The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

by Nick Louth

  ‘He knows I’m in a hotel, but not which one. He’ll soon figure it out. Did you bring your gun? It’s the only safe way to bring him down.’

  ‘What gun? British police aren’t armed.’

  Her face distorted in disbelief. It was the first real piece of animation he’d ever seen on it. ‘I don’t believe it. Okay, I understand you don’t carry them around everywhere, but you must be able to get one.’ She folded her arms and the expression on her lips was akin to the one he had seen on the bellboy. She clearly felt short-changed in her choice of saviour. ‘Fine. I think Oleg has a gun back at the hall, some silly golden thing. If we can find it, I take it you at least do know how to use one?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not something we’re trained on, except officers from the specialist firearms units.’

  She threw herself down on a chaise longue and shouted in frustration as she punched a cushion. ‘Idiot! Simple Simon, you’re going to have to learn. There is no other way out of it.’

  * * *

  Gillard sat staring disconsolately at the enormous records of evidence now accumulating on the HOLMES computer. It was nearly seven on a dismal Friday evening and the rain was hammering on the Khazi roof. He’d sent most of his colleagues home for the night, asking for them to return for an incident room meeting tomorrow at noon. Many of them were clearly exhausted. He’d particularly taken pity on Rainy Macintosh, whose fourteen-year-old son Ewan had been staying with Claire’s family in Staines. She’d barely seen the boy over Christmas, and for a single mum that separation was agony. Michelle Tsu and Vikram Singh likewise deserved a bit of time with their families. Only Hoskins, emotionally bulletproof, was still around. He was probably with Wolf or in the kitchens with Tatiana, apparently his new sweetheart.

  The one other exception was the research intelligence officer, Rob Townsend, who was now back with a team of specialist officers at Mount Browne. They had a ton of work to do looking through all the electronic items that had been seized.

  Events were conspiring against Gillard. Wolf had confirmed to Carl that Jason Lefsky had left in one of the Mitsubishi pickups on Boxing Day morning, destination unknown. Corrigan at Special Branch hadn’t returned his call. The one person who had called him was Chief Constable Alison Rigby, who was clearly feeling the heat from higher up. The press coverage, slow to start because of the Christmas break, was now relentless. ‘Yet another Kremlin slaying,’ according to the Daily Mirror. He explained to Rigby that despite finding the murder weapon, none of the obvious suspects could have pulled the trigger. Her response was brisk: ‘Craig, guns do not fire themselves. I need a result, fast. There’s a Cobra committee meeting on Monday at nine a.m. The Prime Minister, Home Secretary, heads of MI5 and MI6, Corrigan too. They’ll all be there. Don’t leave me empty-handed. I don’t enjoy looking a fool.’

  She had then hung up on him.

  There were small saving graces. He had some idea of the whereabouts of the remaining Volkov family, thanks to the long-suffering Wolf. He was certain Anastasia was in central London, because a gigantic bill on the Volkov account had just come through from the Dorchester. Wolf had also been notified that Yelena Yalinsky was returning to London, after hearing of her son’s arrest, and wanted a room prepared. The Met Police, which was keeping an eye on Oleg’s Knightsbridge flat, had rung Gillard to let him know the young Russian had returned to it after being released from custody. So far he was keeping strictly to the terms of his bail.

  Claire had arrived at the crime scene in Sussex and confirmed to him that Sussex Police were treating Levin’s body and the camper van with an appropriate level of circumspection. However, there was no possibility of a post-mortem before Monday morning.

  With a Monday deadline, the same conundrum kept returning to Gillard with greater urgency. How had Volkov, Talin and Bryn Howell been shot if no one had got into or out of the building?

  Mulling this thought, he shrugged on his overcoat, grabbed an umbrella from a coat peg and walked out of the Khazi into the pouring rain. He greeted the rather damp duty PC, who was guarding the incident room. ‘Are you signing out for tonight, sir?’ the PC asked, brandishing a clipboard in a clear plastic bag, fogged with condensation.

