‘Welcome’, and, ‘Thank you for coming’, he was saying when Holly entered the room, fussily shepherded forward by her boss. ‘This is the case of Jane X. DS Angel will now bring you all up to speed… Come on Holly!’
When beckoned, Holly put her plastic cup on a nearby desk and walked over. Holroyd simply waved his right hand forward, this simple gesture serving to both present her and prompt her to speak at the same time. Holly introduced herself again by name, then gave a brief account of the discovery of a naked anorexic woman’s body in one of two red leather arm chairs placed on the fifth fairway of the Sussex Royale Golf Club. Photographs and other bits of useful information were already on display. DCI Holroyd announced that this was to be a murder enquiry, then motioned DI Garbutt forward to take over the meeting, while he sat down to observe. The DI then explained that an incident room would be set up close to the golf club’s location within a day or two, and began apportioning jobs.
Holly was given the task of liaising with Club Secretary, Peter Harding, and asked to make contact with the club’s founding president, Jamie Royle. Missing persons review; local and national publicity; telephone and further face-to-face interviews with club members and staff; house-to-house enquiries; chasing up hospital and dental records; locality CCTV footage examination; further forensic testing: all were considered and each task allocated. There were questions, mostly answered in the negative by the DI, and some discussion. The most helpful suggestion was that they concentrate on removals firms in the area, one of whose vehicles might have been used on that fateful Wednesday night.
After almost an hour, DCI Holroyd took over again, thanked Holly and her boss, delegated two officers to look into fingerprint matches and unsolved missing person cases, then summarized priorities for the whole team. Who was this woman? Who killed her, and who transported her to the golf club? How was it done, and why?
‘The motive for the killing is one thing’, he said quietly. ‘More important, because it will help us solve this case, is the motive for dumping the body where it was, and the manner in which it was positioned very deliberately. This was a message for somebody. We want to know who the message was for… And what it was trying to say.’
That was it. The meeting was over. A few people made their way between the desks to speak to Holly. Some were colleagues she had worked with before wanting to say Hello, and some had more specific questions to ask. Holly’s tea was cold by the time she went to retrieve it. Leaving the briefing room, she stopped off in the lavatory to pour the rest down the sink. On emerging, she was slightly disconcerted to find her boss in the corridor, waiting for her.
Back in the barren office of her senior, Holly quickly spoke up first, spending a few minutes relating details concerning the outcome of the McInnes case. After this she picked up her bag, hoping to leave, when she was bluntly instructed to wait.
‘We have a new DC starting with the team on Monday’, her boss said sternly. ‘I want him to work with you, Holly. I think you will be a good teacher. His name is Richard Baum. I think the name may be Dutch, but he’s been with the Kent force and comes from Maidstone. Apparently his parents live near here and he wants the transfer to Sussex for that reason.’
Holly remained silent, taking the news on board thoughtfully. It was obviously not a request. On the one hand, it showed that her boss had confidence in her. On the other, she wasn’t sure she wanted an inexperienced sidekick hanging around at the start of a murder case.
‘I’ve not met him yet’, the DI continued. ‘He’ll be coming here first thing on Monday. I’ll release him to you in the afternoon. Make sure you let me know where you’ll be and I’ll send him along.’
A few minutes later, Holly found herself in a heavy downpour as she made her way swiftly across the car park, jumping once or twice to avoid the puddles. Despite being uncomfortably wet, she sat still briefly as the Micra’s windows immediately steamed up. Having to wait for them to clear before she could head back to Graffham, she removed the neglected sausage roll from her bag and took a bite. It was unappetizing, dry and hard to swallow, but hunger made her persevere. The food felt like lead in her belly. She was thirsty, but had nothing to drink. She found a bag of peppermints in the glove compartment and took one. Starting the engine and turning on the air-conditioning helped clear the windscreen, but still she sat motionless for a while, her mind drifting back to the pathetic corpse she had seen again that morning. ‘Who was she? What terrible things had happened to her?’ Holly wondered as a decision formed, taking firm hold in her mind: ‘I am definitely going to find out’.
