‘Right, boss,’ said Connolly.
‘Oh, and ask Swilley to come in.’
‘OK.’
‘And see if you can rustle me up a cup of tea.’
Atherton came into his room just as he was trying to mark out a hundred mile radius on the atlas with a drawing-pin and a piece of string. Annoyingly, of course, he couldn’t get it all on one page, except on the overview page, which didn’t give any useful detail.
‘Bit of a pointless exercise,’ Atherton commented. ‘Why not wait until you get a ping from the ANPR?’
‘I just wanted an idea of where he might have gone,’ Slider defended himself.
‘He might have gone anywhere,’ Atherton said, leaning to look over his shoulder.
‘At least we can be sure he went somewhere,’ Slider countered. Like anyone else who lived north of the river, he was looking to the north of London first – south always seemed a direction of bleakness and desperation. And – lookie here – what was around ninety miles directly north of London, straight up the A1? ‘Stamford,’ he said aloud. ‘With Colleyweston, where he was born, just three or four miles to the west of it.’
Atherton looked. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘He knew he was dying. He’d just seen his son and made his will.’
‘We assume.’
‘And it was a lovely day that Sunday – a lovely autumn day. Maybe he went for a nostalgic look around at the scenes of his youth – why not? Stamford’s a fine old town. And it’s pretty country. Green hills. The woods changing colour. A nice day out to say goodbye.’
‘You’re such a romantic,’ Atherton said. ‘Don’t forget he met and married the lovely June, loyal spouse and the joy of his heart, in Stamford.’
‘Yes, but given that Colleyweston is not a metropolitan hub, he probably had most of his youthful Saturday nights out in Stamford, too. He probably had a lot of memories.’
‘Might have had some friends in the area,’ Atherton admitted. ‘You could be right.’
‘It’s just an idea. Ask McLaren to look for the car in that area first. And try ringing round the pubs and restaurants. If he went that far, he probably ate somewhere up there.’
Atherton shrugged and turned to go, saying over his shoulder, ‘If he paid cash, as was his usual method, they won’t have any record of his name.’
‘But he was a good tipper,’ Slider pointed out, ‘and they tend to be remembered.’
If Sinar Serhati was disconcerted by another appearance of the police at the Piazza, he didn’t show it. He greeted Swilley with a white smile and a wide gesture of welcome, gestured her to a seat at the nearest table, and offered her coffee again.
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got a few more questions to ask you. Won’t take long.’
‘For you, bella signorina—’ he began gushingly, and then, catching her eye, broke off short, shrugged, and said, ‘Sorry. Force of habit. But please, sit down, and tell me how I can help. I suppose you haven’t found out yet who killed poor Mr Bygod?’
‘We’re getting there,’ Swilley lied. ‘Just need to clear a few things up. Now, you said the last time Mr Bygod was in here was on the Saturday before he died. He had lunch.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘Yes, he often lunched alone on a Saturday. I think he liked having the time to himself. He’d have half a bottle of wine and some spaghetti and some olives. He said once it reminded him of Sorrento when he was young.’ Serhati glanced round at his restaurant, and the greyness of Shepherd’s Bush outside, and shrugged. ‘He was a nice man,’ he concluded.
‘Okay.’ Swilley nodded. ‘Now, on that day, did he have any papers with him?’
‘Papers?’ Serhati prepared a negative, then clapped a hand to his mouth in almost comical dismay, his eyes wide above it. ‘Dio mio, I forgot! Not at lunch, but earlier. Should I have told you? Will I get into trouble?’
Swilley, interested that he exclaimed in Italian rather than Kurdish, concluded that the restaurant had got deeper under his skin than he knew, and said, ‘Just tell me now. It might be important, it might not.’
‘He came in in the morning, early, must have been about half past eleven – I was just opening up – to book his favourite table for one o’clock. We are busy Saturday lunchtime – it is best to book. Then he said he had a favour to ask me. I said, “Sure, anything,” and he asked if Tiago and I would witness his signature on a document. Tiago is one of my waiters, he was helping me lay the tables. Anyway, Mr Bygod signed and we signed and that was that. He said he was going to do a few errands and he’d be back at one o’clock, and went away.’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. It didn’t seem important at the time so it went out of my head.’
