Last Reminder

by Stuart Pawson

  The warbling continued. It wasn’t mine. ‘It’s yours,’ I told the super.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he said, looking at it. We both turned and stared through the open doorway, to the phone on the floor, chirruping its song of greeting.

  Someone was determined to get a reply. ‘Answer it,’ I suggested.

  ‘God, what if it’s someone for her?’

  ‘Then they got a wrong number.’

  We stepped inside and resumed our kneeling positions around the raucous piece of electronic wizardry. Isles removed a pen from a pocket and pointed at a button. ‘That one, you reckon?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d say so.’

  He eased the aerial out with a fingernail, pressed the button with a little green telephone on it and said, ‘Hello.’

  I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, so I stretched upright. Isles listened, careful not to touch the phone with his ear. An earprint is as distinctive as a fingerprint, and we use all the help we can get.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I heard him say, ‘we were hoping you’d ring. Your mobile phone has been handed in to the City Police headquarters.’ More listening, then, ‘Earlier this morning. Would you like to collect it, sometime?’

  I couldn’t help smiling. This was too good to be true. Isles said, ‘Shall we say in about an hour. That would make it twelve noonish. If you could give me your name, sir…’ He held a hand up to me, for writing material. I pulled the cap off his pen for him and held my notebook at an open page.

  ‘And your first name, sir… Thank you. And your address is…’

  I couldn’t read his scrawl upside down. He lowered the pen and said, ‘Thank you, sir. So we’ll see you in about an hour. Goodbye.’

  I turned the book around and held it towards the light.

  ‘Know him?’ Isles asked, standing up and flexing each leg to restore the circulation.

  I nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I said, when I’d deciphered his hieroglyphics. ‘I know him all right. We go back a long way.’

  I’d only met Dominic Watts the day before, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

  Personally, I’d have hung on to the phone and let Watts go. Made some feeble excuse about doubting his ownership of it, but we’d let him know, soon as pos. We could have picked him up any time. Mr Isles arrested him and made him strip bollock naked. Even confiscated his shreddies and leather hat for forensic examination. I could have gone down to the cells at City HQ and gloated at him, sitting there in his nifty paper one-piece suit, but I didn’t.

  What I did was spend several hours explaining to Isles, a fresh-faced DCI unknown to me and a couple of DSs the relationships between Watts, Goodrich and the Davis family. They met, we suspected, through the diamond investments, which were legitimate but unwise. How Goodrich and K. Tom talked their way out of that, when they crashed, was only conjecture, but maybe the Hartog-Praat gold came into it.

  ‘Did Watts know Lisa Davis?’ Isles asked.

  ‘Can’t be sure,’ I told him, ‘but there’s no reason why he should have. Maybe his address book will tell us different.’

  ‘He’s denying everything,’ Les told us. ‘Claims he never heard of her. He lost the phone somewhere in town and is threatening us with a wrongful arrest suit. He’s an indignant so-and-so.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

  We were interrupted several times as bits of information filtered through. First of all it was the fingerprint section. The mobile phone was covered in marks, as one might expect, but they didn’t match the ten-print form made by Dominic Watts after his arrest. A small piece of lateral thinking and a call to Criminal Records did produce a comparison, though, indicating that the phone had been last used by Michael Angelo Watts, son of Dominic.

  ‘Shit!’ growled Isles. ‘It looks as if Sonny Jim borrowed his daddy’s phone. We got the wrong person.’

  ‘Let’s drag the son in, then,’ the DCI, who was called Makinson, suggested. ‘Then see what Forensic can come up with to put one of them at the scene. One of them did it.’

  ‘Maybe Forensic won’t find anything,’ I argued. ‘Picture what happened. Someone walks straight in, cuts her throat, walks out again. If they got blood on their clothes they had over twelve hours to destroy them or lose them somewhere…’

  ‘We’re looking,’ Isles interrupted.

