by Janet Neel
‘If Francesca were here, she’d finish those for you,’ Martin Bailey observed, grinning, then blushed as he realized from the concerted expression of disapproval round the table that he had been less than tactful. McLeish’s sense of the ridiculous reasserted itself as he looked round at the four Wilson boys scowling at poor Martin; and he said easily that he was perfectly right, one was simply not safe eating with Francesca.
‘Any luck with finding Ketterick?’ Henry asked sotto voce as three different conversations started up awkwardly round the table.
‘None at all. He’s completely vanished — his ex-wife just reported him missing, as well. Did you find any trace?’
‘Yes,’ Henry said, smugly. ‘He is seeing a sales director at Allied – my old firm — tomorrow. ’
‘Oh, great!’ McLeish felt suddenly rejuvenated. ‘Marvellous. I do feel better for that. Thank you very much, Henry — I’ll catch up with him now.’
‘You still worrying about that table, then?’
‘Francesca’s table?’ Martin Bailey, somewhat cowed by his previous faux pas, brightened up, and they looked at him enquiringly. ‘I had an idea, you see. You remember those letters at the top of the column? They must be initials, mustn’t they? — only we couldn’t think of anyone whose surnames matched. Well, what if they were Christian names?’
McLeish felt a faint ringing in his ears, and hoped it was the whisky, as he fished out the table from his top pocket.
‘Bloody hell!’
‘P. for Peter Hampton you see, perhaps?’ Martin suggested stolidly, looking tidy, clean-cut and indefatigable as he always did. ‘And W. for William Blackett. I don’t know who S. is for, though.’
‘Simon Ketterick.’ McLeish and Henry spoke together, and both of them glared at Martin.
‘I didn’t think of it before,’ he protested.
‘I didn’t think of it at all,’ acknowledged McLeish, shaken.
‘That would mean they were all three in it, John.’ Henry was bouncing with excitement. ‘It’s the classic supplier fiddle. Hampton places orders with Ketterick at Alutex, and Ketterick gives him an envelope of used fivers at the end of the month. Ketterick keeps some cash for himself, and Blackett is cut in as well, presumably because he is the chap who authorizes the cash going out of Alutex.’
‘So Fireman wasn’t in it?’ McLeish felt as if his brain was made of high-quality cotton wool.
‘Well, he could have been, but that table doesn’t suggest it. No, I think you were right first time, John, he wasn’t that sort of chap.’
‘But one of those three topped him because he found out about it. Jesus!’
‘Well it was a lot of money. If that table is right, Blackett and Hampton were getting £2,000 a month each, tax free, and Ketterick £1,000 odd — I wonder why he got less? I suppose the other two reckoned they were directors, and entitled.’
Martin, uninterested in this reflection on salary differentials, was methodically grossing up for tax. ‘That’s the equivalent of about £50,000 a year in gross salary for Hampton and Blackett and £25,000 for Ketterick. More than double their existing gross salaries,’ he observed, and then visibly thought about the numbers, and looked up, astonished, at McLeish. A silence had fallen round them. Charlie and Perry were listening, fascinated.
‘Well, if Ketterick’s an addict we know what he’s doing with the cash, but what are the other two spending it on?’ Henry asked rhetorically. ‘It could all be current expenditure but it seems too much — my guess is they are stashing it somewhere.’
‘Oh, they are.’ McLeish sounded savage. ‘Both of them took trips to Switzerland recently. You were right, too, Henry, about Hampton needing money to put in with his new partner: the bloke wanted £20,000, and Hampton had told him he’d be able to borrow that on his house. He could have too, I understand.’
‘Easier still to steal it, though,’ Henry pointed out. ‘You don’t need to repay it.’
McLeish shook his head to clear it. ‘I must get back. Can I have some coffee — a lot of coffee?’ He looked enquiringly at Charlie who seemed to be in charge, and was struck by the way the four boys were watching him for guidance, much like baby monkeys with their mother, and felt very old. They were all so alike, and he longed for the missing Francesca as Jeremy tentatively smiled at him, with exactly her smile when she was not quite sure of her ground.
Jeremy’s face changed suddenly as he looked at a point behind McLeish’s head, and he turned to see a uniformed sergeant looking doubtfully at the assembled group.
‘Inspector McLeish, can I have a word?’
