Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  ‘Is that how long ago it was?’ said Jones lamely. ‘Time goes so quickly.’

  ‘Except when you’re in prison,’ said Kate crushingly, ‘and it goes very slowly in there. Mind you, the hardened lags who’ll be your cellmates will just love you.’

  ‘What else can I tell you?’ Judging by the tremulous tone of his voice and the expression on his face, Kate’s last comment had unnerved Jones a great deal.

  ‘The truth, Dennis,’ I said, taking over the questioning from Kate. ‘For a start, where were you on the day of Cooper’s murder? Until you arrived at Cockcroft Lodge, that is.’

  ‘I was with Sally.’

  ‘Where did your wife think you were?’

  ‘I told her I’d got a job in a supermarket during the school holidays.’

  ‘And she believed you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Did Richard Cooper ever mention a woman who was seen letting herself into his apartment on several occasions? A witness has described this woman as being possibly French, some five foot ten tall, and stylishly dressed with shoulder-length Titian hair.’

  The sudden change in questioning threw Jones for a moment or two. ‘Er, no, he never mentioned anyone like that,’ he said eventually.

  ‘When you were using the swimming pool at Cockcroft Lodge, did you ever see a woman like that in his company?’

  ‘No,’ said Jones.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve no idea who this person was who you said scared the pants off Richard Cooper, Den?’ Kate posed the question in a tone that was almost conversational.

  ‘No. I keep telling you, I don’t know.’ The desperation in Jones’s voice was becoming even more marked.

  ‘If I find out that you’re lying to us, Den,’ Kate continued, ‘I’ll come after you in whichever prison you happen to be banged up.’

  Jones went white and gripped the edge of the table.

  ‘You didn’t mention that you’d met a Mrs Fiona Webb in the pool at Cockcroft Lodge, Dennis,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, that.’ Jones sounded dismissive. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with her, she wasn’t my type.’

  ‘That’s not the story Mrs Webb told us, Den,’ said Kate. ‘She reckoned you couldn’t get it up.’

  Jones flushed, but said nothing.

  ‘You’ll be kept at this police station until officers come to escort you back to Richmond police station, where you’ll be interviewed by the CID, Jones,’ I said.

  By the time Kate and I left the interview room at Hounslow, Jones was near to tears.

  ‘What d’you think, Kate?’ I asked, once we were in the car and on our way back to Belgravia.

  ‘He’s a bloody weasel, Harry. What baffles me is why Cuyper should’ve befriended him in the first place. Seems to indicate very poor judgment on his part if that’s the best he could do for a minder. On the other hand, Jones might not have been the great friend that he claimed he was. Perhaps Cuyper just picked him as a one-off for the day when he had to come back to Cockcroft Lodge. He wasn’t to know that the bloke was a drongo if he’d only met him in the pool a few times, I suppose. But whichever way you look at it, I think he’s in over his head.’

  ‘I think you’re right, Kate. It’s most unlikely that Jones had anything to do with Cuyper’s death, but I’m not dismissing him entirely. He might be cleverer than we’ve given him credit for. Anyway, he’s bound to go down for having it off with one of his pupils, so we’ll know where to find him if we turn up anything that implicates him.’

  Kate smiled. ‘I don’t really blame Jones for shacking up with young Sally Gray,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘At least that young girl’s got a bit of sex appeal about her, which is more than you can say for that wowser Jones is married to.’

  ‘That’s one I’ve not heard you use before, Kate.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Wowser.’

  ‘Oh, that. It’s a prude or a killjoy, Harry, and I reckon Ann Jones qualifies on both counts.’

  It was well past nine o’clock by the time Kate and I got back to the office. DI Len Driscoll had dismissed the team, and after I’d bought Kate a beer in a pub in Pimlico Road we went home. To our separate homes, that is.

  TWELVE

  On Friday morning I decided it was time to visit the hotel where Tom Challis said Cuyper had stayed immediately prior to his murder.

