“Perhaps not. This is the bit where you might think I’ve lost my marbles. What if you’ve got the wrong impersonation?”
“The wrong impersonation? What are you talking ab— Bloody hell.” Robin stopped just short of punching the wall. “I’ve been blind. We’ve been blind.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I should be. Only a couple of days back I was going over something Ben had turned up. One of Sian’s family was talking to the local newspaper, after the inquest, about how cut up she’d been at her father’s death. How she was such a frail little thing, he wondered if she’d survive the shock.” Robin headed for the stairs, still talking. “And her uncle said that for a small girl she packed a lot of venom. Small or frail isn’t how I’d describe the Miss Wheatstone who volunteers at Culford.”
Adam followed him downstairs. “No?”
“No. She’s built like the girls who used to wallop me on the hockey pitch.” Robin reached the bottom. “Sorry, got to make a phone call or three. You brought it on yourself being a genius.” He gave Adam a kiss on the head, then went to the kitchen, phone already in hand.
“What?” Adam responded to the dirty look Campbell—who’d parked himself at the lounge door—was giving him. “I know he’s ringing in again, but it’s all to the good. I, your dutiful master, might just be a mastermind.”
Although he might simply have generated another pointless chase, if it were possible to pursue red herrings down dead ends, and that wasn’t going to help Robin’s temper any.
Early Tuesday morning, before the whole team were in, a coterie of officers assembled in Robin’s office by special invitation. If Robin was going to make a dick of himself, he wanted to minimise the number of witnesses.
He and Cowdrey were already in conflab when Pru arrived, with a few well-rounded curses aimed at the local traffic. “Any more news?” she asked, flinging her bag onto the floor and herself into a chair.
“Only that we may have used up a whole year’s worth of goodwill with Greg.” Robin sniffed ruefully. “I may have to buy him a box of chocolates for arsing him around so much.”
“I don’t envy forensics their job.” Cowdrey fiddled with a paper clip. “He’ll get on the trail later this morning?”
“Yes. Once I’d turned his annoyance into curiosity, he was raring to get going this morning.” Greg had still been at home when Robin rang, and had been frustrated that there wasn’t much he could do then. Robin went through the events of the last twelve hours, ensuring everyone had all the facts, such as they were, to hand. They’d contacted Sian’s uncle—the one she’d fallen out with before any of the impersonations had begun—to see if they could get the name of the dentist she’d used before she moved to Culdover. They’d not held much hope of success, but luck had been on their side. The dentist had not only looked after all the family, he’d been golf buddies with both Wheatstone and his brother. Once his practice was open for the day and Sian’s records had been accessed, the forensic people would have something to work on, something which would be augmented when the local CSI had been to take a DNA sample from the uncle.
“This time we go direct to source.” Robin drummed the desk. “I’m guessing that Pippa had got her hands on all Sian’s health information, then provided it to her parents, who’d naturally be in on the scam, so they’d have everything ready and waiting for us to verify that the corpse was her.”
“It’s possible,” Cowdrey conceded. “I have a cousin who’s such a hypochondriac he has a file amongst his papers with all his health records on.”
“You can access them online with some surgeries too.” Pru nodded. “Maybe I’m being biased, sir, and you could say I’m tarring everyone with the same brush, but I can’t help thinking we should have had alarm bells about the Palmers. What with the uncle having a criminal record.”
Robin shrugged. “We’d probably have said that was being overly prejudicial and pandering to stereotypes.”
“Sometimes an open mind doesn’t help.” Cowdrey flipped his pen between his fingers. “If it turns out that your hunch—”
“Adam’s hunch.”
“Adam’s hunch,” Cowdrey corrected himself. “If it turns out he’s right, this story is going straight into my memoirs. I’ve never known a case quite so bizarre. Any news about where Sian is? Sorry, I think we know where Sian might be. Maybe I should have asked if there was news about where ‘False Sian’ is.”