McLeish got up and joined him in a corner of the room, conscious of the effects of three whiskies and two glasses of wine, but reminding himself that he was off duty. ‘Sergeant Davidson rang through, sir. Says to tell you a Simon Ketterick has been found dead in the Glengarry — you know, that big hotel near Euston. Drug overdose. Been dead since lunch-time, likely, but the body’s only just been found. Euston Road CID have got it.’
McLeish felt the shock down to his bones, and stood staring at the sergeant who fidgeted uncomfortably, visibly wondering whether this particular ornament of the CID was actually understanding what was being said to him.
‘Telephone,’ McLeish said, recovering with an enormous effort. ‘No, wait a minute.’ He strode back to the table and lent over the back of his discarded chair, both hands flat. Everyone stopped eating or drinking. ‘Henry. Ketterick’s dead; said to be a drug overdose.’
Henry and he looked at each other.
‘Could be carelessness,’ Henry suggested, unhopefully.
‘Or one of the other two tidying up.’ McLeish sounded, and felt, grim. He drank down his own coffee, commandeered Charlie’s and finished that as well. Reaching for his jacket, he stood up straight, wishing he had drunk at least one less of everything.
‘Any bets, Henry? Or Martin?’
‘Well, Peter Hampton’s got a nasty temper,’ Martin volunteered. ‘I mean, if that means anything. I mean, he needn’t be a murderer …’ He stopped, horror-stricken.
‘What are you thinking of, Martin?’ Henry’s completely matter-offact manner defused the question, and Martin relaxed.
‘Well, when we were doing the suppliers’ lists that day, I also disorganized a cupboard in the room where we were working — Fran wanted a biscuit, you know what she’s like. She was brought in from down the corridor by Peter, and he was already in rather a paddy, but he was furious when he saw me at the cupboard.’
‘What was in the cupboard?’ The whole table froze in their places as McLeish came back into the conversation, leaning over towards Martin.
‘No biscuits. Some odd papers, draft accounts for three years back, cups for swimming, a box of biros, some of those giant paperclips.’ Martin’s eyes were narrowed with effort. ‘Ah. And a little flat box.’
‘What sort of box?’
‘A blue one. It said Britex dash forty years.’
McLeish stared at him, and Martin quailed. ‘How do you know?’
‘I noticed, I mean I remembered, I mean I was there.’ He took a deep breath, and calmed down. ‘About this big.’ He set his hands down on the table about nine inches apart, and McLeish tore off his watch and laid it between Martin’s hands where it fitted neatly.
‘That’s right,’ Martin said, plainly relieved. ‘A presentation box.’
McLeish felt the table sway, and Martin’s face changed. ‘What have I said?’
‘The murdered Britex Purchasing Manager was not wearing a watch. This surprised everyone because he had last been seen wearing one presented to him by Britex for forty years’ service. He had been presented with it, in a box, the Friday before. We have never found either the watch or the box.
Martin and Henry looked at each other in horror. ‘You think the watch was in the box, John? Why did he keep it?’
McLeish straightened up, his mind finally working. ‘I had better not drive. Sergeant will you get me to Edgware Road, please,
and I’ll use your radio on the way.’
The Car is here,’ Charlie volunteered. ‘Biff could take you, couldn’t he, Perry?’
Perry, absolutely white-faced and his eyes looking huge, looked back at him, speechless, and his brother was on him in a flash. ‘Perry. Where is Fran? Tell me this minute.’
‘You don’t need to shout. I don’t know where she is but she is with this Hampton.’ His eyes flicked towards McLeish and instantly away again. ‘I saw him waiting for her after the rehearsal, and said hello. He was apparently going to have a drink with her and go back to Yorkshire tonight.’
‘How did you know it was Hampton?’ Charlie asked, puzzled. ‘I’ve never met him?’
‘I went round to collect a jacket from Fran’s house before supper last night. He was there having a drink.’ He kept his eyes fixed on his brother’s face, avoiding McLeish. Charlie’s mouth tightened, and McLeish understood that a message had been passed.
‘Oh, but that is naughty of her,’ Henry said, seriously annoyed. ‘I mean, dammit, she’d been told not to mix socially with the customers.’ He blinked as he considered the implications. ‘What do we do, John?’
‘I don’t know whether Blackett or Hampton murdered Fireman, and possibly Ketterick. We find her.’
The whole table stared at him, aghast, and he remembered that they dealt with paper, not violent people. It was Perry, whom his family thought barely intelligent, who recovered first.