  Dave and I arrived there at ten o’clock. It was a well-known hotel in central London and boasted five stars. From what little we knew of Cuyper, he wouldn’t have stayed anywhere cheaper. The more we found out about his lifestyle, the less we seemed to know about him.

  We were ignored by the doorman, whose antennae told him that we were not bona fide guests, and we entered the vast sterile foyer, where well-dressed foreigners wandered about aimlessly. There were four or five weird-looking youngsters wearing what are known as distressed jeans, and were obviously a pop group of some sort that in the present economic climate even this hotel could ill afford to turn away. Some instinct told me that there was bound to be tuneless music in the lifts to appease those foreign tourists who are terrified of being anywhere that is completely silent lest they should think they’ve died.

  We approached the desk of the hall porter, the man Challis said had recognized Cuyper’s photograph. In any event I would have consulted him first. In my experience, the hall porter is the one person in establishments like this who knows everything. And if he doesn’t know it, it’s either not worth knowing or it hasn’t happened. But things change, and according to the brass plate on the hall porter’s desk he was now called ‘the concierge’. Immaculate in a green tailcoat, he was probably in his fifties, balding and heavily built.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’ The concierge carefully donned a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles that hung from a gilt chain around his neck, and quickly assessed the value of the suits Dave and I were wearing. ‘How can I help you?’ He knew damned well we weren’t about to book a penthouse suite for a fortnight.

  I discreetly displayed my warrant card. After all, one does not enter a hotel of this calibre cavorting across the foyer loudly trumpeting to all and sundry that the Old Bill has come among them.

  ‘Thought so,’ said the concierge, and gave me a knowing nod. ‘Perhaps you’d care to come into my office?’ Without waiting for an answer, he turned to his assistant. ‘You’ve got the desk, Charlie,’ he added, in a manner that reminded me of those war films where the captain says, ‘You have the con, Number One.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Charlie.

  The concierge lifted the flap of his counter and ushered us through to his office. There was a wide curtained window in the middle of the partition separating the room from the counter, but the curtains were open. ‘It’s a one-way mirror, guv’nor,’ he explained, once I’d introduced Dave and me. ‘I like to keep an eye on young Charlie until he’s got a proper handle on the job.’

  Maybe that was the reason, but I suspected that the concierge would want to monitor everything happening in the foyer regardless of who was manning the desk.

  ‘I suppose it’s about Richard Cooper,’ he continued. ‘I had your Sergeant Challis round here a day or two back. He said you’d be likely drop in at some time.’ He picked up the phone, tapped out a number and said, ‘Tray of tea for three in my office, please, Rodica. No, my dear, it’s the concierge speaking. Now concentrate, there’s a good girl. I want a tray of tea for three in my office.’ He repeated the order very slowly, enunciating every word, before turning back to me with a sigh. ‘Romanian,’ he muttered and shot a quick glance at the ceiling. ‘So, what d’you want to know, guv’nor?’

  ‘The dates that Cooper booked in and when he booked out would be a start.’

  The concierge opened a notebook. ‘I got those details from reception after your sergeant came in. I thought you’d want to know. Mr Cooper arrived here on Wednesday the tenth of July.’

  ‘And when did he book out?’ asked Dave.

  ‘He didn’t. He left here just
before midday on the twenty-sixth and we haven’t seen him since. He reserved the room until the end of August, and of course the receptionist swiped his credit card. So he’ll pay for it, whether he’s here or not.’

  ‘That means you’re still holding his room for him, then?’

  ‘Indeed we are. Ah, that’ll be the tea,’ said the concierge as a knock at the door was followed by a middle-aged woman in waitress’s uniform entering the office. ‘Put it down there, love.’ He pointed at his desk. ‘Where are the biscuits, Rodica?’

  ‘You never asked for no biscuits,’ said the waitress churlishly and flounced out of the office.

  ‘You can’t get the staff these days.’ The concierge shook his head, and closed the door after the departing waitress.

  ‘Am I right in presuming that all Cooper’s belongings are still in his room?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, they are. Is there a problem?’

