Naked Flames

by Graham Ison

  Sharp had told Madison Bailey that his premises were opposite a pub nearer Sloane Square than the World’s End. But the most likely location turned out to be a coffee shop of which there are many in the King’s Road. That is to say, there are many this week.

  Dave found a parking space, not an easy thing to do in this particular street, principally because it’s in London.

  The coffee shop was one of those old-fashioned establishments where a waitress took your order and you paid her as you were leaving. It’s amazing that there are still some people trading in London who are that trusting. Having ordered coffee, we seated ourselves and when the waitress returned with two beakers containing an inferior brown liquid, I discreetly displayed my warrant card and asked if the manager could spare me a moment.

  The young man who appeared wore a T-shirt marked ‘Barista’ and hovered in an agitated fashion by our table. ‘I’m the manager,’ he announced. ‘Is there a problem?’ He probably thought we’d discovered the sock in which he kept his stash of cannabis under the bed in the flat where he lived.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you sit down for a few moments while we have a chat?’

  The manager glanced furtively around as though fearing the instant arrival of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to do a snap VAT inspection. Eventually, he took the plunge and sat down or, rather, perched on the edge of the chair. His left hand, fingernails bitten right down, played a constant tattoo on the table top.

  I told him who Dave and I were, and that we were investigating a murder. ‘I’ve been informed that these premises were until recently an antiques shop.’

  ‘Not as far as I know. This has been a coffee shop for quite some years,’ said the relieved manager. ‘At least, that’s what I was told.’

  ‘Must be a record for the King’s Road,’ said Dave. ‘Have you ever heard of a guy called Robert Sharp who was said to be in business in this area?’

  ‘Sharp? Sharp?’ The manager savoured the name for at least three seconds before replying. ‘No.’

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ said Dave. ‘What do we owe you for the coffee?’

  ‘Six pounds twenty,’ said the manager.

  ‘Cheap at twice the price,’ said Dave sarcastically, and counted out the exact amount.

  We’d checked the story that Madison Bailey had told us and the outcome had been exactly as I’d expected. I can only assume that Sharp had created his latest persona with the intention of persuading Madison Bailey into parting with some money. Or persuading her into bed with the promise of marriage to a man of great wealth who owned a Caribbean hideaway and took his holidays on the French Riviera.

  As we were not too far from Pall Mall, I decided we’d check out the gentlemen’s club, the address of which Sharp had on his business card.

  The fount of information in such places is always the hall porter. I identified myself and told him I was enquiring about a member.

  The hall porter, resplendent in a green tailcoat, bridled at this request. ‘We don’t give out information about our members, sir, unless you have a warrant.’

  ‘We’re not asking you to,’ said Dave, ‘but this finger’s been going about pretending he belongs to this prestigious establishment.’ He displayed the card that Madison Bailey had given us.

  The hall porter took out a pair of glasses and examined the card closely. ‘I can tell you, guv’nor, that there’s no one called Robert Sharp belonging to this club.’

  ‘Just as I thought,’ I said. I had known that before we entered the club’s premises, but it had to be done.

  My list of suspects for Robert Sharp’s murder was looking decidedly short. Madison Bailey had admitted being at the Pretext Club at the same time as Sharp and there was little doubt that was true. She claimed to have left early, a claim that was supported by the CCTV and Rosemary Crane’s assertion that Bailey had settled her account when she left at two minutes past eight on Saturday morning. Bailey further stated that she had left the country later that day, although not before the fire was reported. I determined that I would have her alibi checked with the airline she worked for.

  Unlikely though it sounded, Sadie Brooks’ statement that she had spent the busiest trading day of the week in bed all day with a man who had now vanished would be difficult, although not impossible, to disprove. I thought I might send my Australian rottweiler to see her; Kate Ebdon is very good at persuading people to tell the truth. It did cross my mind that Sadie Brooks’ antiques business might be a front for something else, like drug dealing, money laundering or even sex-slave trafficking, given that the ferry port of Newhaven was a mere ten miles away from Brighton. In that case, closing for a day wouldn’t have mattered a damn. On the other hand, experience told me that if she was a murderess, she’d have come up with a better alibi than the one she had given us.

