hushed voice. He says it so quietly that at first I think the word is passe-partout. Then it dawns on me.

  “Passports? Whose passports?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t know, either. But they said it looked as if someone had been . . . making them. As in forging them, I mean.”

  “How did you find this out? Were you there, too?”

  “Yes.” Snivelling little creep, trying to distance himself from it.

  I sigh wearily.

  “I’ve got no idea what this is about. I’ll deal with it when I get back.”

  Again there is silence.

  “You don’t think that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s not what I think, Mr Kevan. I’m just trying to warn you. The police have asked me how to get hold of you. I’ve stalled them so far, but in a minute I’m going to have to give them this number. When I do, I know they’re going to tell you to come home straight away.”

  Two

  Detective Inspector Tim Yates dragged on a pair of latex gloves and tipped on to the sheet of plastic he’d draped across his desk the contents of the Ziploc bag that Detective Constable Ricky MacFadyen had just handed to him. The bag contained what appeared to be five United Kingdom passports. He picked one up and carefully turned over its pages, one by one. The stationery that had been used to produce it was either genuine or a very good fake. The passport itself was obviously counterfeit, since it contained no name or photograph. Putting it down, he worked through the other four red-covered booklets. Each was identical to the first.

  “What do you make of these, Ricky?”

  MacFadyen shrugged. He’d been called out very early to the house in Sutterton where the passports had been found, having been awoken from a bare four hours’ sleep after celebrating the birth of his friend Charlie’s daughter the night before. His hangover was relatively mild, but the effort required to keep his eyes open intensely painful. He stifled a yawn.

  “Somebody’s obviously working some kind of racket. It’s a pity they didn’t get a bit further with what they were doing with these. We might have had more of an idea of what they’re up to. Aliases for criminals, most likely. Generally, criminals only need fake passports if they’re planning on travelling abroad with false names. If that’s what they’re for, there’s something big going on.”

  “I’d say it’s definitely big, given the quality of these. I’ll need to get them checked over by a Home Office expert, but they look pretty good to me. I know something about this Kevan de Vries, the character whose house they were found in, but I’ve never met him and had no official dealings with him or his company. I understand he’s on holiday in the Windward Islands. Thornton, who does know him personally, has spoken to him on the phone, told him he needs to come home immediately. I understand he cut up pretty rough about it.”

  “I’ve not met him, either, but I should think most people in the area know something about the de Vries family. Kevan’s grandfather came here from Holland in the 1930s. He was part of a group of Dutch bulb-growers and market gardeners who all settled in the Fens at around the same time. I think they got grants from the Dutch government to move here. There were too many farmers in the Netherlands, so the authorities offered sweeteners to get rid of a few.”

  “Sounds like a forerunner of EU interventionist policies!”

  “You could say that. Seems a bit Stalinist to me, shipping people out of the country – like collectivisation in reverse – even if they came here willingly and got paid for it. Anyway, old man de Vries did all right. He was easily the most successful of the lot of them. He practically owned Sutterton and land stretching for many miles around it when he died. By then he was much more than a farmer. He’d built canning plants and freezer plants; food-packing plants, later, when the supermarket chains started to want pre-packed produce. And acres of fields of tulips. He turned into a local tycoon.”

  “All above board?”

  “As far as I know. My great-uncle worked for him for a while. Said he had a reputation for being a bit of a slave-driver, but he paid quite well. That made him a better employer than many round here, then or now.”

  Tim nodded.

  “So has Kevan de Vries inherited all of his grandfather’s empire? Or is Kevan’s father still alive?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll find out. I don’t actually remember hearing much about Kevan’s father. Kevan’s listed as the MD and CEO of de Vries Enterprises, whatever that is. It may not include all of the companies. I’ll check that as well.”

  “Tell me in detail how the passports were found.”

  “There’s a woman called Jackie Briggs who cleans at Laurieston House, Kevan de Vries’ home. She’s actually called the housekeeper, but I think that’s a bit jumped-up for what she does. She lives close by and has to pass it on her way to another job that she has, cleaning the inside of ice-cream vans.”

  “That a de Vries business, too?”

  “I don’t think so. She cleans out ambulances as well, apparently. She has to finish cleaning the ice-cream vans before the drivers start their rounds, so she gets to the depot early. She was passing Laurieston House at about 6 a.m. this morning when she saw two men there. One of them was emerging from an opening in the conservatory roof; the other was standing in the garden. She knew the de Vries family were away, so she went to fetch her husband, who called the police. The bloke on the roof had only just jumped to the ground when the husband turned up and caught him with a rugby tackle. He was still holding on to him when the police arrived. The other one had scarpered, of course.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  “Terry Panton. Local kid. He had a bag of stuff he’d taken from the house. Nothing of great value. He’s already on probation for breaking and entering. He’ll have to do time now.”

  “A petty thief, though? Not likely to be a passport forger?”

  MacFadyen gave a short laugh.

  “Hardly! He hasn’t got the brain. Besides, why would he want to plant the passports there, if he was involved in some way?”

  “I’ve no idea; and you’re probably right that he knows nothing about them. A bit unfortunate for Mr de Vries, if he’s engaged in some kind of scam, to be exposed by a bungled burglary.”

  “You say if he’s engaged. Can there be any doubt that he’s mixed up in this in some way?”

  “My intuition says that he must be; yours too, probably. But stranger things have happened. He wouldn’t be the first rich man unwittingly to play host to someone’s little sideline. Talking of which, what did you make of the Briggs woman?”

  “She seemed pleasant enough. A bit flustered, a bit in awe of the situation. And worried about her husband. Panton gave him a nasty bite when he was trying to get away from him.”

  “Viciou
s little bastard! So you think she’s straight up?”

  “I’d say so. She seems quite loyal to the de Vries family. She was concerned they might have lost something valuable.”

  “But she didn’t think they had?”

  “No. Something that struck me was that she didn’t like the bloke who showed up when we were looking round the house with her. Sentance, his name was. Some kind of senior de Vries henchman. Oily so-and-so.”

  “That’s interesting. And you say she didn’t come down into the cellar with you when you found the passports?”

  “No.”

  “What about this Sentance character?”

  “Oh, he came all right. He wouldn’t let us out of his sight.”

  “He saw the passports?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He said that he was sure that Mr de Vries would be able to give us an explanation.”

  “Did he? I wonder what kind of explanation he was thinking of.”

  Three

  Tim Yates was not surprised that Superintendent Thornton had instructed him to meet Kevan de Vries off the plane when it landed at Gatwick Airport. Thornton liked nothing better than to be able to demonstrate the importance of his position by organising the transatlantic telephone conversation that had taken place with the high-profile businessman, but he was less keen on getting up at 3.30 a.m. in order to apprehend him.

  The flight from St Lucia was scheduled to touch down at 7.00 a.m. Tim and DC Juliet Armstrong had arrived at 6.45 a.m. to find a notice flashing on the arrivals board. De Vries’ flight was estimated to land 45 minutes late.

  “Let’s go and find some coffee,” said Tim.