Meanwhile, she had the result of Dr Meddowes’s postmortem examination on Sebastian Knox. The cause of death was from a blow on the back of the head with a heavy blunt instrument. The pathologist, when pressed by Kate, had reluctantly hazarded the opinion that lesser bruises and contusions on the face could have resulted from something like a fistfight. As to fixing the time of death, Dr Meddowes was less forthcoming. The last reported sighting of Knox, by a neighbour living in the same road, was just after he’d driven off from his home at about two-forty-five on the previous Saturday afternoon, which tallied with the time his mother had given for his departure.
The state of decomposition of the body suggested that death had occurred four days earlier. From blood pooling in the tissues it was clear that Knox had been killed elsewhere, then taken to the tip. And this could only have been done at a time when none of the council workmen would have been on the site.
An inquest was opened and adjourned, pending police enquiries.
Kate talked to Jillian Murdoch once more, to her father, and to Sebastian’s mother and his secretary. Through them she charted the dead man’s movements through the last few days of his life, and tracked down each of his contacts. Every person on the list was interviewed. Not a glimmer. Nobody had any suggestions, nobody acted at all suspiciously.
Another person she talked to again was PC Martin Denby, who couldn’t be overlooked as someone with a motive for wanting Knox dead. As expected, the interview was inconclusive, but Kate’s gut feeling was in Martin’s favour.
On Monday morning Kate closeted herself with Sergeant Boulter for a brainstorming session.
‘Okay, Tim. As wild as you like.’
‘One of Slater’s buddies killed Knox to get revenge?’ he hazarded.
‘He didn’t seem to have any buddies. Lady friends, yes. But I can’t see a woman killing Knox, then dumping his body on that waste tip.’
‘Suppose Knox had found out who it was killed Slater?’ Boulter suggested. ‘There’s one hell of a motive for you.’
Kate pondered. ‘That could still fit Dr Meddowes’s opinion that the bruising on the face was the result of a fistfight prior to death.’
‘Which is something else that rules out a woman.’
‘If Knox was killed by Slater’s killer,’ Kate said, ‘that clears Martin Denby. He has all the people at his mother’s birthday party to give him an alibi for the earlier killing.’
‘But if Jillian killed Slater, and Sebastian found out, young Denby might have gone rushing in to save her by killing Sebastian. He’s daft enough to.’
‘Or if Jillian’s father had killed Slater, that might have led to a fight between him and Knox.’
‘How d’you reason that out, guv? I’d have thought Sebastian would have applauded Murdoch for doing it.’
‘I don’t know the reason why,’ she snapped irritably. ‘It’s just a possibility, that’s all. Like I said, think wild.’
‘I’m fresh out of ideas.’ Boulter sounded despondent. ‘All kinds of curious facts have come up in this case but they just don’t seem to make any sense.’
‘That reminds me,’ Kate said. ‘There’re one or two Actions I’m waiting on, and no answers yet. For instance, the list of times scribbled down on that scrap of newspaper I found in Slater’s room in London. I asked for ideas about what they could refer to.’
‘Sorry, guv, I should have chased that up. I’ll get on to it right away.’ He stood up.
‘Another thing, Tim, while you’re about it. Remember I wanted to check on Heather Bletchley, on whether she’d worked for the same bookmakers in London as Slater once did?’
‘Will do.’
Boulter was back in her office hardly more than fifteen minutes later.
‘Promise you won’t blow your top, guv.’
‘No promises. What’s gone wrong now?’
‘Those two Actions you told me to chase up - nothing’s been done about them yet.’
‘What?’
‘Inspector Trotton, seemingly, marked them as low priority.’
‘The hell he did! Why?’
‘He doesn’t explain his reasoning to mere sergeants, guv.’ Clearly Boulter had suffered a bruising encounter with the office manager of the Incident Room.
‘Then he can do some explaining to me,’ Kate said, reaching for the phone.
‘Guv, before you get through, could I have a word off the record?’
