“Thanks for meeting me,” Rex said, surprised that Burke had agreed to give up part of his Friday afternoon at relative short notice.
The man’s piercing grey eyes swept the teashop as he moved towards a corner table and selected a chair facing the entrance.
A woman in a full apron, with ginger hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, flicked a damp rag around the Formica table top. “Your usual, luv?” she asked Burke.
“No, just tea, ta.” Burke spoke with a southern English accent and was missing two teeth from the bottom row.
“Same for me,” Rex said.
She ambled away, greeting customers by name.
“You’re not from here originally, are you?” Rex enquired.
“Kent.”
“Been back there since your release?”
“Not yet. I have roots here now.”
“You have a brother in Canterbury.”
“I do,” Burke said cautiously. “I thought you said on the phone this was about Dan Sutter.”
“It is, but I heard that your brother Alan is the handyman of an acquaintance of mine, whose father sentenced Sutter to ten years in prison.”
“Judge Murder sentenced me, and all. Al said he did odd jobs at his house and joked about doing something to make it look like the old geezer met with an accident. ‘Course, he was only joking.”
“Of course,” Rex said, betraying no sarcasm.
“Al told me he died in his sleep.”
“Are you glad he’s dead?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”
“Do you keep in regular contact with your brother?”
Burke leaned back in his chair, his hands loosely clasped on the table. “We talk on the phone about once a month. He came to visit me in prison a couple of times, once with my niece. There’s a ten-year age difference between me and Al, me being the youngest. Tim, our middle brother, died of a drug overdose. I was headed the same way before I was sent down for holding up a jeweller’s. Daft, that was.”
He clenched a giant fist stamped with gothic lettering across the knuckles, which Rex could not read. “There was cameras all over the shop, but I was high on ice and desperate for cash.” His hand spread open in a gesture of resignation.
“Can you tell me how you got on with Dan Sutter? I understand you were cell mates.”
“We had adjoining cells for a time. You try to get on with everyone inside, if you know what’s good for you, but Dan wasn’t what you’d call friendly. And he wasn’t one to make confessions, not him. So, if that’s what you wanted from me, you’re out of luck. Sorry.”
“What did he talk aboot?”
“His sister mostly. Said he should’ve been a better brother. Said what a monster his dad was. A lot of blokes inside talk about their girlfriends and wives. With him it was his sister. Whatever gets you through your stretch.”
“Did he ever say he wanted to harm Judge Murgatroyd?”
“We all did. Everyone up before Judge Murder knew they were for it.”
“Did he get into specifics?”
“Said how he’d like to carve him up in small pieces. I didn’t pay much attention to the talk that went on inside, just did my time and got early release last year for good behaviour. And I won’t be going back in neither. I got a decent paying job round the corner from this caffe, and me and the missus are going to have a baby. A bit late in life to start a family, you might be thinking, but I’ve a lot of time to make up for.”
The waitress reappeared with the tea. Burke hunched forward and looped his hands around his mug protectively, no doubt a habit formed in prison.
“How old is the niece who came to visit you?” Rex asked.
“Petra? Twenty-two.”
“What does she do?”
“Right now she’s stocking shelves at Tesco’s, but she’s going to night school. Wants to do hair. Why’re you interested in her?”
Rex took up the glass container of sugar and tipped the metal chute into his mug without comment.
Twenty-Eight
That evening, Rex sat in Alistair’s library in a purposefully distressed leather armchair in keeping with the floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves and panelled wainscoting. At Alistair’s prompting, he told him about his latest interview in the Murgatroyd case.
“I think Bruce Burke can be eliminated. He’s a converted meth-head, who claims he’s gone straight. Definitely not the rough individual I expected. He didn’t seem to be harbouring any grudges and appeared to just want to get on with his life.”
“So, crossed off the list?” Alistair squeezed a wedge of lemon into his Earl Grey.
“Aye, but he has a twenty-two-year-old niece living in Canterbury, who could conceivably have climbed into Judge Murgatroyd’s room. That might explain the hair clasp found in the bed. Her dad is Phoebe’s handyman, whom I told you aboot.” Rex shrugged
at the possibility of the niece’s involvement, uncomfortable with how thin a possibility it was. Still, he was not ready to discount it quite yet.
“You’re more convinced, now that the judge’s wig turned up in Richard’s flat, that it was Dan Sutter who broke into the house,” Alistair stated, accustomed to his friend’s way of presenting hypotheses only to dismiss them.
“I have no proof he was ever in England, but whether he broke into Phoebe’s home or not, he still tried to kill Richard. For that alone I’d like him found.”
“And he inflicted bodily harm on us,” Alistair pointed out, sitting back in his brown leather wing armchair, his legs crossed at the ankles. “He had to find a way of getting rid of you before you realized he wasn’t Richard Pruitt and alerted the police. When I came along, he probably couldn’t believe his rotten luck, especially if Richard didn’t receive many visitors. I’m sure Sutter was spying on him.”
Rex thought for a moment as he contemplated his tumbler of whisky. “But I’m at a loss as to why he would tip his hand by leaving Judge Murgatroyd’s wig in Richard Pruitt’s attic.”
