by Roz Watkins
I took a bite of a caramel chocolate digestive and settled back in my chair. ‘Were you close?’
‘We were up at Cambridge together. But, you know what men are like – we don’t talk about anything important. I suppose I should have found out more about his life.’ He sounded almost bored. ‘Is there anything else? I have a pile of work to get through.’
‘Peter’s cases? I gather he was behind?’
‘Oh, not especially. We’re just all extremely busy. Taking on any extra work tends to put us under pressure.’
‘So, were you worried about Peter’s performance?’
He looked me in the eye. ‘Not from our point of view. We were a little concerned he was feeling stressed.’
Felix could have been awarded a prize for Most Innocent-Looking Witness Ever. At least according to traditional thinking. No fidgeting, leg-tapping or shifty eyes. It was too good a performance.
‘So, was his behaviour affecting the business?’
‘Oh no. It was his welfare we were concerned about.’ Felix knotted his eyebrows together. ‘We didn’t like to think he was struggling.’
‘But we heard you argued on the stairs and Peter fell?’
Felix stiffened and lost the Mother Teresa look. ‘Who told you that?’ His tone was cold. ‘We hadn’t argued. Peter’s been clumsy recently. I helped him when he fell.’ He seemed to get control of himself and pointedly relaxed back into his chair, but if he was a dog, you would not approach. Jai scribbled something in his notes.
‘What about his charging?’ I said. ‘Were you concerned about that?’
‘Not really. He’d charged out fewer hours recently but it’s normal to have ups and downs.’ He had himself back inside the cocoon, firmly zipped up.
‘So, was there anything else you noticed?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
I fought a wave of annoyance. He was giving us nothing.
‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm him?’
‘No, of course not. But surely it was suicide?’
*
‘I remembered something else,’ Wendy said. We were in Reception arranging a meeting with Edward Swift, the teensy bit autistic other partner, who was working from home. ‘It’s probably not relevant, but a man came here one lunchtime last week asking for Peter. Rather an odd man.’
‘Odd in what way?’ I said.
‘He was wearing a straw boater hat which was very inappropriate, and he had on a floppy coat like tramps wear and shoes that looked too big. He looked like a tramp in fact. And he definitely smelt like a tramp.’
‘And he wasn’t a client?’
She smiled. ‘No. I mean we do get some clients who look like tramps, but he wasn’t one of them. He said his name was Sebastian. I remembered because of Brideshead Revisited. I loved that on the television. Anyway, Peter came down and hurried him out. I heard him say he shouldn’t have come here.’
‘What did you think they were up to?’
‘I really had no idea. He seemed a funny sort of person for Peter to be spending time with. And Peter was angry. He was trying to hide it but I could tell by the colour of his face.’
Chapter 6
‘I bet he’s a shit if you get on the wrong side of him.’
I’d been right. Jai was not a fan of Felix Carstairs. I pulled out of the car park and set off towards Edward Swift’s house. He lived in a much resented new development a few miles south of Eldercliffe.
‘Murderous type of shit?’ I said. ‘Or just your common-or-garden one?’
‘Hard to tell. But if he did murder you, I reckon he’d do it neatly and competently, with no excessive emotion involved.’
‘What, you mean like poisoning in a cave, for example?’
‘That kind of thing. Although with colleagues like Felix Carstairs and clients like that woman in reception, maybe the poor bastard did top himself after all.’
We arrived at Edward Swift’s house – a mock Georgian hunk of a building, squatting at the end of a curved driveway, in a gated complex of similar houses like something from Desperate Housewives.
‘I’ll lead on this one,’ I said. ‘I’m used to strange, slightly autistic types.’
Jai laughed. ‘I’m glad your Oxbridge education wasn’t wasted.’
We pulled up in the expansive parking area and headed for the pretentious, columned entrance. The door opened and a hefty, well-groomed woman took a step towards us. She had the look of someone scaring off raccoons. When she saw our ID, her face softened but it looked fake-soft, like quick-setting concrete.