  ‘Not yet, unfortunately.’ The DCI opened the umbrella and made his way onto the main drive. He stared up at the huge edifice of Westgrave Hall, its mullioned windows now mostly darkened, the brooding towers and belfry silhouetted against the sky. The only sounds were cawing rooks and the spattering of overflowing gutters. He turned south, looking down the drive, through the long avenue of limes, their leafless limbs reaching for the darkling sky.

  The press encampment was smaller than the day before, just a couple of satellite trucks still there at the gates. Further away, in the village, he could make out the lights of the bunkhouse. Probably only half a dozen officers would stay overnight, now that the search had been finished. He made his way down to the gate where a couple of male uniforms kept guard, miserable as drowned rats. On seeing him, one of the cops picked up a bin bag from the ground.

  ‘Ah sir, I was just going to come and see you. A courier from the National Ballistics Intelligence Service brought this a few minutes ago.’ He opened the bag and passed across a shoebox-sized package.

  Gillard guessed what it was and, after thanking the PC, headed back to the Khazi. Once inside he undid the package and removed a plastic bag containing the golden gun, somewhat tarnished and grimy, the gold paint flaking off in a few places. He had not actually seen the weapon close up, and he was surprised that it was so small and light. With a normal six shot magazine, it would fit into the palm of his hand. But it didn’t have one. Instead, separately bagged, was an enlarged fifty round magazine a foot long, and in another plastic sleeve were four test bullets fired by NBIS, and the two sent as comparators from the crime scene.

  The detective slid on latex gloves, unbagged the gun and fitted bullets and magazine. He squinted down the sight, training it at the furthest objects in the room. He held it up under an LED reading lamp to get a good close look. There was a white sticky substance on the grip, which he immediately recognised as residue from gaffer tape or something similar. He ejected the magazine and reinserted it, hearing it click soundly into place. The spring was good, and correctly seated, so there would have been no need to tape it closed.

  A little puzzled, he logged on and re-read the detailed overview of the weapon that the NBIS had emailed him. Almost all of it concerned the ballistic identification of test bullets compared with those found at the crime scene. There had been no forensic examination of the weapon, except fingerprints and DNA, which had come back negative. The fact that someone had used tape on it was unremarked. There was just a single line that referred to its condition: Evidence of superficial internal water corrosion.

  Something about this just wasn’t right, and he couldn’t work out what it was.

  A gun can’t fire itself. That’s what Rigby had said.

  But who had fired it? And how had it got wet?

  * * *

  There was a knock on the door and the duty PC put his head through. ‘You’ve had a message, sir.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Lady Fein. She sent one of the staff to ask if you are free to come up to the hall for coffee.’

  Gillard looked at his watch. It was nearly eight p.m. Time he took a break. The prospect of a conversation with Natasha Fein was an alluring one at any time of the day. The detective grabbed his raincoat and an umbrella and made his way out into the pouring rain and up to the house.

  She was waiting for him in a chair in front of a roaring log fire. Anastasia’s two huge Borzoi wolfhounds, Pyramus and Thisbe, lolled at her feet. Their soft brown eyes followed him as he shrugged off his coat on the doorstep, shook out the brolly, and made his way over. Gillard recalled that the last time he had seen her she was swimming. Naked. The clinging white woollen dress she was wearing now did little to disguise that superb figure. And she had made a pass at
him, or so he thought.

  ‘Take a seat, detective chief inspector,’ she said, tapping a wing chair next to her. ‘You must be exhausted. Would you like coffee, or something stronger?’

  ‘Coffee is fine, thank you.’

  Natasha swiped on her phone and tapped the screen. ‘This is one of our little innovations for Westgrave Hall. It pretty much keeps track of all the staff. Summoning them, giving orders and so forth is straightforward. Coffee and biscuits are on their way.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘Does the app save a history of staff movements?’

  ‘Ah, now that is a question for Tatiana, I’m afraid. I suppose you want it to find out where everyone was during the party?’

  ‘Yes, every little thing is helpful.’

  ‘I’ll get her to message you with any records that we have.’ She watched him closely, her feline eyes unblinking.

