by Faith Martin
After work, he’d buy a couple of steaks, some salad and a bottle of her favourite red wine and invite Hillary round to his house. He felt like cooking and he wanted to put her in a good mood.
Any serious talk about his future had to include her, and whatever part she wanted to play in it. He felt himself tightening up again as the thought flashed across his mind, as unbidden and unwelcome as lightning, that that might not be a very big role at all.
Then he leant back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, gently cursing Donleavy. Although the man was helping him to achieve his ambitions, right now he could have kicked the commander in the seat of his immaculate, silver-grey trousers.
Neill Gorman, when they finally got to meet the man, was almost the polar opposite of Mitchell Harris. Although both men were probably around the same age, Gorman looked nearly a decade younger. And whereas Harris was running to fat, Gorman had the wiry, lean frame of a dedicated jogger. He also had a full head of hair and a rather aesthete sort of face. He was dressed in a dark blue suit and blood-red Oxford loafers.
If these were two examples of Felix Olliphant’s friends, Hillary instantly thought, then they certainly added to the picture of a man who could be very varied in his tastes. She couldn’t see either Neill or Mitchell having anything at all in common without Felix Olliphant there to provide a bridge.
‘Hello, Della said you were police?’ Gorman was on his feet and holding out his hand, and Hillary took it, again going through the speech about who they were and what they were doing.
When she’d finished, Gorman echoed Harris eerily when he said, with that same mixture of genuine grief and anger, ‘Felix? Oh Lord, Felix. I still can’t get over what happened to him. I couldn’t understand then, and I still can’t, why anyone would have wanted to kill him. Please, sit down. Anything I can do to help. Anything at all.’
Hillary and Jake accepted two well-padded leather chairs and sat down in an office lined with books and with a view of the city of dreaming spires that was as far removed from Mitchell Harris’s warehouse office as Xanadu was from Charing Cross Station.
‘Thank you. You said you didn’t know who might want to kill Felix,’ Hillary began briskly. ‘I take it then that he never mentioned any enemies to you?’
‘Not at all. Felix just wasn’t the sort to have enemies.’
‘Perhaps that’s not the right word,’ she temporized. ‘By enemies I don’t mean anything so dramatic really.’ Hillary soothed him with a smile. ‘He never said anything more innocuous, say? Like a dissatisfied customer withholding a payment because he wasn’t happy about his new study or someone keying his car late one night, or getting weird phone messages, or anything like that?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that,’ Neill said. He had a neat, no-nonsense, short back and sides haircut of a mousey brown-grey, and wide brown eyes, topped with dark brows. A shadow of a moustache touched his upper lip and his skin had that well moisturised look that spoke of a man who took care of himself. ‘He used to get telephone calls sometimes, you know, on his mobile, that made him look sort of angry. But I think that was because they were interrupting us when we were about to play squash. That’s where we spent most time together – at the squash courts.’
Hillary nodded. ‘I understand. And he never said who these calls were from?’
‘No. Just a friend, he said. Mind you, from the way he said friend I’m not quite sure that’s the word he really wanted to use. I got the feeling sometimes that they were being more of a pest than a pal. But sometimes friends are, aren’t they?’ Neill shrugged philosophically. ‘And besides, when we got together we really liked to play, you know? We weren’t just mucking around – Felix was a good squash player, and so was I. We improved each other’s game, and when we met we liked to get down to it. So neither one of us was in the mood for interruptions.’
‘Would you say he liked to win?’ Hillary asked, curious. ‘I mean, he was competitive?’
‘Oh yes. But so am I. But neither one of us had the John McEnroe temperament or anything like that! We never swore at each other or came to blows or had tantrums or anything.’ Neill Gorman laughed. ‘But we were both serious about our games – we stuck to the rules, we played hardball, as the Yanks would say, and we both wanted to win. Like I said, we were well matched, and playing like that helped us both to up our games.’
Hillary nodded, as yet another side of their victim was revealed. Felix Olliphant might well have been a nice guy but he was also one who liked to play hard and win.
