“I’m afraid you will need to go the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for that. He’s very ill and has been in there for a week.”
Hooley was so irritated at this news, and the annoying manager, that he briefly tried to think of a reason to arrest him. He took the view that anyone who behaved like that obviously had something to hide.
But Roper was keen to get going, even tugging at Hooley to get him moving back to the car that had delivered them here. As they journeyed back the way they had come the DCI complained about spending the day going backwards and forwards.
Despite his grumpiness, he was actually feeling quite energised. The fact that Dobson had been in hospital for a week made him, in Hooley’s eyes, a near certainty to have committed the crime. His reasoning being that the stress of being a killer had made him ill.
The car dropped them close to the hospital entrance. It is one of the more recently built in London and visitors find themselves funneled into a huge atrium forming a square with each floor housing the different units and wards. They’d called ahead, and an administrator was waiting for them. He was a man in his early 50s, slightly overweight and wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and no tie. His name was David Smith.
“I gather you want to speak to Mr. Dobson? While you’re welcome to see him, I am afraid that talking to him is impossible. He arrived here six days ago in the final stages of lung cancer. The medical team were astonished that he kept going as long as he did. He’s been unconscious for the last two days.”
Hooley realised he couldn’t be their man. “One of us has to double check, so why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go?”
Roper shrugged and went to sit down. Within seconds he was reading something on his phone. The administrator gave Hooley a sympathetic look as he explained he needed to see Dobson for himself.
“I understand, and you won’t be disturbing anyone. We couldn’t find any family members, so we think he was all alone. It’s terribly sad when that sort of thing happens. At least the doctors have been able to make him comfortable.”
A quarter of an hour later he was back to collect Roper. “Come on. Let’s get back to the office, then perhaps we can go and have that drink tonight. Or at least I can drink, and you can watch me.”
As they walked out Roper was shaking his head. “I was so sure he was the killer. He just seemed to fit perfectly.”
Hooley patted him on the shoulder. “You can’t win them all.”
◆◆◆
As they walked back into the office Roper clicked his fingers and said. “I’ve only just thought of this, which is daft of me. We need to check if there was an understudy at the theatre.”
Hooley knew he was right but couldn’t stop himself groaning as he thought about making a third trip to the Strand area. He decided he would send another team over there.
An hour later and one of the two detectives who had accompanied them to the theatre first time round rang in. They explained that once Dobson had designed the set it was more a question of maintaining it while the production was running. That meant there were no likely candidates left at the theatre.
Ordinarily Hooley would have left it at that but there was still something niggling him about the manager. “Stick around for a couple of hours. I’m sure that man is hiding something. It’s probably that he’s got illegals working back stage for a pittance, or something similar, but see what you can find out.”
He put the phone down and saw Roper was looking at him.
“The hospital was right. I’ve been looking at a genealogical data base and he came from a really small family. According to the records Dobson was an only child and his parents had him very late. They’d already died when he wrote that play so there’s no immediate family member to take revenge for him.”
“So, for all that effort, all we really have is another thing that isn’t the reason, or whatever it was you said earlier.” As he finished speaking Hooley chided himself for being bad tempered. It wasn’t Roper’s fault that someone who had looked like a very likely suspect had turned out to be a dead end. He decided to make up for his lapse by going to get the coffee.
“I take it you’d like your usual serving of muffins?” he asked after taking the drink order, a black Americano with cold milk on the side, as usual.
Roper nodded. He never put on weight and never had to think about what he was eating from the point of view of calorie intake, although lately he had become quite obsessive about checking all the details about what he ate.
“Could you make them a couple of reduced sugar, blueberry bran muffins,” he called to the back of Hooley’s head as the DCI hustled out to get to the cafe.
◆◆◆
One of the toughest parts of being a detective is when you have run down the likely suspects, got nowhere, and have to go back to the beginning. Ploughing through the same old material required real concentration. It was surprising how easy it was to read a whole page of information and then realise you had been thinking about something else all along, so none of it had gone in.
Hooley glanced over at Roper, who was in his characteristic pose in front of his computer screen, sort of hunched forwards and unmoving. It seemed to suit him, but it made the DCI wince to think of what state his back would end up in if he tried the same thing.
It was at moments like this, when they were going nowhere and losing interest, that one of Roper’s more remarkable qualities shone through. No matter how many times he had read something, each time he came back to it he was able to treat it as though he was starting again. And on many occasions, this had led to a fresh lead as he made connections he had missed the first time around.
But that wasn’t happening this time. Eight days on and they were going nowhere. Even Roper, who could normally be relied upon to make some sort of daily observation, had said nothing today. It was clear they were out of ideas and were at the point that they would have to consider handing it on to another unit. The longer they stayed full-bore on the murder, the more other important cases started to pile up, all of them also demanding and deserving attention they weren’t getting.
