‘Then there’s Freddie Clarke. We need to find him, or at least discover the circumstances under which this confession was made. Is he to be trusted? What were his motives?
‘We also haven’t explored the possibility that Nancy Haynes may have presented some kind of direct threat to Hadden-Vane. It’s hard to see how, but we ought to check that she didn’t try to get in touch with him, speak to the people in his parliamentary and constituency offices, his wife.’
Brock checked through the list in his hand. ‘One other thing. I went to see the people in the hotel yesterday, and I had the impression they were hiding something about their dealings with Nancy Haynes. They said she’d never mentioned staying in Chelsea Mansions as a girl, or shown them the photograph she had with her, which seems improbable to me. They admitted detesting the Russians next door, and I wonder if they might be trying to hide something else she’d told them, perhaps to protect her reputation? We’ll need to talk to them again, but first I’d like a bit more background on them and their dealings with Moszynski.’
He looked around the room. They were all fired up, debating options, throwing ideas around-all except Kathy, he noticed, who seemed preoccupied.
Bren Gurney’s first task was to speak to Wayne Everett. He bustled into the interview room with a file of papers under his arm and shook hands with the security man.
‘Sorry to take up your time, Wayne,’ he said affably. ‘We need to speak to as many people as possible who knew Sir Nigel Hadden-Vane. I take it you’ve heard about his suicide?’
Everett nodded cautiously.
‘How about the video of Freddie Clarke on the web, accusing him of fraud? Have you seen it?’
‘Yeah. Jeez, what a shocker, eh?’
‘You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?’
‘What? No, of course not.’
Bren chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, had to ask. So what exactly was your relationship with Sir Nigel?’
‘Relationship? Well, that’s too strong a word. I knew him because I worked for Mr Moszynski, and Sir Nigel was a friend of his and often came to the house. Sometimes Mr Moszynski got me to drive Sir Nigel home after a heavy evening, that sort of thing.’
‘How long have you been working for Mr Moszynski?’
‘Six months.’
Bren paused and opened his file. With his heavy build and Cornish burr, Bren sometimes appeared slow and deliberate, and Everett waited, shifting in his seat as the silence dragged on. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘since December.’
‘As I said,’ Bren spoke at last, ‘we’re anxious to talk to people who’ve had recent contact with Sir Nigel, and we came across this.’ He selected an enlarged photograph from his file and showed it to Everett. ‘That’s you, isn’t it? And that’s Sir Nigel, yes?’
Everett looked puzzled. ‘Um… yeah. Could be. Where did you get this?’
‘It was in the local paper, couple of years ago. Sir Nigel handing out prizes at the Haringey Sport and Social Club in Tottenham Green. Remember that?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Everett gave an apologetic laugh. ‘Yes, I had met him before I went to work for Shere Security. In fact he got me the job there-it’s a company that he part-owned.’
‘So Sir Nigel got to know you well enough to get you a job?’
Everett shrugged, not quite as nonchalantly as he might have intended. ‘Around then his chauffeur died, and I did a bit of driving for him, casual like. Then later, when I was looking for a regular job, he got me the interview with Mr Shere.’
‘I see. Sir Nigel was a sort of patron of the club, wasn’t he? We’re wondering who else he knew there. Anyone else in the picture you recognise?’
Everett took another look. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘What about this bloke?’ Bren pointed to Danny Yilmaz.
‘Face doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘You sure? He’s been in the news lately, name of Danny Yilmaz, died last week of something called Marburg fever.’
‘Oh, that bloke. Yes, I did read about it.’
‘So have you had any contact with him in, say, the last six months?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘That’s his cousin behind him, Barbaros Kaya. Do you know him?’
‘More by reputation. Bit of a tough guy, I’ve heard. But I haven’t had any personal dealings with him.’
Bren nodded. ‘Did you know Sir Nigel’s previous driver then, the one who died?’
‘I’d seen him around, yeah. I think his name was Bernie.’
‘That’s right, Bernie. And he had a son and daughter called Kenny and Angela. Remember them?’