‘Did you see what was written on the document?’
‘No,’ said Serhati. ‘I don’t know what it was. It was folded kind of long and thin, and all there was on the part he showed us was a line for his signature and two lines for ours. He explained we were just signing to say we had seen him sign it. Tiago said afterwards it was probably some financial thing, a deed, maybe property or something.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘Is it all right? I just forgot, is all.’
‘No, that’s fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about it. So, when he came back to lunch, did he mention this document? Did he say anything about it?’
‘No, no, he never mentioned it again.’
Telling Slider about it on her return, she said, ‘It looks as though that could have been the will, boss. Your hunch was right. What made you think of it?’
The fact was that what looked like a hunch was usually the result of long experience and subconscious filtering of ideas, the pay-off for basic hard work. There was no such thing as a free hunch.
‘The timing just seemed right, that’s all, given that we knew he went in there on the Saturday,’ said Slider. ‘And he knew them, and knew they’d be around for a while. Pity Serhati didn’t see anything else, though – the executor’s name or anything.’
‘Or even that it was definitely the will,’ Swilley added.
‘Two witnesses, in the presence of the signatory and of each other,’ said Slider. ‘I don’t know what else it would be.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Well, thanks,’ he concluded. ‘I don’t know that it helps much, except to help confirm that he had made a new will before he went to see Danny on Tuesday.’
Swilley stirred discontentedly. ‘But if Danny was his only kin, he’d have got the money anyway. Diana Chambers is the only one who needed him to make the new will. And she’d have wanted it to be found.’
‘I know,’ Slider said unhappily.
Porson was unexpectedly consoling. ‘Can’t be helped. Sometimes you have to do it the hard way. Needs must what can’t be endured.’
‘I’m afraid they were hoping for a quick turn around at Hammersmith,’ Slider ventured.
Porson scowled, his eyebrows leaping together like two rams in combat. ‘You let me worry about that. Everyone always wants a result yesterday. But you can’t break eggs without straw. Better to do it right than do it quick. Have you got anything left?’
‘We seem to have eliminated the obvious. But we know he had lots of people coming to him for help,’ Slider said.
‘The more the merrier. Gives you more to work with,’ Porson said, undismayed. ‘Better start charting ’em all, get working on their movements, alibis, etcetrea. Progress of elinimation.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And we’ll go ahead with the leaflets. Get something sketched out, will you? We’ll put a couple of people out in the street handing ’em to passers-by, do the bus routes, get ’em through all the letterboxes on the block. Give the carpet a shake, see what falls out.’ He seemed to take heart from Slider’s air of gloom. ‘Buck up, laddie. You know how it goes – eventually someone’ll come forward. Someone must’ve seen chummy go in or come out, even if he doesn’t remember it now. Slow and steady wins fair
lady.’
Slider murmured agreement and took his faint heart back to his own office. He had hardly sat down when the phone rang. He recognized the tortured RP vowels of June Bygod/Buckland before she had got any further than asking if he was him.
‘How can I help you?’ he asked, with a little wisp of hope curling upwards that she might have some information, might have remembered someone who wanted Lionel dead – preferably a sinister man, seven feet tall with red hair, a scar on his face and an unusual tattoo on the back of his hand.
‘Oh, I was just wondering,’ she said, with a deprecatory laugh. She sounded nervous. ‘Have you made any progress?’
The spark was doused. ‘We are following up a number of leads,’ he said as quellingly as politeness allowed.
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re working very hard,’ she said. ‘But I wondered if you had any idea when all this will be over. I mean, it’s upsetting to think of poor Lionel’s killer walking about loose out there. It would be nice if it was all sorted out and we could put it behind us, get on with our lives.’
I didn’t know you cared, Slider said, but not aloud. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you at this stage how long it will be.’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, as if disappointed. ‘I expect these things take time. I suppose if you don’t find out who did it, eventually you’ll have to write it off – close the file or whatever the right expression is?’
