False Impression

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Which brought me in,’ said Keith. ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about the murders, so I cleaned up everything in sight, which had the side effect of removing the incriminating messages on Orlando’s phone.’

  ‘But,’ said Leon, ‘later that day both Orlando and I went to the police with what we’d seen and done, and handed over our phones for inspection. We were told we might be asked more questions later but allowed to leave. At that time the police seemed convinced that Margrete had been the real target.’

  ‘Which,’ said Bea, ‘is when I first phoned you, Inspector, and you said you couldn’t interfere. So, moving swiftly on, we leave the murders behind and start looking at what happened next, which was a deliberate and sustained policy of harassment aimed at Leon and, because he’d come to me for help, at me and the agency. I noticed that there were phone calls for him the moment he stepped through the door here. How did they know? Fortunately, Keith was still with us and discovered that my phone downstairs had been bugged. We traced that to one of our agency workers, a woman called Jennifer, who’d arranged for someone to visit the agency to “clean” the phones but had planted a bug instead. Keith removed the bug. Jennifer went AWOL before we could question her. But still someone at the Holland organization seemed to know exactly when our visitors arrived. I couldn’t work out how.’

  Bea continued, ‘Moving swiftly on …’ She outlined recent happenings, ending with the tale of the toy cat, ‘which resembled my cat Winston – who I observe is currently sitting on Keith’s knee. I was upset, which was probably the intention. No, I didn’t report it. We have the box it came in, still, but … so much else was happening, and it knocked me off balance. Meanwhile, Leon was dealing with major trouble on several fronts: some of his personnel decided to sue when they were sacked, and the banks were pressed to look at his finances. The pressure was intense. One of the precautions Leon had taken was to give the training college, lock, stock and barrel, over to …’ Bea gestured, and Anna took up the tale.

  ‘To me. I was working late last night when …’

  She told the tale well, holding herself together as she recounted the horror of finding herself locked into a gas-filled building. Then came her rescue by a couple of security guards from the big house, who’d put her on a train back to London.

  ‘They didn’t suggest calling the police?’ said the inspector.

  ‘No. And I was too shaken to think straight. Sorry.’

  ‘Has this been reported?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Bea. ‘Anna wasn’t well enough. She’s slept most of today, and there was so much else going on that we didn’t get round to it.’

  ‘So I can take it,’ said the inspector, ‘that you are now asking me to investigate something that has not previously been reported? Well, that makes a change. What do you think happened?’

  ‘My turn,’ said Hari. ‘I run a protection agency. Leon had been using me. I have a powerful bike. I got out there to find the college in darkness, with padlock and chain on back and front doors. No sign of anything untoward except for the broken window …’ He told the tale well.

  When he’d finished, the inspector said, ‘You’re thinking that someone from the security staff organized what might have been set down as an accident to the building, but that a couple of them didn’t realize Anna had been locked in by mistake and so got her out in time?’

  Hari nodded. He laid a tape recorder similar to the inspector’s on the table and shot it across to him. ‘I made a full report to Leon. There’s a copy for you. It’s enough to let you go in and investigate, isn’t it? I dossed down in the college last night to make sure there weren’t any other accidents to the gas, but there weren’t. When the first lot of cleaners arrived at the college this morning, I attended to the lady’s car and made my way back here to collect Leon.’

  ‘By which time,’ said Bea, ‘the situation here had deteriorated once more.’

  Leon said, ‘Death threats on my computer. So like a good boy I take it into the local police here, together with some evidence which Bea had collected.’

  Bea said, ‘You remember one of the girls in the agency had arranged for someone to come in and bug my office? Well, she returned this morning, trying to sell us information. We think she’d been promised a bonus by her boss … Oh, yes, there’s a definite tie-up there with Holland Holdings, as she had previously worked for them in the maintenance office. We got a confession of sorts from her, and yes, that is also now with the local police. To be fair, they did send a couple of constables around to take notes on what’s been happening. I suppose they’ll report back and we’ll be visited by a more senior officer eventually.’