‘DI Meg Dalton and DS Jai Sanghera,’ I said. ‘Here to see Edward Swift.’
Her cheek twitched. ‘Oh yes. He won’t like being disturbed. He’s doing an urgent draft.’ She had an American accent with a southern twang.
‘We know. Are you his wife?’
‘Yes. Grace Swift.’ She stood stiffly as if wondering whether to let us into the house. Then she relaxed. ‘Sorry, come in, come in. So sad about Peter. What a terrible thing to happen. Edward’s in his office. I’m just with the children in the living room. Actually, I know Alex would love to meet you, if you have a moment?’
‘Alex?’
‘Our son. We home-school him. And he’s decided he wants to be a detective when he grows up.’
‘Right.’ Him and half the other kids in the land. ‘We’ll need to talk to your husband first, then if we’ve got time, we’ll have a chat with Alex.’ I could feel unenthusiastic vibes emanating from Jai, but I thought it was always best to keep wives on side – they often knew more about their husbands’ lives than the husbands themselves did. Besides, Jai was the kid-expert. He had two of his own.
We stepped into a hallway the approximate size of my house. A child of about ten bounced into view. He had spectacularly orange hair and the luminous skin that so often went with that look. ‘Mum! I’ve finished my calculus. Can we do—’ He stopped abruptly and stared at us as if we were biological specimens.
Jai spoke first. ‘Alright, mate?’
The child gave him an uncertain look.
‘Alex, these people are detectives,’ Grace said. ‘They’ve agreed to have a little chat with you if they have time, after they’ve spoken to Dad.’
The child had a bird-like fragility. If he had the misfortune of being good at maths as well as ginger, he’d be the main prey-animal in the playground. Maybe home-schooling made sense. ‘I’m going to be on next year’s Child Genius!’ he said.
I winced as if I’d been caught out. The programme had been a guilty pleasure for me, watching with wine in hand, booing at the most horrible parents. The children were pitted against one another like fighting cocks, trying to win the title of Britain’s cleverest child.
‘Oh,’ I said weakly. ‘Make sure you find time to play outside with your friends as well.’
A flash of annoyance crossed Grace’s face before it reverted to the placid mumsy look. ‘This way,’ she said.
We followed her into a vast kitchen complete with granite worktops, slate floor and the aroma of fresh bread. It was the kind of kitchen you see in those awful, aspirational homes magazines at the dentist, the ones designed to make you dissatisfied with your perfectly adequate house – if indeed you have an adequate house, which I didn’t.
Grace installed us at the table and asked if we wanted coffee. I nodded and she popped a sparkling burgundy capsule into a sleek, black machine.
‘I know they’re an ecological disaster, but…’ She looked round and shrugged. I shrugged back – the shrug that defined the whole of Western civilisation.
She presented us with coffee, disappeared from the room, and reappeared a few moments later. ‘He’s outside staring at his fish. Would you like to go out or shall I bring him in?’
Jai and I exchanged a look. ‘Staring at fish?’ I said. ‘I thought he had urgent work to do.’
‘It’s based on the optimum efficiency of the human mind. He works for a set time, take
s a short break, walks, works, stares at his fish. He has a timetable mapped out so he operates at peak performance. He’s a wonderfully diligent and organised man.’
‘Wow. Okay.’
‘Here he is.’
A man stepped through an open patio door from a bright garden and approached the kitchen table, notepad and pen in hand, as if he’d come to interview us. He had a startled look, with prominent raised eyebrows above pale blue eyes, and light blond hair with just a hint of his son’s ginger. ‘Can we be quick?’ he said. ‘I have some urgent drafting to do.’
Grace slipped out of the kitchen.
‘So we gather,’ I said. ‘And we have a possible murder to investigate. So let’s press on, shall we?’
He pulled out a wooden chair and sat facing us. He steepled his fingers in a show of confidence but couldn’t seem to pull it off, so resorted to picking up his pen and making as if to write notes on my performance. ‘If I don’t get this draft done by the end of—’
‘When did you last see Peter?’
