Loose Head

by Jeff Keithly

  I nodded. “All four knew about John’s collection. They were all familiar with his house – and they were all there on the night of the murder. Is the fingerprint report back yet?”

  Brian nodded. “Interestingly enough, nothing had been wiped clean. They found Weathersby’s prints, Leicester’s, Barlowe’s, Seagrave’s and Lord Delvemere’s at various points around the room, including the rifle. And yours.”

  I nodded. “Not surprising – we know that’s where Weathersby did his business. What about the shell casings?”

  “The casing in the gun had a partial of an unidentified thumb and forefinger – might’ve been the rifle’s previous owner. I’ve sent DI Miller over to take his prints. They did find your prints on one of the shells in the box.” He looked at me inquiringly.

  “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re wondering – I’m far too pure of heart to be blackmailed.” I felt a brief pang at the lie, but soldiered onward. “I handled one of the shells earlier that evening, when John was showing me the gun.”

  “Ah. The bottom line is that it would appear that the killer wore gloves. To continue. Weathersby’s financials were a mess – it’s pretty clear why he needed the money. He’d been playing the market, and by this time last year, he’d managed to reduce the principal of his inheritance by half. At that point, he rolled everything over into a long-term IRA – safe as houses, but his income was down to £15,000 a month. Not bad for you and me, but for him, with two big houses to maintain, alimony and child support... let’s just say there wasn’t much mad money left over once all his bills had been paid.”

  “So he’d been on an austerity budget for the last twelvemonth. That wouldn’t sit easily with a man like John – he hated to deny himself anything. Anyway, it isn’t his motive we’re concerned with.” I looked unhappily at Brian. “Could it have been a burglary gone wrong?”

  He considered. “I don’t see how. You said the gun was unloaded when he showed it to you earlier in the evening. A burglar would’ve had to load it before they shot him. They wouldn’t’ve had the time if he’s just walked in on them.”

  Unhappiness swooped down on me like a buzzard to a shit-wagon, but after all, I had known it would come to this. “What about CCTV?”

  “Vesta’s on it. I gave him recent photos of the four we know were being blackmailed – Seagrave, Leicester, Barlowe and Plantagenet. The most obvious access point to the communal garden – Montpelier Garden, it’s called – and then to Weathersby’s French doors is on Rosmead Road. Unfortunately, there’s no CCTV camera there, for some inexplicable reason. Vesta’s checking to see whether any of our boys might’ve been caught leaving the crime scene on another camera nearby.”

  “Right.” I pushed back from the table. “Let’s get it over with. I’ll get the four of them to come in, one at a time.”

  “We could go see them. Make it easier on them.”

  I shook my head. “We’ll go see Leicester – he lives alone. But I’d prefer to interview the others here. Save them some awkward questions at home. You know – ‘Why did Dex and his partner come to see you, dear?’ ‘Oh, just the usual – I was being blackmailed, and now I’m the subject of a murder inquiry...’”

  Brian grinned sourly. “I take your point. Here is fine. D’you want me to make the calls?”

  “No, you’ll only spook them into fleeing the country. Delicate touch called for, I think.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

  II

  “You must think me a real cunt, Dex,” said Roger Seagrave.

  We were seated in one of the interrogation rooms on the third floor of New Scotland Yard; we had just finished watching the blackmail DVD. The tape recorder was rolling, so there was no mistaking this for a friendly chat. Brian stood in the corner, studying Seagrave dispassionately, as he had done for the past 20 minutes. If Roger was discomfited by his scrutiny, he didn’t show it.

  What I actually thought was that we cannot help who we are, sexually; we can no more control to whom or what we are attracted than we can control how tall we turn out to be. “Soliciting prostitution isn’t illegal in Nevada, Roger,” I said mildly.

  “It isn’t that, although that’s bad enough. It’s the fact that I do love Catherine, despite how this must look. It would kill her if she knew I found her more attractive when she was heavy. Isn’t there some way we can keep this from her?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. “It will depend on what direction our inquiry leads. I must tell you that it’s looking doubtful. It would certainly come out at trial, if it comes to that.”