  The inspector winced. ‘Look, you must understand the way the police work. You take a complaint to one of the local offices. They assess it, and if they think it needs attention they send someone round, which they have done, to see if it checks out. In this case they’d need to find an expert to assess your reports before they can link them to the murders. And that takes time.’

  Bea said, ‘We understand that. But unless and until they do something about it, we remain open to attack. This morning Keith discovered that a camera has been fitted in our porch, allowing someone in a van – a florist’s van, we think – to monitor who was coming and going in this house. So now we know how the enemy became aware of who entered or left the house. Keith turned it so that it only got pictures of the steps down to the agency. Leon had to get out of the house to take various bits and pieces of evidence to the police and go on to a series of important meetings. We didn’t want him being run down in the street on his way to the police station so we dressed him up as Orlando, and he was about to leave when we found a man trying to turn the camera back on to the front door … but we got rid of him all right.’

  ‘How?’

  Bea blushed. ‘I pretended I thought he was a homeless man looking for a place to sleep and threw a bowl of water at him. So he ran away.’

  ‘And,’ said Orlando, holding up his mobile, ‘I got some photos of him and the subsequent traffic jam when the florist’s van tried to get out to follow Leon at just the wrong moment.’

  The inspector’s face was a picture. ‘Who do I charge on that one? Bea or the intruder? Is the camera still there?’

  Keith shook his head. ‘I showed it to the police constables who came round this afternoon, and they removed it.’

  Bea said, ‘The thing is that the distractions keep on coming. Hate mail on the agency computers. Death threats on my landline phones. I couldn’t think straight … until I took time out and realized that they were nothing but that. Distractions. That’s when I asked you, Inspector, to see if there was a John Doe body somewhere which might match Adamsson’s description … and you found that there was.’

  ‘Not yet proven,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ll need to visit his father and—’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Leon, heavily. ‘As soon as Bea realized everything stems from the fact that Adamsson had gone missing, she sent me out to check on what was happening at his house. Hari took me there late this afternoon. We found the house deserted and up for sale.’

  ‘What!’ Consternation.

  Leon said, ‘Inspector, I am asking you formally to file a report for Mr Adamsson junior as a missing person.’ He produced a packet wrapped in a plastic bag from his pocket and spun it down the table till it ended up in front of the inspector. ‘Hari and I looked through the front window of Adamsson’s house. No furniture. No curtains. We looked through the letterbox. There’s a few letters, some daily papers and some junk mail on the hall floor. We knocked on neighbours’ doors. Elderly couple, retired professionals, on one side. A young family with a baby on the other. Both were mystified by what has happened. Father and son had been living there in relative harmony. The old man was a bit of a moaner, walked with a stick, always complaining about something. The son kept himself to himself but was always civil. When he went on holiday – which was infrequently – he’d go ro
und to the neighbours, leave them a key and ask them to look out for the old man.’

  ‘And this time he didn’t?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. One minute the car was there, and the next it had gone. The neighbours weren’t sure when it went but they think it was on Tuesday morning, which would tie up with my seeing it in the car park at the swimming pool on Tuesday afternoon. Incidentally, the swimming pool is only a hop, skip and a jump from his house. Parking is difficult around there, and if the neighbours failed to see Adamsson’s car in front of his own house, they’d assume he’d had to leave it up the road somewhere.

  ‘The elderly neighbours are at home most of the day. They say the old man had a visitor in a flash car late Tuesday afternoon. They couldn’t remember the make or number, but it was large and black. Possibly a Jaguar. They didn’t see who the visitor was, but they were expecting Tesco to deliver their weekly shopping order so were on the lookout when they heard his front door open and the old man inviting someone in. They always get their shopping delivered on a Tuesday afternoon, so they know exactly which day it was. The next morning Mr Adamsson senior called on them to say his son had decided to move abroad and that he couldn’t manage on his own, so he was going to move into a posh home where he’d be looked after better than his son had ever done and he wouldn’t be left alone all day. He said he was fed up with people trying to contact his son who was a grown adult and should be able to answer the phone for himself. He gave the neighbours a twenty-pound note to pay off the milkman and the paper boy and asked them to return the keys to his house, as he’d been told they’d got a vacancy in the home for him straight away and he was going to pack up and move the very next day.

