by Jo Bannister
‘I expect so. He’s had these episodes before. He just needs to be quiet for a few days. Can your inquiries wait?’
‘In fact, Miss Harbinger, it was you I wanted to speak to. Is there somewhere we can go?’
‘Of course.’ She walked past him and opened the very door he’d chosen – not a cupboard but a small, comfortable sitting room. ‘We won’t be disturbed in here.’
Gorman caught the edge of a chilly smile as the housekeeper disappeared through a door opposite.
‘Now.’ Jocelyn Harbinger took one oversized armchair and gestured Gorman to another. If his presence here made her anxious, it didn’t show. ‘How can I help you this time?’
‘I need to ask you about the night your mother died.’
‘Why?’
He’d been prepared for annoyance, for anger, even for tears. But that took him aback. ‘Because I’m a detective.’
She gave him an impatient glance. ‘I mean, why are you raking all this up again? It’s been seventeen years. All the healing that we’re capable of has taken place. Why do you want to reopen the old wounds again?’
‘You know why. Someone hasn’t healed. Someone has held onto their grudge so doggedly that even after seventeen years they’re still looking for their pound of flesh. And not from someone they can conceivably blame for what happened, but from that man’s son and daughter, who weren’t much more than children when it happened.’
‘I wasn’t much more than a child, either, Inspector.’
For the most fleeting of moments he thought that was a confession. But it wasn’t. Her expression was calm, slightly quizzical; she was reminding him of something she thought he’d forgotten.
‘I know that, Miss Harbinger. But you’re not a child now. You’re a successful businesswoman, and I imagine that took equal quantities of intelligence, application, hard work and sheer bloody-mindedness. The same qualities that would enable someone to conduct a campaign of murderous persecution over nearly two decades.
‘Now, maybe you didn’t start this. Maybe that was your father, when he was physically stronger and his world had just been ripped apart. But as he got old, you got older. If he’d asked you to finish what he couldn’t, I don’t think anything that’s happened to the Cho family would have been beyond you.’
‘You’re serious?’ But nothing in her tone now suggested that she thought he was joking. She was quiet and focused, watching him with a directness that Gorman found faintly disconcerting. And still nothing resembling alarm, which troubled him even more. ‘You think we’ve made a family business of persecuting the Chos?’
‘Have you?’
‘Detective Inspector Gorman,’ she said with a trace of impatience, ‘it’s perfectly true that my father started something and I’m carrying it on. It’s called Harbinger Transport; it’s a twenty-four/seven operation involving a hundred and twenty-two lorries, ninety-three drivers, and delivery routes from the Isle of Wight to the Outer Hebrides. It doesn’t leave me much time for hobbies!
‘Of course, if I was determined to pursue this supposed vendetta, I could have saved up my holiday entitlement and spent it looking for Edward Cho’s children. But why would I want to?’
‘Your father threatened to wipe out the whole family,’ said Gorman. ‘Now both parents are dead, and an attempt has been made to kidnap the daughter. We don’t know about the son – nobody knows where he is, not even his sister.’
Jocelyn sighed. ‘I know what my father said. You know the circumstances in which he said it. He’d just lost his wife because someone he trusted tried to recover the valuables without spending the ransom money. The most generous assessment is that Edward Cho wasn’t competent to handle the negotiation, and by informing the police he cost my mother her life. You’re surprised that my father was so angry he didn’t know what he was saying?’
‘Are you telling me that, when he calmed down, he forgave Mr Cho?’
Jocelyn bit her lip. After a moment she shook her head. ‘No, I can’t tell you that. He has always bitterly resented the way we were let down. He loved my mother, and he shouldn’t have lost her that way. It may be true to say he wouldn’t have pissed on Edward Cho if he was burning. That’s not the same as saying he’d have started the fire.’
