Wheel of Fire

by Hilary Bonner

  Vogel happened to glance out of a convenient window just as she arrived. He watched her climb out of the car and walk briskly towards the station door. She still had the confident swagger about her which he’d noticed when he first met her at the Mount Somerset. In Vogel’s experience that was almost inevitable in those who enjoyed both considerable wealth and extensive power.

  The front office was not manned that day. Vogel walked swiftly through and opened the station door for her. She looked mildly surprised. Vogel liked surprising people.

  He ushered her straight into the interview room, gesturing for her to sit down to the side of the desk which was the main piece of furniture. There was recording equipment in the little room, but Vogel would not be using it as this wasn’t a formal interview. Vogel sat down opposite her. They were quickly joined by Dawn Saslow, who took the third chair.

  Vogel politely thanked Bella for coming.

  ‘I really need to go over a few things with you, and then Dawn will take that statement,’ he began.

  Bella nodded her assent.

  ‘There have been some developments which you may or may not know about,’ Vogel continued. ‘Are you aware that George Grey, your father’s employee who was injured on the night of the fire, has walked out of the Musgrove hospital where he was being treated and that we have so far been unable to locate him?’

  ‘Yes, I do know about that,’ assented Bella. ‘I saw it on the regional news last night. He was described as someone the police believe could help them with their enquiries. I took it to mean you thought he might have started the fire, or at least been involved in some way. Is that so, DI Vogel?’

  ‘It is far too early to make any such assumption, Miss Fairbrother,’ replied Vogel. ‘We are still investigating and accumulating evidence. But we certainly regard George Grey as a person of interest, and we need to find him and talk to him as a matter of some urgency. I wondered what you could tell me about Mr Grey and his wife?’

  ‘Me?’ queried Bella, sounding surprised. ‘Why would I know anything about them? I’ve never even met the Greys.’

  ‘Never?’ queried Vogel.

  ‘Never. I told you, DI Vogel, I’ve been estranged from my father for over a year. And whilst I have encountered him once or twice in the City, which would be almost inevitable, I haven’t been back to Blackdown during that time. I doubt he’d have let me through the door if I had turned up here. And, actually, it was some months before that when I was last here. The Kivels were still employed then, still living in The Gatehouse. Everything seemed normal and appeared to be how it had always been. I had no idea that my father was planning to get rid of them after all those years and move in the Greys. If indeed he was planning it. It could have been some spur of the moment thing. It was just like my father to make some sort of snap decision for reasons which he would probably not disclose to anyone. He wasn’t a man who thought he had to give reasons for anything he did. He always did exactly what he wanted, and hang the rest of the world.’

  Vogel found himself blinking away behind his spectacles. Bella Fairbrother’s apparent display of emotion over the phone earlier had clearly been temporary. Her attitude to her father had definitely not softened.

  ‘So, you had no idea why he sacked the Kivels?’ he continued doggedly.

  ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘People locally seem to think the sacking was in some way connected with his illness,’ said Vogel. ‘Do you think that might be the case?’

  ‘Like I told you, I really wouldn’t know. You may find this hard to believe, but I didn’t even know he was ill until after the board had been told. They naturally assumed I knew, of course. My father eventually got his solicitor to tell me. His solicitor! Even harder to believe, don’t you think?’

  ‘Did you not then try to get in touch with him directly?’

  ‘Yes. I phoned several times. Each time I got his message service, and he never called back.’

  ‘Did you ever consider just coming to see him?’

  ‘Mr Vogel, I didn’t even know for sure where my father was. And in any case, he had made it quite clear he wanted nothing more to do with me. I wasn’t going to beg.’

  Vogel certainly believed that last remark. He could not imagine Bella Fairbrother begging anyone for anything.

  ‘Were you told what your father was suffering from, and just how ill he was?’ Vogel asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ replied Bella. ‘I was also told that my father was hoping to live for at least a year or two more, and that the drugs he was taking were making it possible for him to continue to function in business. But that he wanted me to know that he had made every provision for the continuation of the bank, and a private provision for me from his personal fortune.’

  ‘What did you make of that?’

  ‘What I made of that, Mr Vogel, was that my father had decided to cut me out of the bank and do his best to make sure I had nothing more to do with it. A private provision from his personal fortune, indeed. I have never wanted his damned money, detective inspector. Nor have I ever needed it. I have demonstrated again and again that I can succeed at the highest level in the world of commerce, without him or anyone else propping me up.’

  Vogel stared at her in silence for a few seconds. This was a formidable woman, all right. Even when she was sitting down Bella Fairbrother sat up so straight that she looked tall. Everyone understood about walking tall. Bella Fairbrother, although of average height, sat tall. And she had a way of making everyone around her feel rather on the small side. Even Vogel, who was comfortably over six foot.

  ‘I take it from this that your father made a new will, perhaps quite recently, is that so?’

