Body Line dibs-13

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Let’s not run away with ourselves,’ Slider said. ‘Amanda Sturgess came across to me as a determined and well-organized person who could carry through any project she put her mind to, but we haven’t the slightest reason to suppose she wanted Rogers dead, so let’s just clear as we go, shall we? Mackay, you can look into this agency of hers, see if it’s genuine. Connolly, I want you to look into Robin Frith.’

  ‘The dyslexic’s Colin Firth,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Is she getting the ride off him?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘He could be the lodger, her long-lost cousin or one of her ex-clients, for anything we know,’ Slider said. ‘That’s why you have to look into him. What else have we got?’

  There was a bit of a deadly silence.

  ‘Then get on with this lot,’ Slider said, waving at the bags of Rogers’s effects, and took himself off to his office to make phone calls.

  Dennis Markham, the ballistics man, rang. ‘I’m sending over the report to you,’ he told Slider, ‘but I thought I’d tell you what it says.’

  ‘I’m not going to like it, am I?’ Slider guessed from the sympathy in his tone.

  ‘Sorry, mate. Wish it was better news. We’ve got a match with a weapon used in a non-fatal shooting three years ago, a post-office robbery gone wrong in Lewisham. The gun – a .38 revolver – seems to have been let off by accident. The evidence of the postmaster was that three masked men came in brandishing the shooter and shouting for the money. He hit the alarm, the one with the gun let off a shot into the ceiling, and they panicked and ran for it. Didn’t get a penny. Local police had a fair idea who it was, but they couldn’t get the evidence against them, so nothing happened, except that the suspected lads made themselves scarce. So you see?’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Slider. ‘It sounds like a rental.’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Markham.

  ‘Blast.’

  ‘Sorry about that. And given that it was used in a fatal this time, chances are it’ll have been melted down by now.’

  It was an unhappy fact that there was no need for criminals to go to the trouble and danger of buying illegal firearms these days, when they could rent them by the day for an extremely reasonable fee. The dealers kept large stocks and rotated them, and if an individual weapon looked likely to be too notorious it was destroyed. There was nothing to link the firearm with its owner except the word of the criminal, and it would be a foolish criminal who dropped the dealer in it. Murder did not carry the death sentence any more, but grassing up a firearms supplier did.

  ‘I hope you weren’t depending on a lead from it,’ Markham went on.

  ‘I never expect anything but trouble and disappointment from shootings,’ Slider said. ‘Thank God they’re rare enough in this part of the world.’

  ‘One in the back of the head – sounds professional,’ Markham sympathized.

  ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming too,’ Slider complained. ‘What ever happened to the traditional bash on the coconut with the handy blunt instrument?’

  ‘Beats me,’ said Markham.

  Atherton and Hollis had been going through the financial side together.

  ‘According to the bank statements,’ Atherton said, laying them in front of Slider on his desk, ‘he has a regular monthly income, paid direct into his account, from something called Windhover. Here, you see – and here. Fifteen thousand every month.’

  ‘Which sounds like a salary,’ Hollis said. He blew through his scrawny moustache in disgust. ‘Hundred and eighty kay a year? Nice work if you can get it.’

  ‘But it’s not a huge amount for a top consultant,’ Atherton objected. ‘A GP can make that much. It’s not nearly enough for our fancy-dan Dirty Doctor.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not his only income,’ said Slider.

  ‘There’s nothing else incoming in the statements,’ said Atherton.

  ‘O’ course,’ said Hollis, ‘we don’t know that this is his only bank account. If he did have another house somewhere—’

  ‘You haven’t found any documents to suggest he had?’

  ‘Well, not so far. But like I said, there just doesn’t seem enough stuff here, to me. And we haven’t found anything like a contract of employment, or any correspondence with this Windhover.’

  ‘What is it, anyway?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Don’t know yet, guv,’ said Hollis. ‘The bank’s being a bit sticky. You know what they’re like.’

  ‘We might need Mr Porson to lean on them,’ Atherton said.

  Slider was running a finger down the statements. ‘Regular outgoings,’ he commented. ‘This one, three thousand and change, must be the mortgage.’ He calculated in his head. ‘That’s not enough, though.’