  ‘Right,’ I continued. ‘Then there’s the possibility of the transfer of fibres the other way. Watts’s suit looked like silk to me. Something shiny. Not the sort of material that sheds like a moulting labrador. And the son doesn’t exactly wear Harris tweed. We could be on a loser.’

  ‘We found several tyre tracks,’ Les told us, glumly, popping a Polo mint into his mouth. ‘None match Dominic’s car and it’s looking doubtful for Sonny’s. Anybody want one?’

  I took one from the tube and passed it on. Makinson shook his head. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘And what was the motive supposed to be? Remember motives?’

  ‘If we can put one of them at the scene of the crime at the right time,’ Makinson argued, ‘we don’t need a motive.’

  ‘We don’t need a motive,’ I told him. ‘But they need a motive, unless you’re saying one of them is a psychopath. We’re relying too much on forensic evidence. When I retire I’m setting myself up in business as an expert on forensic evidence. For the defence. I reckon I could drive a motorbike and sidecar through most of it, and that includes fingerprints and DNA.’ There. I’d ridden my hobby horse in front of Les’s shiny new DCI. He looked at me as if I’d peed in the font.

  The next interruption saved us from a falling-out. A female DC came in with a list of Lisa’s telephone calls for the day before. Les studied it, checking the date against the calendar and writing against the entries until the relevant bits emerged. ‘OK, pin back your ears,’ he said. ‘She made…ten calls in the morning and four in the afternoon. All the names are here but they don’t mean much to me at this stage. Presumably they’re to do with the agency she ran. Did she work from home, Charlie, do you know?’

  ‘Sorry, Les, I don’t,’ I admitted.

  ‘What sort of agency was it?’

  ‘Office temps, I believe, but she also handled the publicity, and whatever, for her husband.’

  ‘OK. We’ll check ’em out. Let’s jump to the relevant time. According to this she rang K. T. Davis at nine thirty-seven, the call lasting seventeen minutes. At nine fifty-six she rang Heckley police station. That’ll be when she asked for your number, Charlie.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘That call lasted three minutes. Did you ring her straight back?’

  ‘Yes. It was about ten o’clock. Not much later.’

  ‘And how long did you speak for?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Ten minutes, at a guess. It felt like longer, but I don’t suppose it was.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Les said. ‘That takes us to ten past ten. According to this, Lisa rang K. T. Davis again at nine minutes past ten. This time they were only speaking for two minutes. What does all that tell us?’

  I’d been making notes, adding the times, as all the others were. I said, ‘She rang K. Tom and they spoke for seventeen minutes. Immediately after that she rang Heckley nick and asked for me. I spoke to her for, say, eight minutes. As soon as I put the phone down she rang K. Tom again. This time their conversation was short and sweet.’

  ‘So what do you make of it?’

  ‘Plenty, but it’s all conjecture. She’d told me that nobody wanted to talk to her. She was playing me off against K. Tom. It’s painful to admit it, but it was really him she wanted to see, not me. Maybe she rang him to say I was coming round to see her, this morning.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Les nodded. ‘He refused to go round and fettle her, so she rang you. Then she told him that if he couldn’t do the job, she’d found a nice policeman who would.’

  ‘Well, I, er, wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ I protested.

  Les reached out and put his hand on my arm. ‘Don’t worry about it
, Charlie. You’re a single man, and I’m satisfied that your reasons were completely noble. Wouldn’t like to have to convince a jury, though. Seriously,’ he went on, ‘you think there’s a lot more in this, don’t you?’

  Les is older than me, but has slightly less service. He joined after an unhappy spell in the army, and I showed him round for his first few days. He’s ambitious, and very thorough, but sometimes lacks imagination. Or maybe I have too much.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I believe the Hartog-Praat gold figures in this somewhere. Perhaps Lisa told her father-in-law that I knew something about it. Maybe she threatened him. Told him I was coming round in the morning, when she would fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Hell hath no fury, and all that.’

