by Janet Neel
‘What did you do then?’
‘I went over. I knew it must be Bill, it was built like him, great fat stomach, and he was dead.’
‘You were certain of that?’
‘I’m a surgeon, for Christ’s sake. He was dead. And stiff and cold. I felt the legs.’
‘Stiff as well as cold?’
‘As a board. Rigor mortis – you know, it sets in about eight hours after death.’
‘We are familiar with the phenomenon,’ McLeish said, suddenly furious with a man who could have established the time of death very much more closely and with less trouble than the police pathologist. Assuming, that was, that he was telling the truth. ‘Did you form a view about how long he had been dead?’
‘I didn’t really. He was dead, so there was nothing I was obliged to do. But I’ve thought about it since – of course I have, all the bloody time – and he must have been twelve hours dead at least. Rigor was still well established.’ He flicked a glance at them.
Twelve hours took them back to nine thirty on the Friday evening when Antony Price had a solid alibi, vouched for not only by the young woman in the waiting-room but by half the staff of a London restaurant. McLeish looked into the wide dark blue eyes thoughtfully.
‘So why didn’t you ring the police?’
‘I was honestly just about to.’ The eyes widened even further, but McLeish had ceased to expect the truth even without this signal; the use of ‘honestly’ or ‘frankly’ by a witness invariably signalled exactly the opposite intent. ‘Then I got scared.’ His faint inclination of the head acknowledged the small-boy frankness. ‘And I thought, my God, no one’s going to believe this. The other trustee of my mother’s trust knows I had a blistering row with Bill last week because I went and saw him too. And even without that there’s enough people know that Bill and I hated each other. And I’d just had – Annabelle had – we’d split up.’ He looked at them under his eyelashes to see how much they knew about that, but neither man moved a muscle. ‘So I didn’t dare. I thought I’d better just get out as quickly as possible.’
And out of this interview too, everything in the body language shrieked, and McLeish decided the moment had come to push. ‘So what did you think when you saw your father hanging there?’
‘What do you mean, what did I think?’ Antony Price had gone suddenly scarlet, and was leaning forward.
Both policemen waited, stolidly. ‘Well, did you think he’d committed suicide?’
‘Oh no. No, that’s the point, that’s why I was terrified. It was quite clear what he’d been doing. I mean, he had a bag over his head and he was wearing women’s underwear.’
‘You thought it was an accident?’ McLeish suggested.
‘I did, you know, for a minute or so. But then I realised that it wasn’t that. Something else had happened. The table was turned over and the door was open.’
‘The door was open?’
‘Yes. And there was some broken glass.’
McLeish leant over and spoke into the recorder. ‘Sorry, I want to stop. I want you to look at some pictures taken on Monday in the kitchen.’
They waited, McLeish looking at his notes and Antony Price fidgeting while Davidson came back with a set of envelopes.
‘Did you move anything?’ McLeish, asked, when the tape was running again.
‘No. Sorry. Yes, I pushed the door shut and drew the curtains across the gap.’
‘Why did you do that?’ No fingerprints belonging to Antony Price had been found on the door, or indeed anywhere in the room.
‘I wanted to look through the office.’ His hands were on the table now, clenched to each other. ‘And I thought anyone could see that the basement door was open. There’s another house backs on to the garden, it’s not very big. So I pushed the door – I really didn’t disturb anything, you know, I just pushed it with a handkerchief and drew the curtains over.’
‘You didn’t touch the table?’
‘No. Or the body except that once, on the leg.’
McLeish spread the photographs, taken by flashlight on Monday, and watched Price as he leant forward to look.
‘Take your time. Was the table in that position?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think so. I’m sorry, it looks a bit different when it’s dark.’
‘I’m sure that’s true.’
Antony Price’s head came up. ‘I wasn’t trying to make your job more difficult. I’m sorry, I was, frankly, shit-scared.’
