Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it, guv,’ said Kate. ‘Pim de Jonker was obviously hoping we’d tell him, but he didn’t think we’d sussed him out so that he got his collar felt by the real Belgian Feds. As you mentioned to the DAC, de Jonker was very keen to extract any information from us without giving anything away.’

  I read off the names. ‘Bernie Stamper, Sid “the Caretaker” Ellis, Charlie Mukherjee and Renée “the Duchess” Hollande,’ I said. ‘Mean anything to either of you?’

  ‘They sound as though they’re escapees from a cheap American crime novel,’ said Dave.

  ‘The names don’t ring any bells with me,’ added Kate, who knew a lot of villains. Or to be more accurate, a lot of villains knew Kate and probably had plenty of time in prison to regret the day they’d ever met her.

  ‘All four have got form,’ I continued. ‘Give Linda Mitchell a bell, Dave, and tell her about this little quartet. It might help her to narrow the fingerprint search, and it’d be nice to know if any of them left their dabs in Cuyper’s flat. But now I think it’s time to start all over again.’

  ‘Doing what particularly, guv?’ asked Dave.

  ‘Like having another look at Cuyper’s flat, for a start. Have we heard anything about his laptop?’ I asked. ‘Someone was going to organize Lee Jarvis, our self-confessed computer geek, to break into it for us.’

  ‘He’s at Cuyper’s flat now,’ said Dave, ‘and Charlie Flynn is with him in case he turns up something a bit tasty. Mr Driscoll thought it best to keep the laptop in situ so to speak.’

  I didn’t know why Len Driscoll had decided that, but I didn’t question it.

  ‘Hello, Mr Brock.’ Lee Jarvis looked up as Dave and I walked into Cuyper’s apartment. Jarvis was still as thin as ever and looked as though a stiff breeze would blow him away altogether. And his acne was just as bad as the last time I saw him.

  ‘Any luck, Lee?’ I asked. It proved to be an unwise question.

  ‘There’s no luck attached to this business, Mr Brock.’ Jarvis leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. ‘It’s all skill and cunning know-how.’ He lowered one arm and tapped his temple with a forefinger.

  ‘I’ll take your word for that, Lee. Let me put it another way. Is there anything on there that you’ve found so far that I should know about?’

  ‘Dunno. I haven’t had any luck yet.’ And with that enigmatic statement, Jarvis dedicated himself once again to caressing the computer’s pad and studying the screen intensely.

  It must have been something to do with my arrival, not that I ever considered computers to be anything other than my implacable enemies, but Lee Jarvis suddenly cried, ‘Gotcha, mate!’ This, I presumed, was the geek equivalent of ‘Eureka!’.

  ‘Is this good news?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Yeah, we’re in.’

  ‘Good. In the meantime, Dave, I’ll have another look round the apartment, just in case anything fresh springs to notice. If our friend here comes up with anything of value, give me a shout.’

  But I didn’t get the chance. I was about to go into the bedroom when the door chimes rang.

  ‘All right, Dave, I’ll get it,’ I said, wondering if we were about to get lucky and that the caller would be the person who had terrified Dirk Cuyper into moving to a hotel, according to Dennis Jones at least. But I was surprised to see that it was Lydia Maxwell from the apartment opposite.

  ‘Oh, Mr Brock. I was hoping you’d be here. I’ve remembered something that might be useful and I thought this might be a good moment.’

  ‘You were lucky to find me here, Lydia, but I’m afraid I can’t let you in. This is still a crime scene.’ It wasn’t, of course, not any more, but I preferred not to have anyone in the apartment who didn’t need to be there. Especially someone who might be a suspect, and at this stage of the enquiry no one was yet ruled out.

  ‘I quite understand, Mr Brock, but if you do have a moment to spare, you could come across to my place. I promise I won’t keep you long because I know you must be busy.’

  It is a foolish detective who overlooks anything, even the seemingly trivial, that might help him to solve a case. As I had definitely reached an impasse in the murder of Dirk Cuyper, I had to find out what it was that Lydia Maxwell had remembered that might help me.