“He has nothing to lose. He’s already on the run. It could be either a message to Richard to desist in his private vendetta against him or one to you to stop assisting him. Or both.”
“I thought he drugged and subdued me because I walked in on his disposal of Richard. How would he know of my interest in the Showers case? I could have been visiting Richard at his home for any number of reasons. When did you say he would be back?”
“Shortly. He went home with a police escort to retrieve his laptop and grab a change of clothes. It looks like he’ll be staying until Dan Sutter is caught.” Alistair cocked an ear. “I think that’s him now.” He went to the tall window. “Yes, the police car has just dropped him off.”
“I’ll go down,” Rex said, getting up from the armchair.
“Tell him dinner will be ready in an hour, if he wants to join us. I’m making paella.”
Rex descended the front stone steps to the pavement and continued down to the basement where he knocked on a black door fitted with brass fixtures. A few minutes passed before it opened.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Richard said. “I had to check who it was. You never know, do you?” He stepped aside to let Rex into the hall.
“I’ve never been down here,” Rex said, looking about him and sticking his head into the ultra-modernized eat-in kitchen. “Very nice.”
The basement had been converted into a self-contained flat and redecorated to a high level of finish, just as Alistair had boasted.
“It’s so kind of your friend to let me stay here.” Richard led him into a sitting room furnished with plush modern furniture. “Please take a seat. Would you like a drink?”
Rex shook his head. “I just had one upstairs, thank you.”
“Alistair made a lovely dinner last night. And I met John.”
“You’re invited
tonight,” Rex told him. “I’ll be there. Not sure his partner will be.”
“He said John was on nights. I wouldn’t like to be an ambulance man. All those car accidents and crime scenes.”
“Should I tell Alistair it’s a yes?”
Richard nodded. “By all means. I brought food from my refrigerator at home so it doesn’t go to waste, but I can eat it tomorrow.”
Rex took the phone from his pocket and relayed the message to Alistair. He turned his attention back to Richard. “I meant to ask you if Sutter has a car. I’m hoping your PI saw the number plate.”
“Sutter doesn’t own a car. He always took the bus. My investigator said he was a slippery character.”
“Well, he’s managed to give police the slip.” Rex then told him about his meeting with Stu Showers.
“So you do believe me?” Pruitt asked, beside himself with glee. “You must realize I had no motive to murder his daughter.” He sighed and shook his bald head. “I would never have been associated with the Showers family had I not decided to go to a different pub that night. I’m a creature of habit, so why I deviated from my normal routine, I’ll never know.”
“One of the inexplicable vagaries of life,” Rex remarked.
“Well, I rue that fateful decision to this day. No good deed goes unpunished,” Pruitt announced querulously. “I went to the lass’s rescue, not realizing she was dead, and it’s hounded me since. I avoid dark and secluded places now, not because I don’t want anything to happen to me; I just don’t want to be in the position of stumbling upon something again and being falsely accused.”
“And I would not have been involved in this matter had Phoebe Wells not asked for my help.”
“You won’t make your investigation public until you can prove Sutter killed April Showers, will you? I don’t want my name dragged through the mud again.”
Rex assured him he wouldn’t.
“Good,” said Pruitt, easing his posture in his chair.
“But I need proof. What was in the stolen shoebox?”
“Records of Sutter’s comings and goings. Information concerning his background: how his father drank and beat him and his mother, and his teenage sister ran away. His mother left Edinburgh two years ago after her divorce.”
“Where did she go?”
“I can’t remember. But it’s in the file.”
Much good that did them, Rex thought a trifle irritably, and unfairly. After all, it wasn’t Pruitt’s fault the shoebox had been stolen. He had taken the precaution of hiding it, though to no avail as it turned out. Sutter must have searched the flat from top to bottom, leaving no sign he had done so, other than replacing the box with a wig on a papier-mâché bust.
“Do you remember the mother’s name?” Rex asked Pruitt.
“Ann Sutter. His sister’s name is Amber.”
“And where did she go?”
“Amber? Wales, I think. Her mother might have joined her there after she divorced.”
Rex received a call from Alistair to say dinner was ready, and the two men left the basement flat to go up to the main house.
“What would you like to listen to?” Alistair asked, standing by his Swedish stereo system.
“Oh, do play La Traviata again,” Pruitt said. “The recording you have is so divine.”
The dining room, separated by two arched pillars from the drawing room, was set for three, with a full array of china and silverware and peach-coloured napkins folded into fans in the wine goblets.
For all that Alistair had called Pruitt a bit cuckoo, they shared similar interests. Preoccupied with his own thoughts, Rex listened with scant attention while they discussed the latest fads in home improvement over the meal.
“Oh, I know!” Pruitt was agreeing with their host. “I got rid of all the brass in my flat. So passé!”
“Just wait five years and it’ll be back in,” was Rex’s sole contribution to the topic.
Alistair told Pruitt about the American interior designer who had worked on Rex’s retreat in the Highlands.
“Oh, a retreat,” Pruitt exclaimed. “Where?”
