Rough Diamonds

by Graham Ison

  Fourteen

  Reluctantly, Fox decided that he would have to go to Brighton. Dickie Lord’s information that a forty-five-year-old widow was claiming for the loss of fifty thousand pounds’ worth of jewelery interested him. Admittedly, people were losing jewelery almost every day of the week, but this was a substantial amount and the woman was a widow. And it might just be that she had fallen victim to a trickster in the same way as Mrs Ward, Mrs Bourne and Mrs Harker.

  Fox and Gilroy were driven to Brighton by the ever-complaining Swann who was only really happy when seated in the drivers’ room at Scotland Yard with a hand of cards. Preferably a good hand.

  It was a neat, detached house in the Preston Park area. The woman who answered the door was wearing a white trouser suit and had several gold chains around her neck. She was a blonde, though obviously not a natural one, and had a ready smile.

  “Mrs Elaine Carter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs Carter, I am Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox… of the Flying Squad.” The woman looked slightly puzzled. “At New Scotland Yard.” Fox produced his warrant card.

  “Oh! Perhaps you’d better come in. I’m in the conservatory at the moment. Is that all right?”

  “Perfectly, madam,” said Fox, wondering why it should not be.

  “Well, er, are you sure it’s me you want to see?” Elaine Carter’s face still bore the puzzled frown that had greeted Fox’s introduction of himself.

  “If you are the lady who’s lost a substantial quantity of jewelery, Mrs Carter, yes.”

  “Ah, now I see. But I thought the local police were dealing with that, here in Brighton.”

  “I’m sure they are, Mrs Carter, but we in London are looking into several similar thefts. Thefts which appear to be connected with at least two murders.”

  Mrs Carter put her hand to her neck. “Oh, good heavens. You surely don’t think—”

  “There is no need to alarm yourself,” said Fox. “The victims were not those who had lost their jewelery. It’s more of an internecine war among those who did the stealing.”

  “Like gang warfare, you mean?” Mrs Carter looked quite excited at the prospect of being involved in the sort of drama she had only ever seen on television. “Well, well.”

  “I wonder if you could perhaps tell Detective Inspector Gilroy and me about this burglary…”

  “Oh, it wasn’t a burglary,” said Elaine Carter.

  “Not a burglary?”

  “Oh no.” Mrs Carter lowered her eyes and then looked up with a guilty expression. “I’m afraid I was the victim of a confidence trickster. I think that’s what you call them, isn’t it?”

  “It might be,” said Fox. “Would you care to explain?”

  “I’d better begin at the beginning then.”

  “That would be helpful,” murmured Fox.

  “I was widowed about two years ago. A car accident on the M1. My late husband was a director of an insurance company and he left me very well provided for.”

  “I see.” Fox had already deduced, from the quality of the furnishings in a house that would have fetched at least two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, that Mrs Carter was not exactly on the breadline.

  “There were one or two people who told me that it wasn’t easy to adjust to widowhood,” said Elaine Carter, “but I wasn’t prepared to accept that, so I made a determined effort. After all, I was only forty-three when it happened, and I was damned if I was going to sit at home and mope.”

  “Quite right,” said Fox admiringly.

  “So I went out and got myself a job with a yacht chandler in Brighton. My husband and I used to do a bit of sailing and I’ve always loved the water. It wasn’t very strenuous work. Taking supplies and spare bits and pieces out to yachts in the marina, that sort of thing. I didn’t need the money, but I wanted something that would enable me to meet people. I started a new life really.” Elaine Carter sounded very enthusiastic about it.

  “And you’re still there?”

  “Too true. It’s only two or three days a week, but I wouldn’t miss it for anything. There’s not much going on in the winter, but in the summer it can get quite hectic, you know. I had determined to put the past behind me and meet people. I started going to parties and I got invited out to dinner by all sorts of people. I’m even being taken to Cowes Week this year.”

