The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

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by Nick Louth


  He was almost done when he got a call on his mobile from Haldane, the MI5 officer, offering what seemed like a belated apology.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry we got under your feet during the Westgrave Hall murder inquiry. I couldn’t tell you very much at the time, but as I think you may have gleaned from the press, we wanted to protect a very useful intelligence asset in Yelena Yalinsky.’

  ‘Why did she ever agree to become an agent for you?’

  ‘We had promised to retrieve for her certain personal tissue she had stored at a Swiss clinic.’

  ‘Her chance to make a baby with Talin. You let her down, didn’t you?’

  ‘Unfortunately, someone got there before us. Still, by then we had been getting some prize intelligence for more than a year about the various officials in Moscow and elsewhere that she met. We taught her how to plant listening devices, and of course she could access places we’d never otherwise have a chance of reaching. We’re still reaping the benefits.’

  ‘Do you ever feel guilty for using people, Haldane?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Emotions don’t help get the job done.’

  ‘Don’t tell that to Anastasia,’ Gillard said. ‘She hated the idea that her mother may have had other children. Do you know where she is, by the way?’

  ‘Yes, she’s in Moscow. She hadn’t been our principal concern until this morning, when we were alerted to a new and rather unfortunate development, which was my main reason for ringing you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s about Simon Woodbridge, the former police constable.’

  Haldane’s tone was formal, almost reverential. Gillard feared he knew what the news would be.

  ‘He was found dead in Liechtenstein yesterday, having apparently fallen from the fourth floor of a block of luxury flats. The Foreign Office is contacting his next of kin before we release it to the press.’

  ‘That’s very sad news,’ Gillard said.

  ‘You can’t be surprised, surely.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ He thanked Haldane and hung up. Satisfied there was no overlooked evidence, he closed down his computer, and turned off the Khazi lights and the noisy fan. He walked out onto the steps, locked up the mobile incident room and then gazed up into the sky. White fluffy flakes of snow were now beginning to fall, blown by a keen wind from the east, perhaps all the way from Russia. He made his way across to his car, started the engine and cleared the windscreen. He reversed out of the parking space, drove down the majestic tree-lined drive and passed through and out of the gates of Westgrave Hall on his way back home.

  He did not look in the mirror.

  It was the last day of the year, one he would be glad to see the back of. He considered how much he was looking forward to seeing Sam for the New Year’s Eve celebration, and to the two-week Caribbean holiday they had planned together afterwards.

  As he turned onto the narrow lane, winding out of Steeple Risby, a flurry of snowflakes landed on the windscreen. One, caught on the wiper blade, trembled momentarily before vanishing without leaving a trace.

  Acknowledgements

  Please don’t read this until after you have completed the novel, as there are spoilers.

  The creation of The Bodies at Westgrave Hall relied heavily on embedding the plot within the real-life background of the deaths of Russian oligarchs in Britain. For a full and shocking account of all these unsolved killings I leaned on a 2017 BuzzFeed news article, still available online, by Heidi Blake and others: From Russia with Blood. For the wider arc of Kremlin politics I can recommend Catherine Belton’s excellent and up-to-date history of Putin’s People published earlier this year.

  Westgrave Hall itself does not exist and neither does the village of Steeple Risby. I am as ever grateful to retired detective Kim Booth who guided me on the complexities of dealing with an enormous crime scene, and to Gail and Francis Dymoke for allowing me access to the Scrivelsby estate chapel, on which the chapel at Westgrave Hall is based. I am indebted to Andrew Griffiths, the managing director of Droneflight, for guiding me on the intricacies of these devices. Those who doubt that weapons can effectively be mounted on hobbyist drones can dissolve their scepticism with a quick check on YouTube. Eighteen-year-olds in the United States have already been arrested in possession of them. I’d like to thank the National Ballistics Intelligence Service for their help too, and Irena Lingard for checking Russian names and patronymics. Any mistakes remaining are my own.

  Michael Bhaskar and the Canelo team as always were enthusiastic about the book. Miranda Ward did an excellent editing job. I would like to thank my readers circle, Tim Cary and Sara Wescott. Above all is my wife and first reader, Louise, to whom this book is dedicated.

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  About the Author

  Nick Louth is a best-selling thriller writer and an award-winning financial journalist. A 1979 graduate of the London School of Economics, he went on to become a Reuters foreign correspondent in 1987. He was for many years a Financial Times columnist, and a regular contributor to many other financial titles in print and online. The Bodies at Westgrave Hall is his seventh book in the DCI Gillard crime series, and his ninth thriller overall. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.

  Also by Nick Louth

  Trapped

  Heartbreaker

  DCI Craig Gillard Crime Thrillers

  The Body in the Marsh

  The Body on the Shore

  The Body in the Mist

  The Body in the Snow

  The Body Under the Bridge

  The Body on the Island

  The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Canelo

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

  31 Helen Road

  Oxford OX2 0DF

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © Nick Louth, 2021

  The moral right of Nick Louth to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Ebook ISBN 9781800321700

  Print ISBN 9781800323247

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Look for more great books at www.canelo.co

 

 

 


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