“False Sian. I like that, sir.” Robin managed a grin. “And no, I’ve not heard anything more this morning. Thank God we had that picture of her from the library personnel records to circulate alongside Warnock’s. The happy couple on the run.”
“A woman killing another woman and then taking over her life. How far-fetched is that?” Pru was obviously wrestling with the implausibility of it all too.
“Not as far-fetched as some cases I’ve read about, if not been involved in,” Robin pitched in. “It’s a cliché that truth is stranger than fiction, but like a lot of these old sayings, there’s a pinch of reality in it.”
Cowdrey said, “What strikes me is that this impersonation has got elements we haven’t really considered. Chase the money. Sian Wheatstone was a wealthy young woman with little in the way of family contacts. Take over her life and you take over her wealth.”
Of course. Robin should have picked that up. “She’s certainly better off than the Palmer family is. If Pippa Palmer’s one for taking her chances, she’d seize the opportunities to access that prosperity.”
“I’m going to have to be devil’s advocate, sir,” Pru said. “I can see the attraction of taking the money, but why not just strip the assets and leg it? Why hang around and risk being caught?”
Robin shrugged. “The thrill of the game? Walking down the street every day knowing you’re getting away with a huge scam? She’d been doing similar already—pretending to be more qualified than she was, pretending that counterfeited objects are real.”
“She’s been making herself into one of her own artefacts, if you like?” Cowdrey raised his hand. “Yeah, that was a bit OTT.”
“Sort of thing they’d say on Radio 2, sir. Part of one of those mawkish stories listeners send in.” Pru shifted in her chair. “Talking of which, maybe our pair have headed up to Gretna en route to his parents’ home?”
“Given the sheer brass neck of the woman, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Cowdrey agreed. “Although if she’s got enough gall to have held her nerve so long, what’s spooked her now?”
“Got to be that impending DNA test.” Was Robin the only one who thought that was obvious? “The Palmers could give the police a picture of Sian, and her physical details, but they couldn’t fudge the sample from Mrs. Palmer, and that was always going to show the discrepancy. We wouldn’t believe another tale of adoption.”
“We could get Bairstow and Howarth back in and grill them over Pippa’s whereabouts. If you think the three of them are in this up to their oxters, they might know where she’s got to.” Cowdrey, looking up, pointed through the window to where some of the constables had begun arriving for the day. “Young Ben’s keen.”
“As mustard,” Robin agreed. “Get him in, Pru. Let’s see what he thinks of this.”
The delighted grin on Ben’s face showed how much he appreciated being updated in advance of the other constables. “So, let me get this straight. You reckon it’s not Pippa in that grave, but Sian herself. Presumably killed with a method that mimicked Sian’s threats?”
Robin nodded. “That’s how we see it. I’d still keep an open mind about whether the death was an accident that was covered up, but all the subsequent events can’t be accidental.”
“Absolutely, sir. She’s been bloody clever too.” Ben snorted. “Pippa Palmer taking over Sian’s life and keeping up her own online persona. Two people at the same time.”
“And in such a way that it could be interpreted as being an impersonation, if need be.” Fiendishly clever, but that’s how she
’d been all through. “It eliminates the complication about whether Pippa’s family could have the wool pulled over their eyes. They have to be in it up to their armpits, as well.” Robin swung round to face his boss. “Are the Bedford police getting the Palmers in?”
“Yes. Should be around now. I’ve no great hope that Pippa will have gone there, as she’s bound to have sussed out that’s one of the first places we’d look for her. Unless she still believes she’s duped us.” Cowdrey shrugged. “If she’s got away with things for so long, she might have become blasé, although I suspect she’s too savvy for that. Mind you, I still don’t get why she—or should we say ‘they,’ because every indication is that Warnock’s in this too—moved Sian’s body to Culford, knowing there was a chance she’d be found. If they’d disposed of her by weighing her down and throwing her in a lake, she could have gone undiscovered for years, leaving Pippa free to be Sian for as long as she could get away with it.”
