Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  Jones looked nervously in my direction and began to blink through his glasses again. ‘All he told me was that someone had threatened to kill him. In fact, he’d taken the threat so seriously that he’d moved out of his apartment and was staying in a hotel.’

  ‘D’you know the name of the hotel?’ I asked.

  ‘No. He said it was better I didn’t know.’

  ‘What was he doing back here, then?’ Dave glanced up, a suspicious expression on his face.

  ‘He’d come back to get a change of clothes and to pick up some papers connected with his work.’

  ‘How d’you know that’s why he was coming back?’

  ‘Because he rang me and asked me to meet him here. He didn’t want to be here on his own in case this person turned up.’

  ‘What time did he ask you to meet him?’ I asked.

  ‘At about one o’clock.’

  ‘And when did you get here?’

  ‘About half past one, I suppose it must’ve been. There was an accident on the M4 and I got held up.’ Jones shook his head. ‘If I’d been here, this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘If you had been here, you’d probably have been shot as well,’ commented Dave cynically. ‘What d’you know about this person who was threatening Mr Cooper?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Jones said. ‘Dick wouldn’t tell me. He said that if I knew, it would put me in danger as well.’

  ‘You said he’d come back for a change of clothing and to pick up some papers connected with his work,’ said Dave. ‘What was his job?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jones. ‘But if this flat is anything to go by, it pays well.’

  ‘I think that’ll be all for the moment, Mr Jones,’ I said, ‘but we’ll need to speak to you again before you leave. In the meantime, perhaps you’d give your details to my sergeant here.’

  ‘Have you got any evidence of identity on you, Mr Jones? Your passport or a driver’s licence?’ Dave had no intention of accepting this man’s word for his name and address. Vital witnesses – who later proved to be suspects – had been known to give the police false details before disappearing, never to be seen again. Dave was making sure it wasn’t going to happen this time.

  ‘I’ve got my driver’s licence.’ Jones opened his wallet and handed Dave the small plastic card. I got the impression that he did so reluctantly, but it was only later we discovered the reason.

  ‘That’ll do for a start.’ Dave copied the details into his pocketbook. ‘You’re still residing at this address in Petersham, are you?’

  ‘Er, yes.’ Jones hesitated, and flicked his hair back again before answering.

  ‘And your phone number?’

  ‘I can never remember the number of my mobile,’ said Jones, taking the phone from his pocket. ‘That’s why I’ve written it down.’ He took out a pocket diary and thumbed through its pages. Eventually finding what he was looking for, he gave Dave the necessary information.

  ‘As a matter of interest, why did you knock on the door of the flat opposite and ask the occupant to call the police and an ambulance when you’d got a phone with you?’ Dave rested his pocketbook on his knee, gazed at Jones with a thoughtful expression and waggled his pen. I’d seen him do this quite often and it always had a disturbing effect on witnesses.

  ‘Er, I never thought of it,’ said Jones nervously. ‘When I came across Dick’s body, I just panicked. I rushed across the hall and banged on the nearest door.’

  ‘But even if you didn’t use your own mobile phone, there’s a landline in this apartment. You could have used that.’

  ‘I never thought,’ said Jones lamely.

  ‘I’ll get someone to take a statement in a minute, Mr Jones,’ I said, and Dave and I returned to the main area of the apartment. ‘What d’you think, Dave?’

  ‘I don’t fancy him at all, guv. This panic-stricken rush across the hall and making a song and dance about calling us and a meat wagon could all be a load of old moody. And we don’t know that he arrived when he said he did. He could’ve murdered Cooper and then hung about for half an hour before putting on his face-saving performance.’

  ‘Interesting,’ I commented. ‘Jack Noble thought he was a bit iffy. On the other hand, his story might be genuine. Nobody but a complete idiot would make up a story like that unless it was the truth. We’ll see if Mrs Maxwell can shed any light on it.’