“It’s a converted hunting lodge near Gleneagle Village.” Rex did not want to divulge too much about its location since it was, after all, a retreat, and he didn’t want people dropping by unannounced.
“Do you spend much time there?”
“Not as much as my fiancée Helen and I would like.”
“Oh, congratulations. I didn’t know you were engaged. I hope I may meet the bride-to-be.”
“McBride,” Rex murmured.
“Oh, is that her surname?”
“I thought it was d’Arcy,” Alistair interjected.
“It is,” Rex said, impatient in his excitement. He addressed Pruitt. “You said Dan Sutter’s mother was called Ann Sutter. I wonder if McBride is her maiden name. If so, she goes by Annie now.”
“Possibly,” Pruitt said in confusion. “She may well have changed her name back when she divorced her drunk of a husband. But I don’t know of a McBride.”
Annie had told Phoebe she was a widow, as Rex recalled. “Are you sure she moved to Wales?”
“Her daughter went to Wales, but now that I think on it, the mother moved to England.”
“Could she have gone to Kent?”
“Perhaps. Or Essex. One of the home counties, at any rate. Is Essex a home county?”
Alistair affirmed that it was, since it bordered on London.
“According to my PI’s report, she works as a home help or something of the kind.”
“Does Canterbury ring a bell?” Rex asked hopefully.
“Could be Canterbury. Or Colchester. That’s in Essex, isn’t it?” Pruitt asked, looking first at Rex and then at Alistair, who nodded and added that Colchester was the oldest Roman town in Britain.
“She couldn’t be Phoebe Wells’ housekeeper, by any chance?” Rex persisted.
“I very much doubt it,” Pruitt answered. “The judge would have mentioned to me if Sutter’s mother was employed by his daughter.”
“If he’d known. Two years ago is when you said she left Edinburgh. And, lo and behold, Annie has been in Phoebe Wells’ employ for two years. Did you ever tell Judge Murgatroyd you suspected Sutter was April Showers’ killer?”
“Well, naturally. I hoped he could pull a few strings, but he didn’t seem inclined to discuss matters of law. To be honest, I’m not sure he wasn’t going a bit gaga in his old age.”
Rex ruminated for a few moments as he scooped up the last of his paella. He sat back in his chair, thought for a moment more, and suddenly announced he had to leave.
“Are you not staying for dessert?” Alistair asked. “I have a sublime zabaglione from—”
“Next time,” Rex said, getting up from the table to a mounting crescendo of soprano from the stereo system.
He thanked his friend for dinner and told Pruitt he would be in touch the next day. He had to make an urgent call.
Twenty-Nine
Rex’s thoughts raced in all directions as he drove home to Morningside. Ann Sutter living and working under Phoebe’s roof … Was it possible? If so, Dan Sutter might have known Pruitt was in contact with the judge who had deprived him of ten years of freedom. The placing of the wig in Pruitt’s flat now made more sense.
The attempt on Pruitt’s life could be about more than Pruitt tailing him. Sutter had wanted to stop Pruitt blabbing about his involvement in the Showers murder. And he would know about Rex’s investigation if Annie had been listening in on his conversations with Phoebe. It was all beginning to come together at last, but he had to be certain.
Only when he got to his bedroom and saw the luminous green hands on the alarm clock did he realize the time. He debated ringing Phoebe or waiting until morning. Then he saw that she had called him earlier without leaving a
message. He decided that what he had to tell her was important enough to wake her if she was
in bed.
She answered almost immediately, and he apologized for the late hour.
“I was only watching TV,” she assured him. “You’re a welcome distraction.”
“Well, I’m not sure how welcome this will be, but it may prove distracting. Can anyone hear you?”
“Why? What is it?” Phoebe asked in alarm. “Do you have news?”
“I may. Can you call me back on a mobile?”
“I will if it’s charged.”
Rex waited a few minutes before he heard his phone ring. On the display he saw an unfamiliar number with the Canterbury area code.
“It’s me,” she said in a low voice. “I’m in my bedroom on my mobile. I hate these stupid things.”
He told her what he had learned from Pruitt. “Is there any chance Dan Sutter could be your housekeeper’s son?” he asked.
“Annie’s? She’s never mentioned a son! Wait while I close the door,” Phoebe said in a hushed tone. “Are you sure?”
“No, but I thought I should warn you of the possibility.”
“If that’s the case,” Phoebe resumed quietly so Rex had to strain to hear, “my father must not have recognized her from court, if she attended her son’s trial, which I assume she did. But his eyesight was failing, as was his memory, and the trial was a long time ago. Plus, he wasn’t exactly chatty, as you know, so he wouldn’t have asked her about her private life. For another thing, he was of the generation not to treat domestics as equals. Doug used to chide him about it.” She paused. “Do you really think Annie would purposely seek employment in this house to avenge her son’s incarceration?”
Rex did not answer immediately. It had not occurred to him that Annie might be responsible for more than perhaps leaving the window unlocked. “How did she know you were seeking a home help?”
“I advertised in The Lady.”
“You said she had the evening off the night your father passed,” he probed.
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