No, you weren’t, McLeish thought. If you are telling the truth, and genuinely walked in on the aftermath, you did not give one blind damn about anything except finding what you’d come for. You don’t think the rules about obstructing the police have anything to do with you.
‘So you went back to the office?’
‘Yes. I turned the lights out at the door of the kitchen and then I had a look in the office. It’s got Venetian blinds, you can’t see in from the street. I couldn’t find the file – I didn’t know where to look but I tried the obvious places, and I even had a look in the flat.’ He looked at the table. ‘I wore rubber gloves.’
‘Did you bring the gloves with you?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Although you couldn’t know the place had been burgled before you started.’ He watched the sweat shine just above Price’s eyebrows.
‘I suppose I’ve just been reading too may detective stories. I just thought I’d better not leave any traces.’
‘Were you going to take the file?’
The relief on the man’s face could have served as a commercial for indigestion pills. ‘Yes, yes, I was. That’s why I needed not to leave fingerprints, so if Bill had called the police they wouldn’t have found my fingerprints.’
It was not convincing and all three people in the room knew it, but he couldn’t be shaken. No, he had not found the file and he did not know where it could be, except possibly in Bosham at the rented cottage. And he hadn’t dared go there and look because he thought Bill and Sylvia were there. And no, no, and no, he had not killed his father, nor seen his body before about nine thirty on the Saturday, when he had been at least twelve hours dead. They couldn’t move him, though he was sweating and wild-eyed, and losing his temper by the end.
McLeish was just about to call a halt when he checked his notes and recalled that there was a key question not yet asked.
‘Right,’ he said into an exhausted silence. ‘Thank you, Dr Price. Now I need to ask you about your brother.’
‘Francis? I’m going to see him after … after this. He’s out of Intensive Care, you know.’
‘Yes. And doing all right, but St Mary’s say he was lucky. Where did he get the drug, Dr Price, do you know?’
‘Not from me.’ It was said wearily without stress, and McLeish believed him. ‘Getting drugs for a habitual user is just a question of cash.’
‘So I understand. You give him money sometimes, I understand.’
‘Only in very small, meal-buying quantities. I normally pay his rent by cheque – he never would when he’s on drugs – and I gave him £50 this time because what with everything I hadn’t sent a cheque. And I’ve paid off people who threaten him. Twice. But I don’t give him much cash because I don’t want him killing himself.’ He stopped to examine this statement. ‘Or not with cash I’ve given him.’
They ended the interview formally and left him sitting there while they repaired to another room and gave the tape to a police typist.
‘Charge him,’ Bruce Davidson said, definitively, in answer to McLeish’s questioning look.
‘What exactly do you think he did, Bruce? Knocked his father off on Friday, late, or early Saturday after dinner with his girl, and then came back in the morning to tidy up?’
‘I’m not sure he was there on Saturday at all. Killed his father on Friday after he’d said goodnight to his girl, cleaned out the safe, smashed a bit of glass and sauntered off, and waited till Monday. Only now he thinks mebbe he left a wee trace somewhere, so he’
d better find a story about how he was there after all. And it means he can suggest that his father had been killed at a time when he was still eating with the girlfriend. He’s a surgeon, and he could be convincing in the box. No?’
‘It’s a very good insurance policy against us finding any traces of him,’ McLeish conceded. ‘But I don’t think we can make a case stick yet and I’d rather give him some more rope. After all, he’s moved on some since Monday and he’s windy. If we charge him he’ll clam up.’ He sat, thinking, unhindered by Bruce Davidson who knew when not to speak. ‘He’s not going to run, is he? Nowhere to go.’
‘You’re not convinced?’ Bruce was not fooled by all this.
‘No, I’m not, but I’m buggered if I could tell you why. Let him go, Bruce, but tell him not to go far. Keep the pressure on.’
Bruce Davidson sat still, looking miserable.
‘What?’