Emerging onto the by-pass a few minutes later, she turned on the car radio, tuned to a local station. Someone at the briefing had got quickly down to work. After an item about another train strike on Southern Railway, the announcer stated that the body of a woman in her thirties or forties had been found in countryside near Graffham, and that Sussex Police were requesting anyone with possibly helpful information, for example about a missing person, to get in touch. The next item concerned the breaking up of a protest against fracking somewhere in East Sussex that had already been going on for several days, blocking roads in the area. Uninterested, Holly switched from the radio to the CD player, and soothing sounds soon filled the car. Holly’s current favourite was the Shoreham-based ‘Guitar Whisperer’, Richard Durrant, the recording featuring tracks of cheerfully evocative music from Latin America. Pressing down on the accelerator, Holly was soon humming along with the tune.
***
At much the same moment over at the golf club, Peter Harding lifted, then abruptly put down again, his mobile phone. There had been a text from Jamie Royle in Chicago: ‘The golf has started. Do not call me again until Monday. I do not want to speak to the police.’ He decided he would say nothing about this to Holly, only that he was still trying to make contact with Jamie.
It was almost four-thirty, by which time the rain had stopped, when the detective arrived at the club. Holly was a little surprised to see the car park more than half full. She could see no-one playing on the course; but when she went inside the building, the mystery was explained. A large flat-screen television in the member’s lounge was tuned to the Ryder Cup golf in America. A good-sized crowd was watching the action. She noticed Mark Berger and Kyle Scott sitting at a table with several others, but before they spotted her, she button-holed the Colonel who was standing near the bar. ‘Can we talk?’ she enquired. ‘I’ve got a few more questions to ask’.
Peter Harding led the way to his office, repeating before she broached the subject that the club founder was still unreachable. ‘Can you give me his wife’s address and phone number then, please?’ Holly asked. ‘She lives nearby, doesn’t she?’
Georgina Rosemary Royle, was known to her husband, not always affectionately, by her initials, ‘GRR’! She was said to be a tough nut. Harding gave Holly the number, saying that she lived at Rose Cottage, near Duncton, just a few miles from Graffham. Holly phoned immediately, and was eventually informed by Mrs Royle’s assistant that she would be expected the following morning at ten o’clock. Speaking to the Colonel again, Holly then broached a different subject. She said her bosses were looking for a building nearby, or part of one, that they could rent and use as an incident headquarters for the next few weeks.
‘You might be in luck’, he replied. ‘The club owns a property, ‘Greenings’. It’s a three-bedroom house in Graffham village, purchased more than twenty-five years ago when houses were much cheaper than today, for the use of our then head professional, Alex King. It was an incentive. Jamie wanted the best teaching pro he could attract and set out to entice Alex over from Betchworth Park, a golf club near Dorking, where he had already established himself. King was teaching the English Amateur Women’s team, among others, at the time, and his own career also held a few highlights. He was not in Arnold Palmer’s league, but Jamie was still very pleased to get him.’
‘In fact, I
was reading about him in the club’s archives the other day, after somebody rang up enquiring about him; a relative, I think’, Harding continued. ‘In July 1963, for example, King qualified for The Open Championship at Lytham by playing two qualifying rounds. Remarkably, he scored a course record 66 at the nearby St Anne’s Old Course in the process. Then he went on to come equal tenth or eleventh in the tournament itself, one of the two top British players in the event.’
Holly wasn’t sure what all that that meant, reminding the Colonel that she was hardly an aficionado of golf.
‘Well, if someone did that today’, he responded helpfully, ‘A club professional, not a touring pro; he would be instantly famous and set up for life. He would get many more tournament invitations around the world, also advertising contracts and such. You name it, in fact! He would have got a lot more prize money, too. But Alex, by all accounts, was a modest guy. He came originally from Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, where his father was the post-master. I never met him, though. He retired in the late ’90’s and died a few years ago.’
