I was definitely in the mood to shoot off more locks and dealt with the ones on Sydney Hellier’s front door with relish. It was broad daylight and I did not care. People saw me; I did not care. I did not care if the entire Metropolitan Police descended on my neck, the prospect of prison positively cheering if it meant I could wring Hellier’s scraggy neck. All I wanted to do right then was nail this little shit who had lit a large fire under us and tried to kill my husband. I did not know yet whether he had been successful or not. Ambulances had taken both him and Kennedy away and after giving me oxygen the paramedics had wanted me to go to hospital for a check-up but I had refused. I had pressing business.
The door hammered back into the wall in a most delightful Patrick-style fashion as I detonated in. I raged through all the downstairs rooms without locating him and then tackled the stairs at a run. Front bedroom, bathroom, back bedroom, box room. The last was where I found him; in a small space almost filled with junk, crouching like a cornered rat, grey with fear.
I yanked him out by his shirt collar, one-handed, amazed at my own strength, and slammed him into a wall on the landing. And again. He uttered a high-pitched shriek and his dentures fell out. I put the gun in my pocket to have both hands free to resoundingly box his ears.
‘You rang him, didn’t you?’ I yelled. ‘Lazlo Ivers. The preservation society’s all a front, isn’t it? You rang and told him people were sniffing around the cinema and he ordered you to start the fire. Answer me!’
He gobbled at me wordlessly.
I rammed the gun into his ribs. ‘Tell me the truth or I’ll blow your guts out through the back of your spine!’
He carried on opening and shutting his toothless mouth like a half dead fish, all the while puffing bad breath in my face.
God alone knows what prevented me from pulling the trigger.
‘Are you up there, Ingrid?’ called a familiar voice.
I got a firm hold on the knot on Hellier’s stained tie and dragged him to the top of the stairs, banging his head on the wall when he started making choking noises. I was in time to see James Carrick shove a couple of people out of the front door while shouting, ‘Police! Sod off!’
He came on up the stairs, gazing at me soberly. ‘Do we want him alive?’ he asked, even more soberly.
Right then the irony was lost on me. ‘I would like you to arrest this man,’ I said, trying to stop my voice from quavering. ‘For attempted murder, I think.’ I let go of Hellier and he went down in an untidy heap and stayed there. I stopped myself from kicking him, just.
‘Let’s hope and pray it’s attempted murder,’ James said.
‘Have you heard anything?’ I whispered.
He shook his head. ‘No, not yet. Greenway sent me because he was worried you’d come to harm. The man’s obviously clueless.’ He surveyed me wonderingly. ‘Ingrid, mo ghaoil, have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately?’
Well, of course I bloody well hadn’t.
‘Get this dreadful woman away from me and I’ll tell you everything you want to know,’ Hellier glugged from the floor.
I bent down to be on his level. ‘Just confirm that it was Lazlo Ivers who told you to set the place alight.’
‘Yes, it was.’
I handed him back his teeth.
The worst thing was not being able to remember how Patrick had looked. Had his clothes been alight? Did he look as though he had been burned? I could remember nothing, not even the clothes he had been wearing. How far had he and Kennedy fallen? Had he, in fact, actually started down the fire escape with the unconscious man before the flames belched out of the door?
James Carrick had called Greenway before handing over Sydney Hellier to the crew of an area car with instructions to take him to Walthamsden Police Station and there await orders. He had then escorted me, nay virtually frog-marched me, to his car and taken me back to the hotel where I had been staying. There, I was firmly delivered to my room and he too came in and shut the door.
‘I must find out how he is,’ I insisted. ‘How they both are,’ I corrected.
‘I’ll do that. Meanwhile, you go and scrub the soot and stuff off yourself and we’ll get some food and a hot drink inside you.’
‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ I snapped. I could still taste smoke.
‘Fine, but you can’t go wandering around looking like that or someone’s going to suggest I take you to the nearest mental hospital.’
