by Tom Bradby
Sarah’s handwriting was not neat. In the main body of the address book, almost every entry was scrawled, except one or two that she recognized as having been written by Alan, in his precise, organized hand. None of the entries gave anything away in terms of the closeness or otherwise of those listed, and many were illegible. The only way of reducing her workload that Julia could see was to concentrate on those names that had numbers crossed out and replaced by others, which suggested prolonged contact.
There was one entry for ‘M & D’ and it was for this that Julia lifted the receiver first. She couldn’t remember Sarah’s maiden name, but it didn’t matter, because the woman who answered the telephone told her that the elderly couple who had lived here had passed away seven years previously and she did not know of any surviving relatives. She and her husband had bought the house from a solicitor.
Julia wondered if, in Sarah’s absence, the money had gone to Alan. After all, they had never separated.
There didn’t seem any other obvious shortcuts, so Julia turned to the first page of the address book and began at the beginning.
Midway through the second call, Professor Malcolm started snoring quietly. She wondered if anyone at the other end would hear.
Julia had decided against lying, so she told the respondents that a review of the case was taking place and that she and her colleagues would be grateful for any help they might feel able to give. Julia asked them first of all to outline, in a sentence, their relationship with the deceased. The majority described themselves simply as friends.
Each successful call began with the same explanation, which was followed by a momentary silence, as the man or woman the other end of the line recalled the long dead and, perhaps, was reacquainted with old emotions. Some had heard about Pascoe’s release and asked if the case was to be reopened, but none betrayed more than academic interest.
About the tenth call was to a man called Adam Forbes, whose name was listed under ‘A’ rather than ‘F’. A woman answered the phone and, while a baby screamed in the background, explained that Adam was at work and gave Julia another number.
A receptionist answered, ‘Salmon Forbes Barnaby,’ and, after explaining what she wanted and while waiting to be put through, Julia tried to guess what business Adam Forbes was in. Public relations or advertising, she thought.
‘Hello, Adam Forbes here. You’re the police?’
Forbes’s voice was deep, low and confident. He was a man used to being in command of situations, Julia thought.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said.
‘How can I help?’ There was a wariness in his voice, but Julia had already grown used to this. All those who picked up the phone were reluctant to be drawn, fearful of bringing trouble upon themselves.
‘We’re conducting a review,’ Julia said. ‘It’s only a formality – a review of the evidence. You may have heard that the man convicted of Sarah’s murder has been released …’
‘No, I hadn’t.’
There was a pause.
‘Your name is in Sarah’s address book.’
‘Yes. We were at art school together.’
Julia was surprised by this. She’d never seen Sarah paint anything.
‘Which art school?’
‘The Slade.’
‘So, you were friends?’
‘Well … yes. I don’t think I’d seen her for a few years by the time of her death.’
‘Were you good friends? What kind of woman was Sarah when you knew her?’
There was a long pause. Julia knew this kind of conversation was difficult over the telephone, but she wasn’t going to have time to seek out each of these people individually.
‘Sarah is a hard woman to explain.’
‘I’d be grateful if you would try.’
He sighed quietly. ‘She was attractive … vivacious.’
‘Tending to provoke strong reactions in people?’
‘Yes.’
‘Particularly men.’
‘Perhaps. Yes.’
‘Did you ever … Sorry, I don’t mean to intrude, but did you ever have a relationship with her?’
He hesitated. ‘When I first met her, I asked her out. We made a date and she just never showed up. I waited a long time in the restaurant and felt a fool, naturally. I was angry, but the next time I saw her, she was charming and deeply apologetic, but she never explained why she hadn’t turned up, except to say that she forgot.’
‘So you became friends, or drifted?’
‘Friends, yes. Shortly after that I came to accept that she was probably not for me. Too … complicated. We did become friends, of a sort.’
Julia doubted that Adam Forbes had ever stopped wanting to sleep with Sarah.
‘Did you stay in touch with her after art school?’
‘No. I’m quite surprised my name is still in her book.’
Julia had been taking notes on the pad beside her. She put the pencil down for a moment, thinking. ‘Was she popular at the college? I mean, how was she viewed by others?’
There was another pause. ‘Sarah is, as I’ve said, hard to categorize.’
‘Flighty?’
‘Yes. I always got the impression that to her men were a bit of a game. That made her relations with them difficult and almost equally so with women. But there was another side to her that I think many people liked. She was well off and generous with her money. She could be kind and thoughtful at times, but rather careless and thoughtless at others.’
Julia had written ‘generous’ on the pad and circled it. ‘Did she have close female friends?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Life revolved around boyfriends, perhaps.’
‘Yes, I would say that was probably true.’
Julia thanked him and replaced the receiver, pondering the contrast between Sarah’s freewheeling generosity at college and the carefully recorded figures in the Notes section of the address book. It was hard tying these together.