“They might have thought there was no risk of a dig. There wouldn’t have been, not in the short term, if it wasn’t for the sewage. And maybe she’d tried to put any diggers off.” For Pru, the threads were clearly starting to weave together. “Remember those letters sent to the newspapers about Culford being a sacred site? What if Pippa sent them?”
“The first ones were sent two years ago. Unless she had this all planned in advance, that seems unlikely,” Ben pointed out.
“I’m not suggesting that,” Pru countered. “The first batch came from a legitimate address, right? A place that was no longer there by the time the second lot were sent. Pippa could have read the original ones and been inspired to reignite the controversy. Didn’t somebody write to the university too?”
Ben nodded. “They did. It would be good if we could connect everything to her.”
“Like Becky supposedly selling her story to the media?” Robin shrugged. “I know I like loose ends tied, but this girl has got them so slippery it’s like tying an eel.”
Cowdrey, eyes narrowed, consulted his notes. “Howarth tried to get the dig stopped, as well.”
“Or get it relocated to his banjo enclosure or whatever it was. Yes,” Robin agreed, “he could have been involved with trying to stop someone finding the body. I’ve never quite been persuaded by his explanation, although that’s how I feel about a lot of what he’s told us.”
“I trust your judgement.” Cowdrey gave Robin a tip of the head; nice to have the boss’s approval. “But if he knew the body was there, he must have been shi—passing bricks for months, knowing she’d be turned up.”
“Why didn’t they move her before the dig started?” Trust Pru to ask the pertinent question. “I know it was short notice, but they didn’t simply turn up from nowhere.”
“Same applies to Pippa. If she—and whoever helped her—got the body in to the site, they’d have been able to get it out. Unless they felt too squeamish to dig up a part-rotted corpse.” Ben snorted. The cool expression he wore would probably change the first time he saw a corpse “out in the field.”
Robin tapped the pile of papers on his desk. “Howarth was livid because he hadn’t been in the country at the time the dig got relocated, so he couldn’t influence the decision. Pru, will you get him back in today so we can grill him?”
“Will do.”
Robin shot Cowdrey a hopeful glance. “And perhaps, sir, you’d like to have a crack at Howarth? See if you can get to the truth about what he knows, because I’ve not managed to. Pru can sit in with you and look daggers at him.”
“I’ll give it a shot. I assume you’ll be tackling Becky Bairstow?”
“You assume correctly.” Robin drummed on the desk impatiently. “I can’t get my head round that pair restarting their dodgy fakes business right under Sian Wheatstone’s nose. They must have known Sian wasn’t Sian.”
“Do you think they were involved in the original killing?” Ben asked.
“It would certainly have benefitted all of them to have Sian dealt with,” Pru agreed. “I had Warnock in the frame for the muscle man, especially as he’d been working at Culford and literally knew the lie of the land, but the same might apply to Howarth. And Becky’s no small girl. If the three of them set their minds to it . . .”
“No!” Robin hadn’t realised he’d spoken quite so sharply until he saw the startled reaction from his listeners. “We assumed Becky was running away from danger, but what if we misread the source of that risk? If Pippa had killed one person, would she stop there?”
“Chief Inspector Bright’s making a good point. There isn’t always honour among thieves. Or forgers.” Cowdrey pushed back his chair. “Howarth. Let’s—”
The loud ringtone of Robin’s desk phone interrupted the conversation, but none of those present showed annoyance; this could be the breakthrough they so desperately needed.
“I guess that wasn’t Greg?” Cowdrey asked when Robin at last put the phone down.
“No. Metropolitan police.” Robin pursed his lips. “They’ve found Sian’s car.”
“Where?”
“Not at Gretna, clearly. Near Liverpool Street Station. Can people catch a train to Scotland from there?”
“No, but I bet you can get to Stansted.” Cowdrey, who’d sat down once more, added, “and maybe from there to Edinburgh? You wouldn’t need a passport for an internal flight.”