  TWO

  The woman who opened the door to Apartment F was some five ten in height with short brown hair and a buxom figure that was attractively well-rounded. I reckoned that she was in her mid-thirties. Her faded blue jeans were rolled to mid-calf, and she was wearing deck shoes. That together with her Breton sweater gave the overall impression of someone who had at that very moment stepped off a yacht, though to the best of my knowledge there isn’t a yacht marina in the North Sheen area.

  ‘Mrs Maxwell?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ the woman said, smiling.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock, Mrs Maxwell. I’m in charge of the investigation team from Scotland Yard that’s dealing with this case. And this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’

  ‘Oh, please call me Lydia, and come in and make yourselves comfortable.’ Mrs Maxwell spoke in a breathless, husky voice that sounded sexy, although it may have been the result of too much smoking. But that’s what comes of being a cynic: I try hard not to see the best in people when I’m investigating a murder. I later found out that she didn’t smoke and never had.

  As I’d expected, the layout of Lydia Maxwell’s apartment was a mirror image of the one Dave and I had just left, but was furnished more warmly than Cooper’s. ‘Would you gentlemen like a cup of tea? I’m just about to make one. And do take a seat.’ She pointed at a pair of white leather settees that had probably cost the earth, but still managed to look cheap. As Dave often said, it’s all a matter of taste, whatever he meant by that.

  ‘Perhaps you’d start by telling us what you know of this matter, Lydia,’ I said, once she’d poured the tea and sat down on the settee opposite us. ‘Right from the beginning, if you would.’

  ‘I was actually starting to make myself a pot of tea over there.’ Lydia waved vaguely at the kitchen bit of her all-in-one living space, and then smiled guiltily. ‘Actually, I was being lazy and I put a tea bag in a mug of hot water. It was then that I heard gunshots. Well, at first I thought that someone was watching one of those awful cop shows on the television.’ She paused to put a hand to her mouth. ‘Whoops! No offence, Mr Brock. I meant that the shows were awful, not the cops – er, the police.’

  ‘I should give up while you’re still losing, Lydia,’ said Dave, ‘but I agree with you that they’re pretty awful. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were anything like the real thing.’ He paused. ‘But then I suppose they’d be boring.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’ Lydia shot Dave a lingering smile that hinted at availability, but mature women always seem to smile at him like that. And he never seems to notice.

  ‘Please go on,’ I said. ‘Where did this sound come from? Could you tell?’

  ‘No, I’d no idea,’ said Lydia. ‘Being such a hot day, most people had their windows open, me included.’

  ‘And this was what time?’ asked Dave, glancing up from taking notes.

  Lydia considered the question for a moment or two. ‘About one-ish, I suppose. Yes, that’d be right because I’d just watched the news headlines on the TV.’

  ‘But you still managed to hear the sound of what you thought was gunfire over the sound of the television?’ Dave raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, I’d turned it off by then. As I said, I’d only switched it on for the headlines. It’s never very interesting and you get the same stuff over and over again, until there’s another crisis to take their minds off the last one. But I like to keep up with what’s going on, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘It was just after one, then,’ suggested Dave. ‘A few minutes perhaps?’

  ‘Yes, that
would be about right.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Well, the next thing,’ continued Lydia, the tone of her voice dropping as though she was about to share a confidence, ‘was that someone was hammering loudly at the door. I opened it and there was this agitated man standing there. He was in a terrible state, all flushed and shaking, as though he’d seen a ghost. I wondered what on earth was wrong with him. Then he asked me to call the police and an ambulance because there’d been a terrible accident in the apartment opposite.’

  ‘Were they the words he used, Lydia?’ I asked. ‘A terrible accident?’

  ‘Yes, a terrible accident. Those were his exact words. And then he said he thought the man was dead.’

  ‘And what time was this?’

  ‘It must’ve been about half past one by then, I suppose.’

  ‘That would be right, sir,’ said Dave, turning to me. ‘The ambulance service logged the call at thirteen thirty-four and the police received the call two minutes later.’

  ‘Where did this man go next, Lydia?’ I asked.