‘What happened to the house?’ Holly asked.
‘Oh, yes…’ said Peter Harding. ‘I was forgetting… Well, when King left, the new club professional didn’t want to live there, so our head green-keeper, Ted Brough and his wife Martha, took it over. They had twin sons and it suited them fine; but he eventually left, and when John Tranter came, we didn’t need it. John’s single, you see. This was in my time. I think I’d been here about a year then. Anyway, the Board decided to keep it, in case we needed it to use as an employment incentive again, but to rent it out. Now, as it happens, the most recent tenants have just left, only a few weeks ago, and I’ve been arranging re-decoration and a bit of re-furbishing before we advertise the tenancy again through Smith and Wessons, the local estate agents. I can show it to you now, if you like.’
‘Smith and Wessons… Really?’ exclaimed Holly. ‘I don’t believe it’. ‘Son of a Gun!’ she was tempted to add.
***
They went quickly in the Colonel’s Audi, and were back at the club less than twenty-five minutes later. On brief inspection, Holly thought the house was perfect for the job. She telephoned her boss immediately. Harding said he would arrange it with the agents, and someone authorised by Sussex Police could go through the formalities of renting by the month and collect the keys from their office in Midhurst the following morning.
Back in his office, Holly asked the Colonel to clarify the relationship between Jamie Royle and the club. ‘When you said the Board decided not to sell, I was wondering who exactly makes the decisions here.’
‘It is a bit complicated’, Harding agreed. ‘Royle bought Graffham Golf Club, including the existing land, through a company he set up called Regal. It was a subsidiary of Royle Enterprises. In fact, Regal stands for “Royle Enterprises – Golf and Leisure”. He also bought the additional farmland through Regal. Sussex Royale Golf Club Limited is, at least nominally, an independent company, rather like any other private members golf club. It has a Chairman, a Treasurer and a Board who are all financially responsible and who therefore make the important decisions. There are also a number of committees: general, membership, handicap, house, and greens committees, for example, with different areas of responsibility, answerable to the Board. All these people are elected by the club’s members at the Annual General Meeting in April. I and other staff here are employed by the Golf Club according to a written Constitution. The complication is that the club leases the land and the clubhouse from Regal, and therefore from Jamie Royle. He is also Life President and has full playing membership of the club, as of right. He’s a powerful figure, and he likes to get his way so, of course, he tends to be co-opted onto the various committees when he wants to be, and asked his views on anything and everything important.’
‘Doesn’t that sometimes leave you with a sense of split loyalty?’ Holly’s question was highly perceptive and took the Colonel aback. He found himself thinking that he often felt more like Jamie Royle’s employee than the club’s. ‘The lines are a bit blurred sometimes’, he admitted while blushing. ‘Most of the time what Jamie wants is also what’s good for the club, so there’s no allegiance problem. I occasionally get the impression he would like me to be his agent here; not exactly his spy, but he does like to know what’s going on, especially when he’s away, as at present.’
‘It seems odd to me, then, ‘Holly interrupted swiftly, ‘That you haven’t been able to reach him for the last two days!’
The Colonel blushed again under the detective’s steady gaze, but simply shrugged in reply. ‘I don’t control him, you know’, he finally managed to say.
‘I don’t suppose anybody does’, replied Holly. ‘Tell me what you know about his business affairs. How did he get to be so rich? Regal are massive now, aren’t they? Electronics, computers, music, publishing, clothing and sporting goods shops, sports academies… What else?’’
‘I don’t know where his wealth came from’, said Peter Harding. ‘I’ve never discussed it with him. He has an office for Royle Enterprises in Horsham with a secretary I’ve spoken to once or twice. I can give you her details, if you like. But that’s not the main office of Regal, and anyway, I think he leaves the main running and development of that company to his business partners. Some of the companies using the name Regal are franchises, companies set up by Regal and either sold on, with the new owners paying royalties for use of the name, or managed as independent subsidiaries.’