  ‘Do take a seat, Mr Brock,’ she said, once we were in her apartment. ‘I’ve just made some coffee. Would you like a cup?’

  ‘Thanks, Lydia, a cup of coffee would be most welcome.’ I sat down on one of the white leather settees. The last time I was in her apartment I’d noticed that they were rather ugly pieces of furniture, but they were very comfortable even so.

  ‘It is real coffee, Mr Brock, not that instant stuff.’ Lydia crossed to the kitchen area, took down bone-china cups and saucers and poured the coffee. ‘Black or white?’

  ‘Black, please.’

  Lydia was wearing a white all-in-one suit with flared legs, and heels that added at least two inches to her height. She wore a chain-link belt upon which was a medallion on its own six inches of chain, and a discreet wristwatch, all of which I was certain were gold. I noticed that the diamond engagement ring and the wedding band she’d been wearing the last time I saw her, no longer adorned her left hand, and I wondered briefly whether she had met another man or just forgotten to put them on again after she’d showered.

  ‘You said that you remembered something that might be useful, Lydia,’ I said, once she had placed the cups of coffee on the small table between us.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s of any use, and I hope I’m not wasting your time, but I remembered that I saw a woman calling at Mr Cooper’s apartment on a couple of occasions.’

  ‘When was this?’ I took out my pocketbook and got ready to make a few notes. I hoped that what Lydia Maxwell was about to tell me would be of some value, rather than a story made up by a lonely woman seeking attention or desperate for company. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to me in the course of a murder investigation.

  ‘It must’ve been about five or six months ago, I suppose.’ Lydia gave a sigh of frustration. ‘If only I’d known what was going to happen,’ she suggested with a shy smile, ‘I’d have made a note in my diary. All I can tell you is that she turned up twice in the same week. Actually, I should say I only saw her twice. She may have come more often.’

  ‘Was this one of the women you’d seen with Mr Cooper in the swimming pool downstairs?’

  ‘It’s possible that I saw her there, but I can’t be absolutely certain. Women look so different when they’re wearing a swimsuit, goggles and a swimming cap.’

  ‘Can you describe her?’

  Lydia adopted a pensive expression. ‘She was about my height, I suppose, and I’m five foot ten. She had shoulder-length Titian hair, and she was French.’

  ‘How do you know that? Did you speak to her?’

  ‘No, but it was the way she was dressed. She had a camel-coloured coat with very wide lapels and collar, black knee boots and a brown-, cream-and-black scarf tied loosely. There was no doubt she was French: there was that certain je ne sais quoi that’s an absolute giveaway.’

  ‘That’s very detailed, Lydia.’

  ‘It was based purely on envy, Mr Brock.’

  I suspected that Lydia was fishing for a compliment, and she got one. ‘I don’t think an elegant woman like you need to be envious on that score,’ I said.

  Lydia put a hand to her mouth and coloured slightly. ‘Oh, Mr Brock, I wasn’t …’ she began and, obviously embarrassed, lapsed into silence. But then she recovered. ‘And I forgot to mention that she was carrying a tan leather Longchamps clutch bag.’

  ‘Did you see this woman’s face?’ I was thinking in terms of a computer-generated likeness, not that I had a great deal of faith in the system. The operators are first-class, but the witnesses tend to be unreliable. And if you have more than one witness, you’re likely to finish up with descriptions that could be of two entire
ly different people. On one occasion, three witnesses managed to produce a composite image of a suspect who was a dead ringer of our esteemed commander, something that created widespread mirth in the incident room. Until the commander saw it and ordered that it be removed.

  ‘No. I really only saw her sideways on, but I did notice that she was wearing sunglasses.’

  ‘Five or six months ago it would have been March or February, Lydia. Are you sure she was wearing dark glasses at the tail end of winter?’

  ‘I’m certain. A lot of women wear them as a fashion statement. Not that I’ve ever done so unless it’s very sunny. I’m too afraid of walking into something,’ she added, and giggled at the thought.

