‘I’m looking at the New York closing price. It rose again in after-hours trading.’
‘Are you making money?’
‘Yeah, it’s been quite tasty.’ He actually rubbed his hands together.
‘Sorry to drag you back to the real world, Colin, but you haven’t done anything about the Iris McQueen case.’
Hodges’ piggy eyes narrowed, and he stroked his straggly ginger beard. ‘Remind me.’
‘The mugging at the bus stop in Staines last week. You haven’t even checked up to see where her bank cards were used.’
‘The clear-up rate on these kind of cases is not high,’ Hodges said, still seemingly baffled as to why Gillard should be showing an interest in this case when they were all working hard on Mrs Roy’s murder case.
‘Do you know she who she is?’ Gillard asked. Looking at Hodges’ flabby face the penny still hadn’t dropped. ‘As far as Mount Browne is concerned she is a better-known food authority than anyone at Empire of Spice.’
‘Christ, is that her?’ Hodges asked. ‘The woman from the canteen?’
Gillard nodded. ‘She doesn’t want to make a fuss about it, but frankly she’s been short-changed for investigative attention, hasn’t she? It’s always people like her, of her colour, who the police fail. I know we’re all busy but this could have been a quick win.’ Gillard showed Hodges what he had found out about the card usage. ‘Most of this is downloads, and we can get locations from the ISP. I’ve asked Rob Townsend to chase it for me as a matter of urgency. I want you to work with him and come back to me when we’ve got some more details, all right?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Look after Mrs McQueen. After all, she spent years looking after you and feeding you up. All those second helpings too.’
‘I’m mortified, really.’
‘By the way. That bloody beard of yours reminds me of a baby orangutan hanging beneath your chin. Do us all a favour and shave it off.’
Hodges looked almost hurt by the comment. ‘It’s taken me a month to get to this point.’
‘And you could fix it in less than five minutes.’
‘I’d rather spend those five minutes working on the Iris McQueen case.’
‘Don’t try to be an arselicker, Colin, it doesn’t become you.’
Hodges nodded. Gillard watched the portly figure receding as he left the office. He wasn’t a bad police officer, but he needed more active management than most.
‘And Colin, stop looking at share prices during work time. Okay?’
Gillard heard the grudging grunt of acknowledgement as he left the office.
* * *
On his way through the incident room Gillard ran into Shireen. ‘Ah, just the person I was looking for,’ she said. ‘You asked me about shares in Nosh2U.com. I just got off the phone with EoS’s lawyer, Vikram Vaj. He sent me a list of the assets in the family trust. And there was rather a surprise. I’d been expecting that the most valuable asset would simply be the 30 per cent shareholding in Empire of Spice Plc, but there’s also a 1.7 per cent stake in Nosh2U.’
‘Is that worth much?’
‘Boss, it’s enormous. Nosh2U is currently valued by the stock market at £11 billion.’
‘What? How can that be! It’s just a bunch of blokes on mopeds, scurrying around with pizzas and curries.’
‘Ah. But it’s a high-tech app, with algorithms and artificial intelligence, which these days changes everything. Now admittedly, it’s not making any money and never has, but who cares when the shares are worth that much and have been going up 10 per cent every week?’
‘How much, precisely, is the trust shareholding worth?’ Gillard could barely restrain his disdain for this wealth-from-thin-air concept.
Shireen squinted towards the ceiling, mumbling some numbers as she calculated.
‘Approximately £187 million. And that means whichever of the Roy children produces the first boy gets a cool £56 million.’
‘My God, no wonder Prisha is desperate to get pregnant.’
‘She told you that?’
Gillard snorted. ‘This morning she as good as offered me a part in making it happen.’
* * *
Gillard was on his way home. He was feeling happier. It was half past three on a Saturday, the traffic was unusually light, and in theory didn’t have to be back on duty until Monday morning. It was a fragile optimism. He was still under the cosh to Alison Rigby, who wanted a crime scene re-enactment at Ashtead, and tomorrow might be the only day possible.
