The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

  ‘What about local taxes, and all the reporting requirements?’ asked Shireen. ‘Was no one present for the transaction?’

  ‘The notary, a Mrs Sanchez de Piernos, confirmed that everything was in order. The entire transaction was conducted by post, which is not unusual for expatriate purchases.’

  Gillard thanked Vila, and hung up. Then he spoke to DC Corey-Williams. ‘Shireen, I want you to tap our police resources in Spain and check all this.’ He sighed. ‘And tomorrow I have to break all this bad news to poor Oliver Knight.’

  * * *

  Craig had agreed to another trip to see a play with Kathy Parkinson. He hadn’t enquired too much about it; he just knew it was good to get out a bit more, though he guessed that he was playing with fire. It turned out to be some modern play with a forgettable title and lots of meaningful silences played in some warehouse north of Camden. It had only four actors, one a voluptuous black woman with a commanding voice who spent much of the show effectively naked because of the way her thin white shift was lit from behind. Craig had to be woken by Kathy with a nudge to the ribs halfway through the second act.

  ‘So you didn’t find it erotic, then?’ she asked as they took the train back. Gillard’s response was non-committal, and remained so even as he drove her home from the station at Upper Warlingham. He agreed to go in for a coffee, and was then ambushed on the sofa. Even as she kissed him, he knew that if he didn’t do anything he would end up sleeping with her, a key witness. Rigby would kill him. But on the other hand he was now highly aroused, and who would ever know? He extracted himself to go to the bathroom, mainly to make his decision rationally, without her busy hand down his trousers. While in there he heard Kathy on the phone.

  ‘Wrong number,’ she said, immediately he emerged. Guiltily.

  Craig saw his jacket, previously crumpled beneath them, was now smoothly folded on the back of the sofa. ‘Was that my phone?’

  Kathy hesitated. ‘Yes. I picked it up to turn it off. I didn’t want you to be called away. Selfish of me, I suppose. But I inadvertently hit the answer button. Sorry about that.’

  He looked at his phone. Last call was from Sam, two minutes ago. Not a missed call either. Kathy and Sam had conversed for a good minute. Shit, shit, shit.

  ‘I’m sorry, Craig. It wasn’t deliberate.’

  The erotic moment had clearly passed. He grabbed his jacket, said a curt goodbye and walked to the door, closing it gently behind him. Once in the car he called Sam back and got voicemail. Left an explanation along the lines of don’t get the wrong end of the stick. Kathy and I are just friends. Nothing was happening there.

  It wasn’t a complete lie. But it wasn’t honest either.

  Next afternoon

  Oliver Knight let the four detectives in and led them to a big conference room on the top floor of Barker Caynes Tipping. Chloe Knight was already sitting there. She offered Craig Gillard, Claire Mulholland, Gabby Underwood and Shireen Corey-Williams some chocolate biscuits, while Oliver went to extract all the document copies he had, and then instructed his secretary that they were not to be disturbed. When they were all settled, Oliver asked. ‘So where is our money? You said you knew where it had gone.’

  ‘Panama,’ said Gillard. ‘To a limited company protected by banking secrecy, I’m sorry to have to tell you.’

  ‘So it’s gone. Pretty much everything Chloe and I stood to inherit.’ Oliver Knight’s head sagged into his hands, and he ran his fingers up into his scalp.

  No one said anything for a while. Gabby Underwood, always ready with professional empathy, leaned out to put a comforting arm on Oliver’s shoulder. ‘We can still follow other clues,’ she said. ‘We won’t give up.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Oliver said. ‘The main problem with all this is how it could have happened. I checked all the documents thoroughly when Mum first brought them to me. They were copies, yes. We had a couple of small changes we wanted making. When those had been incorporated by the notary in Spain, we got the final version posted to Mum. She and Dad both signed, and I witnessed.’ He clenched and unclenched his fists as he admitted it was the first time he had seen the original document that his parents had signed, which showed that they bought a shepherd’s hut and some poor land for five and a half million euros.

  ‘Did you check the originals again at the time of signing?’