  ‘As a matter of interest, how was it that you happened to see this woman, Lydia?’ I was beginning to grow rather suspicious of her account. In the first place, it was very detailed; on the other hand, my ex-girlfriend Gail once told me that women are always bitchy enough to notice in great detail what other women are wearing, although that may just have been Gail’s view. I also wondered how Lydia Maxwell had happened to observe this woman on two occasions, particularly as the front doors of the apartments at Cockcroft Lodge were solid rather than having an inset glass panel. And Lydia’s did not have a spy-hole. Finally, I wasn’t prepared to accept Lydia’s rather flimsy assumption that the woman was French based merely on what she’d been wearing. But then I don’t know about these things.

  Although it had only been a passing thought at the outset of this case, it occurred to me that Lydia Maxwell could have been the very person who had scared Cuyper enough to force him to flee his flat. Living opposite, she was in the perfect position to have killed him. She could calmly have shot him and made up the story about hearing gunshots; and then, by a stroke of good luck, panicky Dennis Jones arrived and helped her to play the innocent. What’s more, she had now had ample time to dispose of the firearm, but no one had thought of her as a suspect at the time and she wasn’t searched, neither was her apartment. There would be little point in doing so now.

  If that were true, we would have been wasting our time looking at all those CCTV tapes. That said, of course, the woman we’d seen on those tapes who was in the lift at roughly the time of Cuyper’s murder could match the woman that Lydia had just described.

  Nevertheless, I determined that I would have one of my officers look into Lydia Maxwell’s background, particularly the road accident that killed her husband. It would also be interesting to verify the story she’d told of her inherited wealth. She’d said that her late husband had made a lot of money from the futures market, and no doubt she’d received a handsome payout from the life-insurance policy. And in all probability now received a handsome pension.

  ‘I was on my way to take the lift down to the pool for a swim. I was wearing a towelling wrap over my swimsuit, as the residents here tend to do, and a pair of flip-flops. Not exactly the thing to inspire one’s self-confidence when confronted by a walking fashion plate. I’m sure you’ve heard your wife say that,’ she added archly.

  ‘And the second time?’ I didn’t rise to the comment about a wife.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘What time of day were these visits, Lydia?’

  ‘Just after eight in the morning. It’s my usual time for swimming. I usually listen to the eight o’clock news headlines on the radio before I go down. Then I come back up, take a shower and have a plate of muesli. Actually, having thought about it, the second time I saw her was probably a little later because I was on my way back from the pool. About a quarter to nine. Yes, that was definitely the case, because I felt even less composed on that occasion. My hair was dripping wet, I was carrying my flip-flops in one hand and my wrap in the other, and of course I wasn’t wearing any make-up. I must’ve looked like a drowned rat, and I always hope I won’t meet anyone on those occasions. But on that occasion I met her.’

  ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘Yes, I said good morning the second time. But she ignored me completely. Of course, to be charitable, she may not have spoken any English.’

  ‘Did you happen to see if she was admitted to the apartment by Mr Cooper, Lydia?’

  ‘I know she wasn’t, she had her own key.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen this woman again since?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been here. It was just luck, I suppose, that I saw her on those two occasions. Would you like another cup of coffee?’

  ‘No thanks, Lydia,’ I said. ‘In fact, I must get back, but thank you for that information. I think it may prove to be very useful.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t sure,’ she said, standing up at the same time as I did. ‘I expect you get plagued with people who imagine themselves to be armchair detectives, but I thought I’d better mention it.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ I said, and paused. ‘I know you said that you didn’t see this woman’s face, but d’you think you’d recognize her again?’

  ‘I very much doubt it, not unless she’s wearing the same clothes. Why? Do you know who she is?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Of course, if Lydia Maxwell was the murderess she could have made up this whole story about seeing a woman enter Cuyper’s flat. What better way to allay suspicion? But setting aside that thought for a moment, I was thinking of Renée Hollande, aka the Duchess, whose name had been one of the four on Dirk Cuyper’s list, although we didn’t know much about her. Not that we could any longer place credence on what de Jonker had told us. ‘We might be lucky enough to obtain a photograph of her at some stage.’