‘He had a steely, determined, resolute side to him then?’ she asked.
Neill Gorman looked a little surprised, then said slowly, ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. But he wasn’t a prat with it, you know? He wasn’t the sort who liked to bully or boast or brag. But when we got on the court, we were both there to win. Yes, definitely.’
Hillary nodded. So Olliphant might have been an even-tempered guy who made friends across the spectrum easily but he wasn’t the sort who would let himself get pushed around either. Interesting. ‘And who won the most?’ she asked brightly.
Neill gave a soft laugh. ‘I like to think the honours were about even. But I suppose, if I were honest, Felix sometimes had the edge. Which only made beating him feel all the better. But win or lose, we were both sportsmen about it. That’s what I meant about him being a bit impatient with whoever it was on the other end of the phone calls. His mind was on the game.’
‘You didn’t ask him who was on the phone, or what the problem was?’
‘Oh no. We didn’t really have that sort of a relationship.’
‘But you got the feeling that it was just the one person? Or did you think it was just people in general bugging him?’
Neill Gorman shifted a little uneasily on his seat. ‘You know, it’s funny you asking that. Before, I think I just assumed it was people in general, you know. Clients, perhaps, or his business partner, or a mix of other people. But somehow, now I think about it, for some reason my gut instinct is to say that I think it was just one person calling him every time. Mind you, I only ever saw him at the sports club, so, perhaps … I don’t know. You’d better not rely on that.’
Hillary’s nose distinctly twitched. ‘But you feel as if he was being pestered by just one person?’
‘Yes. I suppose I do,’ Neill said, somewhat slowly and a little reluctantly. ‘It was just the sort of look that he’d get on his face, you know. The tone of voice. It was always a sort of long-suffering patience. A sort of oh-it’s-you-is-it kind of attitude. I don’t think he’d be like that with everybody, if you see what I mean.’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Hillary answered. ‘There was just the one person who pushed that particular button in him.’
Neill’s face cleared. ‘Yeah. That’s what it was. I just saw him answer the phone, get that look on his face, and I’d think to myself, Oh no, it’s the pest again. Not that he ever said anything like that, don’t get me wrong.’
‘You ever hear him lose his temper on the phone to whoever that was? Use a specific name, or sound scared?’
‘Hell, no.’ Neill shot upright in his chair. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it was nothing like that. I don’t want to blow it up out of all proportion or anything. If you hadn’t been so interested in it, I wouldn’t have even mentioned it. It was never any big deal.’
Or Felix Olliphant made sure that it hadn’t seemed like one, Hillary mused silently, and wondered if Varney had traced all of Felix’s phone calls for the past year of his life. She made a mental note to herself to check it out, and if Varney hadn’t, to start doing so. Although, after fifteen years that was going to be a pain in the backside. Most of the numbers would probably be dead ends by now. People would have moved, died, upgraded their phone lines or got new numbers.
Still, that was what she had Zoe Turnbull and Jake Barnes for, wasn’t it?
‘You socialize with him much, Mr Gorman?’
‘Please, call me Neill. And no, not really. Not much. Me an
d the wife, and Felix and his girlfriend … oh good grief, I can’t remember her name.’
‘Rebecca Morton?’
‘Becky, that’s it.’ Gorman snapped his fingers. ‘Pretty girl. We’d go out for the odd dinner sometimes, at Browns, or the Eagle and Child, somewhere like that. The Trout, once, at Wolvercote. You’ve been?’
Hillary admitted that she had. ‘You see any tension between him and his girlfriend?’ she asked blandly.
‘Can’t say that I did. They seemed well suited.’
‘He drink much?’
‘Not at all. I assumed he was teetotal to be honest. But then, whenever we met up, we’d be driving, so neither of us drank a lot.’
Hillary nodded. ‘You ever see him upset about anything? Thinking back, can you remember a time when he played really badly on court, when he obviously wasn’t concentrating on his game?’