  “Delightful,” said Fox half-heartedly. He did not share Elaine Carter’s enthusiasm for sailing and was unhappy in any form of vessel that did not have an engine in it.

  “And then I met this man. He seemed a very nice type…” Elaine Carter paused. “One is a bit choosy after a happy marriage that has lasted twenty-two years, but he was very kind, very considerate. He said he understood because he had lost his wife some years previously and he knew the trauma it caused.”

  “And so you got to know this man better, did you?”

  “Better?” Mrs Carter laughed. “We had an affair,” she said. “He was quite a bit younger than me and we had some riotous times.”

  “And how long did this last?”

  “For about four months after he’d moved in. Oh sure, he would disappear for a few days from time to time. On one occasion he was gone for nearly a fortnight, but he always came back.”

  “Until the last time, I presume,” said Fox.

  “I suppose you think I was crazy to trust him?”

  “It happens, Mrs Carter, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does, but it shouldn’t have happened to someone my age.”

  “And when this man left, he took your jewelery with him. Is that it?”

  Mrs Carter nodded sadly. “’Fraid so,” she said. “And now it looks as though the insurance company is not going to pay out.”

  “Really?” Fox knew that from his conversation with Dickie Lord.

  “They’re working on the principle that because he was living with me, it’s much more difficult for me to prove that he actually stole my jewelery. They seem to have convinced themselves that I must have given him permission, or something ridiculous like that. As I said, my late husband was in the business and I know that insurance companies will do anything to avoid paying out.” Mrs Carter smiled ruefully. “But I’m going to fight it, even though it is Jim’s old company that I’m insured with. If I’d been dishonest, I’d’ve told them I’d been broken into.” She sighed at the apparent unfairness of life.

  “What was the name of this man, Mrs Carter?”

  “Don Fortune, he called himself. Should have been fortune hunter.”

  “Would you have a look at some photographs, Mrs Carter?” Fox took the prints that Gilroy produced from his brief-case and handed the first one across. “Have you seen him before?”

  Elaine Carter examined the photograph of Wally Proctor and shook her head immediately. “No, that’s not him.”

  “This one then.” Fox handed over a copy of Robin Skelton’s photograph.

  Again, the woman shook her head. “Nor him,” she said.

  Finally, Fox produced the print of Kevin Povey, a print the police knew to be at least five years old. “Is that him?”

  Mrs Carter stared at the photograph for some seconds before handing it back. “That’s him,” she said. “But he looked older. Was that taken some time ago?”

  “Yes, it was, Mrs Carter. Tell me, did this man own a yacht?”

  “I don’t know if he owned it, but he was certainly on a yacht, the first time I met him. I’d taken a couple of cleats out to him and he invited me below for a drink. He could have been a professional crewman, I suppose, there are a lot of those about. They take yachts from one part of the world to another, you know.”

  “I suppose he didn’t have an Australian accent, did he?” asked Fox, remembering what Bert Glass had told him.

  Elaine Carter nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, he did, but it came and went. I’d forgotten that. When I asked him if he was Australian, he just grinned and said he’d spent some time there, but that’d he�
��d been back about three years.” She paused. “Yes,” she said, “I’m sure that’s what he said.” She looked up at Fox with a quizzical expression on her face. “Does this mean you’ve caught him?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately no, but it’s only a matter of time.” Fox debated briefly whether to tell this lone widow what the police knew of Kevin Povey, but then decided that it might only serve to frighten her. There was no chance of his returning to Elaine Carter, not unless he brought the jewels with him, and Fox could think of nothing less likely than that. “I very much doubt that you’ll see him again, Mrs Carter, but if you do, perhaps you’ll let me know, or the local police.” He paused. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t let him into your house again.”

  “I can assure you, Mr Fox, that there’s no chance of that,” said Elaine Carter vehemently.