  ‘Could have put in cash.’

  ‘It would have had to be a lot of cash,’ Slider said. ‘Utilities bills, council tax. What’s this one, five thousand exactly?’

  ‘Automatic transfer into a savings account with the same bank,’ Atherton said. ‘We’ve found a statement for that. There’s about four hundred thousand in it. That’s about six years’ worth, plus interest.’

  ‘Credit cards, two,’ Slider noted.

  ‘Paid off in full every month by direct debit. And here’s the thing – there’s not a whole hell of a lot on them. Clothes, petrol, drinks and meals, but in moderate amounts. It’s not exactly the lifestyle of the rich and shameless.’

  ‘Adding it all together –’ Hollis took over – ‘it leaves him with a small surplus each month – which fluctuates only by a little – and a growing savings account which he doesn’t seem to draw on. Which doesn’t make sense to me. It’s all too tidy.’

  ‘There must be some more money somewhere,’ Atherton said. ‘I’m starting to think Colin must be right –’ with a glance at Hollis – ‘and there is another house somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t get carried away,’ Slider admonished. ‘You only think there’s some more paperwork somewhere. He could have had a safety deposit box.’

  ‘Not at this bank. We asked.’

  ‘Or something hidden in the house. Have all the papers come over now?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ Hollis said. ‘Bob Bailey says he should have finished this afternoon, but he’s emptied all the drawers and cupboards.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, you’d better find out who this Windhover is and what they were paying him for. And while the four hundred thousand might not be a Blair-type fortune, it’d be nice to know who comes in for it. You haven’t found a will?’

  ‘It’ll be with all that other paperwork,’ Atherton said, ‘in that hidden cupboard we haven’t found. Behind the secret panel in the library.’

  FIVE

  Frith Element

  There is a certain amount of luck in police work – not so much in finding things, but in finding them early on in the search rather than late. Connolly, charged with finding out about Robin Frith, had begun by looking up the last census for Amanda Sturgess’s house at Ealing Common, and had found Frith listed there, all present and correct, in 2001. That was only a bit more than a year after the divorce. Quick work. Was your woman maybe doing the nasty with Frith all along, while blaming the Dirty Doctor for not being able to keep his lad in his pants?

  Even more interesting was that Frith’s profession in 2001 was listed as riding instructor. Given the Guv’s description of Amanda as a sort of rich man’s Margo Leadbetter, it was either dopey or dotey – she wasn’t sure which – that she should have been shacking up with the stable boy, so to speak. A bit of Lady Constance and Mellors in that carry-on. Of course, that was nine years ago, so he might have moved on to a different profession by now. But then she remembered that Atherton had said the Guv had smelled horses when Frith came in, and given the reputation of the Guv’s nose, maybe he was still at it. Riding instructor? You wouldn’t make a lot of jingle at that. Maybe he was just the lodger after all. Stranger things had happened.

  Of course, he might just be riding for a hobby; but if he was still teaching
Thelwell kids to fall off ponies, where was the stable? Hyde Park? Richmond Park? Somewhere out west of London, Uxbridge, Denham, whatever? The field was huge. She started west of Ealing and worked a sort of arc northwards round London, but got no nibbles. It was when she had got as far as Harefield that the word Sarratt on the map caught her eye. Amanda had said Frith was an old friend. She came from Sarratt. And Sarratt was a country place where they’d just as like have horses. Give it a try. What harm?

  She found the right place at the first attempt: a stable just outside Sarratt called Hillbrow Equestrian Centre. She knew it was the right place because right there on the website at the top under the title it said, ‘Proprietor: Robin Frith BHSI.’ What did BHSI stand for, she wondered. Big Hairy Sappy Ijit, maybe. It was a grand class of a place: swanky-looking stables with a clock-tower yoke in the middle of the roof. Indoor manège, all-weather outdoor school, cross-country course. Offered tuition in cross-country, dressage and showjumping, as well as basic lessons. Also did livery. Young horses trained. Children a speciality, hacks in the beautiful Chiltern countryside, blah blah blah. Maybe with all that going on, he was making some money, he wasn’t just a no-hoper after all.