  As for Holly Sharp, Robert Sharp’s wife, I couldn’t be sure if she was better off without him or whether she’d nurtured hopes that he might one day return to the marital home and do the decent thing. Like providing for his family. It appeared at first sight that neither option was advantageous to the poor woman. One thing was sure: I didn’t see her being responsible for Sharp’s murder.

  It was half past five by the time we got back to the office. The incident room was buzzing with gossip that ceased the moment Dave and I walked in.

  ‘I’m just going to see the commander, Dave, to bring him up to date.’

  ‘That shouldn’t take long, guv,’ said Dave gloomily. I think he thought as I did: it was going to be a long haul before we laid hands on Sharp’s killer. And I was under no illusions. Sometimes the police never discovered a killer. Such cases would always remain open, but the amount of police time that was expended on them got less and less with the passing years. Naturally, we always hoped for a miracle, like a guy walking into a nick and confessing, or the DNA of someone just arrested for drink-driving would be a match with the DNA found on a victim’s clothing twenty years previously. But I doubt Dave was thinking that at all and I was within minutes of discovering what the conversation in the incident room had been about.

  I tapped on the commander’s door.

  ‘Come!’

  ‘I thought you’d wish to know the progress of the enquiries I’m making into the death of Robert Sharp, sir. It is in fact, a murder.’ I began to explain about the accelerant under Sharp’s bed when the commander stopped me in mid-flow.

  ‘I’m not really interested in any of this, Mr Brock.’

  It was then that I noticed what he was doing. There was a cardboard box on his desk and he was emptying the drawers of their contents. Some items he was putting into the box, others he was throwing into the wastepaper bin. And finally, he placed the photograph of Mrs Commander in the box. It had been standing on his desk ever since he was appointed to HMCC, and the forbidding appearance of the harridan was clearly meant to serve as an awful warning against matrimony.

  ‘I’ll come back, sir.’

  ‘Don’t bother, Mr Brock. I’m retiring. Close the door on your way out.’

  I returned to the incident room. ‘Dave, a word in my office.’ I knew that my trusty sergeant would already have got to the nub of the strange and uncharacteristic goings-on in the commander’s office.

  ‘The commander’s retired, as of today, guv,’ said Dave, accepting my invitation to sit down.

  ‘Bit sudden, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I had a quick word with my mate across at the Yard who knows about such things,’ said Dave. ‘Apparently the deputy assistant commissioner sent for him this afternoon and told him in no uncertain terms that it was time he retired or he would arrange a transfer for him. Apparently, some vague offer was made of a job in a north London outpost to do with investigating historic damage to police property. It seems that the commander’s laid-back attitude to his hours of work didn’t impress the DAC. At least, that’s the scuttlebutt.’

  ‘The end of an era,’ I said. ‘Any suggestions from your source as
to who might take his place, Dave?’

  ‘The smart money is on Mr Cleaver, guv.’

  That sounded too good to be true. Detective Chief Superintendent Alan Cleaver was a real detective who had been a CID officer for the whole of his service after his first two years beat duty. How Cleaver had put up with the departing commander for the years he was detective chief superintendent of HMCC, I’ll never know, but if what Dave said was true, he’d got his reward at last.

  ‘I suppose there’ll be a collection to buy a present for the commander to mark his retirement.’

  ‘That’s a bit difficult now that there aren’t any ha’pennies in circulation, guv.’

  ‘What about a farewell party, then, Dave? That’s customary.’

  ‘Somehow, I can’t see him pushing the boat out,’ said Dave.

  ‘No, perhaps you’re right,’ I said. Unless it’s a paper boat, I thought.

  On Wednesday morning, I arrived at the office at about half past eight. I was determined to sit down with the two DIs, Kate Ebdon and Brad Naylor, and Dave Poole, to formulate a plan for tackling the increasingly complex case of Robert Sharp’s murder.