Gorman was nodding slowly. ‘He was let down, but not by Mr Cho. Cho was doing the best he could in difficult circumstances. He was put in a situation he had limited experience of, and he took it on because, if he hadn’t, someone even less well equipped would have had to. He didn’t notify the police. I know that for a fact. It was sheer fluke that we got involved. Someone on routine patrol recognised someone in the thieves’ car as a wanted person and followed them.’
Jocelyn was staring at him. It was the first time she’d heard this: Gorman thought it would be a while before she knew how she felt about it. It took her long moments to find a voice. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gorman said wearily. ‘I think, because the whole thing was a disaster. Police intervention had caused the death of an innocent civilian, and both your needs and those of the Chos were trampled in the rush to avoid the responsibility. The senior officers who should have stood up for the truth and dealt with the criticism decided instead to keep their heads down and let Mr Cho take the flak.
‘Since no one took your father’s threat seriously, when Cho drove off an icy road into a reservoir those same officers wanted to believe it really was an accident. And that, a month later, Mrs Cho’s death was suicide. They could have been right. But it was their job to be sceptical and investigate thoroughly, and they didn’t do it.’
He sighed. ‘Now it’s seventeen years later, and someone’s still trying to hurt the Chos. Someone sent a snatch squad to Felicity’s school; and if they find her again, they’ll have another go. That’s why I need to figure out who’s behind it, and stop them.’
There was a pause while she considered. Then Jocelyn Harbinger said, ‘Two innocent civilians.’
Gorman frowned. ‘Sorry?’
‘Two innocent civilians died. Everyone remembers my mother,’ said Jocelyn quietly, ‘and everyone forgets her driver. But his death was important too. Jeremy worked for our family for over ten years. He didn’t have to drive her that evening. He knew it was risky, and my father said he was under no obligation to do it – that he had his own family to consider. But he thought he could look after my mother if things got nasty. He was mistaken, and it cost him his life, but he was a brave and honourable man, and he wasn’t just collateral damage.’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ agreed Gorman after a moment. He was impressed that it was her saying it, but telling her so would have been both patronising and unprofessional. ‘Jeremy? That’s not the name on the file.’
Jocelyn smiled, impishly. ‘No. His name was John. We called him Jeremy because of Beatrix Potter. It started as a joke and ended up being absolutely routine. I don’t think he’d have responded to anything else.’
Seeing that he wasn’t following, she glanced at his left hand. No wedding ring, so probably no children to read bedtime stories to. ‘Beatrix Potter?’ she said again. ‘The Tale of Jeremy Fisher?’
He answered with a slow grin of his own. ‘I see.’ Which meant … ‘Your housekeeper is his widow?’
Jocelyn nodded.
‘Then it was her who was injured the night of the robbery.’
‘Yes. She was alone in the house that night – we all had Christmas functions to go to, and Jeremy was driving my parents. Even the Fishers’ son was out with friends.’
‘Was she badly hurt?’
‘Bad enough. She tried to keep the robbers out, and they knocked her about. She was badly concussed. There were terrible headaches that went on for weeks afterwards.’
‘Who drives for the family now?’
‘Their son John. You’ve already met him – he looks after the gardens as well. He was still at school when it happened, but my father always intended him to have the job when he w
as old enough. He deliberately hired an older man to drive for us for a few years. He was happy to retire when John was ready to take over.’
‘That was thoughtful,’ said Gorman.
Jocelyn shrugged. ‘We had to look after Jeremy’s family. In the circumstances, of course we did. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice. Mrs Fisher was always an excellent housekeeper, and John’s been a great success too. This house would fall about our ears if it wasn’t for the two of them.’
‘Mrs Fisher certainly seems … protective … of your father.’
‘They have a lot in common. Not just what happened – their way of looking at the world. They’re kindred spirits. If she didn’t work for him, they’d be best friends.’
‘You told me about the chess.’
Jocelyn smiled. ‘That’s only one of the ways she looks after him. I don’t mean just making his meals and ironing his clothes: she genuinely cares about him. I think it fulfils a need that both of them have, that was left vacant when they each lost the person they loved most. So he relies on her, and she puts all her energies into caring for him. I love my father, Inspector, but I don’t think he’d miss me as much as he’d miss Mrs Fisher.’