The man had a point, I had to concede when I saw my reflection in the en-suite mirror. Privacy brought tears and it was a real covered-in-dust, sooty mess who, sobbing, stared disbelievingly at herself. The only thing that was the right colour was my hair: black. Well, I supposed my eyes were still green but they were surrounded by red instead of white.
He’s dead, the inner voice insisted. You’re a widow. Get used to the idea, you silly cow.
But what had he once joked in similar circumstances?
‘I never have a pulse on Wednesdays.’
It was Wednesday.
It was a measure of my tattered and exhausted condition when I happily said, ‘That’s all right then,’ stripped off my filthy clothes and got into the shower. I ended up by having two, such was the dire state of affairs, and when I returned to the room, wrapped only in towels – what the hell, Carrick was a married man, wasn’t he? – there was a tray waiting for me loaded with things like a mug of hot chocolate, buttered crumpets and fruit cake. All of which, smoke-flavoured mouth or no, I fell upon, needless to say.
‘You’re just like Patrick,’ James said, from a chair over by the window. ‘In the event of trauma, feed.’
‘Did you ring?’ I asked, cradling the hot chocolate in both hands and, despite the showers, shivering.
‘Yes, but there’s total chaos at that particular A and E department. They know both of them are in casualty, are being attended to and neither has died. But there’s been a major traffic accident on the motorway and people are being ferried in like there’s a war on so some of those have to be given priority. And Greenway rang me. He’s going to carry on with your project of taking Hellier to bits later. You can be present if you want to, but you’ll have to promise me that you’ll’ – surprisingly, a big smile lit up his face – ‘be good.’
I promised.
Greenway gazed at me severely. ‘I’m sure you should be in hospital being treated for smoke inhalation,’ he said.
‘I’m quite all right, thank you,’ I told him. I had an idea my lungs were still a bit kippered and had a tendency to cough but did not want to join a queue of seriously injured people who needed help far more than I did, then wait hours only to be told to go home and rest. Carrick had not really wanted to bring me back to SOCA HQ with him but other than by chaining me to the bed there was not a lot he could have done to prevent me tagging along. I was ignoring my sore head.
‘I did as Patrick suggested and asked Miss Dean to have a proper look at what’s on the discs. She’s here now as a matter of fact – it’s got her out of the safe house for a while. I’m not too sure if she’ll achieve anything though.’ The SOCA man shuffled papers around on his desk. ‘I’ve decided to question Hellier personally. I take it you’d like to be present?’
‘Yes, please. I can stand in for Patrick.’
‘Do we know any more about how badly he’s hurt?’
‘No.’
More shuffling. ‘I have to ask you this, Ingrid. Last time I spoke to him I distinctly got the impression he wasn’t happy.’
I felt I owed it to everyone to tell the truth. ‘No, he’s not. He was of a mind to tell you he didn’t want to go on with SOCA any more but would honour his promise to James Carrick to do everything he could to find his father. It was my idea to investigate the old cinema – Miss Dean had said Ballinger had discussed it in her hearing.’
‘I see. Is this mind-set of Patrick’s due to private reasons?’
‘Yes, but not secret ones. He feels it’s about time he gave more time to his
family. Today has demonstrated how four children are at serious risk of losing their father.’
‘And mother,’ he added.
‘Justin is being a bit of a problem; he needs his dad around a lot more.’
‘Thank you for telling me,’ Greenway said, and rose from his seat. ‘I’ve had Hellier brought here too.’ He gave me my second bright smile of the day. ‘It’s great when you get to be commander – you don’t necessarily have to slog through traffic jams to God-awful nicks in the course of a day’s work.’
Seventeen
Having got the formalities out of the way Greenway opened the questioning roughly with, ‘So who is this Lazlo Ivers?’
Sydney Hellier’s gaze darted from one to another of us. ‘I said I’d only talk if she wasn’t around,’ he said.