Hooley had spent a working lunch with Mayweather discussing the next steps. Very reluctantly they had decided that unless there was a breakthrough in the next seventy-two hours they would have to let this one go.
“I can’t believe we have got nowhere. I’d say Roper was banging his head on the wall, but even he’s gone past that. I don’t think he can quite believe that we have got nothing.”
Mayweather looked rueful. “I spoke to the Chief Constable this morning and I was expecting him to tear a strip off, if I’m honest. It’s not often he takes a personal interest in these things, so he must have been disappointed.
“But he seems to have taken the view that so long as Roper was involved, along with the rest of the Special Investigations Unit, then we could do no more. I was surprised but grateful for small mercies. At least we will be allowed to dump it, much as that goes against the grain. I really hate it when a murder starts shaping up for cold case status.”
The DCI finished off his cup of tea and headed back to the office which he shared with Roper. It was Hooley who had realised there could only be an upside if he removed the younger man from the much bigger room which housed most of the squad.
It was a place where you needed to be pretty robust. It might be housed by an elite team of detectives but that just seemed to ensure everyone was on their toes at all times. When Roper had first joined he had been assigned a desk with the rest of the team. It hadn’t gone well.
One of Hooley’s less understood skills was his innate understanding of what made his colleagues tick and he soon realised Roper was earning himself a reputation for being a bit strange.
His solution was simple. His own office was too large for one, so he installed another desk and told Roper this was where he was going to sit from now on. He’d only moved him a few feet, but it made the difference. It meant there were no more of those little ‘mi
sunderstandings’ when Roper tried to lecture a colleague about how they did their job.
While he wasn’t an insensitive man, Hooley had long ago developed a hide like a rhino. He was used to the younger man’s idiosyncratic behaviour and was, most of the time, able to shrug off some of Roper’s more robust opinions and observations about everything from what he ate to what he wore.
He sat down and told Roper they had three more days on the case and reached out for his copy of that day’s Times newspaper. He had a habit of always finding twenty minutes a day doing the concise crossword.
He found it incredibly relaxing and it helped to clear his mind, no matter how complicated an investigation he happened to be working on. Even Roper approved, telling him that it was important to ‘work his brain muscle to improve his cognitive function.’
Eighteen minutes later, to his immense satisfaction, he finished. He tossed the paper across to Roper who liked to take it home and fill in all the other puzzles. Since a spell attached to GCHQ he had become addicted to games of all types and had to limit himself to working on them at home.
At 7pm they called it a day. Roper stood up, grabbing the paper and glancing at the completed puzzle. He then went so still that Hooley started to wonder if he’d had a sort of seizure. His face was quite immobile and his body like a statue.
“I think I know who did it.”
Hooley did his rapid eye blink. “You do?”
“It’s whoever puts this puzzle together and they obviously want to get caught.”
“They do?” said a baffled Hooley. “How have you worked that out. Is there a confession in the answer grid?”
“In a way. The first letter in clue number 1 for today’s quiz is A.”
Hooley did the raised eyebrow thing which Roper recognised as a question.
“I’ve just realised that a message has been spelled out over each of the last days, using the first letter of clue 1. Over the last eight days it has produced the Latin phrase ‘Mea Culpa.’ It has to be the compiler who did it.”
Hooley couldn’t stop himself grinning. “That’s is truly amazing. How on earth did you spot it?”
“I’ve been doing a memory challenge with myself to remember things. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been memorising all the answers of the crossword, but it’s only today that I’ve realised what’s there.”
◆◆◆
“I was expecting someone who looked a bit more, I don’t know, a bit like one of those really serious teachers you find in schools,” said Hooley, who along with Roper and Mayweather, was looking through the one-way mirror at the compiler, George Elliot.
He was a big man, taller than Roper and considerably wider. The DCI guessed he must have been six feet four inches and probably weighed about sixteen stone. He had a broad face, with thick bushy eyebrows that made him look fierce and intimidating. To cap it off he kept his head shaved, with diamonds glittering in each ear lobe.
“I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night on my own, although the team who picked him up said he was quiet as a mouse and gave them no trouble at all. But look at his hands, they’re huge, what my mum would call stranglers’ hands,” added the DCI.
Elliot placed those hands in his lap and gazed straight at the glass.
“He knows we’re looking at him,” said Mayweather. “He doesn’t look the type to crack up in the face of a little pressure. We might as well get in and talk to him.”
They trooped into the interview room and Elliot watched with intelligent eyes as they sat down facing across the plain, institution-style table. There were cups and two large jugs of water placed in easy reach. Mayweather made the introductions and when she got to Roper the huge man nodded, baring his teeth in what Hooley hoped was a smile.
“I know who you are, Mr. Roper. I read a bit about you after you cracked the case of that missing billionaire. I knew you’d be a smart fellow, so I made inquiries. It seems the ‘puzzle community’, he mimed quotation marks in the air with his index fingers, know all about you.