Jason Waddington remained in custody, and every day until the Thursday deadline she had set him was going to be crucial. They just didn’t have anything on him except that one dodgy DNA link. They had been through Waddington’s phone, and none of the numbers on it belonged to any of the Roy family. He hadn’t met them, they were just not in his social circle. He might be able to look after himself in a fight, but he wasn’t the kind of go-to figure that anyone wanting a hit would have chosen. Gillard still had an inkling that there was a family connection to her murder, but was struggling to find it. All of these thoughts were circulating in his head as he reversed the car up the drive.
In his rear-view mirror he saw a cat sitting on his own front door mat. He recognised the animal, Napoleon, one of four belonging to Trish, and cursed under his breath. He got out of the car and growled at the feline, which ran away.
His happy mood had vanished. Ever since the court case he had promised himself he would have nothing to do with his aunt, but it was clear she was continuing to exert a baleful influence on both him and particularly Sam. Something had to be done about it.
* * *
Gillard woke up with a start from a dream dark with foreboding. A sound outside. The green glare of the bedside clock showed 3.43 a.m. He eased himself out of bed without disturbing Sam, and pulled on a pair of shorts. He listened. Nothing but the groan of the wind, buffeting the fence. It could been a wheelie bin falling, but now he was awake he would have to check. He padded down the stairs, checking all the window locks, although he knew that Sam would have done so before bed. She was almost obsessive, given the stalker in her past.
He looked across the back garden. Everything looked in order. He moved back through the lounge, and moved the front curtains aside. There was still a light on in Trish’s bungalow. He had no idea whether that meant that she was awake or if it was merely a lamp that she like to leave on all night. He would be glad when they moved to get away from his aunt. She gave them both the creeps, and for good reason.
Then he heard the noise again. It was a kind of scratching sound. And it was behind him. He whirled around, and then looked up the stairs. Staring at him from the top was Napoleon, Trish’s dominant ginger and white cat, kneading the carpet. Furious that the animal had got in, but unwilling to wake Sam, Gillard crept up the stairs towards it. It darted away out of view. He had been meaning to put a wire mesh across the casement window, but hadn’t yet got round to it. He looked in the spare room; the window was closed, as it should be, and there was no sign of the cat. That left only their bedroom, the main bathroom or his office. He checked the last first, and it was clear the cat had been in there, because papers about the Roy case had been pulled off his desk, scrunched up and clawed. He could almost believe the animal could read. There was also a vile stink. The offending deposit was on the carpet just below his desk.
‘You’ll regret it if I catch you,’ Gillard hissed. The cat was not in the bathroom, so it must be in the bedroom. He crept back and saw it, as bold as you please, standing on the corner of the duvet near his wife. He reached out, but it jumped off the bed and dodged past him and downstairs. He could hear Sam now, awake and calling out, but the hot pursuit of the cat took precedence. He thundered down the stairs, and saw that the internal door from the utility room to the garage was ajar. He grabbed a torch from the telephone table and went into the garage. He shone the beam across the darkened space, then saw that the small side window looked to be the cat�
�s entrance point. It was less than a foot across, and five feet off the ground, but the wood was rotten and one part of the cracked glass looked to have fallen and shattered. As he crept further into the cluttered garage, Napoleon jumped out from behind some bags of fertiliser, leaped onto a small shelving unit, and then with acrobatic aplomb scrambled the final two feet up the wall, and through the broken window.
Gillard swore softly. A ruined night’s sleep ahead of an early start tomorrow. Ashtead Common for a re-enactment of Mrs Roy’s last dog walk. Rigby had got her way.
* * *
The crime scene reconstruction was a washout. The idea of a reenactment was to prod memories. But heavy rain and – because of the early hour on a Sunday morning – a paucity of spectators contrived to make it seem a waste of time. The assailant, played by Ryan Jones, a young CSI trainee in Kirsty’s class, managed to fall off his bike, twice. Bertie the boxer dog seemed confused and lethargic, unwilling to run for the balls thrown for him. When the middle-aged Asian woman playing Mrs Roy gamely threw herself into a puddle after the mock attack, Bertie simply wandered off rather than guarding her body.
Back at Mount Browne, after a well-earned breakfast, Gillard sat with Colin Hodges once again going through the CCTV footage. Kirsty Mockett had mentioned three parked vehicles on the southern edge of Ashtead Common as she began her run a week ago, and Hodges had got two of them within five seconds of footage from the Network Rail camera. A white Toyota Avensis estate passed over the crossing just two vehicles behind Mrs Roy’s green Jeep Cherokee. However, the camera was designed purely to monitor the level crossing, and simply caught a passenger side view of northbound vehicles. Nothing could be seen of the driver, nor of the registration number.
