‘You mean there’s more?’ I queried.
‘Just a bit. University lecturer is only one of his jobs.’
‘Where did you say this info came from?’ Gilbert interrupted.
‘The SFO,’ Dave answered.
‘No, where did they get it from?’
‘No askee,’ he replied with a shrug, implying ask no questions, be told no lies.
‘The Inland bloody Revenue, I bet,’ Gilbert stated.
‘Like I said,’ Dave told him, ‘they have better contacts than us.’ The Inland Revenue’s principal task is collecting taxes. They’re not a reservoir of essential information for the law enforcement agencies. If it were common knowledge that they supplied us with details of their clients’ finances it would hamper their tax-collecting abilities, so they don’t do it. Anything an individual employee of theirs might pass on is strictly off the record.
‘So what else did they say?’ I demanded, impatiently.
‘Apparently,’ Dave continued, ‘Mr Kingston also earns a healthy salary working as a freelance consultant. His main customer for this work – in fact, his only customer for the last few years – is…wait for it…something known as the Reynard Organisation.’
‘The Reynard Organisation?’ I whispered.
Dave nodded. ‘Yep!’
‘Reynard the Fox. Holy mother of Jesus!’ That was it. We had the link. Duncan senior started the fire, Melissa put him up to it, Kingston was pulling her strings. Crosby owned the house and he was Fox’s sworn enemy. And Kingston worked for Fox. QED, quod erat demonstrandum. ‘Which was to be proved.’ All we had to do now was the demonstrandum bit.
CHAPTER NINE
I put the phone to my ear and nodded to Annette Brown, our swish new DC. She was seated in my office where I could see her through the window. We’d set up a telephone conference on the internals, with Dave, Nigel, Jeff and myself all listening in the big office.
Annette picked up my phone and dialled the Kendal number. After three rings a man said: ‘Hello.’ It’s difficult to form an impression from just hello.
‘Is that Mr Kingston?’ Annette asked in her best little-girl voice.
‘It might be,’ he replied.
‘Oh, hello, Mr Kingston,’ she went on. ‘This is Janine from ABC Windows. We’re doing a promotion in Kendal at the moment, with fifty per cent off, and are looking for a show home in your area. Would you be…’
‘What did you say your name was?’ he interrupted.
‘Er, Janine, Mr Kingston.’
‘And do you have a boyfriend, Janine?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘So in that case why don’t you piss off home and get him to give you a good stiff seeing-to.’ CLICK!
The four of us in the outer office buried our heads in our arms and shook with laughter. When I looked up Annette was standing there, blushing. ‘That was short and sweet,’ she said bravely.
It wasn’t politically correct, but I couldn’t resist it. I flapped a hand towards the door and said: ‘Well, off you go then.’
It was Friday and he was at home. I didn’t want to wait until Monday, but we were supposed to be having a team meeting in the afternoon. Dave knew as much as I did about this case but we were both a week behind with the burglaries, although it was obvious that there had been nothing new to report. I decided to dash up to Kendal to try to catch Kingston at home while they held the meeting without me. Dave and I discussed tactics and at just after eleven I filled the car with petrol and pointed it towards Cumbria, formerly Westmorland, aka the Lake District.
First stop was Kendal nick. I had a long talk with my opposite number, who I’d never met before, and told him the minimum I could. He realised I wasn’t being too forthcoming but had the good sense to know that I probably had my reasons and didn’t ask too many questions. The main thing was that he offered his cooperation and gave me directions to Kingston’s house.
Somebody once said that schizophrenics build castles in the air, psychopaths live in them and psychiatrists collect the rent. OK, so he was a psychologist, but he was doing very nicely. The house was the end one of three that a farmer had built in one of his fields in the middle of nowhere. How he’d obtained planning permission was probably a story in itself, but the proof was here in the security gates, the five- or six-bedroomed mansion and the sweeping views towards the mountains. I pressed the button and wondered what happened next.