  Isles said, ‘So Davis hot-footed straight over and silenced her.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  DCI Makinson could contain himself no longer. ‘All this is getting too complicated,’ he complained. ‘We have a suspect in the cells and another in the frame. What’s the point in dragging up all this farfetched stuff about Hartog-Praat just because Inspector Priest’s girlfriend had too much to drink. I say we concentrate on what we’ve got. In my experience if there are two theories then the simple one is invariably the right one. It’s called Occam’s razor.’

  A DS sitting opposite raised his eyebrows at me with a wicked grin. Makinson had clearly heard of my service record: inspector at twenty seven, then zilch. I drummed my fingers on the chair legs and bit my tongue.

  Superintendent Isles pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  The DS broke the awkward silence. ‘What did we learn from the Watts’ mobile?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much,’ Isles replied. ‘Only half a dozen numbers stored on it. We’re looking at them. Haven’t received a record of calls made, yet.’

  I said, ‘Did you find an answerphone at Lisa’s house?’

  The DS nodded.

  ‘Was the last message still on it? Mine stores the last one until it’s recorded over.’

  ‘Yeah. So does hers.’

  I looked at him, inviting him to reveal its contents. After a few seconds he said: ‘It was from her mother, inviting Lisa to join them for Sunday lunch. That’s all.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I mumbled.

  The other DS said, ‘You reckon K. Tom Davis was in debt to the Wattses, because of the diamond failures?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I agreed.

  ‘Any idea how much?’

  ‘Not accurately, but we could easily be talking about a million pounds.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ he observed. ‘Maybe killing Lisa was a warning. Like, a last reminder.’

  ‘A final demand, calling the debt in. Could be.’

  Superintendent Isles was deep in thought. ‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘you told us that the son’s house, which adjoins Dominic’s, is fortified.’

  ‘Yep, that’s right.’

  ‘But you reckon there’s a door knocked through between the two.’

  ‘Can’t be sure, but I’d gamble your salary on it.’

  ‘Fair enough. OK, here’s how we handle it. We go for the simple explanation. You, Charlie, hang fire for a couple of days and see what we turn up. We can search Dominic Watts’ house because he’s under arrest with a murder charge hanging over him. Michael Angelo Watts is implicated, so we take out a warrant to search his house. But we don’t go in waving the warrant. We enter via the internal door from Dominic’s and then we wave the warrant. Hopefully we’ll be able to shepherd everyone downstairs before they know they’ve been busted.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ I declared, rising to my feet. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Les replied. ‘I’ve told you to hang fire. We’ll see to the Wattses, one way or the other, then you can take it from there. OK?’

  I sat down again. ‘Yeah. Fair enough,’ I said. ‘But do I get to talk to Dominic?’

  ‘I can’t see why not. And we will have to interview your witness, K. Tom Davis, about the telephone calls.’

  ‘OK. You talk to them about the murder, I’ll concentrate on their financial dealings. Another thing. Can I send someone from the Fraud Squad with you on the raid? They know what to look for. Then we’ll compare notes, what, Monday morning?’

  ‘No problem. Monday it is,’ Les replied, gathering his papers together to indicate that the meeting was over.

  Makinson said, ‘You have a weekend off, Mr Priest. I’m sure you’ve earned it. Monday morning you’ll find that it’s all neatly sewn up. Then you’ll be free to run about after your money-launderers.’

  Isles turned to him and smiled like a May morning.

  ‘Inspector Priest,’ he confided, ‘has a tendency to see bogeymen where the rest of us see nothing. He believes that behind every little crook there is a conspiracy of big crooks feeding off him.’ His face hardened as he added, ‘The only trouble is, he’s caught more big-time villains than you and me put together have ever dreamt about. When Charlie speaks, I listen.’

  Thanks, Les. I don’t like slapping down senior officers. These young ones can’t take it; go running for the rule book. It causes unpleasantness.

  On the way home I called in at a jeweller’s and asked to see the top man. He confirmed that it was normal practice to melt gold with a butane flame. It didn’t oxidise or corrupt in any way.

  The wedding wasn’t until three o’clock, Saturday afternoon, so I had plenty of time for other things. I swapped the cars round after breakfast and waited for the postman, but there wasn’t a letter or card from Annabelle.