‘He could be following her,’ Hodges said. ‘If it’s him.’
Gillard nodded. ‘Have you got it on its return journey?’
‘We’ve got several white Toyota estates going in the right direction up to noon on that day, one was an Estima, the others were Avensis. Did she know what model it was?’
Gillard shook his head. ‘I think she was doing well to recall as much as she did. Whatever model it was it had gone from its parking spot by the time the first uniform officer got there.’
‘Well, that gives us just a couple. One an Estima, one an Avensis. Of course with the snow melted, it’s hard to find much resemblance between the two vehicles.
‘Kirsty said the vehicle had only a little snow on it, which to me indicates it hadn’t been parked long.’
‘Sounds reasonable. The nearest ANPR or traffic camera is quite a way away, so none of it’s going to be easy to check.’ Hodges rewound the footage on the level crossing camera. ‘That’s the first Toyota we’ve got coming back. It’s got alloy wheels, like the one tailing Mrs Roy.’
Gillard peered at the screen. ‘Can you get any better resolution on this? I really can’t make out the driver. Just a dark shape.’
Hodges paused the video and zoomed in on the driver side window. The figure within was just a blur. ‘That’s the best we can do, I’m afraid. We can send it off for professional enhancement if you want?’
‘Yes, let’s do that.’
* * *
Hodges was also the evidence officer for this case, and Gillard wanted to take a fresh look at everything they’d got in case they had missed anything. Normally evidence in a current case as hot as this one would be kept on-site, but the sheer volume of the food, medicines and household items which had been tested for thallium meant that the majority of the bagged evidence was kept off site in a secure warehouse at the Guildford suburb of Burpham. After the short drive to get there, Gillard and Hodges used the card reader to gain access, and headed for the shelves dedicated to the contents of Mrs Roy’s two bathrooms.
‘Okay,’ said Hodges. ‘The top shelf is everything we took from the bathrooms and kitchen in Richmond. The shelf below is the stuff from her flat.’
Gillard picked up a series of different transparent polythene evidence bags, each of which was labelled with date and place of discovery, and the date of testing. At the right-hand end of the lower shelf was a large bag with several items in it. Gillard read the label which showed that they had been retrieved from Mrs Roy’s office in Slough, and were initialled by DI Mulholland. Inside it were several smaller polythene evidence bags: toothbrush, toothpaste, Nivea moisturiser, a roll-on deodorant, and a small bottle of some essential oil with a label written in what looked like an Indian script.
‘Well done, Claire,’ Gillard said.
‘Yeah, I sent off a swab of the oil to Yaz for his wife to do the thallium test,’ Hodges said.
‘What about the toothpaste?’
Hodges laughed. ‘She’s hardly gonna get poisoned by Colgate is she?’
‘Test it anyway.’ Gillard opened the bag containing the moisturiser and unscrewed the lid. He gave it a sniff. ‘It would be quite possible for someone to put in here, wouldn’t it? Then she rubs it on, and it gets through the skin.’
Hodges gave an expansive shrug. ‘What are all these tests for anyway, sir? We’ve got a suspect, he’s been charged with the murder. I don’t understand what we are doing with all this stuff.’ He gestured at all the evidence bags.
Gillard scowled at the junior detective. ‘There are other things going on here that I’m afraid I can’t share with you. But I need you to take seriously the idea that there was a poisoning attempt.’
‘I’ll send them all for tests if you want.’ He made it clear he thought it a complete waste of time and money.
‘You were already told to do that. It says here in DI Mulholland’s notes. But you thought you knew better, didn’t you?’ Gillard held up the bag, which contained a brand-name roll-on deodorant. He squinted at it, and manoeuvred the item within the bag.
‘What have you found there, sir?’ Hodges asked. He watched as Gillard rapidly undid the polythene bag’s seal, then hesitated, looking around.
‘What are you after?’
‘Plastic gloves,’ Gillard said. ‘I want two pairs on before I touch this.’ He found a packet of gloves in a drawer by the entrance to the warehouse, and put on two pairs.