‘Is that right?’ Greenway said with a nasty grin. ‘Well, if you don’t start spilling the beans right now I reckon I might just leave you alone with her.’
Ye gods, what had Carrick told him?
It was quite late in the afternoon and we were in a room in a secure – very secure – area in the basement.
‘He’s just a member of the preservation society,’ Hellier muttered.
‘Don’t give me that load of old baloney,’ Greenway said. ‘You admitted in DCI Carrick’s hearing that he told you to set the place alight. It was all ready to go up with incendaries stacked beneath the stage.’
Hellier gave me another wary look. ‘He was just a member to start with,’ he amended. ‘Then all these heavies turned up with him at one of the meetings and he sort of took over.’
‘But you must have still kept an eye on the place. Didn’t you question all this wildly inflammable stuff being stored there?’
‘Yes, I … I did. He just told me to shut up and mind my own business.’
‘How long had it all been there?’
‘A few weeks.’
‘These people are the ones who want to knock the place down,’ Greenway informed him heavily.
‘Well, I wasn’t to know that, was I?’
‘But did your tiny mind work it out eventually?’
Hellier nodded miserably. ‘One of the stupid ones opened his mouth one day when I was there. Ivers threatened me not to tell anyone.’
‘That whole area’s due for redevelopment and it was highly likely that a building in such poor condition would have been demolished anyway. Why did they have to go to such lengths to take over some piddling preservation society instead of just biding their time?’
Hellier shrugged.
Greenway thumped the table. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. These people are big-time crooks.’
‘They wanted to stifle resistance to a redevelopment scheme. I think they’ve bought up most of the area,’ said Hellier.
‘And they stifled your resistance with threats?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No money was involved? They didn’t grease your grubby little mitts with silver?’
‘No. And I want you to know that nothing they’ve done is anything to do with me.’
‘No, you just tried to burn three people to death.’
‘Two!’ the man shot back with.
‘You admit it then?’
‘He made me do it,’ the other responded dully. ‘As soon as I said I’d mentioned his name to people who wanted to have a look round he went half off his head and said he’d kill me personally.’
‘But you must have phoned him or he wouldn’t have known.’
‘I just thought I ought to get an OK from him. He’d always said he wanted to know if anyone was taking an interest in the place.’
‘What’s his number?’
‘I – I can’t remember. No, honest,’ he shrilled when he perceived that Greenway was coming to the boil. ‘I mean, you put them in the phone’s memory, don’t you? You can’t possibly remember them all.’
‘We’ll find it in your mobile then.’
‘No, I … er … dropped and accidentally trod on it before you lot arrived. It’s bust.’
In the exasperation-loaded silence that followed this statement I caught Greenway’s eye and he nodded.
‘You knew nothing about the policeman trapped in a room off the projection box?’ I asked Hellier.
‘No!’
‘You’ve just told us that all the boxes and papers had been there for a few weeks. Did you put it all there yourself?’
There was a silence and then Hellier said, ‘Yes. He said he’d set some of his boys on me if I didn’t.’
‘How long did it take you?’
‘I did it over three or four days. I pinched most of the stuff from the recycling dump.’
‘So how come some of the newspapers were only a couple of days old?’
‘Oh, I tossed in a few more yesterday.’
‘You’re lying. That’s when there was a big panic to get it all ready for burning – when the policeman was brought from wherever he was being held with a view to finishing him off without anyone knowing.’
‘No!’
There was a knock on the door.
‘Come!’ Greenway bellowed.
‘Miss Dean would like to speak to you, sir,’ said a woman I knew to be his assistant.
‘I’m rather tied up here,’ he countered.
‘She says it’s important.’