  ‘If you do, Harry—’ Lydia blushed. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr Brock, that was rather rude of me, but it just slipped out.’

  ‘That’s all right, Lydia. Harry will do fine. After all, I’m calling you by your first name.’

  ‘If you do get a photograph, just knock on the door. I’m here most of the time, except when I’m swimming. Or house-hunting.’

  ‘Have you had any luck with finding somewhere?’

  ‘Not yet. I think I told you that I’ve been looking mostly in the Strand-on-the-Green area, but I’ve not seen anything I like. I may have to look further afield, or even out of London altogether. I might try Surrey. Goodbye … Harry.’ Lydia shook hands, and closed the front door as I crossed the hallway to Dirk Cuyper’s apartment.

  It was an interesting snippet of information that Lydia Maxwell had provided, mainly because, whoever this woman was, she possessed a key to Cuyper’s flat. But this was based on the assumption that Lydia Maxwell’s story was true. On the other hand, Lydia might have been laying a false trail. Perhaps she’d had an affair with Cuyper and he’d eventually tired of her. A woman spurned can react in an unpredictable way: ranging from just walking away, through cutting the legs off all his suits, to murder.

  She had a confident personality, and I wondered if the tempestuous marriage that she’d told me about had been her fault rather than her late husband’s. There again, she might have made up that story to gain some sympathy and allay suspicion.

  But there were other things that were making me think. I wasn’t at all sure that Lydia’s use of my first name had ‘just slipped out’ and I didn’t think the throwaway line about my wife was accidental, either.

  TEN

  It was getting on for midday when I returned to Cuyper’s apartment. I repeated to Dave what Lydia had told me about the mysterious Frenchwoman she had seen letting herself into Cuyper’s flat.

  ‘Could be Renée Hollande, I suppose, guv.’

  ‘Maybe, but I was told by Renata Cuyper – or Anna Veeltkamp, as we now know her to be – that Cuyper had a string of girlfriends. And Pim de Jonker confirmed it, for what that’s worth. Of course, all that is meaningless now we know that he wasn’t a copper at all.’

  ‘It was probably deliberate disinformation anyway,’ said Dave. ‘This mystery caller could be anyone.’

  ‘Renée Hollande was one of the names de Jonker gave us, but that was probably fiction
as well,’ I continued. ‘I reckon the woman Mrs Maxwell claimed to have seen was one of Cuyper’s fancy birds and he’d given her a key to his flat. It looks to me as though there are two strands running in parallel here, Dave, and somehow we’ve got to separate his love life from his villainy. I think this woman was someone else entirely.’

  ‘I don’t think there are two strands,’ said Dave. ‘If he’s part of this sex slavery racket, these women are very likely potential prostitutes, or are on the game already.’

  ‘It’s anybody’s guess, Dave,’ I said, and then shared my theory with him that Lydia Maxwell might have been the murderess.

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose, guv. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that anything could be going on in this investigation. But you might have a point with Lydia Maxwell. She was a bit too helpful,’ Dave said thoughtfully. ‘But if Cuyper was into the sex slavery business, I doubt we’d get anything from this mystery woman, even if we find her. Or, as you suggested, she could just be one of his bits on the side and he’d given her a key because she was flavour of the month.’

  ‘I’ve at last managed to go through his laptop, Mr Brock,’ said Lee Jarvis. ‘I was listening to what you were saying, and it looks as though you might be right. There are folders with the names of four women on here.’

  I crossed the room and looked over Jarvis’s shoulder at the screen of the laptop. As Jarvis had said, there were the names of four women. ‘What did you mean when you said folders, Lee?’

  ‘Well,’ began Jarvis, leaning back with the air of a professor about to begin a lecture to a rather unreceptive class.

  ‘Keep it simple,’ I said, recognizing the signs of an expert given free rein.

  ‘They’re really separate files, Mr Brock, and each one will contain information.’ Jarvis pressed a key and opened one of the folders.

  ‘It looks like a CV,’ I said, peering more closely at the screen.

  ‘All four are similar,’ said Jarvis.