  ‘No, not really. I scanned the first paragraphs, and then Mum said it was okay, she’d already compared them line by line. I mean, she spoke fluent Spanish. I don’t.’ He threw up his hands. ‘Are you saying she lied?’

  ‘Not lied. Anyone can make a mistake,’ Gabby said, with a smile.

  ‘This is not a mistake my mother would have made, I assure you.’ Oliver gestured angrily at the papers. ‘She was an absolute stickler for detail.’

  ‘Well, someone has made these changes, and someone pretty professional and proficient too,’ Corey-Williams said.

  An hour later, having dropped off Chloe and Oliver Knight at his home with liaison officer Gabby Underwood, Gillard drove Claire Mulholland and Shireen Corey-Williams back to the Caterham incident room for a review of progress. They were Gillard’s most trusted investigative brains, but the brooding silence in the vehicle betrayed the knot they seemed to be in, trying to connect the murder of Liz Knight and the theft of the family inheritance.

  ‘Someone’s lying,’ Gillard said. ‘Either the notary or Oliver.’

  ‘Perhaps it was Liz Knight who wasn’t telling the truth,’ Shireen said. ‘This whole scam wouldn’t work without someone who was in an intermediary position to prepare and present false documents for signing by Martin and Liz, and then get them witnessed by Oliver.

  ‘Liz is the obvious person,’ Claire agreed. ‘No one else was involved in visiting the Spanish land registry, getting the documents drawn up, reading and checking them in two languages, and presenting them for signature. With her, it’s fairly easy; without her I can’t see how it could work.’

  ‘Can anyone think of a single reason why she should steal her own money, though?’ asked Shireen. ‘It just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Maybe it would do if she thinks her husband is about to divorce her to marry Natalie Krugman,’ Gillard said. ‘It cuts him out of the cash. But she’d need help setting up the finance deal in Panama, surely.’

  Shireen’s mobile buzzed, and as she answered it she held up a hand to get the rest of the team to quieten down. After two minutes making some notes, she hung up. ‘That was a friend of mine who works in the London Asset Recovery Team. I’d asked him for pointers on how we tackle Panama.’

  ‘Any conclusions?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Not encouraging ones. The Panamanian company which sold the property to the Knights no longer exists. According to an official notice, it was liquidated in September.’

  There was a collective sigh. ‘All right, everyone, thank you for your help,’ Gillard said. ‘I want to look at this again from first principles, starting with key witnesses. Starting tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Shireen and I are going for a drink, Craig. Fancy joining us?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Thank you, but I have plans,’ he replied with a grin.

  * * *

  Sam had seemed to be quite understanding when Craig called her the next morning. She listened to his explanation of why he was at Kathy’s flat. ‘Just tell me the truth, Craig. That’s all I ask. Be honest with me, and I’ll be honest with you.’

  ‘So are you still going to come around to sample my cooking tonight?’

  ‘Of course,’ she had said. ‘I wouldn’t miss that for the world.’

  Now it was almost half seven. Craig Gillard looked at the assembled herbs on his chopping board. He’d never cooked with lemongrass before, and the kaffir lime leaves looked like something from a compost heap. Fresh chillies, garlic and a tin of coconut milk, plus a little sachet of some ferocious Thai red curry paste he’d got in an Asian shop in Croydon. A tiny sample on the tip of a finger had almos
t blown his head off. Still, Sam had said she loved Thai food and he was determined to cook it from scratch. What was the point of him doing the cooking otherwise? There was white wine in the fridge, an Austrian Gewürztraminer that the man in the wine shop said was aromatic enough to hold its own against spicy food. He’d bought some candles, selected a little of his favourite Simply Red to play on repeat.

  The time came and she hadn’t arrived. After half an hour he became a little agitated. So why wasn’t she here? At 40 minutes he rang and left a message on her mobile, and turned off the oven. At two hours, with two more messages, he knew she wasn’t coming. Craig gave the dinner a stir. He could eat it, watch TV and forget about her. Or he could drive round to see she was okay. Maybe the dreaded Gary Harrison had re-emerged.