There was a click and a hum and the big gates swung open. They were black with gold arrowheads and Prince of Wales feathers. I looked one way, then the other, and strode off up to the block-paved drive. I’d once had a quote to have mine done like this, but had thought £4,000 excessive and opted for tarmac again. Kingston’s drive was about twenty times as long as mine. Loopy Lucille from Draughty Windows could have earned herself a holiday in Benidorm with the commission on this. When I reached the door I paused for breath and rang the bell.
It definitely wasn’t the cleaning lady who opened the door almost immediately, her mouth already forming words which she cut off when she saw me. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, with what might have been a touch of disappointment. ‘I, er, I’m sorry, I, er, thought you were the man from Wineways.’
She was about average height but that was the only thing about her that was average. Ash-blonde hair down to her shoulders and curves like Monza, fast and sweeping, demanding your full attention. She was under thirty, at a guess, and wearing a navy-blue pullover with a white blouse and jodhpurs. This was trophy wife incarnate. I took it all in with a trained policeman’s sweeping glance, from the Hermes scarf at her throat right down to the gleaming riding boots with two spots of mud on the left and three on the right. She’d been out for a canter.
‘No,’ I said, offering my ID. ‘I’m the man from the CID. Detective Inspector Priest. I was wondering if I could have a word with Mr Kingston.’
She quickly regained her composure and realised I really was just another tradesman. ‘Mr Kingston?’ she echoed, as if I’d asked for an audience with Barbra Streisand. I was two steps down from her so she had the advantage, whichever way you looked at it.
‘Is he in?’ I wondered.
‘What’s it about?’ she demanded. ‘He’s very busy.’
‘Are you…Mrs Kingston?’ I risked. I suppose she could have been his daughter.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Could you please tell him it’s about a little matter that I’m sure he can clear up. I won’t keep him more than a few minutes.’
‘Well, actually, he’s not in the house. I think you’ll find him in the belvedere.’
‘The Belvedere?’ I queried. Where the hell was the Belvedere?
‘Yes. He does his reading there.’
‘Can you give me directions, please?’
She stepped down to my level and pointed to the corner of the house. ‘At the bottom of the garden,’ she told me. ‘I’ll tell him you’re coming.’
I wandered down the side of the house feeling bemused. He had a pub at the bottom of the garden? Wow! Wait till I told Sparky! There was a BMW M3 convertible in one of the garages and a short hike away I saw a large summerhouse flanked by ornamental trees. As I approached it Kingston came to the door and held it open for me, for which I was mightily grateful. This, presumably, was the belvedere, and they had a telephone line to it.
They also had electricity and the security system coupled up. It was a double-glazed mahogany construction shaped like an old thrupenny bit, with a raised deck running all the way around it.
‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ Kingston greeted me. ‘My wife forewarned me of your approach.’
I entered, then waited for him to pass me because there was more than one room. He pushed a door open and said: ‘In here, please.’
It was every grown-up small boy’s dream. Windows on three sides gave a view of the hills, as if from a ship’s bridge. Behind me, the wall was lined with bookcases and framed old Ordnance Survey maps. ‘What a gorgeous view,’ I stated
.
‘Mmm, it is,’ he agreed. ‘Goat Fell. We try to walk over it three times a week.’
‘Both of you?’
‘Of course. Just the thing to raise your, er, spirits.’
‘It’s beautiful. I envy you.’
‘Do you know the Lake District at all?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’ve done most of it,’ I boasted.
‘Really? Good for you.’
Leaning in a corner I noticed a high-powered airgun with a telescopic sight, and one of the windows was wide open.
‘Shooting?’ I asked, nodding towards the gun.
‘Squirrels,’ he replied. ‘Grey ones, of course. Bloody menace they are.’ Thirty yards away, hanging from a branch, were several bird-feeders filled with peanuts.
‘Sit down, Inspector,’ he invited, ‘and tell me how I can help you. Francesca didn’t catch your name…’
‘Priest,’ I told him, settling into a studded leather chair that matched the captain’s he pulled out for himself. ‘From Heckley CID. I believe you were a lecturer at Essex University back in 1969.’
