Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery)

by Douglas Watkinson

  The yellow smile was getting thinner the more he used it. “Now you want to question me, like I was a witness?”

  “Suspect, actually.”

  He paused and searched his memory. “Gaffney? No. Who are they?”

  “They killed a man called Charles Drayton.”

  “It’s been a good week for the grim reaper, by the sound of it, but to answer your question I don’t have many friends who are murderers.”

  “Charles Drayton disposed of Patrick’s body, turned it into dog food. Would you call that a ‘good idea’? The reason I ask is that Drayton was paid handsomely for it … about 25 grand, strangely enough.”

  Rochester took a sip of his own drink, keeping his eye on me. “Maybe this Drayton killed Patrick in the first place?”

  “Did his parents ever speak to you of people who were in competition with him, people he owed money to…” He was shaking his head before the questions were fully asked. “…people who envied him, or just plain disliked him?”

  “No.”

  “You never met his girlfriend, Belinda?”

  He laughed. “Christ, I was going to give him money, not take charge of his fucking life.”

  “There was another girl, Henrietta…”

  And that’s where he drew the line in his stream of denial. The name had meant something to him but he tried to cover it by taking offence.

  “I’ve had enough,” he said, putting his glass down. “Thanks for dropping in. If and when the real police need help with this case, tell ‘em to call me.”

  He entered a code into a panel beside the door, it folded itself open and just as I was about to step through it so Yi Ling entered with my second drink, no ice, just the scotch. Rochester and Jaikie stood watching as I savoured it, one sip at a time, then handed back the glass. We walked over to the lift, which swallowed us with all the stealth of a shark and then dived.

  We met Laura for supper at The Crown where, at least amongst the regulars, Jaikie’s celebrity gloss had lost some of its shine. Familiarity had reassured people who knew him, like his old teacher John Demise, that he was still just an ordinary bloke. Ordinary-ish. My qualification.

  There was one new face at the bar, drinking lime and soda. He was Corrigan’s replacement - or temporary relief, as both men preferred to call it. His name was Mark Granger, six months in the job, and the stress of it was already beginning to show. He was suffering from every ailment known to his age group and, halfway through the day, had engaged Laura in conversation prior to showing her the moles on his back.

  Meeting Edward Rochester had had more of an effect on Jaikie than I’d expected.

  “Can’t get a toehold on the guy,” he said. “All that money, he dresses like a slob, long greasy hair and beard. Stank as well, common or garden BO.”

  “Oh dear,” said Laura. “Did he have no saving grace whatsoever?”

  Jaikie passed that one on to me. “The whisky, best I’ve ever tasted.”

  She smiled. “I knew there’d be something.”

  “With all that money, you’d think he’d employ one of these lifestyle coaches,” Jaikie went on. “But do you know what he had dotted around the room, like mildewed pole dancers? That green woman my mother used to loathe. I thought there was just one of her but turns out there’s dozens…”

  “Vladimir Tretchikoff,” I clarified for Laura. “Thing is, Jaikie, your mum was talking about posters, ten quid a time. What Ted Rochester had were the originals.”

  Hyde Park Close was a crime against humanity, Jaikie pronounced, and should not be allowed to go unpunished. It was the ultimate example of a divided society and according to Google this man, this Edward Rochester, had paid £47 million for that penthouse. The roof was a full-blown garden, with a helipad, trees, fountains, pools. Down in the basement, reached by his own private elevator, there was a panic room, in case of terrorist attack. And if he felt peckish, a well-known gourmet chef was on call to knock him up a gold-plated sandwich…

  I’m not sure if Laura felt as I did, that these were fine words from a man who’d been paid a small fortune for playing the celluloid hero, but she sensed an oncoming rant and stepped in to save him from himself. She called softly to him, patted the seat beside her and he went and sat in it.

  Fifteen minutes later, with a bowl of Annie MacKinnon’s venison stew to work on, Jaikie said quietly, “Thanks for that, Laura. I was all set to go off on one. Meant what I said, though, just didn’t mean it so loudly.”