‘You seem to know quite a lot’, Holly remarked, making a mental note to investigate this further. She was always suspicious of people with enormous wealth. Changing tack, though, she asked, ‘What about the new professional? Gary Brooker is it? I saw his name outside the professional’s shop downstairs. Is he around? I haven’t seen him yet.’
‘Well, firstly, he isn’t the one who followed Alex King. We had someone else for a few years, until he decided to go back to Germany. Erich Wessell was his name. It didn’t work out too well, I’m afraid… Not one of Jamie’s better picks. Apparently Wessell cured him of slicing all his drives or something when he was visiting Germany one year, so Jamie signed him up; but the members didn’t take to him, I gather… Too serious! Gary is very different.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Oh!’ Harding was again startled by Holly’s abrupt tone and direct manner. ‘Gary’s with Jamie in Chicago’, he said. ‘He likes to take him on a trip from time to time. It’s something of a reward for his services here. Also, I think, Jamie uses it as an opportunity. Gary is such a terrific match golfer, and Jamie is very useful off his handicap of five. When they team up, they are hard to beat. I’ve heard them boasting about it together in the bar downstairs on occasion. They take on opponents for money, and I imagine the stakes are quite high.’
‘He likes to win, then… Jamie?’
‘I think that’s fair comment. Yes!’
***
Holly left the Colonel alone to tidy and lock up his office. She had reached the bottom of the stairs when she heard cheers and some clapping through the open doorway to the member’s lounge. Investigating the applause, she was just inside the door when Kyle spotted her from across the room. Standing up, waving excitedly, he called out with typically cheerful Caribbean cheek. ‘Hi there, Missy!’
Holly steeled herself not to react, but then another voice whispered the same phrase softly in her left ear: ‘Hi there, Missy’. A shiver ran down her spine. This was not a welcome sensation, but it was not entirely unpleasant either. The voice belonged to Mark Berger who, taking advantage of a commercial break, had taken a comfort stop in the men’s room, creeping quickly and quietly up behind Holly on returning to the lounge.
‘Oh… Sorry!’ He said, seeing her jump, putting a hand gently round her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you… Can I buy you a drink?’
Holly let the hand remain in place for a few seconds. Under circu
mstances like these, she would normally yank the arm away and possibly also apply a painful wrist-lock, or at least tell the chap to get lost. This time, however, on reflection, she decided she quite liked the attention. She even agreed to a drink. ‘It’ll have to be a soft one, though’, she added. ‘I’m still on duty, you know.’
‘What can I get for you, Mr Berger?’ The barman said courteously, his accent unmistakeably Irish. Mark looked across at Kyle who, still standing, telegraphed his preference by sign language, holding up an empty glass. ‘Two pints of Sussex Ale, please’, he replied, ‘And… What will it be, Detective Angel?’
‘What do you suggest, Frank?’ she asked the barman, whose name she remembered from interviewing him the day before. ‘This apple and mango juice is very popular, Madam’, said Frank. ‘You can call me Frankie, by the way’, he added. ‘Everybody does.’
‘Thank you, Frankie’, Holly answered. ‘I think I’ll just have mineral water this time.’ Frank reached into a fridge behind him. Turning, he held out two bottles. ‘Still or sparkling?’ he asked. Holly just pointed to the one with the bubbles.
Moments later, Mark led her between tables to where Kyle was sitting. He was about to introduce her to the others when the man sitting beside Mark’s empty chair got to his feet and offered Holly his seat, then ambled back across to the bar. As Holly sat down, the lady opposite leaned forward with a smile. ‘Hello, Dear’, she said. ‘I’m Marjorie Willis, and this is my husband, Dick. How lovely to meet you… But what a terrible job you have. I don’t know how you do it.’
The Red Chairs Mystery Page 11