‘I’ll drive for you, John. I hardly drink, and we have a car telephone. Two, in fact. Let’s go. She may be home, if he was catching a train tonight. Do we ring up?’
Jeremy appeared at his elbow. ‘I did. No answer.’
McLeish nodded to him, and he and Perry raced for the door, McLeish instructing the uniformed sergeant to get on to Edgware Road and get Davidson and a police car round to Wellcome Street to meet them. He hurled himself into the front seat of the Rolls as Perry took off, observing as he did so that Charlie, Jeremy and Henry Blackshaw had somehow got into the back.
‘I have come in order to tell her that the next time she does something I tell her not to, in professional terms, I’ll see her posted to the Wigan branch of the Department of Health and Social Security,’ Henry said, grimly, in answer to his unspoken question, but McLeish was not fooled. Henry Blackshaw had come out of love, to try to protect her from the full consequences of her idiocy.
‘The others are behind us with Biff,’ Perry noted, and McLeish, with the bit of his mind not occupied in putting out a general alarm for Hampton and Blackett, marvelled at the ease with which Perry was flicking the big car through heavy traffic. He organized Brady to get a search warrant and to go for the Britex safe. He put the car phone down, but it rang again, sharply. Charlie snatched it up, prepared to blast any of Perry’s associates off the other end, but handed it over immediately to McLeish.
‘It’s Bruce. I have yon Blackett, or I will in ten minutes. Ye mind that lassie he had spent the evening with when Mrs Byers was attacked? A business girl? She rang me ten minutes ago because she had Blackett on her hands, insensible with drink since lunch-time. What time he was not loading more in he was screaming his head off about someone whom he’d found dead in bed at his hotel.’
‘In bed?’
‘Ketterick was found in bed, seemingly asleep, until the wee girl who was cleaning the room tried to rouse him and frightened herself out of a year’s growth.’
‘Get Blackett, Bruce, and sober him up.’ The concentrated ferocity in McLeish’s voice silenced the background chatter in the car, and Henry raised his eyebrows, wordlessly. McLeish explained, tersely, and swung round to urge Perry on, but held his tongue as he realized Perry was doing sixty down the outer lane in the narrowest part of the Edgware Road, headlights full on, his hand on the horn, clearing a path for the big car.
‘John, does that mean Blackett killed him?’ Charlie was shaking his shoulder to get his attention.
‘No, I don’t think so. I think it was Hampton. Perry, for God’s sake!’ He threw up his right arm to protect his face as a motor cyclist hurled himself bodily out of their way, taking out the Rolls’s right-hand headlight and buckling the bonnet, sending himself ricocheting off the Rover he had incautiously being trying to overtake.
‘At least he didn’t come through the windscreen,’ Perry observed, slamming down the accelerator so that the big car leapt across the road to turn right down Wellcome Street under the bonnet of a giant articulated lorry, whose air brakes sounded like an explosion as the driver brought it up all standing.
‘There!’ He slid the car into a space twelve inches longer than its length outside Francesca’s door.
‘I have a key. I’ll do the usual signal and go in.’ Perry was half out of the car. ‘Wouldn’t that be less awkward for you, John?’
‘We’re long past all that, Perry.’ The big man spoke dismissively as he ran up the front steps, Perry at his heels.
Perry unlocked the door and Charlie pushed past him and ran upstairs, shouting for his sister. McLeish and Henry both stopped in the hall, staring at a crumpled skirt and leather shoes dumped in the middle of the hall.
‘She’s running, John,’ Perry spoke over the nightmare. ‘She does that, puts on the tracksuit and trainers she keeps in the hall, and just takes off whatever she can’t force under a tracksuit. It’s all right. He must have gone, and we can just wait for her.’ He sat down, heavily on the floor, and breathed out carefully. McLeish swung round to go upstairs but stopped.
‘Who is singing?’
‘Me,’ said Perry from the floor. ‘It’s a recording,’ he added redundantly. ‘In fact it’s the tape of the BBC thing.’ He started to sing quietly with the tape. ‘It may be that Death’s bright angel, Will speak in that chord again…’ He was plainly not thinking about the words, but McLeish and Henry stared at each other, appalled. Charlie crashed down the stairs.
‘She’s not there,’ he reported. ‘I looked in the cupboards, too.’ He sat down, equally heavily, and quite unselfconsciously rested his head momentarily on Perry’s shoulder. ‘I’ll kill her when we find her,’ he observed, simply.
