"Multiple arrests for poaching, fencing of protected species…"
"Just the type of guy who would hate someone like Mary Beckett," Eric said.
"And they've crossed paths before?"
"Repeatedly."
Tom looked at the registered address. It was on the edge of the Royal Sandringham Estate. "Let's go and pay him a visit."
Chapter Twelve
Tamara watched Tom and Eric leave the ops room. She didn't mean to slap Tom down in front of the team. Inevitably, he was going to hear a great deal about the Gage case. This was unavoidable. He wasn't the type to stick his oar in either. She had absolute respect for him and his professionalism. But she was setting down a marker, and it was for his own good as much for the integrity of the investigation. She knew that he wasn't a realistic suspect. If she didn't know him would she look at him? Probably. When lovers clash with former partners it can easily cross a line but not Tom. Then there was what she hadn't said, and he was experienced enough to have worked it out for himself. Alice was going to be considered. She would have to be.
Did Tom know she was there yesterday? No. He would have said so if he had. Unless there were two women in Adrian Gage's life who drove a red Volkswagen and had a child of a similar age in tow. She'd already made the decision to speak with Alice. It was just a matter of deciding how they went about arranging that. They could invite her to the station for an informal chat or knock on her door with a warrant. The latter would be traumatic, not least for Tom, but that was secondary. The decision would come following the conclusion of the autopsy and the processing of the forensic evidence. She would prefer the latter, and she'd be lying if she said otherwise.
"Where are we with determining what Gage was working on?" Tamara asked, picking up her coffee. It was lukewarm now, but she quite liked cold coffee.
"Still can't get into his laptop," Cassie said without taking her eyes from the screen in front of her. "It's encrypted. I was hoping for biometrics, a fingerprint scanner or facial recognition because we can get around that easily enough."
It was true, they could. They had Adrian Gage, even though the requirements would be a little gruesome.
"Can we bypass it?"
Cassie shrugged. "Maybe we could send it down to Norwich and let the boffins have a look but I'm hopeful."
"You think you can crack it?"
Cassie laughed. "Don't be daft. Of course not, but let's face it, we all make a note of our passwords somewhere just in case, don't we?"
"We're not supposed to do that."
"But we do," Cassie said, looking up and smiling at her. "You can't have your niece's birthday as your password all the time. At some point you're going to have to come up with something more complicated. And when you do, you will write it down."
"Just need to know where it's written down."
"Exactly," Cassie said.
"And do you?"
"Well, no."
Tamara sighed. "Otherwise, a solid plan. What do we have then?"
"Contents of the bag," Cassie said, standing up and moving across to a board on the wall. "Looking in his notebook, which seems to cover multiple stories across a varied timescale. I'll say one thing for Mr Gage, he's certainly organised. From his handwriting to his date stamps and note taking – he's a dream to follow. It's just a shame that the bulk of the detail is probably logged on the computer. What we have in his notebook is a memory map of sorts."
"A to do and don't forget list?" Tamara asked.
"My thoughts exactly."
"So, where's he been and who's he looking into?"
"I've broken it down into names of people, places and businesses," Cassie said, pointing out three lists on the board. "The highlights of interest so far are three local councillors, all of them still sitting. I checked. The CEO of a local building firm. Not a little two or three a year builder, but interests in major sites. Multi-million-pound ventures spanning East Anglia in its entirety."
"Interesting," Tamara said, coming to stand alongside her. "Didn't Gage scoop an award for uncovering corruption in local government?"
"Yes, that's right. He uncovered a trail of dirty money passing between developers and local government officials by way of lavish trips abroad. That type of thing. The suggestion was that this was influencing planning decisions to be more favourable towards extending development boundaries of local towns. It caused a bit of a stink at the time, led to a number of resignations and two criminal trials."
"Do you think he was onto something similar again?"
"If it was going on, then he was the guy to find it," Cassie said. "Might have to wait until we get into the laptop for confirmation, though. He also had a copy of a local Ordnance Survey map in the bag, with a number of locations circled."
Cassie returned to her desk and unfolded the map. There were a half dozen locations circled with a red pen. All of them were on or close to the coast. Numbers were scribbled at the edge of the circles, but what they were referring to was unclear. Tamara indicated them.
"Any ideas?"
Cassie shook her head. "No, not yet. They could be proposed building sites, or ones they hoped to get permission for."
"Most of them look well outside of any existing settlement boundary, as far as I can see. Worth looking into. Anything else?"
"There is another name, or two names to be exact, but he only references one in his notes. Michael Rowe and, by association, his brother Les."
"And who are they?" Tamara asked, finishing her coffee and heading across the room to put the cup in the bin.
"A few years back, the Rowe brothers ran a business providing services to the public sector. Anything from waste management to school meals. They