‘Whenever, Tim. You know that.’
Boulter seemed reluctant. ‘I shouldn’t be telling tales.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ she exploded. This isn’t a bloody boys’ school. If you know something I ought to know, then spill it.’
‘Well . . . let’s put it this way. With Inspector Trotton running the Incident Room, things aren’t what they would have been with Inspector Massey in charge.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘The problem is,’ he went on awkwardly, ‘he seems to regard this job as a personal ego trip.’
‘Every job that comes up is an ego trip for Don Trotton.’
‘He likes to push his own ideas forward, you see. Other people’s ideas . . . well, there’s no mileage for him in them. No personal kudos if they turn out to be winners.’
‘So what you’re telling me is that he’s shoved these two instructions of mine onto the back burner?’
‘Those two, at least. Maybe others. I’ll need to check.’
‘Right, Tim, say no more.’
‘What are you going to do, guv?’
Her hand lifting the phone, Kate managed a faint grin. ‘I think you’ve got a shrewd idea what I’m about to do. Have you ever seen me really angry, Tim?’
‘Now and then.’ He said it with feeling.
‘This time’s going to be around Force Nine.’
* * * *
Kate rose to her feet as Don Trotton entered her office. Not as a courtesy, but to mark the tone of the interview. It would be conducted standing.
He said chirpily, ‘Well, here I am, O great white chief. What’s so important that I must come running?’
‘Inspector Trotton, there are two Actions I asked for a report on today, only to learn that they’ve not yet received attention. I want an explanation.’
‘And which two Actions would they be?’ he enquired lazily.
‘You know damn well which two. Don’t play games with me.’
‘So your little lap dog’s come running back to Mummy DCI with dreadful tales about the big bad inspector?’
‘You and I, Inspector Trotton, appear to have very different ideas about how an Incident Room should be operated,’ she said.
‘You can say that again.’
‘Unfortunately for you, in this particular enquiry it will be done my way, or -’
His smile slipped a bit. ‘Or what?’
‘Or I shall have you replaced.’
‘You can’t do that,’ he protested. ‘Not midway through a murder investigation.’
‘Can’t I? Just try me.’
Trotton snorted contemptuously. ‘I can imagine the bollocking you’d get from Jolliffe.’
‘Save your imagination for matters that concern you, Inspector.’
‘So I’m expected to work my arse off while you end up with all the glory. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’
Kate controlled her own anger, and said in a cool voice, ‘The concept of being one of a team, all pulling together, might be hard for an outsize ego like yours to grasp. But one of a team is what everybody on this murder squad is going to be - including you, including me. Personal glory is not what police work is all about, and you’d better remember that. Now, clear out and get back to work. I want full reports on those two Actions here on my desk before the day is out. Is that understood?’
For a moment Trotton didn’t move. He was calculating, Kate knew, whether he dared come back with another crack. Then he abruptly turned to leave.
Once back in the Incident Ro
om, Don Trotton would get busy on another smear campaign, but Kate felt fairly confident that not many of the squad would be receptive. Luckily, the days when men were eager to share snide jokes about women being good for one thing and one thing only were slowly but surely becoming history.
And you, Kate Maddox, can take a tiny bit of credit for that welcome change of attitude.
Chapter Sixteen
The two reports arrived on Kate’s desk around four-thirty that afternoon. And very interesting reading they made.
Number One: Heather Bletchley, prior to marrying the major, had been employed at the offices of the same West End turf accountants where Barry Slater had worked, and at the same time. With a total staff numbering only twenty-five, it was impossible for them not to have been acquainted. Yet Heather had claimed that the dead man on whose wrist her husband’s watch had been found was unknown to her.
Number Two: the listing of times jotted down by Slater on the scrap of newspaper exactly matched the daily departure and arrival times of flights to Lisbon, Portugal.
‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’ said Boulter.
‘Just give me a minute, Tim.’