  ‘I used to ride when I was a kid,’ she told Slider when she took it to him. ‘Summer hollyers in Connemara and Kerry. And not just beach ponies – I went in for gymkhanas, even did a bit of cross-country once. So I can talk the talk, guv. If I went to this place saying I wanted to take it up again, sure I could find out something about the boss.’ To his apparently doubtful look she added, ‘Most of the people who work at stables are females. If your man Frith is a bit of a Bob, they’ll all be secretly in love with him. They’ll be gagging to talk about him to someone.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you could get them to talk,’ Slider said. ‘I’m just wondering if it’s the best use of your time.’

  ‘Well, guv, the ex-wife’s the only connection we have, and we know the deed was done by a man. If they’ve been shacked up such a long time and she did want the doctor done, who’s she going to turn to? And you did say he’d dark hair and was wearing work boots, and that’s all we know about the killer.’

  ‘All true.’ Slider sighed. ‘Well, we don’t have such a hell of a lot of leads, so you might as well find out what you can.’

  ‘Thanks, guv.’ She turned away eagerly, and he called after her.

  ‘But remember it is a village, where gossip spreads like wildfire, so don’t go giving anyone the idea that Frith is a suspect, OK?’

  ‘You can trust me, guv. I’ve just got a feeling there’s something queer about the set-up, Lady Connie and the gamekeeper, and him moving in so quick after the divorce. There’s a story there.’

  ‘I’m all for stories,’ Slider said. ‘As long as they lead us somewhere.’

  From the way Fathom bounced into Slider’s room, bringing with him the faint fragrance of sweat mingled with Obsession for Men, it was obvious he had not come simply to chalk up another NTR from the Front.

  ‘Guv, I think I’ve got something!’

  ‘All right, I’m buying. In fact, I’ll have two.’

  ‘Come again?’ The large, excitable lad was not very quick on his mental toes.

  Slider waved it away. ‘What have you got?’ He enunciated clearly for the hard of thinking.

  Fathom presented a video cassette. ‘CCTV,’ he said proudly. ‘Well, you know the Aude female said when she was hanging off the balcony, she saw the perp go down the end of Hofland and turn left?’

  ‘Yes, into Masbro Road. But don’t call him “the perp”. You’re not on CSI.’

  ‘Sorry, guv. Well, I was on the canvass and I’m going down Masbro in the same direction – like as if I’d turned left out of Hofland – and I get this feeling someone’s looking at me. You know what I mean. I looks round and I see this security camera. It takes a minute to register—’

  ‘I’m sure it did,’ Slider murmured.

  ‘There’s this school down the end of the road.’

  ‘Yes, Masbro Primary.’

  ‘Well, the camera’s in the school yard, high up on a pole. I s’pose they’ve all got security problems these days. But I reckon if this one’s aimed at the school-yard walls, maybe there might be a bit of the street in it as well. So I goes in and talks to the school seckertree, and she lets me have a look at the tapes. And this is Mundy’s.’

  ‘Stop hanging it out,’ Slider said. ‘Can you see anything?’

  ‘Yes, guv. That’s what I’m telling you.’

  Slider grabbed the tape and walked rapidly through the CID room to the cubby where they kept the viewing equipment, gathering a little trail of his firm as he went. It was the usual sort of security video, grey and grainy, with the date and time in the corner. The view was the brick wall dividing the school yard from the street, with the iron gate in the middle of it; but true enough, the camera had been set high enough to see over the wall as well, and a section of the street, heavily parked on both sides, was visible, with the junction with Hofland Crescent in the distance.

  Using the time cue, Slider ran it forward to six fifteen. There were few people about, just the occasional man or woman walking jerkily down the street on their way to the tube, and the odd car passing. The cue ran on towards six twenty.

  ‘There!’ said Fathom. He had the benefit of having viewed the tape a few times already. The rest of them squinched up their eyes and prayed. A small figure had appeared in the distance, apparently leaping out of nowhere, because of the way these tapes took exposures with breaks in-between. As he jerked towards the camera, it could be seen that he was wearing dark trousers and a blouson-type top.