Greenway stopped the tape, jerked his head in my direction and we left the room. When he had organized someone to watch over the suspect we took the lift to the second floor.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve dragged you away from something important,’ Miss Dean began. ‘But I think you ought to know that I’ve had some success with this. Once I had realized that some, if not most, of the code names for people are places and vice versa I made headway. It’s an almost childishly simple code. The old cinema is Garbo after the actress. It would appear that they bought a lot of other property surrounding it two years ago when prices in the whole area were at rock bottom. I think we’re talking about money-laundering on a large scale. Plymouth is referred to as Drake, Portsmouth as Nelson and Swindon as Bombs – so someone must have studied History and English literature at school,’ she ended by commenting crisply.
‘So what’s Bristol?’ Greenway wanted to know, his mind obviously on Slaterford and Sons.
‘Duke, I think.’
‘Duke?’
‘Wasn’t Sid James the Duke of Bristol in one of the Carry On films?’
‘You’re a genius,’ Greenway said admiringly.
Miss Dean beamed at him. ‘Putting the names of real people to those of places is much more difficult, of course – and some eastern European-sounding ones could be either – but I’m working on it. What I really wanted to tell you was that I went on the local authority website here and there’s a report that the old cinema has, in the last couple of days, been awarded money from the Lottery Heritage Fund for its restoration, together with the whole road as most of the properties are Grade Two listed. Everything would be compulsorily purchased.’ She removed her half-moon glasses and said sadly, ‘It’s come too late for the old picture house.’
‘They knew,’ Greenway said succinctly.
‘And because of the award a planning application by a development company has been turned down. I accessed the local paper’s website and understand the plans were very unpopular with just about everyone in Walthamsden because it would have meant a lot of high-rise flats and a casino. That would be Ballinger all right.’
‘Was the application for lottery funding anything to do with a preservation society?’ I enquired.
‘I don’t remember seeing anything like that mentioned.’
‘Did the name Lazlo Ivers appear anywhere?’
‘I don’t think so. If you like I can double-check.’
‘Please do,’ Greenway said earnestly. ‘I’ll look in again later but you mustn’t feel obliged to work late.’
We were halfway out of the door when she called, ‘Oh! How do you spel
l that name?’
I told her how I thought it might be spelt.
‘Slizaverlo!’ she exclaimed, pointing to the computer screen. ‘If ever there was a place name on no known map it’s that one. It’s an anagram,’ she explained, seeing our baffled expressions.
‘I’m seriously thinking of taking that brainy lady on as a part-time consultant,’ Greenway said as we were returning to the basement. ‘Do you think Hellier’s lying or just stupid?’
‘Both,’ I replied.
‘So do I.’
‘Right!’ Greenway exclaimed, flinging open the door of the interview room and making Hellier jump out of his skin. ‘I want to know Iver chummy’s address and how much he was paying you to be his dogsbody.’
‘I’ve never known where he lives,’ Hellier stated emphatically. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you ask anything of a personal nature.’
‘And the rest? Your cut for stifling resistance to his presence among the other members of the preservation society, lighting fires for him, that kind of thing?’
‘Nothing! I didn’t get paid nothing!’
Greenway ignored the contradiction. ‘It seems that you’re easily intimidated. I think that when most people, even frightened ones, were asked to commit murder they’d run to the police, but you obviously didn’t. Why?’
‘You don’t know him,’ was all Hellier said.
‘But we’re getting a pretty good idea,’ Greenway went on silkily. ‘I actually think you’re now part of his whole set-up and were bought, lock, stock and conscience by him right from the moment he decided to snuff out all local objection to what he wanted to do. You have a website that anyone can access. He might have thought the organization was much larger and had more influence than it has. Well, sunshine, it was all in vain. Not only has the whole area been granted a ton of money to be fully restored but you’re in the frame for murder.’
I shot a panic-fuelled look in Greenway’s direction, wondering if he knew something that I did not, but he glanced at me and winked.
‘He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do as he said!’ Hellier shouted. ‘I knew he must be a crook and would never take his money.’
‘I only need to take a look at your bank account.’
Blood Substitute Page 21