  ‘May I ask what are you doing here on this rainy and windswept evening?’ he asked.

  She smiled. ‘The Volkov organisation does not run itself, especially when the head has been cut off. Wolf does his best, but at a time like this there is a bit more multi-tasking required than any one person can manage. This is where our concierge services come into their own. It’s pretty much an organised wind-down until the various wills are sorted out.’

  Coffee arrived in a large silver pot on a silver tray, with a delicate golden jug of milk and a hand-blown glass dish containing glistening dark crystalline sugar. She poured, then looked up at him. ‘I have a question of my own, if I may.’

  ‘Fire away,’ he said.

  ‘I understand that Oleg Volkov’s gun was the one used to kill his father and the others.’

  ‘We have arrested him, yes, but we haven’t released any further details.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘I can see from your expression that you are surprised I’m so well-informed. Oleg’s solicitor is a family friend, so I do get to hear the inside story.’

  ‘I hope anything you hear you will keep to yourself.’

  ‘Naturally. Have you heard about Sophie?’

  ‘Ms Cawkwell? We took a statement from her shortly after the shooting.’

  ‘She’s in a bad way, unfortunately. She was so excited about marrying Sasha, now she seems to spend every day crying, which isn’t like her at all.’

  ‘It must’ve been a terrible shock,’ Gillard said. ‘Especially as she found his body.’

  Natasha nodded. ‘She is halfway through making a documentary about the fossil, commissioned by National Geographic TV. But I fear she is in no state to work on it, so I’m not sure it’ll get done at all, even with Anastasia’s help. There was marvellous footage taken inside the library, which showed Lebyodoushka and Molodoy in all their fossilised glory.’

  ‘I hope she makes a rapid recovery.’

  ‘Well it’s been a blow, obviously. But she is very resourceful. The death of her first husband left her a widow while she was still in her twenties, and she seemed to cope with that. Poor Sophie, she’s had more than her fair share of bad luck.’

  ‘So it seems,’ Gillard said, standing up to take his leave. He thanked Natasha for her help and returned through the rain to the Khazi, which with all the comings and goings was now an island in a sea of mud. He took one look inside the damp mobile incident room and decided he couldn’t bear to stay in it a minute longer. It was time he went home.

  As he bade good night to the duty officer and headed to the grey Vauxhall he thought about Sophie Cawkwell. Bad luck? Or something else. He’d really like to know what her inheritance would be.

  * * *

  Sam Gillard was surprised and delighted to see her husband walk through the door. It was just gone nine thirty.

  ‘I thought you were staying at the bunkhouse tonight,’ she said, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him.

  ‘I thought better of sharing a dormitory with Carl Hoskins. Need to get away from the case for a while.’

  Sam’s parents, John and Carol, came out to greet him. ‘How’s it going, Craig?’ John asked, eagerly. ‘The news seems to be full of nothing else but dead Russians killed by the Kremlin.’

  ‘We’ve made a lot of progress. It’s certainly one of the largest crime scenes I’ve ever been involved with, and simply co-ordinating all of the statements and evidence has been quite a headache.’

  Sam knew that her father was looking for more than those generalities, but Craig was skilled at only sharing tidbits that were already in the public domain. Finding out he hadn’t eaten anything but a couple of biscuits, Sam busied herself in the kitchen to see if there were any leftovers that she could reheat. Turkey, obviously. When she re-emerged with a plate of hot food, Craig was sitting on the settee next to Carol and they were watching the latest TV coverage of the murders.

  ‘So the murder weapon’s been found?’ Carol asked.

  ‘A golden gun apparently,’ John said, looking up at Sam. ‘It’s a bit like James Bond, isn’t it?’

  ‘So much for our news blackout,’ Craig said glumly.

  ‘Tell you what,’ John said, leaning forward to Craig conspiratorially. ‘Dig! is on Channel Four. It’s the Mongolia episode that I missed first time round.’

  Carol laughed. ‘He only wants to see Dr Sophie Cawkwell’s long tanned legs.’

  ‘Nonsense, I’d not even noticed them,’ he retorted, pressing the remote.