“Ben, can you get the local force to send some officers back round to Warnock’s parents’ house? Pru, I hope you’re doing something useful on that phone.”
“Just checking where else you can get to from Liverpool Street.” Pru displayed her mobile screen. “Perhaps they fancied a few days in Norwich.”
“Gorleston.”
A chorus of “what?” greeted Ben’s unexpected outburst.
“Gorleston. It’s on the coast next to Great Yarmouth,” Ben explained. “If you can get to Norwich from Liverpool Street, then you can get to Great Yarmouth, I bet.”
Cowdrey looked at the young constable as though he’d lost it entirely. “And the significance of Gorleston is . . .?”
Robin opened his mouth to answer before deciding he shouldn’t take Ben’s glory.
“Gorleston’s near where Sian Wheatstone’s dad either fell off or threw himself over a cliff.”
“But Pippa’s not Sian.” Pru used a tone suitable for addressing a not-very-bright seven-year-old. “She’d have no emotional attachment to the place.”
“Spot on, but Ben’s got a point.” Robin tapped the desk. “They also had a holiday flat there, and Pippa might have keys to it.”
“That’s what I thought.” Ben smiled delightedly. “Shall I get the local force onto that, as well?”
“Yes. And as your first priority. The address might be in that book I picked up at Sian’s house. If not, they might be able to find a note of it from when Mr. Wheatstone had his accident.” This was looking promising. “If you’re right, I owe you a pint.”
“Bribing officers, Chief Inspector Bright?” Cowdrey, who’d risen again and was heading for the door, gave Robin a conspiratorial wink. “What sort of example is that to give?”
“I’ll buy them a pint anytime, sir, if it gets us a result.”
He’d willingly stand the whole station a drink if they got their hands on Pippa Palmer by the end of the day.
Later that morning, Cowdrey came out of his interview with Howarth with steam coming out of his ears. “I can see why he winds you up,” he told Robin as the two of them, and Pru, grabbed an on-the-hoof lunch of sandwiches and packets of crisps. “Full of himself, isn’t he?”
“Full of crap, as well.” Robin attacked his packet of smoky bacon flavour. “Does he know where Sian—sorry, Pippa is?” Would Robin ever get those two women straight in his mind?
“Says he doesn’t. Admitted that he’d begun to suspect she wasn’t really Sian, although he’s clinging to the story that he’d never met Pippa in person, so he couldn’t know it was her. And he swears he didn’t have anything to do with the murd
er.” Cowdrey bit into his sandwich with gusto. “He says he tried to contact her yesterday, but he couldn’t get hold of her. She’s not answering her mobile.”
“Trying to contact her to tell her to get the hell out of here?”
“If that’s the explanation, he’s not admitting it. He said he wanted to test his theory—his words, not mine—about her identity. Bloody maverick.” Cowdrey took another vicious bite of his sandwich.
“You believe that?”
“Surprisingly enough, I do.” Cowdrey finished his sandwich off. “And while he may have been acting full of himself, he’s definitely running scared of something. Like he’s suddenly realised the danger he’s been under all this time. Sian making vague threats that didn’t come to anything for two years, even when she appeared at Culford, is a different kettle of fish to a woman like Pippa, who’s capable of committing murder and may not stop at just the one. Pru has a theory about Howarth.”
Robin had plenty of theories about Howarth, but he kept them to himself while his sergeant—who up until then had been concentrating on her lunch—expounded.
“It’s in character. He probably wants to show he’s smarter than you in particular, Chief Inspector. You said you don’t like him, and it’s clear the feeling’s mutual.”
Robin snorted. “Go on. I can take it.”
“Well, it’s like he wants to be one of those amateur sleuths you get on the telly who solves the crime, then shows the dumb policemen where they went wrong. Think of how much he could boast about it down at the rugby club.”
Robin could believe that. “Might explain why he’s been less than helpful all this time. Doesn’t explain why he tried to stop the dig, though.”
Two Feet Under (Lindenshaw Mysteries Book 3) Page 24