  ‘The neighbours were surprised but supposed it was all for the best. They asked for a forwarding address. He said he’d leave one with them, but didn’t do so. They offered to help him pack, but he refused. Sure enough he went off next morning, Wednesday, in a car that had come for him. That afternoon the “For Sale” sign went up, and yesterday the house removal people took out everything, including the carpets. It’s a prime position, overlooking the park at the back, and the neighbours say there’s been someone round to view it already.’

  The inspector fingered the packet Leon had passed to him. ‘Are those his keys?’

  ‘The old people had given Mr Adamsson senior back the keys that they had, but the young mother on the other side still had hers. She’d been out for the day when he left so was shocked when she met the older couple in the street and they told her he’d packed up and gone. She says the son left the keys with her some time ago. I’m hoping he licked the flap before sticking it down, which would give you his DNA for comparison purposes, but in any case, it should have his fingerprints on it.’

  Hari held up an expensive camera. ‘Give me your email address and I’ll send you pictures of the house with the “For Sale” up, and the view through front and back windows.’

  No one asked how he’d got to the back windows.

  The inspector nodded. ‘I’ll let you have it when we’ve finished. I may have been warned off the murders, but I can ask someone to investigate the disappearance of a man who was supposed to have met people in the car park and didn’t. And of his father, too, come to think of it.’

  Orlando’s voice was sharp. ‘That’s all very well, but I want to know who killed my father.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Yes,’ said the inspector. ‘I’d like to know that, too.’

  Leon put his hand over his eyes.

  ‘Leon, it wasn’t Briscoe, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ said Bea, quickly. ‘Why? Because no one who knew him thinks he was capable of it. You said he wouldn’t. Dilys said the same thing. Anna agreed. He wouldn’t. So, he didn’t.’

  The inspector said, ‘Come on, now. Everything you’ve all said seems to indicate that Briscoe’s security men are behind the attacks on you, and that he ordered his men to destroy the college.’

  Leon said, ‘I think he’s dead. I can’t think of any other explanation. He was not well. He was becoming very frail. He was so much older than me. I ought to be able to accept it.’

  ‘He may not be dead,’ said Bea. ‘If he’d died of natural causes in hospital or with a doctor attending we’d have heard. So he’s not officially dead. Angharad Evans ran his household. Briscoe married his housekeeper first time round because he’d become dependent upon her. I think that’s what Angharad has been working for. I don’t know if he has actually gone through a form of marriage with her yet, but I suspect that’s what she wants. Failing that, she would like him to make a will leaving everything to her. It might not be necessary for his solicitor actually to attend. She could write out a letter of intent and get him to sign it.

  ‘The courts would honour it if no one else objected, but if he had died with his loving family around him, there’d be endless fuss and bother with lawyers, because Leon, Lethbury and Adamsson would have challenged a will which left everything to her. The affair would have rumbled on through the courts, probably for years. The only winners would be the legal eagles. So, to make a will that will stick, she has to arrange that Briscoe quarrel with his immediate family and friends by drip-feeding him with false information and cutting off his contact with them.’

  Dilys mopped up tears. ‘Don’t say that! It was my dream to look after him in his old age … until Angharad said that I irritated him so much that he didn’t want to see me any more.’

  ‘A clever woman,’ said Bea. ‘You see how she got rid of everyone around him? Leon and Dilys were driven away. His sister went to the States. There remained Adamsson – with whom he communicated daily – and his old friend Lethbury, whom he saw every week. She isolated Adamsson from Briscoe till he talked about resigning. Well and good. But even if he left the organization, he’d still be pretty vocal if Mrs Evans produced a will in her favour, because he’d never agree to her trying to run an international corporation such as Holland Holdings. But, he could vanish to the Continent on permanent holiday, couldn’t he? Lethbury was a different matter.’ Bea took a deep breath. ‘Orlando, what did your father have that Briscoe didn’t?’