  Half an hour later, at 10.30, he was sitting in his car outside her darkened flat. Sam’s green Renault wasn’t there. No one answered the doorbell. Craig sighed, and reclined the seat. He seemed to spend half his life mooning outside the homes of women who had let him down. Enough. He quietly put the car into gear and, after reaching for a CD from his 1980s collection, slid away back to his Thai meal for one.

  Okay, he hadn’t been fully honest with Sam. She had seen through him. And she had lied to him in turn. She never had any intention of turning up.

  * * *

  The next day’s re-interviews included visits to Liz’s parents, Chloe Knight, and Knight’s academic secretary, Zakira Oglu. To save his embarrassment Gillard had asked Mulholland and Michelle Tsu to interview Kathy Parkinson. But the one person he really thought hadn’t told him all she knew was Helen Jennings, for whom he’d saved the day’s last appointment. Now, as he watched her on CCTV waiting for him in the Caterham witness suite, he could see the symptoms of her anxiety. She had power-dressed in a houndstooth jacket with padded shoulders, a shortish black skirt and dark tights which showed off her long legs, and medium-high-heeled shoes. She spent a lot of time running her fingers through her already very neat hair, and only sniffed once at the plastic cup of perfectly vile police coffee that the desk sergeant had given her. If clothing and make-up are part of women’s armour, Helen Jennings looked fully protected. Gillard waited for DC Shireen Corey-Williams to arrive before going in.

  ‘Thank you for coming in at short notice, Mrs Jennings, and sorry for keeping you waiting,’ Gillard said. ‘We have a number of questions that we’d like to ask you.’

  ‘That’s absolutely fine,’ she said, smiling warmly. ‘Has there been any breakthrough yet? Do you have any idea where Martin’s got to?’

  ‘Actually, we’ll be asking the questions, Mrs Jennings,’ Corey-Williams responded. Gillard glanced at the DC, never having witnessed her interview technique before. A tad harsh, he thought.

  After going through the verbal formalities for the recording, Craig asked. ‘Can I ask you to detail your movements between May and August this year?’

  ‘I think I already emailed you my online diary,’ she said, smiling again. ‘Is there any particular day you want more details on?’

  ‘Have you been abroad in that time?’

  ‘Yes. I went to Portugal for a fortnight in June. It’s in the diary. And I went on a cruise along the fjords of Norway in August. It is absolutely lovely there.’ She directed a beguiling smile at Shireen, but if she expected to generate some reflex warmth from her face she would have been disappointed. Shireen was as blank as a slab of Lake District granite, seemingly devoid of any empathic handhold.

  Helen switched her gaze back to Gillard. ‘If you haven’t been there, you should go.’ The smile was infectious and clearly practised.

  Craig fought not to respond. ‘Out of my price league,’ he muttered.

  ‘Can I also ask you whether you have been to France or Spain in the last two weeks?’ Shireen asked.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  Shireen pushed across the desk a large photograph of the woman entering the French bank. ‘This is a blow-up of a CCTV image from Neuilly, a suburb of Paris. You might have seen it on TV or in the papers.’ It wasn’t a great image, despite enhancement. It was partially dark, it was raining, and the woman’s umbrella blocked a view of her head and neck. The knight tattoo looked fuzzy, but the woman’s shapely legs came out very well. One of the reasons the tabloids had loved the picture. ‘Do you know who this woman is?’ Shireen asked.

  ‘Should I?’ She picked up the picture and stared at it. There was no sign of nerves now, Craig noted.

  ‘Is it you?’ Shireen asked.

  ‘I’m flattered you might think so,’ she laughed. ‘But no, it isn’t. I don’t have any tattoos, for a start.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything. Some tattoos are temporary,’ Shireen said.

  ‘What has this woman done?’ Helen asked.

  ‘She may have helped Martin Knight to get abroad undetected,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t have done that. I don’t even like him very much, and Liz was my friend.’ She looked genuinely shocked at the suggestion. ‘Is that the only reason you’ve got me in here?’

  ‘No,’ Gillard said. ‘Chloe Knight had mentioned that you and Liz Knight travelled abroad together earlier this year to help refugees. Can you tell me more about it?’