“I even know you really got the bug when you were at GCHQ, so I knew you might end up on this case. Actually, I’ll go further than that, I really hoped you would get the case; if I was going to get caught, I wanted it done by a worthy adversary.”
As he finished speaking he glanced back at Mayweather who had reacted to his words by leaning forward. Now it was her turn to get that toothy smile. The huge man nodded. “You heard right. That was me admitting I did it. I’m going to confess, so you’d better make sure you’ve got a big enough recording machine to capture the details.
“What I did was wrong, although I could have lived with that, but at the same time, a bit of me couldn’t help but feel guilty, so I made a pact. I put a confession into the Times Concise Crossword and if anyone spotted it, then I would go quietly. If they didn’t, I could accept getting away with it.”
Hooley looked at Roper, whose expression was inscrutable, even though he must have been amazed to find out he was the talk of the ‘puzzle community’.
Mayweather sat back in her seat. “In that case I appreciate your candour but I think it might be better if we take a break right now.” She noted the confused expression which flashed across the man’s face. “Don’t worry Mr Elliot. I am very happy to take you confession and all the details but if that is your confession we need to make sure everything is done by the book. Police work that ignores the rules has a nasty habit of unravelling.
“I understand when you say you are happy to confess but it might be better if you had someone who can act as your legal representative and observer. Unless you have someone in mind, a duty lawyer should be here in half an hour so why don’t we adjourn until then?”
Elliot shrugged in a way that suggested that while he understood her explanation, he wasn’t bothered by what happened. She stood up, leading the two men out behind her.
Once safely outside and the door shut so Elliot couldn’t hear she turned to Roper. “It seems your reputation precedes you, Jonathan. Are you happy about that?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. Especially him knowing about GCHQ. I thought that was supposed to be top secret but that’s the second time a stranger has told me they know about me.”
She could sense there was a little unease behind his words and placed a hand lightly on his shoulder. “I don’t think you should get too worried about it. Things always have a way of getting out and people do like to talk.” He looked as though he was about to protest, and she put her hand on his shoulder. “Not everyone likes to talk. In any case, I hadn’t realised there was a community of puzzlers, or whatever they call themselves, so I bet only a handful of people are smart enough to belong to that, which means not many others know about you.” She could see that Roper was happy with this and pressed her case.
“Don’t forget that it may be that Elliot got lucky by asking one person who did know, so is now trying to make out it’s some sort of big thing on his part. A way of telling us how clever and well connected he is. Go and have a coffee and I’ll collect you when we’re ready to start again.”
◆◆◆
It took almost an hour for the lawyer to arrive and he was hustled into the interview room almost as soon as he turned up, Hooley’s guiding hand almost shoving him into his chair. His urgency was matched by Mayweather who started talking the moment he produced his legal pad and clicked his pen, ready to take notes.
Despite her urgency, she took her time to get the formalities underway, allowing the lawyer to check his client was genuinely in agreement with the process. Satisfied there was nothing else to do, the man gestured to the policewoman that he and his client were good to go.
Elliot calmly repeated what he had said the first-time around and then Mayweather moved him onto the why.
He said. “Robert Randall wasn’t a cruel man as such, but he sometimes lost sight of what makes us human. Yes, the play Paul Dobson wrote wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t that bad either. It would never ha
ve got as far as being staged if it had been hopeless.
“I knew Dobson quite well. We’d been to university together studying English and drama. He was incredibly shy and nervous around people. Writing was his one safety valve. It was the only way he could stay sane.
“I’m not sure why, but I really liked him and took him under my wing. People look at me and tend to avoid getting into an argument, so at least I could make sure he never got bullied. It took him years to get that play written, but he finally managed it.
“It was only on at a local theatre, not the West End. I don’t know why Randall was so far out of his normal stamping ground. It was miles off his usual patch and no one could have expected him to review something there. When he came out with that terrible write-up, the theatre management panicked and pulled it.
“I argued that they should hold their nerve. The free publicity would have probably packed them in, all the punters wanting to know what the fuss was about, but they wouldn’t listen. The stress just broke him - he snapped like a dry twig, he was so fragile. He simply took off, not even talking to me, and disappeared. I was frantic with worry about him and it was a relief to hear he had pitched up in Blackpool.
“When he was finally discharged I was up there waiting for him. I didn’t want him being alone again, so I persuaded him to come back to London, but he was never the same. I think that’s why he got cancer so early. He was only forty years old and the stress just killed his immune system.”
Not one of the detectives, or the solicitor, had moved or said anything. There was something mesmerising about listening to this giant of a man talking so frankly about his friend.
He took a drink of water and carried on. “Even when he got cancer he didn’t make a fuss. I didn’t know he was ill until the day before he went into hospital. I realised a terrible truth, he didn’t want to fight, he just wanted to slip away. It’s like he fell through the gaps after that review and could never find his way back.
To Kill A Critic Page 4