As she went, Julia continued to make notes – a paragraph summary for each person, just in case she ever had to come back to any of them. By six o’clock, she had almost reached the end of the Bs – she was at Dennis and Amelia Brown – and was bored of listening to Professor Malcolm snoring. She wrote him a note saying that she would come back to pick him up for the meeting at the village hall, then walked home in the afternoon sun, which was warm on her face.
She had a strong image of Sarah in her mind in that yellow bikini, with her dead straight, jet-black hair and willowy figure. The impression that Adam Forbes had given her had not been substantially altered by subsequent conversations, although the objective picture she was forming was tending to make her seem a more attractive figure. Almost everyone, it seemed, remembered her generosity and occasional thoughtfulness. Julia wondered why she could recall no such positive memories of her next-door neighbour.
Caroline was not at home, so Julia went up to her room, read her parents’ statements, then folded them up again, put them in the drawer of her bedside table and sat down on the mattress, trying to dispel the image of Sarah’s inert body that had found its way back into her mind.
CHAPTER TEN
MAC WAS SITTING at home, by his window, looking out over the roof-tops towards Clapham Common. He looked at his watch, concluded that Alan Ford would probably have left the base, stood and reached for the phone. He took out his mobile and searched through previously called numbers until he found the one for the base in Cranbrooke, which he dialled on the land-line. ‘Duty officer,’ he said to the operator.
‘Duty officer, Lieutenant Benson.’
‘Good evening, Lieutenant Benson. This is Major Rigby from the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch at Woolwich. We’ve got something of an incident and I urgently need an up-to-date address and telephone number for one of your former soldiers, a Corporal Richard Claverton.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, the P files are with Admin. The block’s all locked up. If you call back o
n Monday, they’ll be able—’
‘Benson, I’m not sure you understand. It’s important and I wouldn’t be calling you on a Friday night if it wasn’t, would I?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I need to know the answer now – not in an hour or two or on Monday but now. You’ve got keys, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And a brain?’
‘Of sorts, sir.’
‘Right. Go to the admin block, find the filing cabinet that lists former regimental personnel and look under C for Claverton. Corporal Richard Claverton. I will call back in forty-five minutes and I expect you to have the answer. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Telephone number and up-to-date address.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mac wondered if Benson would contact Lieutenant Colonel Ford to get clearance, but he calculated that, on a Friday night, the duty officer would be anxious not to disturb his boss.
Forty-five minutes later Mac called back. ‘Benson, it’s Major Rigby here.’
‘Yes, sir. It says on the file that Richard Claverton is deceased. Eleventh of November last year. Eleven Albany Mews, Strathallan Road, London SW18. No telephone number. Next of kin, Mrs Sandra Claverton.’
Mac thanked Benson and hung up. He thought for a minute, then picked up his jacket and walked towards the door.
He drove down Battersea Rise, then up the hill, turning left past the railway line, navigating with the A–Z open on the seat beside him. Strathallan Road was down towards Southfields, and Albany Mews was a new development set back from the main street, full of neat grey houses, each with a parking space.
Mac looked at his watch again as he walked up the short path to the front door. It was getting late, but he knocked quietly. The wooden front door had small square panels of frosted glass, which he could not see through, but he heard someone approach and waited while whoever it was examined him through the spyhole.
The door opened. A small Jack Russell darted out and got caught between his legs, before circling him rapidly.
‘Tibbett, come here! Stop it!’
‘It’s all right.’ Mac stooped to pick up the dog and held her at head height as she tried to lick his face.
‘I’m sorry, she’s only a puppy.’
Mac placed the dog in the woman’s outstretched arms, but holding her still was not easy.
‘Sandra Claverton,’ Mac said, smiling.
She looked at him and nodded.
‘Captain Macintosh, Royal Military Police.’
For a moment, Sandra Claverton paused, then her instincts overcame natural suspicion – or so it seemed to Mac – and she stepped back to allow him into her home.
The small hall led immediately to the living room. It was cramped, but not gloomy, despite the dark upholstery and carpet. All the surfaces, including the top of the large television, were covered in photographs.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Captain Macintosh?’
‘Yes, please.’ Mac looked at her. ‘Milk, no sugar.’
‘May I take your coat?’
Mac slipped it off and handed it to her. She put it on a peg by the door, then went to make his tea, taking the dog with her. Mac put his hands in his pockets and bent to look at the photographs on the mantelpiece. In the centre was a picture of a tall, handsome, blond man with a bushy moustache, wearing a sleeveless fishing jacket and holding up a large, silver fish, the blue waters of a lake behind him. There was a much shorter man standing next to him, squinting in the sunshine, his bald head glistening. Next to the photograph was a tall metal fish standing upright on a wooden base. At the bottom of it was a plaque, with an engraving: ‘Nomads Annual Bullshitter of the Year Award 1995’.
Mac smiled and moved along a step to look at a formal picture of Richard Claverton and his wife – an engagement photograph, perhaps. With their blond hair and good looks, they were Nordic in appearance, Sandra seeming much younger here, but her husband exactly the same.