‘You believe him about the lad – his brother? You don’t reckon he gave him the cash to overdose with?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Mm. And the wee girl? Out there. You reckon she’s safe with him?’
‘If he killed his father – and I say if – it was opportunistic. He found his dad playing a game which satisfactorily incapacitated and blinded him, he saw his chance and shifted the table. He didn’t plan it ahead. And he knows we’re watching him now. The girl isn’t living with him. He’s the type to crack if he did do it, and we may be saved a lot of work.’
‘So you’re not one of Chief Superintendent McLeish’s mob then?’
Luke Fleming was sitting opposite Catherine Crane in the room looking on to the street, which served as a waiting-room for visitors to Price Fleming Associates. He was leaning forward slightly, with an expression she knew very well, somewhere between lust, incredulity and hope, as he took in her neat suit with the smart blouse and the carefully manicured hands.
‘No. I am a detective inspector with the Fraud Squad, and I am here today to follow up a complaint made to us about the conduct of Price Fleming.’
‘People can do that, can they? Come to you if they’re not a happy camper?’
‘No.’ She gave him a carefully rationed smile. ‘We can only move if there is some prima facie evidence that a fraud has been committed.’
‘And you think there is here. What’s the complaint? Or rather who is the complaint?’
‘What is being alleged is that you have sold a holiday that you can’t deliver. Or won’t deliver.’
‘We’re not going to get anywhere unless I know who it is who reckons he hasn’t got what he paid for. And why hasn’t he – or she – complained to us, so that we could put it right?’
‘They have. We have copies of the correspondence. Or rather copies of the letters he wrote. He didn’t get many answers. He last rang earlier this week.’
‘Wouldn’t have got much of an answer earlier this week with Bill dead and me on the way home.’
He had a point of course, which was why she had come by herself, not mob-handed. She considered him: a big chap, thick hair going grey round the ears, only just not leering at her.
‘He tried to reassure himself by more conventional means, Mr Fleming. But found that the last set of accounts at Companies House are three years old.’
‘Ah, well, I’m not in London much, I am afraid I depended on Bill for all that. I’ll get the accountants on to it straightaway.’
‘Late filing of accounts is of course an offence.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I expect there’s a few of us in the same boat.’
There were, of course – several hundreds of them – and, as he rightly supposed, there was not official time enough to do other than write increasingly rude letters. She was, however, paradoxically heartened by his straight-bat response; it was characteristic of the truly fraudulent. Those who had got into a more or less innocent muddle tended to collapse in tears and confusion.
‘Your customer was sold a two-week holiday in Soller in June, in one of the new blocks you advertised you were building.’
‘We are building at Soller.’
‘Not very fast, I understand. The informant went down last week and could find only a site with no buildings on it at all. He didn’t fancy his chances of having a holiday there in June.’
The big man smiled at her, kindly. ‘He hasn’t read his contract, has he? I’ve been working in Spain a very long time, and what with the unions and the local bad lads you can’t guarantee finishing a building when you hoped you would. So we always put a clause in which says if we haven’t finished a particular building you get something else. Something better as often as not.’
‘If the company can afford it.’
‘I don’t think anybody is suggesting seriously that we are going to let this customer down, are they? Not aloud, where anyone else can hear them, like our solicitor.’
Another salient characteristic of the fraudulent, all the Squad agreed, was the threat of libel action in response to any questions, and Catherine was further encouraged.
‘I’m suggesting it, Mr Fleming, here to you. Your accounts are adrift, your auditors resigned six months ago, and I don’t believe you’ve replaced them, and you’ve got three actions for unpaid bills pending in Majorca. Oh, and you’re a year behind with your rates here, and there are two County Court actions pending against the company by trade creditors.’
Luke Fleming did not move but the smile faded, and she had a strong impression of a system going into overdrive.
‘I’d have to say that cash has been tight, but I was not aware how tight.’
‘You must, however, have been aware of your liability as a director under the Companies Acts.’