  ‘Back across the hall, I imagine.’ For a second or so, she seemed uncertain about what had happened, but I put that down to excitement. ‘I was too busy phoning for the police and the ambulance to see exactly where he’d gone. But after I’d put the phone down, I opened my front door—’

  Again she paused. ‘Come to think of it, he’d actually left my door open. The man, I mean. And the door to Mr Cooper’s apartment – that’s the one opposite – was ajar. It was then that a number of policemen came up the stairs and went into that apartment.’

  ‘It will be necessary for you to be spoken to again at some time, Lydia,’ I said. ‘Either by me or one of my officers. We’d like to know how much you knew about Richard Cooper, because this is a murder enquiry.’

  ‘He’s been murdered?’ said Lydia, a little too innocently I thought, and put a hand to her cheek. ‘Oh my God! How awful. Poor Mr Cooper. But the man who knocked on my door said it was an accident.’

  ‘Do you have a key to Mr Cooper’s apartment, Lydia?’

  ‘No. Why on earth would I have a key?’

  ‘Neighbours sometimes exchange keys in case they lock themselves out,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, Mr Cooper and I didn’t have keys to each other’s apartment.’

  ‘I’ll leave Sergeant Poole here to take a brief statement from you,’ I said, unwilling to go into details, ‘but as I said, someone will see you again in the near future.’ I thanked her for the tea and returned to the crime scene to see what Linda Mitchell and her experts could tell us.

  The pathologist had finished his initial examination, and the machinery of scientific murder investigation was in full swing throughout the apartment.

  ‘I’ve made a cursory examination of the cadaver, Harry.’ Dr Henry Mortlock levered himself out of the uncomfortable settee and adjusted the pince-nez he had lately taken to wearing in place of the old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles that had always seemed to be a part of his rounded face – almost as if he’d been born wearing them. Henry Mortlock was a difficult man to get to know personally, so much so that I wondered if he deliberately kept himself aloof from personal relationships. Consequently I didn’t know very much about him, even though we’d been professionally acquainted for years. I did know that he played golf, because he was always complaining that my dead bodies were interfering with an important game. Natural enough, I suppose, because he seemed to play a lot of important games and I seemed to attract a lot of dead bodies. He was rather short, about five foot seven and had the sort of shape that my ex-wife would’ve described as cuddly. In his case sartorial elegance was non-existent and his suits, even when new, looked as though they’d been lived in for some time. Or even slept in. That, together with his trademark spotted bow tie, a watch chain strung between the pockets of the waistcoat he wore all year round, and now the pince-nez, lent him a vaguely Dickensian look that I suspect he nurtured.

  But the overtly avuncular disposition, similar to that of a family doctor in whom one felt one could confide, was misleading and he could become noticeably short-tempered when anyone got in his way while he was conducting an examination, or if they started asking stupid or ill-formulated questions. He also had a sarcastic and acerbic wit, but that perhaps was the result of a professional lifetime mixing with cynical coppers like me. He’s frequently mentioned a wife, but never by name, and I’ve no idea if he’s got any children. And that really sums up all I know of the man.

  ‘And your diagnosis, Henry?’

  ‘Oh, dead, Harry, dear boy. Quite definitely dead.’ Mortlock began to pick up his various pieces of equipment and pack them into his bag.

  ‘Good gracious! Surely not! Any thoughts on how he came to be in that parlous state?’ I asked, playing along with what in his case passed for witty repartee. Forensic pathologists, especially first-class ones like Henry Mortlock, have a sense of humour that swings between the macabre and the puerile and back again. All within a matter of seconds.

  ‘Shot,’ said Mortlock tersely, but then, tiring of trivial banter, he switched to his professional mode. ‘As far as I can see without having him on the slab, Harry, several shots to the chest, rather than stab wounds.’ He picked up a stethoscope, stared at it as though wondering why it was there, and tossed it into his bag. ‘They appear to be close to the heart, assuming that his heart is where it should be. I once performed a post-mortem on a Latvian seaman and found that all his organs were on the wrong side of his body.’ He sniffed contemptuously. ‘Very inconsiderate for pathologists working every hour that God gave trying to scrape an honest crust.’