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, throwing his head back and guffawing. ‘I knew I should have paid that parking ticket! You’ve taken your time, Inspector, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
I didn’t mind at all. My day would come. In some ways he was a bit like me. Tallish, skinny, with all his own hair worn a little too long. The years had treated us differently, though. My features have been etched by alternating stress and laughter into an attractive pattern of wrinkles and laugh-lines. Well, I think so. He’d grown flabby-cheeked and dewlapped from a dangerous combination of dissolute living and half-hearted exercise. He wasn’t wearing well, in spite of his efforts.
I said: ‘You lectured in psychology, sir, I believe.’
‘That’s right, Inspector. You are to be commended for your diligence; I can see you’ve done your homework.’
‘Can I ask…why psychology?’ There was no table between us and I carefully watched his reactions. He might have the book learning, but my knowledge of human behaviour was honed on the streets and in the interview rooms, with some of the toughest nutters and craftiest crooks in society.
He smiled and shrugged, saying: ‘I’ve never been asked that before, Inspector. Is it part of your enquiry?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I just wondered how a person goes from school into a subject like that. It’s not as if it was on the curriculum in those days is it?’
‘No, I suppose you’re right.’ He thought for a few seconds, then said: ‘Girls.’
‘Girls?’ I repeated.
‘Mmm. Girls. I’m a Freudian, Inspector. I think I went into psychology because: a) I would meet lots of girls, and b) I’d learn how to deal with them after I’d met them. Does that answer your question?’
‘Did it live up to expectations?’
He bit his lower lip and nodded his head, very slowly. ‘I think I can safely say that it did. It bloody well did. After all,’ he continued, ‘we’re talking about Essex in the sixties. What more could a man want? What was it that poet said? Sexual intercourse was invented in 1962, or whenever?’
‘Philip Larkin,’ I told him. ‘It was 1963, after the something-something and the Beatles’ first LP.’
‘That was it. Bloody wonderful time, it was. Did you go to university, Inspector?’
‘Art college, about the same time.’
‘Well then, you’ll know all about it, eh?’
‘Can you remember any names from that period?’ I asked.
He pulled his feet in, just for a moment, then relaxed again. ‘Students, you mean?’ he queried.
‘Mmm.’
His right hand brushed his nose. ‘No, ’fraid not,’ he replied.
‘None at all?’
He did an impression of a thinking man before shaking his head.
‘I have a list of names,’ I told him, taking my notebook from my jacket pocket and opening it. ‘I’m supposed to ask if you can volunteer any, and if you can’t I’ve to prompt you with a few. Is that OK?’
‘Fire away, Inspector.’
‘Right.’ I glanced down at the notebook. ‘Have you ever known a girl called…let me see… Melissa Youngman?’
His hand went to his mouth in a pensive gesture and he said: ‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
I put a cross next to carrots on last week’s shopping list. ‘How about Janet Wilson?’
This time there was no reaction. ‘No.’
‘Mo…Dlamini, would it be?’
He pulled his feet under the chair and said: ‘No.’
‘You never heard of any of them?’
‘No.’ He relaxed, stretching his legs again, and said: ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but it was a long time ago, and to be honest, sometimes I couldn’t remember their names the next morning. Are you allowed to tell me what it’s all about? It must be serious after all these years.’
‘Something about a fire, I believe, in an area of Leeds called Chapeltown. It’s the red-light district. A witness has recently made a death-bed statement that has led us to this woman called Youngman, but we can’t find her. One of my chiefs has decided I haven’t enough to do already and has given me the job of looking into her background and associates. We’ve got to look as if we’re doing something, I suppose. I’m told that she went to Essex University and one of her classmates thought she’d had an affair with a psychology lecturer. That led me to you. Believe me, Mr Kingston, I’ve enough on my plate that happened last week, never mind twenty-three years ago. I suspect that it’s to do with drugs, it usually is, but nobody tells me anything.’ I closed my notebook and asked if there’d been much drug-taking at Essex.