‘No murder case is ever closed, madam, until it’s solved,’ he said firmly.
‘Oh, quite, but – you’d sort of put it to one side, wouldn’t you?’
‘We’re a long way from that stage yet,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll track the culprit down all right. And now, if you’ll excuse me, my other phone’s ringing.’
He disconnected himself, and sat staring at the wall for a long moment, pondering. What had she meant by the call? Did she think they needed geeing up? Or was it—?
Atherton came in. ‘Bullseye!’ he said. ‘You win your choice of a cut glass vase or a fluorescent pink teddy.’
‘How’s that?’ Slider frowned, still far off in thought.
‘Your hunch,’ Atherton said. ‘Which seems to be getting more pronounced, by the way. It’s the lack of ergonomic chairs. Stamford,’ he elucidated, seeing Slider was still only halfway back. ‘You guessed right. He had lunch at the George in Stamford. Waiter remembers him from his large tip, description matches, and he said Bygod mentioned in a chatty way that he’d lived in the area as a lad and had many fond memories of the place.’
‘Oh,’ said Slider.
‘You don’t sound pleased at being proved right,’ said Atherton.
‘I can’t see that it helps,’ Slider complained. ‘Unless he met someone there – and that’s a whole lot more things to check.’
‘Well, he lunched alone,’ Atherton said. ‘And from the timing of the meal he must have gone straight there, but of course he may have gone visiting afterwards.’
‘Or was just driving about, looking.’
‘There is that. But if he visited someone, it might have stirred up an old enmity. Someone he knew an old secret about, who later decided old Li was better off out of it.’
‘I suppose we’ll have to get the local police to make enquiries about his movements,’ Slider said with a sigh. He didn’t like it when a case went out of his area. Foreign police couldn’t be chivvied like your own firm. ‘But it does open up a whole new area of possibilities.’ He looked across as McLaren sidled up to the door and tapped tentatively on the frame for attention. ‘Yes?’
‘Guv,’ McLaren said, ‘I think I might’ve got something.’
‘I’m buying,’ Slider said.
McLaren came all the way in, printout in hand. ‘Well, I was looking for the hire car up the A1, like Jim asked, and there’s cameras on the big roundabout where the A1 crosses the A411. I got him going up and then again coming back.’
‘As you would,’ Atherton said impatiently.
‘Yeah, but no – fact is, he gets pinged there three times.’ He looked at Slider hopefully. ‘He goes north in the morning, straight up the A1. But coming back in the afternoon he turns off, down the A411 towards Chipping Barnet. Then about an hour later he comes back along the A411 and turns south on the A1 towards London.’
‘Chipping Barnet,’ Slider said triumphantly to Atherton, ‘is where June lives, in a delightfully bungaloid residence right on the main road.’
‘The main road being the A411,’ McLaren said, eager there should be no mistake.
‘Yes, I get it,’ said Atherton. ‘So he has his jaunt – perhaps meeting some old friends or perhaps not – and on the way home—’
‘It’s only a mile out of his way, if that,’ McLaren interpolated.
‘—he drops in to see the lovely former Mrs Bygod—’
‘Something she omits to mention to us when asked,’ Slider said happily.
‘—to tell her – what?’ Atherton reached for the end of his sentence.
‘There is one obvious topic,’ said Slider. He paused, thinking.
Eventually, McLaren broke the silence, saying, ‘Shall I go on tracing the hire car, guv?’
‘What? Oh, no. Not for the moment. I’ve got something else for you to do. Get on to the DVLA and get the numbers of June’s van, Buckland’s van, and the Range Rover that’s parked on their front, which I imagine is registered to Buckland. Then look for any one of the three on the Tuesday in the vicinity of Shepherd’s Bush Road.’
‘Right, guv,’ McLaren said, a light going on behind his eyes.
And to Atherton, Slider said, ‘I want you to have a look at Buckland’s business, Barnet Multibelt Limited. Get Gascoyne to help you.’