‘I believe I do. Kenny went up to Scotland, I seem to remember.’
‘He did. Did you keep in contact with him?’
‘No.’
‘What about Angela? She inherited Bernie’s house. Have you visited her there?’
‘No. I wouldn’t have a clue where it is.’
‘Hackney, 13 Ferncroft Close. You quite sure you’ve never been there?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘You didn’t maybe take Sir Nigel there?’
‘Not to Hackney, no, never.’ Everett was looking disconcerted now. ‘I don’t get it. What’s this all about?’
‘The thing is, Wayne, with two recent homicides associated with Chelsea Mansions, we need to make quite sure that Sir Nigel’s suicide wasn’t, shall we say, assisted in any way. And we’re also interested to trace Freddie Clarke and make sure his video was above board. You can appreciate that.’
‘Yeah, okay.’
‘But you knew Sir Nigel, you drove his car, were in close physical contact with him, shook his hand, may have touched his clothes. You see my point?’
‘No, frankly, I don’t.’
‘Your prints and DNA may crop up in the course of our forensic examinations, along with those of other people we’ll want to trace. So we need samples of yours in order that we can identify and eliminate them. You’ll agree to that, won’t you?’
‘Oh.’ Everett looked troubled. ‘Sir Nigel spoke to me about this. He had very firm views on the subject, and told me I should never agree to it unless it was absolutely unavoidable. He said there had been mistakes, miscarriages of justice.’
‘It really would help us, Wayne, and I can assure you…’
‘No, sorry.’
Bren sighed patiently. ‘That’s a pity. We’ll just have to do it the slow way. Now I’m going to need details of every occasion you and Sir Nigel came into contact during the past six months…’
‘Can you throw any light on Mr Clarke’s confession, Mr Kuzmin?’ Brock asked. The two men were sitting in the library in Chelsea Mansions in which Brock and Kathy had first encountered Hadden-Vane and Freddie Clarke on the night Moszynski died, over three weeks before. In front of him, Vadim Kuzmin seemed tense and preoccupied.
‘That’s funny.’ Vadim gave a chilly smile and lit a cigarette. Apparently Shaka’s prohibition no longer applied.
‘Funny?’ Brock said.
‘Yes.’ The Russian inhaled deeply. ‘I thought you might be responsible, Chief Inspector. I understand you and Sir Nigel were old enemies.’
‘You must have had dealings with Mr Clarke recently, in connection with Mr Moszynski’s business affairs. How did he seem?’
‘Uncooperative, secretive, devious. My wife is an executor of her father’s estate and the chief beneficiary. She was entitled to have full information about his assets and liabilities. I was trying to get Freddie to set down on paper all the details, but he seemed reluctant. He said it was very complicated.’
‘You argued over this?’
‘Sure, we argued. It was intolerable.’
‘But you used to be a member of the FSB Sixth Directorate, Mr Kuzmin,’ Brock said with a quiet smile. ‘You would know plenty of ways to get such information from a reluctant witness.’
Kuzmin looked at him sharply. ‘I had nothing to do with that video.’
‘Really? I wondered, yo
u see, because it struck me that the background to the film, the setting in which it was shot, reminded me of the cellars underneath this house. We’re working on sharpening those background images.’
Kuzmin shrugged, sucked again at his cigarette. ‘Good luck. Have you any idea where Freddie is now?’
‘He took a flight to Athens yesterday morning. We don’t know where he went after that.’
‘He’s done this before, several times. He sits at his figures day after day until something snaps and he takes off. He has always come back before, but things are a little different now.’
‘You mean he might feel responsible for Sir Nigel’s suicide?’
Vadim gave a derisive snort. ‘Who cares about that? No, I mean that he is now the only one who can lay his hands on half a billion dollars’ worth of Mikhail’s money.’
This thought hung in the air for a moment, then Brock said, ‘We’d like to have access here to carry out a thorough search of the house, to make sure we didn’t miss anything before.’
‘Sure, be my guest, take the place apart if you want.’