  ‘You could say that,’ put in Dave. ‘Shortly after he left here on that Friday, he was killed. I reckon the management might have a job getting the credit card company to part with money.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ The concierge chuckled at the thought. ‘What happened? Get run over, did he?’ He poured three cups of tea.

  ‘No,’ said Dave. ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered, eh?’ The concierge nodded, handed round the tea and took a slurp from his own cup. ‘These things happen,’ he said, with the air of a man to whom nothing was new or shocking any more. ‘So what happens about the stuff in his room?’

  ‘That’s not really our concern,’ I said, ‘but we’ll get in touch with his next of kin and get them to arrange collection of his stuff.’ I didn’t mention that right now we didn’t have a clue who his next of kin were. ‘In the meantime, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention this to anyone. So far, we’ve managed to keep it from the media.’

  ‘You can stand on me, guv’nor,’ said the concierge, tapping the side of his nose with a forefinger. ‘But I suppose the general manager will have to be told.’

  ‘I wanted to have a word with him anyway, just to put him in the picture. And we’d like to see what there is in Mr Cooper’s room and possibly take some of the items with us.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the general manager. He’ll do as he’s told,’ said the concierge. ‘He’s foreign, you know. That’s why I’m called a concierge now: it was his idea to change it. Frankly I couldn’t see anything wrong with being called a hall porter. It was good enough for my old man, and it was good enough for his father before him.’ He tapped out a number on the desk telephone. ‘It’s the concierge, sir. I have the police with me. They’d like to have a word with you about a serious matter. Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Is he there now?’ asked Dave.

  ‘Yes, he said to go up. I’ll get one of the bellboys to show you the way. You won’t have any trouble from the GM, he’s a pussycat, and I think he comes from a country where they’re scared stiff of the police.’ With that dismissive condemnation of the general manager, the concierge led us out to the foyer and shouted for a boy.

  A youth in page’s uniform skidded to a halt in front of the concierge. ‘Sir?’

  The concierge inspected the boy critically, as though assessing his ability to conduct us to the top man’s office. ‘When you’ve got your breath back, lad, take these two officers up to the general manager.’

  The page delivered us to an oaken door on the first floor, knocked and scurried away.

  The general manager, a small man with a neat goatee beard, a pencil moustache and pince-nez, stood up as we entered. I was surprised to see that he was wearing morning dress, a mode of attire that I thought had long been abandoned even in hotels with a global reputation.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of the Murder Investigation Team, and this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’

  ‘Please take a seat, gentlemen.’ The general manager had a slight accent that could have been German or Swiss or even Dutch, it was difficult to tell. He indicated two chairs with a wave of the hand.

  ‘We’ll not keep you long,’ I began, declining to sit down. ‘We’re investigating the murder of Richard Cooper, one of your guests, and wish to search his room if you’ve no objection.’

  ‘Do you have a search warrant, Chief Inspector?’ It was the standard knee-jerk reaction from someone who probably watched too much television.

  ‘We can get one,’ said Dave, ‘but we would have to seal Mr Cooper’s room with tape and put up a large notice indicating that it was the subject of a police investigation. In several languages, of course.’

  I don’t know how Dave dreams up these fictitious little threats, but they inevitably have the desired effect.

  ‘Oh, good heavens! That’s the last thing we want in a respectable hotel,’ the general manager said hurriedly, his hands waving about and twitching alarmingly as they searched for somewhere to park.

  ‘We may need to seize certain objects from the room,’ said Dave.

  ‘Of course, of course.’ The general manager was suddenly at pains to get rid of us as quickly as possible. Perhaps he thought that Dave might put a uniformed policeman outside the door to Cuyper’s hotel room. ‘I’ll get someone to show you the way.’ He tapped out a number on his telephone and summoned whoever had answered. Moments later a woman of severe countenance arrived. ‘This is the housekeeper,’ he said.

  The housekeeper, an unsmiling middle-aged woman in a black dress, took us to Cuyper’s room and used her pass card to unlock the door before standing back to allow us to enter.

  ‘There you are, sir.’ She too spoke with a foreign accent. Her duty completed, she immediately took off, almost running towards the lifts.