‘Just before we got married,’ Sandra said, behind him. Mac turned and took the cup of tea she offered. They faced each other awkwardly, neither comfortable enough to sit. Sandra had half-moon glasses around her neck and wore a brown cardigan, her blond hair in a bun at the back of her head. Like her husband, she was tall, but she was larger around the waist and hips and her calves were bulky and swollen.
‘Did they send you?’
Mac sipped his tea. It was hot. Bitterness had crept into her voice, he noticed, a slight emphasis on the word ‘they’. ‘No,’ he said.
Sandra Claverton sat, legs neatly together. Mac followed suit in the brown armchair next to the fireplace, which faced the television. He wondered if this had been Richard’s chair.
‘Mrs Claverton …’
‘Sandra.’
‘Yes. I’m … sorry about your husband.’
Sandra Claverton looked down. She had placed the tea on a side-table and her hands were in the middle of her lap, one clasping the other.
‘Mrs … Sandra. I’m working on something to do with Mitchell Havilland and I’ve found that, though a public event in all kinds of ways, actual details of his death are somewhat hard to come by.’
Sandra Claverton continued to look at her hands. She was frowning, as if concentrating on holding herself in check. Mac did not want to upset her.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Sandra. It’s just that your husband’s is one of the few names that I have … one of the few who can definitively be said to have been present.’
She looked up. Mac saw that if there was hurt in her eyes at her husband’s death, there was also anger. ‘They’re wrong,’ she said. ‘They’re all wrong.’
Mac waited for her to clarify this, but she was now staring at the floor. ‘Wrong about what?’ he asked.
She looked up again. There was confusion in her face. ‘You don’t know about Richard?’
Mac shook his head. ‘No. As I said, all details that should be routine seem difficult to come by.’
Sandra frowned more heavily. ‘I found him … upstairs, on the bed …’ She placed a hand over her open mouth, then crumpled, her head in her hands.
Mac waited as she composed herself. ‘They said it was suicide,’ she went on.
‘That was the coroner’s verdict?’
‘Yes, but Richard would never have done a thing like that. Why would he? He would never have done that to me.’
‘I’m sorry, Sandra.’
‘He’d never have let me find him like that.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’ She looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, Captain Macintosh.’
‘You referred to “they”? You said, “Did they send you?”’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is they?’
‘The Military Police.’ She took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
‘If you were willing, Sandra, I think it would be helpful to me if we could start at the beginning.’
‘But who are you?’
‘I’m … Put it this way, I think I might be of more use to you than whoever it was who came to see you before.’
Sandra Claverton looked at Mac, still unsure. Then she seemed to make up her mind. ‘There was a letter. That began it. It had a terrible effect on him … I wasn’t supposed to read it, but it was postmarked Winchester, it was from a prison and it was written in poor handwriting. It said, “It’s time for the truth, Richard.” It wasn’t signed or anything, just one sentence in the middle of a page, with the name of the prison written at the top. Winchester Prison.’
‘The truth about what?’
She shook her head. Mac waited for her to continue.
‘Then nothing happened for a long time and I forgot about it. I asked Clive …’ Sandra pointed towards the man in the picture with the fish. ‘That’s Clive Danes you were looking at earlier. He was in the same regiment. And he said … well, he said, forget about it. Just someone they’d served with who’d lost his mind.’
The next pause was longer. ‘But it didn’t go away?’ Mac asked.
‘No. Then the men from the Military Police came and asked Richard questions. They came three or four times and, like the letter, the effect on him was terrible each time.’ Sandra tilted her head to one side. ‘You see, my Richard was a sunny man. He didn’t get depressed often, but after each visit he was not himself at all. He would withdraw to his study upstairs for hours, and when he came out he wouldn’t want to talk about it, and if I asked, he’d be angry with me. That was out of character, too.’
‘This was just before he died?’
‘No, there was a gap. The men from the Military Police stopped coming. They wrote him a letter saying that the investigation was complete and no further action was to be taken – he didn’t want me to see that either, but I did. Things improved for a while. He seemed more back to his own self, but then, just before he died – a few weeks before – there was another letter, which he was careful I didn’t see, but I knew it was from the prison again and then there were other visitors. A man in a smart suit came twice, with a briefcase.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘A square-looking man. Balding, with a thin belt of hair running from the front to the back. He was not attractive, but his manner was kindly. Each visit had the same effect on Richard, and I would try to talk about it, but …’
‘Were there any other visitors in the same vein?’
‘Only Clive. He saw a lot of Clive. They were close. Fished together.’
‘Would you have an address or telephone number for him?’
Sandra looked at him oddly, as if he were stupid, and Mac wondered if he had said something inappropriate.
‘Clive is dead as well. He died two days after Richard.’
Mac stared at her. ‘Suicide?’
She began to cry again, shaking her head in frustration at her lack of self-control, or perhaps just in grief, Mac couldn’t tell.
‘You told the Military Police of your suspicions?’
She gathered herself, clearing her throat and straightening. ‘Yes. They came to look at my Richard’s study and they took some of his things away – the letter from the prison and some of his papers. They said they would look into it and contact me, but …’