Gorman nodded his understanding. ‘So … a hundred and twenty-two lorries. Any grey vans?’
‘No,’ Jocelyn said immediately.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Absolutely sure. We have vans – of course we have. They’re all painted in burgundy and gold. Fleet colours.’
‘All of them?’
‘All of them,’ she said firmly.
TWENTY
Of all the people Hazel didn’t expect to hear from any time soon, her friend at the PNC was high on the list. ‘Everton? I thought I was out of favour with you people.’
‘I thought so too,’ said Everton Woods with disarming honesty. ‘Except, apparently not today. Today one of our inspectors wandered by – not officially, you understand, just in passing – and said if I happened to be talking to you, you might be interested in something that came in yesterday.’
All Hazel’s instincts sharpened like the quills on a porcupine. ‘What came in yesterday?’
‘A DD found up the Angel.’
‘DD?’
‘Discovered Deceased. In the rear of an antiques shop in Islington. There was a sign on the door saying On Holiday: back next month. The neighbours only started worrying when they noticed a smell in the back alley. They called the council and the council called the Met. Turned out he wasn’t on holiday, and he isn’t coming back. BFT.’
Blunt force trauma. ‘Someone beat his head in?’ Everton grunted confirmation. ‘Who was he?’
‘Lester Pickering, aged fifty-four, divorced, no children.’
‘I’m guessing Mr Pickering is known to the Met as more than an honest antiques dealer.’
‘Oh yeah. Not much actual form – a bit of petty theft twenty years ago, a conviction for handling stolen goods ten years ago that he put his hands up for on the basis that it was criminal carelessness rather than criminal intent, nothing since. General feeling round the Yard, though, is that he didn’t become a better person, just a better con.’
Hazel grinned at that. ‘He was a fence?’
‘Perfect cover, an antiques shop. It’s cash business, you don’t get a registration book with a Victorian sideboard, and if you can pass the gear through an auction you’re probably safe even if it is identified later.’
‘Market overt,’ Hazel said sagely. It was one of the curious loopholes in English law that she’d gained extra points in her exams for remembering. ‘You think he was murdered over a Victorian sideboard?’ When Hazel was growing up, people were paying other people to take away their grandmothers’ sideboards.
Unseen at the other end of the line, Everton Woods frowned. ‘Don’t be silly. That was just an example. The late and largely unlamented Lester was more into the art side of the business.’
Hazel felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘Paintings?’
‘Among other things.’
‘And he’d have been doing this, say, seventeen years ago?’
‘Probably.’
‘Do we know who killed him?’
‘No.’
‘Any suspects?’
‘Lots of suspects,’ said Everton judiciously. ‘No evidence.’
‘Then, do we know why he was killed?’
‘Also no evidence, but probably a falling-out with someone he’d done business with.’
Hazel pursed her lips. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’m saying it because that’s what it says in the crime report. The SIO said it because of what was missing from Pickering’s shop.’
She waited, but he wanted prompting. ‘What was missing from his shop?’
‘Almost nothing,’ said Everton smugly. ‘Whoever killed him walked past trays of jewellery and cabinets of silver, and a Fabergé-style egg (slightly damaged), and all he took was a picture off the wall of the back office.’
‘A picture? What kind of a picture?’
‘He said that would interest you,’ said Everton with quiet satisfaction. ‘The inspector who just happened to be passing. He said you’d prick your ears up at the mention of a picture.’
‘Everton, what kind of a picture? A painting, a photograph – what?’
‘Dunno. No one they’ve questioned so far remembers seeing it. All we know is the size of the white patch on the wall where it used to hang: fifty-eight centimetres by seventy-two.’