He returned to find Hodges squinting into the evidence bag. ‘What have you found? I can’t see anything.’
‘Let me show you,’ Gillard said, holding the bag up. ‘The deodorant has been on its side and leaked into the bag.’
‘Okay,’ Hodges said, warily.
‘Why would it leak, Colin?’
‘It’s full of liquid, on the roller maybe, and seeps under the cap.’
‘They’re designed not to do that.’ He carefully retrieved the roll-on from the bag. ‘Don’t touch it. But if you look carefully at the seam where the two halves of the plastic moulding of the case join, there is a tiny hole.’
‘You must have good eyes,’ Hodges said, peering at the deodorant. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘It had to be tiny, otherwise Mrs Roy would have spotted it. And because the roll-on was normally stored vertically it wouldn’t have leaked with a hole two thirds of the way up. Until we took it as evidence. My guess is that she didn’t take thallium into her body through food or medicine, but through her armpits.’
Hodges stared at him in horror.
‘This is not accidental,’ Gillard said. ‘We are dealing with a devious and knowledgeable killer.’ And, he realised, it’s definitely not Jason Waddington.
* * *
Luckily for Gillard, Yaz Quoroshi was at home that Sunday afternoon. The detective could hear sport on the TV in the background as he described his finding to the head of crime scene investigation.
‘I’m going to ask you a big favour, Yaz. And a favour from Jenny too. Is it at all possible to get back to the lab this afternoon and run the test on this deodorant? It’s just the one item.’
Quoroshi sucked in a big breath. ‘Yeah, I think we could do that. Arsenal are losing anyway Let me just ask.’
Forty minutes later all three of th
em were in the lab at Guildford University, wearing white coats, eye protectors and thick rubber gloves. Before them was a plastic evidence bag containing the roll-on. Jenny Quoroshi carefully picked it up, unscrewed the cap and inverted it. She then used a cotton bud to move the ball, so that a smear of liquid emerged. She wiped the bud in it, soaking it as much as she could, then dropped the bud into a test tube on a stand. From a locked cupboard she removed the surplus reagent which she had mixed for the previous test. The mixture of bismuth nitrate, sodium iodide and nitric acid would turn red in the presence of thallium. Using a teat pipette, she put a single drop into the tube.
It was only a couple of minutes before they noticed a dark red precipitate begin to form in the bottom of the tube.
‘That’s it,’ Jenny Quoroshi said. ‘Positive for thallium. We need to get it confirmed with a spectrophotometry test. Can do it here, but it will take a day or so.’
‘I’m looking forward to showing this to Dr David Delahaye,’ Gillard said. ‘He was leaning towards an accidental exposure to thallium. But there can be nothing accidental about this.’
Chapter 13
The sound of the quad bike was gradually driving Prisha mad. She looked out of the kitchen window into the paddock, where her eleven-year-old daughter Indigo was driving round and round and round on a bumpy circuit through the orchard. Perhaps the neighbours did have a point about the racket. And maybe it was a mistake to have bought her the damn thing, but even if there was only a slight chance it was worth taking.
Yesterday’s rain, and her daughter’s incessant laps, had turned half the paddock into a muddy quagmire. Prisha drained her coffee, made her way into the cloakroom and – shoving aside Indigo’s skateboard, football gear, and hockey stick – dug out her own wellingtons. Donning them and a rain jacket, she went out into the cold, crossed the thirty yards of formal garden and arrived at the hardstanding by the garage. On Indigo’s next pass this side of the spinney, Prisha hailed the mud-spattered vehicle, whose original bright yellow bodywork was barely visible. Indigo waved to her mother in acknowledgement, and standing up, accelerated up a hillock, spraying earth in all directions. She then executed a tight turn, and raced the quad at her mother. Prisha stood her ground, annoyed and encouraged in almost equal measure. Indigo had inherited plenty of her own fierce independence, and with it an almost frightening intelligence. She had realised that when they discovered two years ago that Indigo was selling her lunches of EoS past-date products to fellow pupils, and even members of staff. But this quad bike had unzipped in her a layer of almost masculine aggression. The child slammed on the brakes just in time, and swerved to a halt on the gravel.
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