  Roger turned pale; beads of sweat suddenly stood out on his elegant forehead. “Trial? Surely you don’t think of me as a... a suspect?”

  “I’ve already cautioned you, Roger,” I said, as gently as I could “ – this is a murder inquiry. Can you tell me what you did on the night of 11 October, after John’s party?”

  “The night John was killed? Dex, you can’t think I killed him! You’ve known me for decades, for Christ’s sake!”

  I felt a weight of anguish settle somewhere behind my eyes; this was going to be even more difficult than I had feared. Reminding myself that Oakhurst and Wicks would be reviewing the transcript of this interview, I pressed on. “Right now we’re in the interview phase of the inquiry, Roger – we’re asking everyone the same questions. Now, what did you do that night?”

  “Went home and went to bed, of course. I’d had a skinful at the party – you were there, you know what went on. Catherine and I took a taxi home and went straight to bed – we... we tried to make love, but I just... Christ this is difficult. I slept like the dead, and woke up with a head the size of a pumpkin.”

  “You never left the house once you got home?”

  “No. Not until eight the next morning, when I went to work.”

  “Catherine can vouch that you were there the whole time?”

  “Of course she can! She was sleeping right next to me!”

  I moved on. “And what about the blackmail, then? I presume Weathersby made the same demand of you as everyone else? £100,000 in cash, small bills?”

  “Yes.”

  “And had you paid him?”

  “Not yet – it was taking me some time to get together. Most of my money’s in stocks – I was having to sell a few things, cash smaller checks, assemble the cash a bit at a time. I was going to pay him this week.”

  “And did he warn you what he would do if anything happened to him?”

  Roger, poor old sod, was sweating freely now. “He did. He said if he died within five years, whatever the cause, or if I went to the police or told any of the other Hastewicke Gentlemen, he would send Catherine the DVD. I was going to pay him, Dex, you must believe me! I’d have been mad to kill him! I’ve been such an ass... I just want all this to go away!”

  “And did you? Discuss it with any of the others on the team, I mean.”

  “No! I had no way of knowing who else he was blackmailing.”

  Next question; I consulted my notebook. “How much of a hardship was it? Getting the money together, I mean?”

  “You mean could I afford to pay him? It was no problem – I’ve a goodish bit stashed away, for use on tour and the like. The market’s been pretty kind to me the last few years. The truth is I’d have paid a lot more than a hundred thousand pounds to keep Catherine from finding out.”

  “You won’t mind if we ask for evidence of that? If we look into your financials?”

  “If you think it relevant. Do you really need my permission?”

  “No, not really,” I said absently. “All right, Roger. Brian, can you think of anything else?”

  “No. Although...” He moved away from the wall, came to the table in the centre of the room. “Would you mind unbuttoning your shirt, please?”

  “My... shirt? Whatever for?”

  “Just to satisfy us on a small point of interest. Do you mind?”

  “No, I...” Roger undid his button
s with an air of bewilderment.

  “Just show us your shoulder, that’s a good lad. Are you right-handed or left-handed?”

  “Right. Why?”

  “It’s something we’re checking with everyone we’re interviewing. Any tenderness if I touch you here?”

  Roger submitted to this unorthodox examination with poor grace; his shoulder appeared unbruised, but he winced slightly as Brian palpated the muscle. “I say – do be careful, that’s my dickey shoulder. You remember, Dex, I separated it in that match against Harlequins last year.”

  “Right – so you did. Still bothers you, then?”

  “Now and again.” Roger did up his buttons. His voice had taken on a frosty edge. “Was there anything else, DI Reed?”

  “Not just now. We may have more questions for you as our inquiry proceeds.”

  “Of course. Pity.”

  “What is?”

  “I thought we might rely on you for a little discretion, Dex, that’s all. What goes on on tour, stays on tour, and all that?”