  ‘It was Liz’s idea. We all saw the pictures on the TV, all the suffering. And over a bottle of wine one night in January, I think, we decided that we should do something about it. Liz raised a lot of money through her church and at the school, and I managed to get an ex of mine to lend us a long-wheelbase Transit with a trailer. We bought a hundred tents and loads of blankets and water filters, and emptied the charity shops of teddy bears. Liz researched what it was that they needed, particularly the medical stuff, as she’d done some St John Ambulance volunteering when she was younger. We also had over a thousand pairs of shoes, trainers and wellingtons. Many of the refugees from Syria and Iraq only had sandals. It took us five days to get to Athens, taking turns to drive, and we slept in the van. It was wonderful, like being students again.’ She unleashed that radiant smile again, still trying to generate empathy.

  ‘But then it got a bit harder. Once we got near the coast, there was such a confusion. So many different groups trying to help, so many organizations raising money, so many refugees wandering around. We went across to Chios on a ferry with a Dutch group, and the moment we arrived we got stuck in. There was a large group of Syrians just getting seen to by the Red Cross. Two boats had come in that morning but a number of people were missing. It was terrible, some of the families were distraught. One man lifted his two children out of a waterlogged inflatable boat, then turned straight back and tried to wade out to sea to look for his wife who had fallen overboard. It was dark, and hopeless, but he was hysterical.’

  At this point even Shireen looked sympathetic. ‘Had she died?’

  ‘Yes. Fourteen bodies were picked up that day. Some had been in the water a long time – weeks, months. They were bloated, unrecognizable, and stank worse than rotten meat. I saw a Red Cross volunteer try to pull a bloated body from the water into a boat. But the arm just came away in his hand. At that point, I’m afraid, I was sick.’

  She paused. ‘There was a makeshift mortuary, a big tent, just a hundred yards from the beach with a giant portable refrigerator, but it was full. They were supposed to retain the bodies for identification by relatives, but there were just too many arriving. Dozens every day. The Greek authorities put enormous pressure on the Red Cross to get them buried quickly. I remember Liz telling me that in some cases they were buried without a death certificate because there were too few Greek officials to issue them. I have to say the whole process was smelly, chaotic, and quite stomach-turning. Liz had a stronger belly for it than I did, and did more than her fair share in the mortuary and helping with the burials. The first few days I just collected up lifejackets and did laundry. It was all I could face. Pathetic, really. I wish I’d had her strength.’ She looked down, and a look of unfathomable sadness crossed her
face. ‘Poor Liz.’

  ‘You went out on 6th March. When did you get back?’ Shireen asked.

  ‘I got back on April 14th. I dropped Liz at Athens airport – she wanted to round off the time away with a week’s skiing in Romania.’

  ‘Skiing must be tough if you normally walk with a stick,’ Gillard said.

  ‘She didn’t have a stick then. The arthritis was quite intermittent at first. It was only when she got back that it became quite chronic. By the way, the skiing was a secret. Oliver and Chloe apparently love skiing, but Liz just wanted to decompress on her own, and get the refugee experience out of her system.’

  ‘How did she get home?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘By train, I think.’

  ‘Mrs Jennings, do you have any legal training?’ Shireen asked suddenly.

  ‘No. We didn’t need any for the refugee work.’

  ‘Do you speak Spanish?’ Craig asked.

  ‘Un poquito,’ she answered. ‘Enough to get round a menu, but that’s it. My Portuguese is better; I’ve got a place in the Algarve.’

  ‘Or property experience? Have you ever been an estate agent?’

  ‘No.’ She looked quizzically at them. ‘What strange questions you ask! It’s almost as if I’d applied for a job selling villas in Spain or something.’

  The two detectives didn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s something to do with the Knights’ place in Spain, isn’t it?’ She leaned forward inquisitively.

  ‘There’s nothing we can really say at the moment,’ Gillard said. ‘Thank you for coming in.’ Gillard stopped the recording, wound up the interview, and escorted her out to her car.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry that was a bit full on,’ Gillard said.