‘Well, only that time he had the car accident. He was sort of cut up and bruised so he wasn’t as limber as he normally was. And that poor little boy … that really upset him. And then, after he’d got over that, there was that one time he played like a girl, and I called him on it, and felt really bad when he’d told me he’d been at a friend’s funeral earlier that day.’
Hillary nodded. Hadn’t somebody else mentioned that he’d lost a close friend? ‘But nothing untoward happened just before he died? Say in the month running up to it?’
‘No. No, he was pretty much the same as usual.’
Hillary kept on for another ten minutes or so, but whilst Gorman was able to paint more or less the same picture of the man as Mitchell Harris had, he came up with nothing new.
Once Hillary had thanked him, and they were walking back to the E-type, Hillary gave Jake a list of instructions.
‘This is the second time we’ve heard about a funeral for a friend. Find out who it was, and when, and if there’s anything about it that rings alarm bells.’
‘Guv.’
‘And find me a copy of Felix’s will – it wasn’t in the original files I had. Things can go missing, so if you can’t track it down, apply for another copy from his solicitors. Varney would have seen it, and the fact that it didn’t feature in his notes probably means there’s nothing in it to raise our eyebrows, but I don’t like not having it to hand.’
‘Guv.’
‘But make Olligree Interiors your first priority. And when you’ve done all that, run a background check on Querida Phelps.’
‘Guv.’
They were now back at the car, and Jake opened the passenger door for her and stepped back to let her in. Hillary caught his eye for a moment and smiled blandly. Jake nodded, and when she was seated, closed the door for her like the gentleman that he was.
Back at HQ, Hillary gave Zoe the onerous job of tracing all of Felix’s phone calls in the last year of his life. ‘I want you to concentrate on the evenings when he was at the squash courts. See if you can find out who was pestering him, if anybody. It may turn out that he was just getting the odd call or two from legitimate friends or relatives, and that our witness was reading more into it than there was. On the other hand, it’s our job to run down any leads that Varney missed. You’ll get the details from our reports on the Harris and Mitchell interviews, which will be in the murder book by tomorrow morning. Right, Jake?’ she added archly.
Jake Barnes, already busy at his keyboard, smiled without breaking his lightning-fast fingerwork. ‘Yes, guv.’
‘Right. Before that, Zoe, you’re with me. I want to start re-interviewing some of the people at the party. We’ll start with the finders of the body.’
‘That’d be the twins, guv?’ Zoe said eagerly. ‘I’ve got their latest address. One of them lives in Bladon. Isn’t that where Churchill’s buried?’
‘It is. Call her, see if she’s in.’
Felix Olliphant’s body had been found by identical twins girls, who’d been the first to decide to leave the party, just after one o’clock, and had gone to retrieve their coats. Roberta and Thomasina Gregory had just turned eighteen at the time, and according to Varney’s notes had both been semi-hysterical by the time the first responders had arrived. Normally anyone finding the body is looked at very closely by any SIO, but Varney had been able to find no connection between the Gregory twins and the victim. Besides, his notes had made it pretty clear that he thought the idea of the girls murdering Olliphant to be all but laughable.
Hillary liked to make up her own mind about such things. As she was thinking this, Zoe hung up the phone, her black-lined eyes shining avidly. ‘That was Roberta Gregory, guv. She’s not only at home but her sister’s with her – karma or what? They’re planning their parents’ golden wedding anniversary or something, and she says we’re welcome to come over and chat any time.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if we weren’t,’ Hillary pointed out with a small smile. ‘We may not be official police officers but we do carry a certain amount of weight,’ she reminded her. It was time the girl learnt that they were in a serious job, and start getting used to dealing with authority – and that included wielding it when necessary, as well as submitting to it from the top brass. ‘Because of what we do, we carry a certain amount of gravitas around with us, so get used to it.’
In response, Zoe grinned and held up a thumb. A skeleton ring on said thumb winked back at her out of two red-garnet eyes.
Hillary sighed.
Roberta Gregory lived in a small Cotswold-stone cottage on the outskirts of the village. The garden had the slightly overgrown look of a not particularly keen gardener and was a riot of messy colour.