Brock made a call to the team waiting outside in the square, then said, ‘It looks as if someone’s been digging up the floors in the cellars. Do you know why?’
‘Oh, that was Mikhail’s next project, a huge swimming pool in the basement. They had to investigate the drains, to see how it could be done.’
‘Is Mrs Marta Moszynski here?’
‘No, she’s with Alisa at our house. She doesn’t like it here any more. It reminds her of Mikhail. It is painful for her. She is talking about going back to live in St Petersburg. Is that everything?’ He began to get to his feet, but Brock stayed where he was, watching the other man. He seemed as anxious as Marta to leave Chelsea Mansions.
‘Not quite. In the old days, when you were all living in St Petersburg, you knew Mr Moszynski’s father, Gennady Moszynski, didn’t you?’
‘What is this, family history time?’
‘In a way, yes, it is.’ Brock reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph. He handed it to Kuzmin, who, just for a brief moment, gave a look of recognition, Brock thought.
‘What’s this?’
‘That’s Gennady standing there behind the girl, isn’t it?’
Kuzmin’s eyes darted to Brock’s face, then back to the picture. ‘Maybe.’ He said the word carefully.
‘The girl is Nancy Haynes, the other two people are her parents, the building in the background is this building, and the date is the twenty-sixth of April 1956.’
‘Before my time,’ Kuzmin said dismissively and handed the picture back.
‘You’re not curious? Or do you already know what it means?’
‘What are you talking about? What does it mean?’
‘It means that, contrary to what everyone has been telling us, Nancy Haynes had been here before, she knew Mikhail’s father and would surely have approached Mikhail.’
‘And you think this has something to do with their deaths? That’s crazy.’
‘Gennady had met Nancy’s mother before, in San Francisco in 1939. They became lovers. Gennady was Nancy’s father, Mikhail was her half-brother.’
Brock watched the man’s impassive face. ‘You knew this?’ Brock persisted. ‘Mikhail told you?’
Kuzmin shrugged.
‘Nancy had recently lost the money she needed for the lifestyle she was used to. Did she ask for money from Mikhail to keep quiet about this family scandal?’
Kuzmin shook his head indifferently. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What about Marta? How would she feel? Her revered husband, Hero of the Soviet Union, the father of an American woman. Would she have wanted rid of her, before she sold her story to the newspapers?’
That seemed to register with Kuzmin. ‘That old witch,’ he growled. ‘Who knows what she would have done? But what about Mikhail? Why kill Mikhail?’
‘Yes indeed,’ Brock said. ‘Why kill Mikhail?’
Brock left Kuzmin and went out to see how the search through the Russians’ palace was going. They were looking for documents, letters, electronic records, anything that might throw light on the relationship between Hadden-Vane and the Moszynski family.
Eventually he made his way down to the basement security control centre where Zack was working at the control panels, and took a seat alongside him.
‘So what is all this stuff?’ he said.
Zack looked up. ‘High-quality gear but nothing extraordinary. That’s the controls for the motion sensors set up around the house, and this is for the window and door alarms. Then there’s the CCTV stuff-the screen there linked to that DVR…’
‘DVR?’
‘Digital video recorder, which in turn is linked to that HDD-hard disk drive-which stores the images.’
‘Can we find out why the CCTV was switched off at exactly the times that we really needed it-like when Mikhail Moszynski went out for a cigar on the Sunday night he died?’
‘The Shere Security people explained that, didn’t they?’ Zack said. ‘They said that Mikhail must have switched the recording off himself.’
‘The trouble is, Zack, that we may not be able to trust Shere Security-Wayne Everett in particular. How can we check this?’
‘Well, either the system, or some key part of it, like the HDD, was switched off for that period, either deliberately or as a result of a tech glitch, or…’
‘Or?’
‘Or the system did record for those periods and was erased afterwards.’
‘Can we test that?’
‘Yes. Not here or at Queen Anne’s Gate, but I can take the HDD over to technical support to take a look.’
‘Yes, do that.’