It was there, he told me, for those who took the trouble to look for it. And if you were at a party the odd reefer might be passed round. He’d dabbled, of course – who hadn’t? – but only with pot. Nowadays he didn’t know what made young people tick. He sympathised with the dilemma the police and the government were in. Legalisation wasn’t the answer; that would just make a fortune for the tobacco companies. Perhaps the new Drugs Tsar would make a difference? I stifled a smile. We call him Twinkle, as in Twinkle, twinkle, little Tsar.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’ve never heard of her or the others I don’t think I need trouble you any longer. Thanks for your time, sir.’
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘I’m only sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance.’
I stood up as if to take my leave and glanced around. ‘Is this where you do your studying?’ I asked.
‘Yes. This is my little den.’
I turned towards the bookcase. ‘May I look?’
‘Of course.’
They were the sort of books that are referred to by the names of the authors rather than title. Get out your Weber, Umlaut and Schnorkel rather than your The Perceived Differences Between Alternative Analytical Approaches to Clinical Investigations of Stress-Induced Syndromes in Western and Oriental Societies. They made Stone’s Justices Manual sound kid’s play. I let my eyes flick over them, not paying much attention, until a familiar title caught my eye.
‘Read one!’ I announced triumphantly, pointing to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which had been a cult read book in the seventies.
‘Ah, the Pirsig,’ he said. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Mmm. Dabbled with Zen for a while afterwards. And caught up on my Plato.’
‘Really?’
Further along I saw some more I had read. I was definitely down among the beer-drinkers now. ‘And these,’ I told him. ‘The Carlos Castanedas.’
‘I’m impressed, Inspector,’ he replied. ‘What did you think of them?’
We had something in common. I decided to milk it for every drop. ‘I thought they were interesting,’ I told him. ‘Only last week I was walking in the Dales when the weather changed. I could feel it coming, long before it reached me. It was probably only a temperatu
re drop, or the wind rustling the heather, but I thought of Castaneda and wondered about it. And I always look for a power spot before I sit down to eat my sandwiches.’
‘Ah! Don’t we all, but we are only looking for somewhere free from sheep droppings, eh, Inspector?’
‘No, I think there’s more to it than that.’
‘You’ve surprised me,’ he said. ‘You’re obviously a man with a great sense of the spiritual. You said you’d walked most of the hills in the Lake District, I believe?’
‘Several times, over the years,’ I replied.
‘Have you ever done any at night?’
‘No, not really. Camped out near Sprinkling Tarn a couple of times in my youth. That’s all.’
‘Well, I recommend you try it. The spirits are abroad after dark, Inspector. Late evening is a very special time. For a man with a soul it’s a wonderful experience up there. Power is everywhere, believe me.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’
‘Only for he that cannot see.’
‘I’ll have to try it some time. Thanks for your time, Mr Kingston.’ I walked to the door and he followed me out.
‘I’ll take you through the house,’ he said. We wandered down the path, making small talk, and entered through a back door inside a smallish porch filled with flowers I couldn’t name. ‘Darling!’ he called when we were inside.
Francesca appeared and Kingston said: ‘The inspector’s leaving, dear. I wasn’t able to help him, unfortunately.’ He introduced us and we shook hands.
‘Perhaps you’ll stay for a coffee next time, Inspector,’ she said.
Only if you make the offer first, I thought. We were in a passage, quite gloomy, that ran through the house. There were original watercolours of Lakes views on the walls, and in an alcove I noticed a display cabinet filled with cameras.
‘Who’s the photographer?’ I asked, although I knew the answer.
‘Oh, I used to dabble,’ Kingston replied.
There was a full range, from ancient folding jobs with bellows, levers and spirit levels, right up to a Nikon with a complete set of lenses. He hadn’t bothered with the latest electronic devices which did everything for you except choose the subject. Smack in the middle, with the others arranged round it, was the famous single lens reflex Hasselblad.
Some by Fire Page 18