  *

  The insurance broker whose offices were in Chelsea was called Browning. He had a beard and wiry gray hair, and he remembered Jeremy Ryan very clearly. “I only took him on because business was well up that year and I needed some help,” he said. “He wanted to learn the business, so he said. I must have been feeling charitable that week.” Browning grinned. “Most unusual for an insurance broker,” he added.

  “And how long was he here, Mr Browning?” asked Henry Findlater.

  The broker stood up and walked across to a filing cabinet in the corner of his cramped office. “I can tell you exactly,” he said. “I’m very hot on keeping accurate records. Have to be in this business.” He produced a file and opened it on top of the cabinet. “Yes, here we are. Three weeks.” He replaced the file and slammed the door shut.

  “And it was at that point that he stole some of your records?”

  Browning sat down behind his desk and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It was the week that the photocopier broke down. Bloody nuisance. The engineer came round, looked at the damned thing and then said he’d have to get a spare part. Didn’t see the sod again for a week.”

  “Are you suggesting that Ryan might have photocopied other records then?” asked Findlater.

  “He did. Your chaps found them when they searched his house. After all, there’s no point in stealing files if there’s a copier standing in the corner, is there? I reckon it goes on all over the place. I mean to say, Inspector, how often does anyone in an office ask an employee specifically what they’re copying? It’s all done on trust and you don’t have time anyway.”

  “So it was the week the photocopier broke down that you found Ryan taking documents, is that it?” Findlater was jotting down notes as he spoke.

  “Yes. And it was pure luck that I found out then. Wasn’t very lucky for Ryan. He was going out to lunch and he’d got one of those flashy executive briefcases with him. But as he got to the door, the case fell open and all these files went across the floor. If I hadn’t been in the outer office, I wouldn’t have known anything about it. Anyhow, I challenged him and asked him what he was doing.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  Browning stroked his beard and grinned. “Not a lot he could say. He started to spin me a yarn about going out to see a client. Well, for a start he hadn’t got any clients, and secondly, the files he’d got were all policies that were up and running.” He smirked. “So then he changed his story and said that he had one or two friends that he was meeting for lunch and thought that they might put a bit of business his way and he was taking these files with him to show these prospective clients how it was done. Well, that didn’t stand up for a moment, so I called the police.”

  “Did the police at Chelsea take a note of the subjects of these files?” asked Findlater.

  “I suppose so. I don’t really know. They let me have them back the very next day because I said I might need them.”

  “Is it possible for you to give me the names of the clients who were the subjects of the files he took and the ones he copied?” Findlater looked up from his pocket book, an expectant look on his face.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” said Browning. “They are confidential, you know.”

  “I realize that,” said Findlater, “and we will, of course, treat the information in confidence, but we think that this theft may have been a part of an ongoing conspiracy to defraud insurance companies.” He did not think that at all, but he knew that the mere suggestion of it would strike home.

  “Oh, that’s different,” said the broker. “Why didn’t you say so?” He opened a drawer in his desk and produced a handwritten list which he handed to Findlater. “There you are, Inspector.”

  Findlater ran his eye down the list. Two of the ten names were of women who had already excited the interest of the Flying Squad: Mrs Audrey Harker of Chiswick and Mrs Linda Ward of Earls Court. Findlater wrote down all ten names.

  *

  “It’s bloody obvious,” said Fox. “Ryan was going through Browning’s files to find anyone who could provide rich pickings for our three icemen: Proctor, Skelton and Povey. And Chelsea would be a good place for it. He would pass this information on and then one of the three would make the acquaintance of a rich widow, chat her up and have her jewelery away.”

  “Looks like it, sir,” said Findlater, peering through his owl-like spectacles at his notes. “It was just bad luck that the photocopier broke down that week. He might still have been doing it.”

  “He probably still is,” said Fox gloomily. “I doubt that he would have stayed at Browning’s for too long, even if he hadn’t been caught out. Once he’d milked his files, he’d have been off somewhere else. What’s he doing now, Henry, any idea?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, I think you’d better find out. Put some of your lads on him. See where he’s working now.” Fox opened his day-book, the unofficial record he kept of things to do. “Any joy from young March? He was supposed to be finding out about Gordon Povey.”