He glanced at Jai and then gave me a huffy look. ‘On Friday at work.’
‘And did you notice anything unusual?’
‘No, but I only said hello in the corridor. He looked fine.’ He tapped his pen against the table.
‘Did you and Peter get along well?’
‘Yes, well enough. We went into business together.’
‘But that was five years ago. What about recently? I understand Peter had changed recently.’
Edward cleared his throat. ‘He seemed to have become a little careless, yes.’
‘And what were the implications of that?’
‘It could be very serious in our profession.’
With some witnesses, you could set them going and they’d be off like the Duracell bunny, revealing every tiny detail of the victim’s usually tedious and irrelevant life. The problem was shutting them up, but at least you had something to work with. This was clearly not going to be the case with Edward.
‘Why is it so serious?’
‘Patent work is very deadline-driven. In most branches of the law, if you miss a deadline, you can extend it, no one’s harmed. But we have certain deadlines where if we miss them, that’s it. An invention potentially worth millions isn’t protected any more. And if the client’s disclosed the invention, you can’t ever get valid protection.’
‘Had Peter missed one of these deadlines?’
‘Look I can’t really say much. It’s all confidential. I don’t see what this has to do with his death.’
‘Why? What do you think is relevant to his death?’
‘I really have no idea.’ He wouldn’t catch my eye.
‘So how do you know this isn’t? And don’t you care?’
Edward put his pen down and then picked it up and started the annoying tapping again. ‘Yes, of course I do. I am sorry about Peter but he had been a pain in the neck recently. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.’
‘So, had he missed an important deadline?’
Edward sighed. ‘He may have done.’
‘Where were you yesterday?’
‘I was in work all day. I didn’t even go out at lunchtime.’
‘Why do you think Peter got careless?’
‘I don’t know. I wondered if he was drinking. Not in the daytime but in the evening, and then feeling under the weather in the daytime.’
‘Why were you going through his files when he was on holiday?’
Edward blushed and the pen froze mid-tap. ‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes, that.’
‘I was checking he was on top of his work. Which he wasn’t. Or his partnership duties.’
‘What partnership duties?’
‘Look, can we continue this another day? It’s bad enough having to take on half Peter’s clients without losing more time.’
‘Tell me what partnership duties he’d neglected.’
‘He hadn’t renewed our professional indemnity insurance, which was pretty serious given the state of his work. We trusted each other to do things. You have to in a small firm – you can’t be checking up on each other all the time or you’d never get your work done.’
‘Was that serious? Not renewing the insurance? I imagine it was.’
Edward gave a humourless laugh. ‘You could say so. We’re still a traditional partnership, which means we have unlimited liability. We could be personally bankrupted by one of his mistakes.’
‘Was that what you and Felix Carstairs were discussing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard you had discussions, just the two of you.’
Edward put the damned pen down and looked straight at me, but didn’t quite meet my gaze. ‘We were concerned about Peter’s performance, yes, and this indemnity insurance issue was very alarming.’
‘Did you consider asking Peter to leave?’
‘It’s not that simple. We’d have had to find a lot of money.’
‘Why would you have had to find a lot of money to get him to leave?’ I leaned forward in my chair.
‘We’d have had to buy his share of the business – worth several hundred thousand. And we’d probably have had to pay him a year’s salary, too.’
‘And do you have to buy his share in the business from his beneficiaries now?’
‘Yes. But we have insurance to cover that. He didn’t let that one lapse.’
‘You’ve checked that already?’
‘Of course.’
‘So, it’s actually quite convenient that he’s dead?’
Edward examined his hand, the one without the pen. ‘Yes, actually, it is. It’s easier to pick up his clients between us than to manage his mistakes.’ He wiped his large forehead. ‘Look, they’ve probably told you I’m not good with people and I’m also not a good liar. It is convenient that he’s dead but I didn’t kill him.’