  I thought about that. “John set that rule aside when he blackmailed you – I didn’t. And now that someone’s killed him, everything is fair game. I don’t have a choice, Roger. There’s been a murder. It’s my job to find his killer, and to see justice done. I won’t let anyone, or anything, stand in the way of that.”

  “Obviously. I’m sure it will be quite a feather in your cap – high-profile case, sensational murder, aristocratic sex scandals. Just do me a favor, will you?”

  “What’s that?” I asked, stinging from his remarks.

  “Try not to trample too many of your teammates underfoot on your way up the ladder. We did trust you once, you know.”

  Chapter 12

  Early in the Hastewicke Gentlemen’s match against Seattle on Saturday morning, Robert Leicester, Lord Palmerston, the Hastewicke outside centre, found himself in a familiar position – with ball in hand, and some hard yards to be made. He shrugged off a tackle from one of the Seattle centres, then stiff-armed another tackler and danced away. A lock hit him at the knees and clung on like a limpet; somehow Leicester retained his balance and kept his powerful legs churning until, abruptly, he broke free.

  There was clear green space in front of him now, almost all the way to the goal. He accelerated to a balls-out sprint, leaving the pitch behind him strewn with tacklers; only the Seattle fullback, Richard Shearer, a crafty ex-pat from Oxfordshire, left to beat. Leicester could hear Dex Reed just to his right, in support and calling insistently for the ball – a two-on-one.

  At the 10-meter line, Leicester tried to sell the dummy, but Shearer refused to bite on the fake pass. Leicester prepared for the tackle and, just before impact, offloaded a deft pass to Reed, the hard-working flanker. To his horror, he saw Shearer suddenly change direction, seagull the pass, and take off toward the opposite end of the pitch.

  There is no more devastating play in rugby – a sure try for one team turned into a 90-meter score for the other side. Leicester didn’t stop to think. He spun about, leaving long furrows in the turf, and sprinted in pursuit. He had to atone for making a pig’s breakfast of a sure try.

  Shearer was already 10 meters upfield; now he danced easily past a stunned Hastewicke Gentleman defense and burst into the clear. Shearer paused briefly to sidestep a diving John Weathersby, and Leicester gained a yard or two. Shearer saw only the try-line, far ahead. Leicester concentrated on form – arms in, palms open, deep breaths through the mouth. Now he was five yards behind, now four, now three, but the try-line was only 10 meters ahead. He gathered himself for a convulsive leap and, lungs, nearly bursting, caught hold of the hem of Shearer’s shorts. They tore with a flatulent rip, but the contact slowed Shearer just enough for Leicester to improve his grip. He leapt onto Shearer’s back and bore him to ground just inches from the goal-line.

  The ball rolled free; Leicester scooped it up and staggered doggedly back the way he had come, breath labored and gasping now. Once more into the breech, dear friends, once more into the breech...

  Afterward, all the lads could talk about had been his saving tackle, which had averted a sure 14-point turnaround. Bob modestly waved off their backslapping praise. “Think nothing of it, think nothing of it – any superhumanly-fit 48-year-old centre could’ve done it... yes, yes, you’re just lucky to have me. Had a better offer from the Harlequins Gentlemen only last week...” But secretly he was happy. To have been the cause of a Hastewicke gentlemen loss... well, that simply wouldn’t do. Above all, Bob Leicester hated to lose.

  It was his father’s doing, he supposed. He could still feel his father’s hand close around his skinny preadolescent biceps, still hear that hectoring hiss, laden with loathing and liquor: “Are you just going to take that, you nancy-boy? Are you going to cry now, you big girls-blouse? No son of mine is going to let someone snurge the ball from him like that. Now you get back out there, Bobby, and make that boy sorry he ever saw you, or by God you’ll be wearing a dress to school tomorrow!”