Brock’s phone sounded. Bren had something for them at Queen Anne’s Gate. Brock contacted Kathy and got up to go. As he made his way out he passed an open door leading into the warren of unused cellars in which he’d seen evidence of digging. The walls in there were whitewashed brickwork, similar to what could be seen in the background on Freddie Clarke’s video. He called Zack and reminded him to take a look.
As he stepped out into the square Brock saw a taxi waiting outside the hotel, the driver loading a suitcase into the boot. The hotel door opened, and he saw Deb, a coat over her arm, come trotting down the steps. When she reached the cab she turned and, seeing him, gave a wave, then she got in and the taxi moved off.
THIRTY-SIX
‘I reckon we’ve got him,’ Bren said, nodding with satisfaction. He described what he’d established about Wayne Everett’s earlier history with Hadden-Vane and the Tottenham youth club.
‘He was Hadden-Vane’s enforcer, and he made sure the club officers were kept sweet as he used the charity to divert his share of the money coming in from Moszynski. He knew Danny Yilmaz, and also Kenny Watson, who used to come to the club before he went up to Glasgow.’
‘He told you all this?’ Brock asked.
‘Yes. It took a while, but he finally agreed to let us have his prints and DNA. They’re processing them now.’
‘Good. Does he show up on the CCTV records at Hackney?’
‘We’re still looking.’
As Brock and Bren sat down together to go through the interview record in detail, Kathy at the next desk checked her phone again. Nothing from John. She tried ringing his number, but it was still switched off. She hesitated for a moment, then finally called the number of the Chelsea Mansions Hotel. It rang for a long time before it was answered with a tentative, ‘Hello?’ She recognised Toby’s voice.
‘Toby, hello, it’s Kathy Kolla.’
‘Ah… Hello, Kathy. What can I do for you?’
‘I’m trying to get in touch with John. Is he in the hotel?’
‘John? John Greenslade?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not here. I haven’t seen him since yesterday.’
Kathy frowned. ‘I was with him yesterday evening, and he said he was going back to the hotel. He should have got there about t
en-thirty, eleven.’
‘No, he didn’t come home last night-we presumed he was with you.’
‘Would you mind getting someone to check his room, Toby? See if he slept there?’
‘It’s a little awkward at the moment. I’m rather short-handed. I’ll ring his room, shall I? Hold on.’
After a minute he came back on the line. ‘No reply, I’m afraid. He’s not here.’
Kathy rang off, feeling worried.
‘Okay, Kathy?’ Brock was looking at her.
‘Not sure,’ she said, and told him.
‘Probably nothing to worry about. But why don’t you check the crime reports?’
‘Yes, I will.’ She went to her computer and logged in. She worked through the accident and crime incidents from the previous night in the districts he would have walked through on his way back to the hotel, but none of the victims resembled him, and his name didn’t crop up anywhere. Then, feeling a little foolish, she requested a check on passenger flights to North America. That too drew a blank. Well, she thought, of course he wouldn’t have gone home without contacting her. She rang the caretaker of her block to see if he’d called in there, but again there was nothing. Then she decided she was being overanxious and got back to work on a pile of the documents they’d taken from Mikhail’s office at Chelsea Mansions.
Brock came over to her side and said, ‘Did we find out any more about Toby Beaumont?’
‘Yes, a little, about his father.’ She searched through the papers on her desk and found what she was looking for. ‘Well, not much. His name was Miles, so presumably he wrote that note on the back of the photo.’
‘And probably took the picture too,’ Brock said.
‘Yes. Born 1910, Eton, Oxford, the army. He was sent over to France with the British Expeditionary Force in 1939 and evacuated from Dunkirk the following June. In September 1941 he joined the Special Operations Executive which had just been formed to carry out raids in occupied Europe. In 1942 he was parachuted into Greece as part of Operation Harling, which blew up the railway viaduct at Gorgopotamos and cut the railway line from Thessaloniki to Athens and Piraeus which was being used by the Germans to supply their army in North Africa. He subsequently returned to England, took part in D-Day and was awarded the Military Medal.’
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