I sat back in my chair. ‘Okay, we’ll leave it at that for today. We may need to talk to you again.’
Edward grabbed his notepad and bolted from the room.
I rocked my chair recklessly onto two legs, and turned to Jai. ‘I wonder how many levels of bluff a man that intelligent could handle.’
‘Enough to fool your average cop,’ he said.
Grace reappeared and offered us another drink, which we declined.
‘Do you have time to talk to Alex today?’ she said. ‘It’s fine if not. I know you’re very busy.’
I grimaced. Did some mental calculations. ‘Okay. I’ll have a word with Alex while my colleague asks you a few questions.’
‘Oh, thank you so much. He’ll be thrilled. Do tell him if he’s being too precocious. We’re really trying to avoid that. It’s just… he didn’t get on well at school. I so want him to have a happy childhood.’ She hesitated. ‘And to be brought up with Jesus in his heart.’ She beckoned Jai from the room and he followed her, glancing back and giving me a theatrical, Don’t-make-me-go-with-the-Nutter look.
I ignored Jai, and sat back and closed my eyes against all the weirdness.
I heard the thud of approaching children. It sounded like at least four. I opened my eyes unwillingly.
Alex appeared in a cloud of ginger. He bounded over and sat on the chair opposite me, his elbows pushed forward onto the table. ‘I’m going to be a detective when I grow up.’
A girl of about fifteen followed, clutching a mug of tea, and sat next to me, legs crossed. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. ‘Lucky you, getting to talk to Alex. He’ll probably ask you to do his stupid logic problem.’
‘This is Rosie,’ Alex said. ‘She comes for extra maths because she’s not that good at it.’
I gave Rosie a sympathetic look.
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘But at least I’m not a spoilt brat.’
Alex’s eyes darted back and forth between Rosie and me. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Mum told me I should think about other people’s feelings. Sorry, Rosie, it’s not your fault you’re no good at maths.’
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Rosie laughed. ‘Thanks, Alex. I feel so much better now.’ She looked at me. ‘He doesn’t actually mean to be rude. It’s a disability.’
I smiled at Rosie and turned to Alex. ‘Did you want to ask me about being a detective?’ I was keen to move the conversation away from poor Rosie’s ability or otherwise in maths.
‘Yes,’ Alex said. ‘Do you use deductive logic?’
I felt a frisson of panic. I was used to questions about dead bodies and Tasers. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Maybe more often inductive.’ I wasn’t sure I could fully remember the difference. ‘Why do you want to be a detective?’
‘I want to see corpses and use my intelligence to solve crimes.’
I suppressed a laugh. ‘That’s what we do. Plus a bit of paperwork.’
‘I think I’d be very good,’ Alex said. ‘Rosie and I are arguing about a logic problem. Would you give us your opinion?’
‘Er… I could do with getting going really.’
‘Please,’ Alex said. ‘It won’t take very long.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. Two minutes.’
‘Hurray!’ He whipped three playing cards from his pocket and handed them to me – two kings and an ace. ‘Shuffle them,’ he ordered. ‘Please.’
I complied and passed them back to him. He dealt the cards face down on the table, giving me one card and himself two. ‘Leave your card face down,’ he said, picking up his two cards.
Rosie folded her arms. ‘No one cares but you, Alex.’ But she stayed at the table.
Alex scrutinised his cards and laid one of them on the table, face up. A king. The other card he laid face down next to it. So, there were two cards face down – mine and his – and one card face up, which was a king. ‘What’s the probability of you having an ace?’ he said.
‘It’s got to be fifty percent,’ Rosie said. ‘Two cards face down: one ace, one king.’ She lifted her mug and took a sip.
My mind was occupied with the ridiculousness of being sucked into playing a clearly contentious card game with a suspect’s child. But I still saw it immediately, with that odd brain of mine, sometimes so sharp it cut itself. I glanced at Rosie. I really didn’t want to make her wrong and Alex right. But I couldn’t bring myself to get it wrong either, even in front of children. What did that say about me?