‘Not if I find her first,’ Henry said, grimly. ‘And I expect we’ll all have competition from John, here.’
They looked round for McLeish who had gone into the street. ‘Her car’s here,’ he said, from the doorstep. ‘At least she isn’t running in Holland Park.’ He hesitated, looking at Perry. ‘I know a circuit she does run, though, and we must find her. You OK to drive?’
‘Of course,’ Perry, still very white, got to his feet, and they all went out to the car, meeting Biff and his carload on the way.
‘We’ll take Pindar Street. And hurry.’
Perry looked at him sideways as they left. ‘You’re still worried? Surely he’s gone?’
‘Just drive, Perry.’
The car hurtled round three sides of a square, cutting off a corner, and emerged at the end of Pindar Street, long, ill-lit and apparently deserted. Perry checked his speed. ‘There. Left-hand side, right at the top.’
McLeish, who had until then thought he had perfect eyesight, squinted into the night and saw, just, a flicker of movement.
‘It’s Charlie’s old tracksuit, you can see it.’ Perry slowed the car further.
‘I’ll have to take your word for it.’ McLeish felt torn between relief, rage and real apprehension about confronting Francesca with the news that she had either been having or considering an affair with a man who was probably a thief and possibly a double murderer.
‘Look out!’ Perry had never taken his eyes off the distant figure, and as he shouted the car leapt forward, its headlights flashed on, and his hand came down hard on the horn. In the powerful Rolls lights all of them saw the tall shadow, arm upraised, barring Francesca’s path.
Francesca was counting aloud as she ran, making sure that she was putting her feet down evenly as John McLeish had taught her, watching the ground ahead of her. She checked as a dark shadow
fell across her path, and lifted her head to see a tall figure standing in her way, dressed entirely in black. The man moved to intercept her and she saw him clear, the blond head haloed in the streetlight, very bright against the dark mackintosh. She saw his arm go up, the hammer in his right hand glinting silver in the light, and she threw herself violently sideways, hearing her wrist crack like a piece of wood as she fell, twisting to face her attacker who was silhouetted against the light like the bright angel of death himself.
‘No, Peter,’ she screamed, as he threw himself on her and the world went dark.
McLeish saw her swerve, trip clumsily over the kerb and fall, spreadeagled, in the road, throwing out an arm to save herself. Then he was out of the car in a flying tackle, flattening a man nearly as tall as himself who fought like several demons. A blow on his collar-bone momentarily paralysed his right arm and turned him sick, but he hung on grimly, and his assailant suddenly went limp and terribly heavy. McLeish shifted the weight painfully and laboriously and struggled to his knees, feeling extremely ill, to find Charlie squatting anxiously beside him, clasping a half brick.
‘I hit him over the head, John — do you think I’ve killed him? John?’
McLeish, concentrating hard, turned over the body, and felt inside the mouth for any obstructions. He put two fingers to the pulse in the neck, and the man’s eyelids creased. Charlie’s explosive gasp of relief echoed in the dark street.
‘Is that him? Is that Hampton, I mean?’
‘Yes.’ McLeish got slowly to his feet and greeted Bruce Davidson who had arrived with two squad cars and half a dozen police. ‘Cuff him, but he needs to go to the hospital.’
He waited, Charlie anxiously fidgeting beside him, while his head cleared and the attendant police dealt with the spectators who had arrived from nowhere, as they always do in London, then turned reluctantly and slowly to find out what had happened to the others. The first thing he saw was the Rolls, slewed diagonally across the road as Perry had swung it to avoid running down his sister, bonnet buckled and the wing on the driver’s side beaten in. He looked for Francesca in a fever of anxiety, and saw her on the other side of the builder’s skip that had provided Charlie’s providential half brick. She was standing in the middle of a tight group of Perry, both twins and Henry Blackshaw, and whatever they had privately threatened they were grouped round her in a defensive formation, prepared to repel the world. He could just see her profile as she watched Peter Hampton being loaded on to a stretcher, handcuffed, his head lolling to one side. She was terribly pale but dry-eyed and expressionless, nursing her left elbow in her right hand, leaning on Henry who had wrapped his jacket round her. McLeish found it impossible to look away from her as she absorbed, steadily, the full depth of the situation, and he found himself praying for her sake that Hampton had not actually been her lover.