‘Oh yes. And my duty to customers, and our suppliers.’ He was watching her intently, looking for an opening, and she presented him with her best, unsmiling, mask. ‘Bill was always an optimist,’ he said at last. ‘I’m afraid he may well have been too hopeful about me getting the Soller apartments finished, but we won’t let the customers down, Detective Inspector. We expect to have some cash shortly for a rather sad reason, but I’m sure you know that in any small business the principals are heavily insured.’
‘For £2m in Mr Price’s case, increased to that last year.’
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘Your fellow director was murdered.’
‘So they say, although I don’t know if that’s right. But the Key Man insurance pays out to the company whatever happened to him, and it’ll pay all the bills I know about. And see any disappointed customers into the best hotel in Soller.’ He shifted position, without taking his eyes off her. ‘That’s what I told Miles – that’s Miles Arnold MP, I expect you know of him. He was sure everyone would be supportive, provided we could pay our way.’
Catherine had been waiting for the political card to emerge and wondered again at the propensity of backbench MPs to take paid jobs with companies run on less than the soundest commercial principles. She considered Luke Fleming. Where the simplest course of action was the businesslike one he would take it, she decided. In a year in the Fraud Squad she had met many men and women who lied for the sake of it, and who walked an incompetent and crooked line, even when a perfectly straightforward route offered itself. Something of this must have got through her professional mask, because Luke Fleming had relaxed, fractionally.
‘Come back in a couple of weeks, Miss Crane – not Mrs, is it? – when the insurance money is in the bank, and I’ve written a few cheques, and got the accountants up to speed and found some auditors. You won’t have anything to worry about and nor will the customers.’
‘What about the sites in Spain?’
‘They’ll be moving, I can tell you that. You ever been there? No? I’ve worked all over the world – well, that’s what happens with civil engineers, and there’s only one rule. Pay your debts or you’ll never work there again. I’ve got a house there, and they’re not very interested in legalities. If the company I work for doesn’t
pay its debts, they’ll go after the house. Or burn it down. Happened to a friend of mine. So you can rely on me there.’
‘How are you going to get them to build the apartments on time?’ This was unwise; she was involving herself with a possible fraud, just as you were all warned not to in the squad, but she was confident in her own abilities and interested.
‘They’re short of work. They’ll build out for me, on spec, if I can keep them going with a bit of cash.’ He grinned at her, and she saw that his teeth had been expensively capped. ‘So. Why don’t you send the chap who has been worrying you to me, and we’ll put his mind at rest. Or give him back his money if he’d rather. We don’t have to but I will, just send him in. And come back yourself if you’d like, to see fair play.’
‘We have the power under the Acts to make an investigation to determine if you are overtrading. We can put accountants in.’
He was not smiling now, but he was not rattled either. ‘Entirely up to you. I’ve called accountants in and they are producing a report right now, and you can have that. Save a bit of taxpayers’ money, wouldn’t it? Mr Arnold will get a copy of course.’
Catherine Crane sat still and thought her way through. It would indeed be difficult to move in on Fleming Price in circumstances where a sum of £2m, enough to settle any short-term debts of which there was a public record, was about to come into their accounts. And if they could satisfy this complainant – and any others who might appear, alarmed by Bill Price’s death – then the Fraud Squad was on weaker ground than they liked. Not hopelessly weak; the Squad had moved on less obvious cases than this one, but it was not a large company, it wasn’t obviously another Barlow Clowes, and it had an MP working for it who would presumably put up a fearsome squawk if he found himself in public trouble as a result of over-enthusiastic action by the Squad. The rational course might well be to wait a couple of weeks, as Fleming was suggesting, and see what happened. It wasn’t her decision to make alone, she needed to report and seek guidance. Time was always useful in a difficult situation; give it a few days and things could be very different. And it could be argued that no creditors of the company would be disadvantaged by waiting for an insurance payment.