  ‘The commander would like a word, sir,’ said Colin Wilberforce, the moment I stepped into the incident room.

  ‘Who is it, Colin?’

  ‘Mr Cleaver, sir,’ said Wilberforce, as though any other officer in the post would be unthinkable. ‘He said there’s no rush, but when you’ve got a minute.’ This was a revelation indeed. Yesterday’s commander, who’d departed so suddenly the previous evening, never appeared before ten o’clock each morning, and disappeared promptly at six, although there had been a few weeks when he’d arrived at nine. But that had been a sop to the DAC and didn’t last long before he reverted to his old timetable. The consensus among his subordinates was that he was more frightened of Mrs Commander than he was of the DAC. It had been an imprudent policy that had finally resulted in his peremptory departure.

  I knocked on the commander’s open office door.

  ‘Come in, Harry, and take a pew.’ Commander Cleaver’s jacket was on the hat stand in the corner and he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves. His desk was completely clear. Gone were the filing trays and the heaps of paper that his predecessor had so adored. This was the desk of a no-nonsense boss.

  ‘No computer, sir?’

  ‘I’ve got a secretary, Harry. She deals with that sort of thing.’

  Before I sat down, I reached over the desk and shook Cleaver’s hand. ‘Congratulations, sir. Pleased to see you sitting in that chair.’

  ‘Thanks, Harry.’

  ‘The Robert Sharp murder, sir …’ I began.

  ‘Felt anyone’s collar for it yet?’

  ‘Not yet, sir, but—’

  ‘Let me know when you have, but don’t come in here every day with interim reports. It’s wasting your time and mine. The reason I’m here is to make sure you do your job properly and provide any help you might ask for or I think you need.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘Another thing, Harry. It’s come to my notice that you’re not too well clued up on IT. All my chief inspectors should know their way around mobile phones, computers, iPads and all the other stuff that’s become the modern face of policing. So, get to grips with it.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve started, guv’nor. My partner knows her way around computers and she’s teaching me quite a lot.’

  ‘I had a French girlfriend years ago,’ reflected Cleaver, ‘before I met my missus. That’s how I became fluent in French. It’s surprising what you can learn in bed, Harry.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t discuss computers in bed, guv,’ I replied hurriedly. ‘It’s just that—’

  ‘Get outta here, Harry.’ The commander laughed. ‘And leave the door open.’

  I returned to my office via the incident room, and asked Kate, Brad and Dave to join me. Suddenly the future seemed much brighter.

  We discussed the Sharp case for nearly an hour. The conclusion was that Sharp’s murderer was either someone who had been ripped off big time by him, probably to the tune of several thousand pounds, or it was a woman to whom he had promised marriage, riches and a jet-setting lifestyle, but who had finally realized that it was all smoke and mirrors, although not before she had parted with a considerable amount of money. There were quite a few wealthy widows or divorcées who were looking for a husband but were wise to fortune-hunters. It would be a motive for murder if one of them had fallen victim to the likes of Robert Sharp.

  That thought immediately put several people back in the frame. Sadie Brooks had been seen off by Robert Sharp, although she admitted he wasn’t the first to have done so, but he might have been the one who finally tipped her over the edge. Madison Bailey had been told wonderous tales of Sharp’s wealth, his Caribbean villa and his exotic holidays and I decided that she would have to be interviewed again. Those members of the Pretext Club who had been present at the time of Sharp’s murder would also merit a second interview despite having been cleared by Kate’s team originally.

  ‘Did you find a website from which you could download a photograph of Sadie Brooks, Dave?’ I asked.

  Kate Ebdon raised her eyebrows in surprise at my new-found familiarity with information technology.

  Dave handed me a print. ‘This is the photograph that was displayed on it, but I think it was probably taken a good ten years ago. She didn’t look that glam or that slender when we saw her yesterday.’