  Ever indulgent, Laura said she’d enjoyed hearing him, that actor’s voice, holding everyone in the room rapt. Jaikie nodded and turned to me.

  “So what about Ted Rochester, Dad? I’ve diminished the name to Ted, helps me cope with him.”

  “He lied to us, for a start. All that stuff about The Magic Carpet was bollocks.”

  Jaikie gave Laura a cut-down version of what Rochester had told us.

  “It’s certainly a clever idea,” she said when he'd finished. “And like all the best ones, extremely simple.”

  “Which is why it isn’t what the Gaffneys, Raphael, Askew, or whoever turned your cottage over were after. They were looking for something much bigger.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because you wouldn’t need detailed plans for a carpet with seeds in it. You wouldn’t have to float a 250K bribe, let alone murder its inventor to get hold of it. Christ, Jaikie and I could stamp out a roll of the stuff in my garden shed next week, just from hearing about it.”

  “So why did he lie to you?” said Laura.

  “First answer is he wants Patrick’s ‘brilliant idea’ all to himself.”

  “Second?”

  “He’s that rare thing in our midst, a thoroughly good man. Yes, he’s an obnoxious, smelly oik but he might just believe what he said, that any rights to whatever we’re talking about belong to Gerald and Marion Scott. Who’s for dessert?”

  Laura glanced at her watch. “Ah, I said we’d be home by 8.30. Jodie Falconer’s coming round.”

  Jaikie stopped eating, mid-mouthful, and tensed up. “Why?”

  “Just to see us, she said on the phone. It’s been a while.” She looked from Jaikie to me and back again. “Is there a problem?”

  “No,” said Jaikie.

  The waitress brought the bill to me out of habit. Jaikie didn’t even notice her, let alone my credit card going down on the little silver tray. He seemed more concerned about the visit from Jodie.

  Laura drove back to Beech Tree in her car, I drove the Land Rover and Jaikie. It’s a mile at the most but halfway home he asked if I would pull onto the verge and switch off the engine. The headlights died and, since the bulb in the map locker had blown long ago, we sat in near darkness.

  “If this is about Jodie…” I began.

  “It isn’t,” he said quickly. “Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s about money. And the fact that I haven’t got any.”

  “Would you care to repeat that?”

  “You heard the first time.”

  “You were paid $2 million for that film.”

  He sighed melodramatically and flopped back into the seat as if he wouldn’t mind being swallowed up by it.

  “I invested in an LA property company. Lost it.”

  Never having earned more than a DCI’s pay, I was in uncharted waters. I gave the news a few moments to sink in, then said, “Of my four children I always thought you might be the one who, in years to come, would look after the rest of us. You, with your nose for luck and money.” I needed confirmation. “Say again, for the record, how much have you lost?”

  “Had stolen. Two million. It’s only dollars, remember, not pounds…”

  I was trying to keep calm and not making too bad a job of it, I thought, but what I really needed was The Map. I felt for it in the inside pocket of my jacket.

  “How many times have I said to you: never put all your eggs in one basket?”

  He played hurt. “You’re making it sound as if I did it on purpose.
I was conned.”

  “To the tune of $2 million?”

  “Will you stop repeating the figure.”

  “Okay, then, who relieved you of the aforementioned sum?”

  “His name’s Jason R Tanner. And I wasn't his only victim. That’s where you come in. I told my friends I’d get you to pop over to LA and track him down.”

  “I can just see me with a plaster over the bridge of my nose…”

  He pointed at me. “Jack Nicholson, Chinatown.”

  “Shutup! You fill some flibernite’s boots, money you’ll never see again, then scrounge off me, Laura, Jamal no doubt?”

  “George Corrigan too,” he added quietly. “I owe him 70.”

  “Jodie?”