  Right place and roughly the right time. It could be their man. Slider wasn’t getting excited yet. He almost did when the figure reached under his jacket – were they going to see him dump the gun? – but what he got out was something small enough to conceal in his palm. Next minute, it became obvious what it was, for the man squeezed between two parked cars into the road, then passed along the offside of the front one and bent to aim the key and plip the door open. He got in, backed and filled a bit to get an angle, and drove away in the direction he had been walking, the bulk of the car disappearing below the line of the school wall and out of shot.

  The breathless silence was broken.

  ‘We got something at last.’

  ‘Good on yer, Fathom.’

  ‘Brill, Jezza!’

  ‘It could be our man.’

  ‘Can you see the number?’

  Slider, ever cautious, said, ‘We can’t be sure it’s him.’

  ‘There aren’t that many people around,’ Atherton said. ‘And he must have come out from Hofland – you could see he didn’t come from further down the road.’

  ‘Guv, there’s something else,’ Fathom said eagerly. ‘If you go back a bit further, you can see him arrive. He had to park there, it was the only space. He’s trying to look normal, he just takes the space, and walks, not hurrying I mean, up the road and disappears down Hofland. But here’s the thing – he arrives about ten past six, and no one else arrives at that time. So it’s gotter be him, hasn’t it?’

  Slider ran the tape back further and watched for himself.

  The man sat in the car a few minutes before he got out, but they couldn’t see what he was doing. ‘What’s he up to?’ Swilley complained.

  ‘Psyching himself for the deed? Putting on gloves?’ Atherton offered.

  ‘He’d made the appointment for six fifteen,’ Hollis observed, ‘and he wanted to be on time.’

  ‘What the hell did it matter?’ Atherton complained. ‘Who was going to argue about a minute either way?’

  ‘I s’pose he’s just efficient.’

  ‘Bloody ’ell, that’s creepy,’ said McLaren. He watched the man reappear, returning from Hofland Crescent. ‘You can’t see his face properly,’ he complained. ‘He’s got his head down. Do you reckon he knew the camera was there?’

  ‘No,’ said Atherton. ‘He wo
uldn’t have parked there if he had.’

  ‘Nowhere else to park,’ Swilley pointed out.

  ‘He was early enough to have parked further off.’

  ‘It was cold,’ Slider reminded them, still watching the tape. ‘And windy. He’s hunched into his collar, that’s all.’

  ‘And he wasn’t very long. Was there time for him to be the murderer?’ Swilley asked, worried.

  ‘It doesn’t take long to shoot someone,’ Slider said. ‘Also, Miss Aude said that while she was hanging off the balcony, she heard some kind of beeper go off. I’m wondering if this man set himself a specific time-limit to do his search after shooting Rogers – say, two minutes – to make sure he was away before anyone came.’

  ‘But no one heard anything,’ Fathom complained.

  ‘He couldn’t know they wouldn’t,’ Slider said. ‘If someone had heard the gunshot and called the police, the response would have been rapid. Also there might have been hidden alarms he knew nothing about. This man was so precise he sat in his car to make sure he arrived exactly on time. Setting himself a time limit on his search fits in with that.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Atherton said. ‘And we don’t know yet what it was he was searching for.’

  ‘Or if he found it,’ Swilley concluded.

  ‘Damn, with all this talking I missed it,’ Slider said, and ran the tape back, then forward again, watching the man walk towards the camera. ‘Ah,’ he said, with immense satisfaction, ‘this was the bit I wanted. I thought I was right.’ He waited until the figure squeezed between the two cars again and froze the image. ‘Look.’

  They looked in silence. It was McLaren who got it. ‘He’s put his hand on the bonnet, the plonker.’

  There it was, the pale starfish outlined on the dark metal of the bonnet of the car parked behind his own. An instinctive movement to balance himself as he squeezed through the inadequate space. And after he had driven away, the parked car’s number was quite clearly visible.

  ‘Chances are it’s a resident’s car,’ Slider said, ‘and if they haven’t washed it since then—’