  ‘I think we’ll have to show it around at the Pretext Club, Dave, although we’re probably wasting our time. I’m not sure I’d have recognized her from that.’

  ‘We could get an up-to-date shot,’ said Kate.

  ‘I suppose we could, Kate,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but is it worth the trouble?’

  ‘From what you and Dave have been saying, it looks as though Sadie Brooks is all that we’ve really got in terms of a viable suspect. If you think it’s a good idea, it would only take a couple of hours to get down there, take the pic and come back.’

  ‘Right, do it, Kate. Dave, you can drive Miss Ebdon down there as you know where it is, but don’t go anywhere near Sadie’s shop or you’ll blow her cover.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare,’ said Kate, and she wasn’t joking.

  After Kate had left for Brighton, I decided to go to Heathrow to speak to the security officer of the airline for which Madison Bailey worked. Colin Wilberforce had already discovered her name for me and had told me that she was a retired police officer.

  Having worked my way through the maze that is Heathrow, I eventually found the office of the woman I wanted to speak to.

  ‘I’m Clare Hughes,’ she said, once I’d introduced myself. ‘I don’t think we ever ran across each other when I was in the Job. But I was in the Uniform Branch and seemed to spend a lot of my time dealing with admin at whichever nick I was posted to. I suppose I had a knack for it. Frankly, I was glad to have got my time in. You can have too much of the Job, especially these days when we don’t get the support we used to get. But it so happened that I was offered this job and it was too good to turn down.’

  ‘How long have you been out, Clare?’ She was a brunette of about fifty, perhaps a little older, immaculately dressed in a grey trouser suit with a red silk scarf, and just enough make-up.

  ‘A year now and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Anyway, enough of me, what can I do for you?’

  I gave Clare the short version of the case I was dealing with and Madison Bailey’s connection with it.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Clare Hughes. ‘Unlike my predecessor, I don’t believe in sitting in this office all day watching aeroplanes take off and land.’ She waved a hand at the window which afforded a view of the runways. ‘I get around the terminals and keep my eyes and ears open. It’s surprising what you pick up, just by listening. Still, I don’t have to tell you that, do I, Harry?’ she added apologetically. ‘As a result of putting myself about, I’ve gleaned quite a bit of interesting information f
rom among the women. One of the advantages of being a woman in this job is that you use the ladies’ staff loos and believe me, Harry, that’s where character assassinations take place and loose-tongued gossip is bandied about.’

  ‘From which, I gather, you’ve learned something about Madison Bailey?’

  ‘Oh yes. By all accounts, she’s quite a forward young lady, and is always on the lookout for a man.’ Clare paused and smiled. ‘Providing he’s got money, of course. It’s an open secret that she pushes off to a nudist camp whenever she gets the chance. Well, she’s an attractive girl and I can imagine that strolling about the place naked she’s going to have the pick of any man she wants. And she has the added advantage,’ she said, shooting an arch smile in my direction, ‘that she can see what’s she’s getting. Mind you, she’s bound to pick the wrong man in the end. They always do.’

  ‘The staff at the Pretext Club told me that Madison Bailey arrived there with the deceased, Robert Sharp, on Monday the fifteenth of July, but when I interviewed her she claimed it was just a coincidence. Incidentally, does the name Robert Sharp mean anything to you, Clare?’

  Clare didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ve never heard the name,’ she said.

  ‘Madison Bailey also said that she arrived in her own car, a Mini convertible. She certainly left very early on the Saturday morning, at two minutes past eight to be precise. And that was well before the alarm was raised. Which means that there was a considerable time gap between her leaving the club and the discovery of the fire.’

  Clare donned a pair of glasses and leaned across to tap a few keys on her computer. ‘Yes, that all tallies,’ she said after studying the screen for a moment. ‘She was certainly on duty that evening, but it wouldn’t have taken her long to get ready for her flight. I don’t know why she should have left so early. It’s not as if she was new to the job. These girls have done it so often that they can get ready for a flight in next to no time. Of course, she might have had another appointment somewhere.’