  He nodded. “Jodie was the proverbial brick wall. Wouldn’t play more than once. Instead she made me promise to tell you. That’s why she’s at home now, to see if I’ve done it. It hasn’t been easy, Dad…”

  I stopped listening to him and recalled the last time we’d fallen out. He was 18, still raw from his mother’s death and he and I were just about to lock horns when I was struck by a dose of lateral thinking. I told him we weren’t going to play this game anymore. We were never going to fall out again, be it over trivial nonsense or fundamental differences. He was surprised at the time, I was surprised, but from that day forward we managed to stick to the agreement and I had no intention of breaking it now.

  I took The Map from my inside pocket and spread it out on the dashboard, closed my eyes and brought my finger down on a small village in Nepal, the one where Ellie was working in an orphanage. She’d gone there with an American boy called Rick Bettucio. ‘Terrific Rick’, we called him, because terrific was his favourite word. I’d emailed her the other day, just before leaving for Belinda’s antique shop. I’d wittered on about nothing in particular, then ended with, “Funny thing, though. Jaikie never seems to have any money on him these days. Borrows. Answers on a postcard, please. Or email.”

  I’d received a swift reply. “Dad, why does every parent think that when their kids borrow money from them it’s to buy vast amounts of the Devil’s Dandruff? Jaikie could buy up the entire coke output of Bolivia, from what I hear. Besides, he’d never do drugs. Mess up the face, darling? I should coke-oh! Anyway, miss you. Home for Xmas. Love Ellie x.”

  Jaikie’s voice broke in. “Dad, that's The Map. You use it against scumbags, not family.”

  “Just be grateful that it’s working. And given that you aren’t going to see that money again, what are you planning to do?”

  His reply was characteristically artless. He was going to stay on with me for a bit while his agent found him another film. Any residuals that came from All Good Men and True would be placed in an account Jaikie couldn’t pilfer.

  I lowered my voice as far as it would go. “Day to day, how does that work? Food, coffees, pub lunches?”

  With the same lack of guile he said he would eat from the freezer and borrow money from me only when necessary, pay me back as soon as possible. I told him that even though my police pension was worth just two per cent per annum of the two million he’d received, we’d rub along on it somehow. With a matey dig in my ribs he said we'd be fine and thanked me for being so understanding. I wasn't aware that I had been.

  “I want you to do something for me,” I said.

  “Name it.”

  I told him I wanted everyone home for Christmas. Ellie was coming anyway, probably with Terrific Rick, but that was okay. Polite enough bloke. I hadn’t seen Fee since last summer in LA, though it felt more like last week. And Con. I was never at ease about Con, though people kept saying he was fine. I needed to have him face to face and make up my own mind.

  “Then worry at your leisure?” Jaikie said.

  “Do that for me?”

  He nodded. “Am I invited?”

  I smiled at him, or at least I think I did. “You’re cooking dinner.”

  When we arrived back at Beech Tree, Jodie’s car was there. Jaikie got out of the Land Rover, hurried over to the back door and straight into the kitchen. He paused and looked across at Jodie and just as I walked in she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Paradise was back on earth.

  I went over to the phone and checked my messages. There was only one. It was from Imogen Slater, who began by telling me that she was Richard Slater the journalist’s wife, in case I’d forgotten. It was timed at ten that evening and she wanted me to phone her back, no matter how late I got in. So I did.

  -16-

  The Slaters’ London pad was a mews house in Notting Hill, a two-up two-downer and in its time, as the address suggested, the street had provided luxurious accommodation for horses. Now it offered pokey homes for upwardly mobile human beings or, as with the Slaters, somewhere for those who’d reached the top to crash out before the morning slog back to the country. Number 47 Carnegie Mews was an odd mixture of Victorian charm and modern absurdity. The street itself was cobbled with a drainage channel running down the centre of it, but a sign of more recent times was the size of the garages, in most cases larger than the living space.