  The chief constable had no reason to be visiting the City HQ on a Saturday morning, so at precisely eight forty-five I swung the long nose of the E-type into his parking spot.

  Les Isles was in, looking out of his window. ‘Saw you come, he said. ‘The car looks fabulous. Your dad would have been proud of it. Did he ever see it finished?’

  ‘No. He died two years before it was completed. Thanks for yesterday, Les. I’m grateful.’

  He screwed his face up, like when you don’t want to laugh out loud, or even cry, so you give the muscles something else to do.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  It was a laugh he was suppressing. ‘Something’s amusing you.’

  He leant back on the radiator and waved a mug at me, his composure regained. ‘Want a coffee?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ll pop down and see Dominic Watts, if you don’t mind. You still have him, I presume.’

  ‘For another five hours. I was thinking about your dad.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Oh, I just owed him one.’

  ‘I’ll accept it on his behalf. Call it paid back in full. What did he do?’

  He smiled at the memory. ‘It was during that time we were all sergeants. You’d gone to Leeds, I was here with him. I dropped a bollock. An almighty, gold-plated bollock. One of those that either finishes you or makes you a figure of ridicule for the rest of your career. Did he ever tell you about it?’

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to. I don’t know what he did, who he had a word with, but he covered up for me. Nothing happened. Years later, when he was ill, I went to see him in hospital. I thanked him for what he’d done. He said we had to stick together. Times were changing. He said that he worried about you, because you were reckless. He asked me to look out for you.’

  Now it was my turn to gaze out of the window, over the roofs and chimney pots and tower blocks and steeples, without seeing any of them. Les was suggesting having a pint together sometime when his phone rang. He said, ‘Yes, sir,’ into it, and rolled his eyes at me. I gave him a wave and sneaked out.

  Dominic Watts’s expression made me feel about as welcome as a shit fly on a prawn sandwich. ‘I presume you have come to rejoice at my predicament,’ he said, every consonant present, the cadence rising and falling like a waltz rhythm.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I derive no pleasure from see
ing a man of your age in a cell.’

  ‘Then why are you here? I have nothing to say to you or anyone else. First you accuse my son of dealing in drugs, now you are attempting to pin a murder charge on me. These are false accusations.’

  ‘I want to ask you some questions, I said. ‘As you know, you are entitled to have a solicitor present. Do you require a solicitor?’

  ‘I have nothing to say, either in the presence of a solicitor or without one.’

  ‘How well did you know Hartley Goodrich?’ I asked.

  ‘I have no comment to make.’

  ‘Did he act as your financial adviser; arrange some investments for you?’

  ‘You have examined his papers – his books – I presume.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you know the answer to your own question, Inspector Priest.’

  ‘We know he placed some money for you with a variety of financial institutions. Do you know anybody called Jones?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘Then how do you explain these?’ I removed some photocopied pages from my inside pocket and passed them across to him. When his house was searched, Maud had found entries in a notebook that corresponded with the amounts of money paid into one of the Jones accounts.

  His eyes flicked downwards for an instant, before he said, ‘I cannot explain them, Inspector, for I do not recognise them.’

  ‘They were found in your house.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘And similar lists were found in Michael’s house.’ He stiffened at the mention of his son’s name. ‘Along with a quantity of cannabis and a few hundred ecstasy tablets. What’s gone wrong? Can’t he afford heroin any more? Starting at the bottom again, is he?’

  ‘They were planted by your officers.’

  ‘That won’t do, Dominic,’ I told him.

  ‘And I am not a murderer. No doubt if you try hard enough you will pin one of these crimes on us.’

  ‘Did you know Lisa Davis?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So you didn’t cut her throat?’

  ‘Does it matter how many times I deny it?’

  ‘Your son keeps a Filofax. Handy things, Filofaxes, though I never felt the need for one myself. Lisa Davis’s phone number was found in it. He knew her, and his fingerprints were found on the phone.’