Kate sat there with her head in her hands as she absorbed the shaming fact that she had been duped by Heather Bletchley. Her brain raced through the sequence of events on that night in Lisbon when Alec Bletchley had been killed.
The murder, she realised now, had been ruthlessly and meticulously planned beforehand with only last minute details to be settled on the spot. Enter a gullible female detective chief inspector from England, and Heather Bletchley had the perfect alibi. With cold fury, she remembered all the sympathy she had wasted on Heather, all the hours that had been lost - stolen - from her precious holiday with Richard. But worst of all was the way that she had been duped! It would haunt her for the rest of her life.
‘You realise, Tim, what this means?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘It means that I was taken for a patsy in Lisbon. I’d better recount the whole ugly business, so you’ll be quite clear about what happened - at any rate, as clear as I am.’
One of the things she liked about Tim Boulter was that he didn’t gloat when she was down. He heard her out without interruption.
‘There’s still a lot I haven’t figured out,’ she said. ‘I still can’t see how the Lisbon business slots in with what’s happened since over here, but a number of things are starting to come together.’
She shook off her black mood and became brisk. ‘I don’t think there can be any doubt that it was Barry Slater who killed Alec Bletchley. If he was still alive we’d have a pretty watertight case against him. First of all, we have proof that he and Heather knew each other before she was married. Then that scrap of newspaper I found in his room, listing flights to Lisbon, was dated just two days before Alec Bletchley’s murder. The watch we found on Slater’s wrist had been taken when Alec Bletchley was killed in Lisbon; we can dismiss the story of Heather’s about his having had two watches. Furthermore, we know that Slater once worked as a roofing contractor, so climbing up to get into Alec Bletchley’s hotel room wouldn’t have daunted him. The theft of jewellery from an adjoining bedroom would just have been a smokescreen to conceal the fact that Major Bletchley’s death had been the intruder’s real intention. Ditto taking the dead man’s watch and ring and wallet. Then, very shortly after the Lisbon killing, Slater turns up in this neck of the woods. Why, we don’t yet know. But the significant thing is that suddenly he’s in the money.’
‘Looks like a pay-off from Heather, doesn’t it?’
‘That’s the way I read it, Tim. So far, so good. But then things get more difficult to fathom out, because five and a half weeks later, Slater too gets killed. If Heather used him as a hit man to get rid of her husband, did she then hire another hit man to get rid of Slater?’
‘Soon after which Sebastian Knox gets killed,’ said Boulter.
‘But how does that link in with Heather? We’ve been thinking up to now that it was Knox who killed Slater. He had a violent temper, we know, but I don’t really see him as a hit man.’
‘He was her solicitor, though, wasn’t he?’
‘Right. So did Knox know something, or stumble across something, and have to be silenced?’
‘Could be, guv. In dealing with Major Bletchley’s estate, he’d have had access to a load of private papers and so on. He might have chanced upon some sort of pointer to what happened in Lisbon.’
Kate nodded, and sat back in her chair. ‘There’s a lot to be done, Tim. First off, arrange for that landlady of Slater’s in London to be shown a photo of Heather Bletchley. My aunt can help us with that . . . remember the one taken at Cheltenham races with Heather in her sable coat?’
‘One of her sable coats,’ said Boulter, with a grin. ‘You want me to go to London, guv?’
Kate dashed his hopes. ‘Sorry, I need you here, Tim. Have the picture faxed to the Met. That chap who helped me, DC Keith Green . . . he’ll know what it’s all about. Then get a check made with the airlines who fly the London-Lisbon route to see if Barry Slater made a booking just before the time of Major Bletchley’s murder?’
Kate also ordered an intensification of the effort to establish more precisely both the time and place of Sebastian Knox’s death, and the time of his body getting dumped at the refuse tip. Surely, somebody, somewhere, must have seen something that would pinpoint these events.