  ‘Do you get the impression we’re contagious, guv?’ said Dave. ‘The pageboy ran away, the manager couldn’t get us out of his office fast enough, and the housekeeper nearly broke a leg escaping.’

  ‘It’s a natural fear of the police,’ I said loftily. ‘I doubt they’ve got anything to hide.’

  ‘Except their price list, sir,’ muttered Dave.

  The search took less than ten minutes. I wasn’t really disappointed at the lack of contents in the room because I’d not expected to find anything that might point to Cuyper’s killer. The little we’d learned of the victim’s behaviour since arriving in this country had shown us that he had always been very careful to cover his tracks.

  ‘The only thing in the wardrobe, guv,’ said Dave, ‘is a spare suit with an English label, but there’s nothing in the pockets. There are some clean pants and a few pairs of socks in the drawers of the dressing table and a Gideon Bible, but nothing else. Plus the usual toiletries in the bathroom, and that’s about it.’

  ‘There aren’t any papers or letters of any sort either, Dave, but I’d not anticipated finding any. And no mobile phone,’ I said. ‘I thought everyone had one these days.’ Once again we’d drawn a blank. We returned to the ground floor.

  ‘Any joy, guv’nor?’ asked the concierge, having emerged from behind his counter. An American approached him and asked him to call a ‘yellow cab’. ‘My assistant will do that for you, sir. Charlie, call a black cab for the gentleman.’ He raised his eyebrows and turned back to me.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t really expect to find anything. Tell me, did anyone call at the hotel asking for Mr Cooper?’

  ‘Like this man for example,’ said Dave, producing the surveillance photograph of Dennis Jones.

  The concierge glanced at the photograph and shook his head. ‘No. In any case, Mr Cooper specifically asked that if anyone called for him, we were to tell them that there was no guest of that name in the hotel. That was passed on to the telephone operators as well. And I asked to be told if anyone did call, and to get the name.’

  ‘Did he mention that a woman might turn up asking for him?’

  ‘No, guv’nor, he didn’t mention any names at all. Mind you, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn he had a bit of
woman trouble. You can tell, you know. I noticed that quite a few of the lady guests couldn’t take their eyes off him when he crossed the foyer. And it was reciprocated. But I don’t think it went any further than flirting with the eyes.’ The concierge smiled at the recollection. ‘I’ll say this, though: Mr Cooper was a very generous man, if you get my drift.’ He gave me an exaggerated wink before adding, ‘So we took great care of his interests.’

  ‘Well, thanks for your help,’ I said.

  ‘No problem, guv’nor. If there’s anything else I can help you with, just give me a bell.’

  Back at the factory, I sat down in my office with a cup of coffee and gave some thought to the mysterious woman, possibly French, who had a key to Cuyper’s apartment. I was still considering the possibility that she was the Titian-haired woman glimpsed on the CCTV tapes riding up in the lift at twelve forty-five on the day of the murder. DC Sheila Armitage had established that the woman had not visited Apartments G or H on the first floor. We knew she hadn’t called at Apartment F: that was occupied by Lydia Maxwell. The only logical conclusion, therefore, was that she had called at Apartment E: Cuyper’s apartment. Now we had to find her and either eliminate her from our enquiries or charge her with Cuyper’s murder. If we had supporting proof, that is. But that wasn’t going to be easy. I wish I could remember the name of the instructor at the Crime Academy who told us that murder was one of the easiest crimes to solve. I’d invite him to come and solve this one for me.

  Then a disturbing thought occurred to me: she might not have been the only one of Cuyper’s friends or acquaintances who had a key. Or she was a plant who’d somehow put the black on Cuyper, obtained the key and then passed it, or copies of it, to someone of evil intent. We had so far managed to keep the news of Cuyper’s murder from the media. Consequently, some of his previous callers – apart from the killer – might not know he was dead and might call again. But what if there was something in the apartment that the killer had wanted but couldn’t find at the time, and returned later to recover it?

  I rushed out to the general office. The only two officers there were Detective Sergeant Liz Carpenter and DC John Appleby.