  Dave had returned from taking Lydia Maxwell’s statement in time to hear the last part of Mortlock’s story. ‘My heart, which is in the right place—’ he began.

  ‘You could’ve fooled me,’ commented Kate Ebdon quietly.

  ‘As I was about to say before my revered inspector interrupted me, Doctor,’ said Dave, ‘my heart, which is in the right place, bleeds for you.’

  ‘Shut up, Sergeant Poole!’ said Mortlock.

  ‘Time of death?’ I queried, cutting across the badinage that seemed always to take place in the presence of violent death.

  ‘Your aforementioned young and attractive lady inspector,’ said Mortlock, and pointed a large rectal thermometer at Kate Ebdon before putting it in his bag, ‘said that a witness heard gunshots at about one o’clock, and my initial findings would seem to indicate that to be the case. Mind you, the fact that the windows were all wide open and that it’s a hot day may make a substantial difference, so I might change that view. However, further and better particulars will be forthcoming in due course.’ He closed his bag, but as usual had left his options open before striding out of the room.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Dave. ‘He usually hums a bit of classical music when he leaves a crime scene, but not this time.’

  ‘You must’ve upset him with that smart remark,’ said Kate.

  ‘It’s more likely that he doesn’t like North Sheen, ma’am,’ suggested Dave, and paused. ‘But going back to the time of death and what Dr Mortlock said about its uncertainty,’ he continued, addressing both of us, ‘we’ve only got Mrs Maxwell’s word for the time of the murder. For all we know, the shots she heard might really have been on someone’s television. It’s just as likely that the killer could have arrived earlier or later and shot Cooper with a firearm fitted with a suppresser. Although that doesn’t reduce the noise by much.’

  ‘You’ve still got a suspicion that Jones might be the murderer, haven’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Well, what d’you think, guv?’

  ‘I must admit it’s a possibility, Dave, but he seemed genuinely shaken when we spoke to him.’

  ‘I imagine he would be if he’d just murdered someone, particularly if he did so in the heat of the moment,’ said Dave bluntly. ‘Either that or he’s a good actor. But think on this for a plan: Jones turns up with a firearm fitte
d with a silencer, shoots Cooper at half past one, and then goes screaming across the hall to Lydia Maxwell’s drum so that he’s got a witness to his panic attack. He admitted to having a mobile phone, so why didn’t he use it? I don’t believe this nonsense about being so confused that he forgot he’d got a phone in his pocket. Everyone carries a mobile these days and it’s second nature to use the bloody thing. Especially in an emergency.’

  ‘Jones could be a good actor,’ suggested Kate.

  ‘I just said that, ma’am,’ commented Dave, but was ignored by Kate.

  ‘There’s only one flaw in your argument, Dave,’ I said. ‘Where’s the firearm now, given that Jones was searched by the first police on the scene?’

  ‘He might’ve tossed it out of the open window intent on collecting it later.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a team searching the grounds. I suppose there might be some profit in checking the television schedules to see if there was a cop show on at around one o’clock.’ I was actually thinking aloud, but Dave scuppered that idea immediately.

  ‘There are hundreds of channels on the box now, sir.’ Dave always called me ‘sir’ when I made a fatuous comment or came up with a stupid suggestion. ‘And I’ve no doubt whatsoever that there’s almost bound to have been one at that time, probably on several channels at the same time.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right, Dave.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Dave.

  I was also harbouring a few doubts about Lydia Maxwell’s part in all this. Her story about hearing a police show on TV was just a little too pat for my liking. That said, however, people do react in different ways when witnessing or being close to a murder, and sometimes say very silly things if they’re in shock. Not that the Maxwell woman seemed likely to be shocked that easily.

  ‘Would you like me to have a word with Jones, guv?’ asked Kate.

  Detective Inspector Kate Ebdon is a subtle and tenacious interrogator, and in the past one of her ‘words’ had often elicited a confession. Right now, I think all three of us had grave doubts about the veracity of what Jones had told us.