  The programme had only just begun, and featured Sophie wearing an outback hat and a tight white T-shirt driving some big off-road vehicle down a steep rocky embankment, with the cameraman in the passenger seat. The pickup pitched back and forth, and Sam couldn’t help noticing how this amply demonstrated that the presenter wasn’t wearing a bra. Sophie gestured at the rocky layers they were passing as they descended, counting them back in time from Cretaceous to Jurassic, then Triassic and Permian. Craig, unusually, seemed to be as fascinated by the programme as her father was. But unlike John, he seemed more focused on the aerial view of the fossil site than on the presenter. At one point, there was an impressive 360-degree panorama of the mountains from high above, before it dived down to about fifty feet above the rock bed, until it inevitably closed in on Sophie. She was on hands and knees, her bottom curved winsomely for the camera in tight cut-off denim shorts, as she tapped with a small hammer on an outcrop.

  ‘How did they get a helicopter down there, then?’ Carol asked.

  ‘That’ll be drone footage,’ John said. ‘They use them all the time now. All these wildlife programmes are done like that now. Hundreds of aerial shots.’

  ‘Oh, Sophie, you’ve really slipped under the radar, haven’t you?’ Craig muttered, wagging his finger at the screen. He suddenly stood up, excused himself and left the room. Sam followed him out into the hallway.

  ‘What is it, Craig?’

  ‘I suddenly figured out something about the case.’

  ‘You don’t have to go back in to work now, do you?’ She had barely got used to the idea of him being home tonight and desperately wanted him to herself.

  ‘No, love. I can do what I need to from here.’ He started to head upstairs to his home office.

  ‘Sophie Cawkwell was at Westgrave Hall at the time of the shooting, wasn’t she?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yes. And she was immediately on the crime scene, and she stands to inherit hundreds of millions.’ He smiled at Sam and hurried upstairs.

  She went back into the lounge.

  ‘Everything all right?’ her father asked her.

  Sam forced a laugh. ‘He gets case ideas at the strangest times.’

  ‘John always gets ideas when he is looking at Sophie Cawkwell,’ Carol muttered.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ He looked up, all feigned innocence. Both women laughed.

  As they watched, a news bulletin flashed up on the bottom of the TV.

  Blast reported outside Buckingham Palace

  ‘Good grief,’ Carol said, seizing the remote from her husband and switching to the BBC’s rolling news channe
l. It showed a scene of chaos amid crowds outside the palace, and the tone of the voice-over made it clear something significant had happened: There is no official word on casualties as yet, but a Metropolitan Police spokesman said that anti-terrorist officers were on the scene.

  Dozens of police cars and ambulances were there, lights flashing, and crowd control railings were already in place, cordoning off a large area from the crowds. Rolling headlines beneath indicated an explosion. A number of vehicles were caught within the cordon, and one of them appeared to be almost destroyed, its roof ripped open like a can of sardines, smoke still issuing from the blackened interior.

  The blast seems to have taken place close to the pedestrian lights at the Victoria Memorial, just a few yards from the gates. Hundreds of officers now appear to be at the scene.

  ‘The damaged car is a stretched limo or something similar,’ John said. ‘Could it be royalty?’

  Carol shook her head. ‘Not the Queen. The flag above the palace isn’t flying, so she’s probably not in residence.’

  ‘Craig!’ Sam shouted, ‘Come down and look at this.’

  The voice-over continued: A source for the palace has told the BBC that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are currently in Balmoral, and no member of the immediate royal family is thought to be in London at the present time.

  Sam heard Craig thundering down the stairs, as the voice-over again repeated the bare details: that an explosion had been witnessed outside the palace, that it seemed to involve a number of vehicles, and that there was no information on casualties. She went online on her phone and found a Press Association report which mentioned two fatalities, one male inside the car and one a female bystander, plus a number of injured.

  ‘Channel Four News has three dead and many injured,’ John said, looking up from his phone.

  ‘Do you have to go in, Craig?’ Carol asked.

  ‘Thankfully not,’ he replied. ‘Met Police’s Counter Terrorism Command will look after it.’