  “Don’t know, sir. Shall I get hold of him?”

  “Do that, Henry.” Fox glanced at the clock. “Christ!” he said, “Is that the time? Tell him I’ll be gone in five minutes.” Moments later, DC March tapped on Fox’s office door and entered, nervously.

  “Come in, Ted, I shan’t eat you,” said Fox. “What have you to tell me?”

  “Gordon Povey, sir.” March shuffled through the handful of papers he had brought with him. “Sergeant Fletcher’s informant was right, sir. Povey did die five years ago. Heart attack, according to the death certificate.” He exchanged that sheet of paper for another. “Married thirty years ago in Maidstone to a Rachel Carey.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you do a birth search to see whether they’d had any children? This bloke that DS Fletcher saw reckoned they’d had two.”

  March shook his head. “I went right the way through, sir,” he said. “From the date of the Poveys’ marriage to the date of Gordon Povey’s death. Nothing, sir.”

  Fox nodded. That looked like another promising lead that had come to nought. “I suspected that Kevin Povey was a bastard,” he said. “I think you’ve just proved it.”

  “Anything else, sir?” asked March.

  “Yes. Mrs Elaine Carter of Brighton said that Don Fortune, the ratbag who nicked her jewelery, and whom we now know to have been Kevin Povey, claimed that he had been widowed some years ago. Have a poke about in the divorce register and see if you can find anything.” Fox stood up and adjusted the collar of his jacket. “But as he’s a lying bastard, I don’t suppose that was true either. But you never know your luck, Ted.”

  “No, sir,” said March whose idea of luck did not include hours spent in the dusty archives of the General Register Office.

  *

  “I’m not very good at buying flowers,” said Fox when Jane Sims opened the door of her Knightsbridge flat, “but I hope these will do.” He handed the girl a bunch of carnations. “I warned the seller thereof that he would be in trouble if they didn’t last at least a week.”

  Jane smiled. “That�
��s very sweet of you, Tommy,” she said. “Come in and pour us some drinks while I put these in water.”

  Fox poured the whisky and lit a cigarette, leaving his case open on the occasional table. Jane smoked only occasionally, but he always offered her one.

  “And how are all your murders going, Tommy?” Jane placed the vase of flowers on top of the television cabinet and sat down on the settee opposite Fox.

  Fox shrugged. “They’re not,” he said. “Every time we come up with something that might be useful, it seems to peter out. And all the time we’re getting further and further away from the real nub of the thing. I’ve almost forgotten that we’re supposed to be dealing with a bloke who got shot in a cab at Hyde Park Corner.”

  “I’m sure you’ll solve it, Tommy.” Jane tucked her legs up on the settee. “Your men speak very highly of you, you know.”

  Fox glanced at her, a sceptical look on his face. “How d’you know that?” he asked. “They’re right, of course,” he added with a grin.

  “They were talking about you after dinner at the Yard the other night. After you’d gone, of course. They obviously think that you’re terrific.” Jane took a sip of whisky. “And so do I,” she added softly.

  “You don’t want to believe a word they say,” said Fox. “Who in particular was giving you all this claptrap?”

  “Jack Gilroy for the most part.”

  Fox scoffed. “Well, he would,” he said. “Up on a promotion board next week. Wants to keep on the right side of me, just on the off chance that I’ll put in a good word for him.”

  “But he is a good detective, isn’t he?” asked Jane.

  Fox nodded. “Yes, he is, but don’t ever tell him I said so. He might slacken off.”

  Jane laughed. “God, Tommy Fox, you’re a hard man,” she said.

  “Anyway, they’re bound to butter you up,” said Fox.

  “Why?” Jane raised an eyebrow and smiled.