When Hillary rang the bell, she wasn’t totally surprised to hear the old-fashioned ding-dong peal echo within.
The door was opened quickly by a tall, dark-haired woman, who was almost painfully thin and dressed in a lime-green tracksuit. ‘Hello, come on in. I’m Bobby, this is Tommy.’ The woman looked over her shoulder as she spoke, and Hillary found herself looking at another painfully thin woman, dressed in a buttercup yellow tracksuit. Their style of hair and make-up were identical. They both wore absolutely no jewellery.
‘Hello, you’re the policewomen right?’ Tommy said.
Her voice had the same, throaty resonance as her twin, and Hillary had them both down as heavy smokers.
Hillary agreed that she was, flashed her ID card, introduced Zoe, and followed the witnesses into a small but charming lounge.
French windows led out to a similarly overgrown back garden and were thrown wide open to let in the late-afternoon sunshine and blackbird song.
‘This is about that man we found, right?’ Tommy said, sitting down on a sofa. When her twin joined her, Hillary could have been looking at a double negative from a photograph, and found herself relieved that they were wearing the different-coloured tracksuits. Otherwise, she’d never be able to tell them apart.
Identical twins had always made Hillary feel just a little uneasy. What must it be like to stand beside someone, look in a mirror, and see two of you looking back? From what little she’d read on the subject, some identical twins went out of their way to appear and act differently from their siblings – colouring their hair, maybe, dressing different, even sporting plain-glass spectacles in order to differentiate.
Others seemed to go down the opposite route and revel in their sameness, dressing identically and getting a great deal of fun out of other people’s inability to tell them apart. These often formed an almost uncanny bond. In extreme cases, she’d read that identical twins sometimes, in childhood, formed their own language or a unique way of communicating in order to isolate themselves further from the outside world.
Although they probably hadn’t gone that far, Bobby and Tommy obviously belonged to the latter category, for, consciously or not, they sat close together on the sofa, all but holding hands and looking uneasy, instantly creating a them-and-us atmosphere and looking like exact replicas of themselves.
Hillary quickly began to put them at ease.
‘I’m sure
you were surprised to hear about this out of the blue, as it were. But I’m a retired DI, now working cold cases. And we’re taking another look at the Felix Olliphant file. We do that occasionally. It’s nothing to be concerned about.’
‘Like that show on the telly?’ Bobby Gregory named a popular BBC cop show that featured a cold-case squad.
‘Yes, just like that,’ Hillary lied with a smile. ‘Zoe here is a probationer, who may join the police force later on. So, you see, this is nothing like a formal interview or anything. We’re just hoping that, after all this time, you might be able to tell us something that didn’t come out during the original investigation. Sometimes people remember all sorts of things years later. Things that, for one reason or another, never got mentioned at the time. We never close a murder file, you see,’ she added, sure that the twins would appreciate the drama of that last statement.
As indeed they did.
Tommy nodded, looking a little happier now. ‘Oh good. I mean, not good. Nothing about that time was good. But I’m glad you’re doing it this time around. We didn’t much like that man in charge much, did we?’
‘Varney,’ Bobby said flatly.
‘No. But there’s not much we can tell you. And we were both really out of it that night, weren’t we?’
‘Utterly blotto.’
‘So I can’t really remember much. Except when I rummaged around to find my coat and I saw his face, I got the fright of my life,’ Tommy continued.
‘Squealed like a rabbit,’ her twin put in helpfully.
‘But I thought he was asleep.’
‘We laughed.’
‘Only he wasn’t. When Bobby lifted her coat off him we saw the blood.’
‘Tommy was sick in the corner.’
Tommy blushed. ‘Sorry.’
Zoe Turnbull, struggling to get down this tennis match of a conversation, wondered if these women were for real. They must be now, what, in their early to mid-thirties, so why did she feel as if she was dealing with someone her own age, or even younger?
Hillary nodded and smiled encouragingly. ‘Did either of you know Felix?’