Atherton frowned. ‘You’re thinking the ex-wife? Isn’t that revenge served unreasonably cold?’
‘Just do it.’ He waved them away. He stared at the wall a bit longer – it was being unusually helpful today, that wall – then got up and went to his door. Out in the CID room, Swilley, at her desk, looked up and caught his eye. He beckoned and she got up and came towards him.
‘There’s something I want you to check,’ he said.
It was late before the various strands came together. Connolly and Fathom went for a tray of teas and everyone assembled in the CID room for the reports to be shared.
First McLaren. ‘It turned out to be the Range Rover – lucky, cos it’s easier for the camera to see in. They’re both there – you can see ’em nice and clear on two of the cameras. He’s driving. They’ve done the M1 and North Circular, he comes off at Dudden Hill Lane, then he must’ve done some back route he knew through Willesden. But we catch him again on Scrubs Lane, then West Cross roundabout, and Jerry gets him on the bus camera in Shepherd’s Bush Road.’
Fathom looked modestly pleased. ‘Five to four that was.’
‘So Lionel had only just got back,’ Connolly remarked.
‘Then we got ’em going the other way starting twenty-five past four. Only, going back, she’s driving,’ McLaren concluded.
‘Thirty minutes. Longer than they needed for a straightforward bash ’n’ dash,’ Atherton observed.
‘Maybe they had a chat that turned into a barney,’ Connolly suggested.
‘What have you found out about Buckland’s business?’ Slider asked Atherton.
‘Buckland owns it. He had a partner way back, but bought him out ten years ago. Did pretty well for a while. But there’s been a sharp downturn since the financial crash, and the business is struggling now. He closed his office two years ago – he does some of the paperwork, and he’s got one secretary working out of her own home, part time.’
‘She’s the one I talked to,’ Gascoyne said. ‘I got the impression she’s more than just a secretary, if you get me.’
‘Might be useful to look into that,’ Swilley said.
Gascoyne nodded. ‘Anyway, she says he’s doing it all himself now. Had to let his men go, does the skilled stuff himself, has a boy to help him w
hen there’s heavy lifting to do, but she says he’s useless – the boy. One of a series of useless boys. She was quite defensive about him working too hard, but proud that he never minds getting his hands dirty. Got the impression he’s a bit of a hero to her.’
‘He took out a second mortgage on the house two years ago,’ Atherton went on. ‘It’s in his name, by the way. And there’s a court case in process against him – a dispute with a big logistics company about some work he did for them.’
‘She mentioned that,’ Gascoyne put in. ‘She says they’re just trying to get out of paying because money’s short since the crash. She says there was nothing wrong with the installation. But it’s costing him in lawyer’s fees, and she says he’s “worried to death” about it – her words.’
‘Anything against him?’ Slider asked.
‘He’s got no criminal record,’ Atherton said, ‘and there’s nothing about him on Crimint. Just this dispute – and he’s two months behind with the mortgage payments.’
‘But he is married,’ Swilley said. They all looked at her. ‘And I don’t mean to June.’ She read from her crib sheet. ‘Philip Arthur Buckland, age sixty-two, married in 1969 to a Wendy Harper in Willesden Town Hall. They were divorced in 1979. He married again in 1984 to a Patricia Boyes, divorced 1992, married a third time – he was a glutton for punishment, this bloke—’
‘Dick-happy, more like,’ McLaren muttered.
‘—in 1993 to a Gillian Cunliffe, from whom there has been no divorce to date. So he could well still be paying for her,’ she added, looking up.
‘So him and your woman June aren’t married?’ Connolly said. ‘Well, well. Livin’ in sin, the little splapeens!’
‘Not married,’ Swilley confirmed, looking at Slider. ‘And the other thing you asked me to check, boss – her and Lionel were never divorced, either.’
‘Ah,’ said Slider, with satisfaction.
‘“Ah” is the mow juice,’ said Porson, making them all jump. He had slipped in quiet as a cat with the inevitable cup of tea in his hand. ‘I’ve been wondering along those lines myself.’
Hard Going Page 25