  Orlando blinked. ‘Well, they were much of a muchness, I suppose. Been pals for ever.’

  ‘You’ve missed the point,’ said Bea. ‘Briscoe had his millions. Lord Lethbury was a wealthy man, too. I’m speculating here, but I think I’m right. He also had … a title. Dilys, did your father ever say he’d like to crown his achievements with a peerage?’

  Dilys perked up. ‘Why, yes; he did. He even showed me a list of possible titles which he was thinking about. I suggested Lord Holland of Holland Park, but he said that was silly, and I suppose that it was. I really am not very clever, am I?’

  Keith patted her hand, and she turned eagerly to him. ‘It was all terribly hush hush. He told me that if you’re offered one, you have to keep quiet about it for ages. That would be, oh, just before Sybil and Bernice went to America.’

  ‘Leon; did you know about this?’

  Leon lowered his eyelids and shrugged. Which meant that yes, he did know?

  ‘And how,’ asked Bea, ‘was he going to get this longed-for title?’

  Orlando slapped the table. ‘Through my father, who was on committees for this and that, and knew exactly who to have a word with.’

  ‘I think we can take it that Briscoe’s old friend did have a word with someone, and Briscoe did get a letter asking him if he’d care to receive an honour. A warning was attached: he’d have to keep quiet about it till the next Queen’s birthday honours list. Now either he told Angharad or she was monitoring his post, because at that moment she could see the future in terms not only of money but also a title. From being simple Mrs Angharad Holland, she’d become Lady Holland. And that’s why I think, I hope, that she’s keeping Briscoe alive. He won’t get the title until the next list is published and that only happens twice a year: on the Queen’s official birthday and at New Year.’

  ‘Or,’ said Leon,
washing his face with his hands, ‘he may have died but she has to keep it quiet until then. I can’t think how she’d do that. Or yes, I can. Put him in the freezer?’ His voice cracked, and he stared down at the table.

  Leon saw things too clearly, didn’t he? Bea had hoped he wouldn’t think of that, but he had. Yes, it was more than likely that Briscoe was dead. But maybe not. It’s best to keep hoping. ‘No, he’s got to be alive to accept the title, which means it’s not in her interests to let him die yet. I think he’s being kept alive but sedated.’

  Orlando was so pale, he looked transparent. ‘You mean, my father was killed because he might have made a nuisance of himself, visiting his old friend? Or because he’d recommended Briscoe for a title? That’s monstrous!’

  The inspector got to his feet with an effort. And stretched. ‘You’ve given me more than enough to make a start. I’ll have to get a warrant … First things first. I need Anna and Hari to make and sign statements. The incidents which concern the plan to blow up the college are the easiest lines of enquiry to follow, leading as they do to the involvement of the Holland security guards. We’ll start there.’

  Anna said, ‘And how many days is it going to be before you actually make a move?’

  ‘And where will the next attacks be made?’ said Bea.

  ‘And how long can Briscoe last?’ said Leon. ‘I can’t bear to think of him alone in that great house, being looked after by people who wish him ill. I must try to get in there tomorrow. Or even tonight.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘How would you get through the security guards? Even if not all of them think you are the enemy, they have their orders and will deny you entrance.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Bea. ‘How many people are involved in this conspiracy, do you think? That wretched girl Jennifer – the one who let the woman in who bugged our phones – said that the people in the maintenance department thought that Leon had taken over part of Holland Holdings in an underhand fashion and that they were going to lose their jobs because of him. They are convinced that Leon is a Bad Thing. I suspect that Angharad and Denver are playing on the fears of lots of different people to target Leon and the agency. Hence the hate mail we’ve been receiving and the horrible phone calls. Let me test it again now.’ She put the phone back on its rest and waited for the inevitable nasty phone call … which didn’t come. ‘Hurray. The enemy has closed down for the night. Hopefully.’