  Leicester could never think of moments like those – and there had been many – of his father’s eyes, bulging and bloodshot in a bloated red face convulsed with rage – without thinking of his death. There wasn’t much change of expression before and after the massive coronary had taken him, Leicester reflected – the eyes protruded; the mouth was still open in a final bellow, in mortal agony not unmingled with rage at unfair fate. They had been at their country house for the weekend, his father had just discovered that Bob had decided to offer an extra two weeks maternity leave to the firm’s female employees, and Leicester senior was beside himself with rage. He had lashed out with a backhander; Bob had ducked it, and then the old man had abruptly clutched his chest, uttered a strangled, gargling scream, and collapsed to the floor. He kicked for a moment, then froze, limbs drawn up in a fetal position.

  Robert had made no move to help. Instead, he had calmly taken a chair, and waited until half an hour had ticked by. Only when he was sure his father was dead did he pick up the phone to ring emergency services. Gazing dispassionately down at the lifeless hulk on the carpet, he had felt only relief, and sudden peace.

  His cold, domineering father, Robert Leicester Sr., Lord Palmerston, had made a pile through hostile takeovers of healthy companies, running them into the ground, selling off their assets and downsizing the workforce. It was from him, Bob grudgingly supposed, that he had inherited his own eye for business opportunity.

  In his most successful single deal, during Thatcher’s gleeful economic jihad of the 1980s, Bob Leicester the elder had bought a controlling interest in a venerable firm of English carmakers, Ocelot. Over two years, he had eliminated more than 2,500 well-paying jobs, shut down three marginally-profitable assembly sites that had provided local employment for more than 50 years, sold off the most profitable subsidiaries to foreign investors. Then, when he had wrung maximum profit from the enterprise, he had sold what remained to a German consortium. Ocelots were still being made, of course. In Dresden, in the former East Germany. The Leicester firm’s profit on the transaction came to nearly £100 million.

  Bob’s mother had died when he was 15; he had no other siblings. And so it was that, when his father died, Bob accomplished what amounted to a hostile takeover of the family firm. He had ruthlessly done what his father had done to so many other companies: sold every asset and pocketed the cash. Then he had struck out on his own, in a direction that would have left his father speechless with apoplexy had he lived to see it.

  Now Bob Leicester was easily the wealthiest and most famous of the Hastewicke Gentlemen, the closest thing the old club had to a genuine celebrity. His firm, Baobob Holdings, Ltd., had parlayed his whale-choking wodge of an inheritance into the largest collection of “green” companies in the world. His holdings included office towers that were marvels of energy efficiency, a subsidiary that was now producing Europe’s first affordable hydrogen cars and a network of hydrogen filling stations to support them, a forest of Scottish windmills produ
cing renewable power, a gigantic international environmental engineering firm, specializing in cleaning up oil spills and contaminated groundwater, rehabbing historic structures and the like. All very astute, far-seeing ventures, all yielding a gratifying annual income.

  When it came to business, Bob Atkinson had one thing his father always lacked: patience. He could see farther down the road than any of his competitors; once he saw an opportunity and decided to pursue it, he never second-guessed himself. He had the faith and the resources to pour money down a dry hole for years, patiently awaiting the moment when it would blossom forth into profitability. To date, he had seldom tasted disappointment.

  He had also put his own philosophy of personnel management into play in his own firm, offering generous compensation and benefits packages to everyone, at every level, in all his companies. As a result, he had been able to attract – and retain – a devoted and highly-motivated workforce. Though nearly as vast as Branson’s, the Leicester empire nearly ran itself these days. By and large, that granted Bob a surprising degree of freedom, to play rugby, dabble in the theatre, and to pour most of the profits from his empire into a network of philanthropic enterprises that rivaled, in scope and complexity, his business holdings.

  II

  After the last match of the day, the lads hobbled with geriatric delicacy aboard the fleet of limousines waiting to ferry them back to the hotel. It was an article of faith that the Hastewicke Gentlemen always traveled first class, even when it meant subsidizing some of the less-wealthy members of the club. Leicester alighted at the Bellagio, stretched painfully, and slung his kit-bag over his shoulder. All he could think of was the hot bath and massage awaiting him in the suite. He had little use for wealth on a personal level, except for its marvelous power to change lives. But occasionally, the perks of his position were most welcome.