Replacing the phone, she said, ‘We’ve just got to hope that something will turn up, Tim. We’re agreed that Knox’s body could only have been taken to the tip at a time when none of the council workmen would have been there. So that means any time from late afternoon on the Saturday, through until Monday morning. Or even Monday or Tuesday night.’
‘The corpse would have been a bit pongy by Tuesday night,’ Boulter said, pulling a face.
‘It puzzles me how chummy gained access to the tip, considering the stout chain-link fence right round it to prevent illegal tipping. That’s eight feet high, and the gates would certainly have been well-secured at all times when no one was working there.’
‘And the fence was in good nick all round. No sign of any weak spots when our blokes checked it.’
‘He must have climbed over. But to hump a heavy body he’d have needed a ladder or something.’
‘Or a bloody helicopter or something,’ Boulter said with a humourless grin.
* * * *
Before the evening was out, Kate received confirmation that Barry Slater had made a reservation on a London-Lisbon flight for the day before Major Bletchley was killed. But she had to wait until almost three o’clock the following afternoon for the final clincher. An apologetic DC Green was on the line.
‘That identification you wanted, ma’am. Barry Slater’s landlady wasn’t home when I called round this morning, and nobody could tell me when she’d be back. I kept trying, and finally one of her lodgers turned up and said that Tuesdays she always goes to her sister’s in Putney. It took a while to track down the sister’s address.’
‘Okay, I understand,’ Kate said, curbing her impatience. ‘And?’
‘One look at that photo was enough for Mrs Millard, ma’am. Recognised her straight off, and the fancy fur coat too. That woman visited Slater a number of times on and off during the three years Slater was living there.’
‘Thanks, Keith. That’s a big help.’
A big help to have it confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt that she’d been taken for a patsy in Lisbon. But Kate had learned long ago not to waste time on useless regrets. Within her was a steel-hard determination to assemble evidence against Heather that no smartass lawyer would be able to destroy.
She considered, came to a swift decision. Sod Jolly Jolliffe, and bugger the budget She summoned Boulter and quickly put him in the frame.
‘Tim, I’m going to Lisbon, and you’re coming with me.’
The sergeant’s face was suddenly one huge smile. ‘I never dreamt I’d be getting a holiday this year.’
/> ‘This won’t be a holiday.’
‘It’ll seem like one to me, guv.’
‘Fix reservations for us on the first flight tomorrow morning. Okay?’
‘Try and stop me.’
Alone, Kate reached for her bag and fished out her diary. Riffling through the pages, she found what she wanted . . . the phone number of the Palacio Palmela. Within a couple of minutes she’d booked rooms there for herself and Boulter. Five-star luxury, maybe, but she reasoned that it made good sense to stay right there where it had all begun. And when she returned from Lisbon, in triumph, who could possibly criticise her for extravagance?
Jolly Jolliffe could. And would. But she’d worry about that later.
Kate stayed at her desk until well into the evening. At around eight she phoned Richard at his flat in Chipping Bassett.
‘I was hoping I’d find you in,’ she began.
‘Yes, I’m in, and I’m bored. I was thinking of running a small ad in the Gazette tomorrow. Lonely male seeks attractive female for companionship on a temporary basis. Or maybe even permanent.’
Kate was in no mood to trade quips. ‘I’d like to see you later on tonight, okay?’
‘What’s wrong, Kate?’ he asked with immediate concern. ‘You sound rather down.’
‘More than somewhat.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘That’s why I want to see you. How about my place, say around ten?’
‘I’ll be there.’
* * * *
Richard was just ahead of her, parking his car, when Kate drove into the courtyard of the old stable block at Ampney-on-the-Water. Once inside her front door they embraced, but Richard knew this was a moment for tenderness, not passion.
‘Why don’t you sit down and put your feet up while I fix us both drinks? Then you can unburden your soul.’
The sick-to-the-stomach feeling she’d been fighting to hold off hit her with full force now. Even the whisky didn’t seem to be working.
Deadly Deceit Page 18