Hazel wrote it down. She had no idea how big the Harbingers’ missing Caravaggio was; and anyway, what would it be doing on someone’s office wall seventeen years after it was stolen? More likely, it was a photograph taken on a boozy night out showing Lester Pickering with someone who, now, didn’t want the moment memorialised. But if there was even the outside chance that the measurements matched …
‘And he didn’t take anything else?’
‘Hard to be sure what was in the shop at any given time. What we do know is that he left behind antiques worth thousands. So far as the SIO could tell, the only thing he was interested in was the picture in the office.’
‘Was the blunt instrument recovered?’
‘Yes, he dropped it on the floor as he left. A brass-headed walking stick with a price-tag on it. Looks like the cheeky beggar lifted it from a rack by the door as he went in.’
‘Any prints apart from Lester’s?’ She knew there wouldn’t be.
‘Gloves.’
Hazel had grabbed a pad and was scribbling notes. ‘So Lester was murdered in the back of his own shop, and the killer left a note on the door so the neighbours wouldn’t report him missing. Have we anything resembling a time of death?’
‘He opened mail postmarked a fortnight ago, and didn’t open mail postmarked twelve days ago.’
‘Then, sometime between twelve and fourteen days ago, someone went to the shop of Lester Pickering, known fence and possible art thief, killed him with an implement he found at the scene, and left with nothing but a picture that was hanging not in the shop but on the office wall. So it wasn’t a robbery – he could have come back with a van and emptied the place at his leisure. Any CCTV?’
Everton checked the information on his screen. ‘Nothing helpful. We have people in the street – there’s a pub across the way – but we don’t have the front of the shop so we don’t know who was the last to go inside.’
‘I don’t suppose the neighbours remember exactly when the note went up on the door.’
‘Around twelve or fourteen days ago,’ said Everton.
Hazel needed to talk it through with Gorman. But she needed to know something else first. ‘Everton – why are you telling me this?’
‘Because someone I call Sir told me to.’
‘OK. But why me? Why not contact DI Gorman if he had information that might help his investigation?’
‘Sir thought telling you was pretty much the s
ame thing, just a bit less formal.’ He meant, Untraceable. Plausible deniability.
‘Well, thank Sir from both of us. Whether it leads anywhere or not, it’s another piece in the puzzle. I’ll have to check the size of our painting, but if it was hanging on Lester Pickering’s wall until a fortnight ago, that must mean something.’
‘He couldn’t get his hands on a Pirelli calendar this year?’ hazarded Everton Woods.
The measurements of the Caravaggio were in the file. ‘Forty-six centimetres by sixty,’ said Dave Gorman.
It had always seemed a long shot. But somehow, this wasn’t what Hazel had expected. Her hopes sank. ‘It isn’t the same picture.’
Gorman leaned back from his desk, discouraged. ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean Pickering wasn’t involved in the Harbinger robbery. We’re pretty sure art theft was his field of expertise at the relevant time.’
‘And he got himself killed a few days before the attempt on Elizabeth Lim. The two incidents could be connected,’ said Hazel. ‘Everton’s Sir must have thought so, or he wouldn’t have wanted us to have the information.’
Dave Gorman had a face made for scowling. He scowled now. ‘Why did he want us to have the information? Who’s playing silly buggers now?’
Hazel didn’t know either, but she was willing to make an educated guess. ‘ACC-Crime?’
The DI considered. ‘Maybe. He said he’d help if he could. Maybe he’s put the word out that anything potentially relevant should be sent my way.’
‘It wasn’t, though – it was sent my way.’
‘So Severick’ – Gorman was working this out as he went along – ‘wants us to have the information, but he doesn’t want his fingerprints on it, because he doesn’t want anyone thinking he was forced into a corner by a couple of loose cannon pinging round the decks of HMS Meadowvale. Most of all, he doesn’t want us thinking that.’
In all probability they would never be able to prove it. And possibly it wasn’t necessary for them to know why sources of information dammed up a week ago were now starting to leak. It was enough that they were back in the loop, that people who handled a lot of information were suddenly aware of what might interest them and felt able to pass it on.