  We’d parked the Land Rover a fair distance from it, on an example of that endangered species, a parking meter; and if it hadn’t been for the desperation in Imogen Slater’s voice last night, asking that I visit her at the earliest opportunity, it would have had all the promise of a Great Day Out, father and son. For a start my fear about why he never had any money had been allayed. It wasn’t flagrant excess, it was innocence, naivety, carelessness. Some would say stupidity. To the tune of $2 million. Okay, so it was dollars not pounds, as Jaikie insisted, but according to my iPhone that morning that made it 1,290,407 quid and how in God’s name anyone in their right mind could give another human…

  I swung my mind back to the immediate concern. Imogen Slater wouldn’t tell me over the phone what was troubling her. I took it to mean that it was something she didn’t want her husband to know about and indeed her phone manner, whispering, rather than speaking in a normal voice, endorsed that. I was wrong, though, and while she was the one to open the door, Richard was right behind her, descending the open stairs to greet us like the best friends he’d never had. He was delighted to see us, what a pleasure, what an absolute joy and he still couldn’t get that performance out of his head, the number of people who had sung its praises…

  His wife called a halt, causing Richard to ask if he’d been going on a bit. To our shame we denied it. Part of me was wondering if Imogen would suddenly dismiss her husband and then pitch in with what she wanted to talk about, but Richard was staying close. This was to be a joint effort and they were twitchy about it.

  “How is that young man, Mr Hawk?” she asked, measuring out coffee into a percolator.

  “Sergeant Corrigan? He’s improving by the day.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it. Does he have family, a wife, children?”

  “No wife or kids. A mother.”

  She nodded, turned back to the coffee. “Dammit! Always happens.”

  “Eight,” said Jaikie, reminding her of where she’d got to, spoon-wise.

  “I don’t quite know how to put this to you, Mr Hawk.” She laughed. “Me, the hard bitch gardening editor of Home Weekly, eh?”

  “From the hip,” I said. “You mind if we…?”

  I gestured to a clutch of armchairs near the stairs and Richard apologised for not having seated us. When he’d stopped beating himself up about it, he handed the conch back to Imogen, who closed her eyes and began searching for words to describe a very simple state of affairs.

  “You should know that Ralph Askew and I were an item at Cambridge,” she began. “People often feel they have a right to exploit the familiarities of those halcyon days. He rang here yesterday morning and said he’d be round for lunch, one o’clock.”

  “Invited himself?” I said.

  “Ostensibly to pick up some research Dickie had done for him. We were perfectly agreeable, I mean we hadn’t seen him, apart from at th
e film premier, for what…?”

  “Twelve years,” Jaikie said.

  “Yes, so round he came. Strange when you know someone’s weaknesses. One is inclined to play on them if one needs to.”

  I smiled. “What are Ralph’s?”

  “He could never drink, not with any safety, so I asked Richard to open a bottle of Rovero. It’s a favourite of ours and I knew Ralph wouldn’t say no.”

  “Why did you feel the need? Something must have forewarned you.”

  “I knew he wasn’t coming round just to pick up his wretched research. Someone from his office could’ve done that. No, there’d be a greater purpose and with a drink inside him…”

  “He’d talk. So what did he say?”

  “It didn’t strike us at the time, but after he’d gone, we sort of turned to each other and said ‘What was all that about?’ He neither asked us about ourselves, the children, the house in Provence, nor did he tell us anything about his own son, ex-wife, his job. On top of which he left the research here.”

  “What was it?”

  “He wanted me to find out about a man called Edward Rochester,” said Richard.

  I could feel Jaikie about to reveal that we knew Rochester, but a sharp glance kept him quiet.

  “You’d think he’d have enough resources at his own disposal, wouldn’t you,” I said.

  “He wanted it done discreetly, and in the old-fashioned way, A4 sheets, stapled at the corner. He didn’t want other people in the office knowing about it, I imagine.”

  “May I see it?”

  Richard rose and went over to a desk at the other side of the room, took out a box file. It contained a jumble of photocopied documents, handwritten pages torn from notebooks, envelopes stuffed with scraps of paper relevant to various projects Slater was working on. The stuff about Edward Rochester was a sheaf of crumpled paper, clipped with a bulldog. The top page was a hand-written list of names, a roll-call of Rochester’s good ideas. When I asked how Slater had obtained the info he said he’d started with tax returns, records of charitable donations, and then drawn on a wealth of contacts in the gossip industry.