  Bella Fairbrother shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it wouldn’t have occurred to me that he hadn’t left an up-to-date will clearly representing his wishes. My father would never have put himself in a position where he died intestate. Not with the bank at stake. Not to mention his personal wealth. My father lived and breathed money, DI Vogel. It was his every reason for being. And everything he did in his life was motivated either by financial gain or to protect the interests of Fairbrother’s bank, which, when you think about it, amount to one and the same thing. Even to marrying, when he was a very young man, a woman who came from the right sort of breeding stock to produce the right sort of children to take control of the bank when the time came. Unfortunately for my father that didn’t go quite according to plan. His second child was a girl, me, therefore, however clever and able I proved myself to be, I would never be good enough because I was the wrong gender. And he had yet to learn that his only son was a wastrel quite incapable of running any sort of business, when his eye was taken by a woman little better than a common whore, albeit doubtless excellent at her job, and he ditched my mother without a backward glance.’

  Vogel was having a blinking fit again. He was never comfortable with overt talk of sexual matters, particularly when a woman was doing the talking. He glanced away, hoping Bella Fairbrother would not notice his discomfiture. He was almost sure she didn’t. She was frowning slightly as she continued her reverie. Her body language indicated that she was wound up like a spring. Vogel had learned to be cautious to the point of cynicism concerning anyone involved, however remotely, in a murder investigation. But he would have bet six month’s salary that this part, at least, of what Bella was saying was the truth. And that telling the story caused her genuine pain.

  ‘My mother’s father was a stockbroker and she had a degree in economics which she never used because my father would not countenance even the possibility of allowing his wife to work,’ Bella continued. ‘Her position on the board was merely token, as such appointments have always had been with all the Fairbrother women. Until me. I was never prepared to be merely the token Fairbrother woman on the board, and that is primarily what caused the rift between my father and me. That, and my tendency to question his leadership. Now I have reason to believe that the board might turn to me to
take, at the very least, shall we say, a prominent position again at Fairbrothers. It’s already been indicated that most of them feel they need me back on the board because I know more than anyone else about my father’s affairs and his way of running things.’

  Bella stopped talking at last. Vogel, thankfully had stopped blinking.

  ‘So what made you drive straight down here, Miss Fairbrother? I mean, you knew that your father was dead and that there were probably going to be serious repercussions concerning the future of the bank, something that is clearly very dear to your heart. Also, presumably, with so much at stake, you need to see his will as soon as possible. Wouldn’t it have been more constructive for you to stay on in London?’

  ‘Look, Mr Vogel, I spoke yesterday to Peter Prentis, the solicitor who has handled my father’s affairs for years and who informed me of my father’s illness. He told me that he was no longer in possession of the will my father had drawn up with him about a year previously, soon after we became estranged. At around the same time my father arranged to have almost all of the business and personal files, until then mostly archived with Peter Prentis, removed and transported to Somerset.

  ‘It also seems that my father then appointed a solicitor here in Somerset, in Taunton, with whom he conducted a lot of private business. Peter Prentis told me he’d had very little contact with my father in the year or so preceding his death, and that the last time had been the telephone conversation in which he had told Prentis of his illness, and asked him to pass on the information to me. Clearly, I needed to see this Taunton solicitor, Mr Vogel, as a matter of urgency, to find out what I can of my father’s dealings with him. And I have an appointment this afternoon. Also, I have to find those files. Some may be lodged with this solicitor, of course, but I believe that the majority of my father’s papers, including those removed from Peter Prentis’ office, may be in a specially strengthened storeroom which my father constructed in the basement of Blackdown Manor. I am also hoping, although it may be just a vain hope, that some of the valuable family paintings, and perhaps some other pieces, may be there and have survived the fire. And that’s why I wanted to see you every bit as much as you wanted to see me, Mr Vogel. I really need to be allowed access to the manor very soon, to gain entry to what’s left of the storeroom, see the damage for myself, and evaluate what may be salvaged. I understand only you can give permission?’

  ‘Me and the fire service,’ said Vogel. ‘We will do our best to assist, but safety is the first priority, and preserving the authenticity of the crime scene a close second.’

  ‘I see.’

  Bella Fairbrother looked as if she were about to argue, but didn’t. This is a woman used to getting her own way, thought Vogel

  ‘Is it really that urgent, Miss Fairbrother?’ asked Vogel.

  ‘Almost certainly, detective inspector,’ responded Bella Fairbrother. ‘Almost certainly.’

  Vogel left Saslow to take the necessary formal statement from Bella. But when he heard her leaving the police station he made his way to an appropriately positioned window to watch. She had managed to find a parking space almost directly outside, and she drove away with a squeal of wheels, accelerating quickly along Victoria Street. She was clearly one of those who did not really consider that speed limits applied to her. Even right outside a police station. And probably not many other limits, either.

  Vogel was thoughtful. He took what he considered to be a healthily cynical attitude to anything involving big business and big money. Miss Bella Fairbrother did not seem unduly concerned about preserving her father’s reputation. But he suspected that her mission to save Fairbrother International might also involve a considerable intent to save her own skin. After all, she had been deputy chairman of Fairbrother’s until little more than a year ago. Sir John Fairbrother may have been a maverick, but Bella herself had admitted that she’d worked more closely with him than anyone else.

  Vogel suspected that Sir John’s death, and the fire which had brought it about, along with the destruction of Blackdown Manor, were all attributable to an intrigue reaching deep into the darker extremes of international finance. And it was surely impossible to believe that his daughter had not been complicit to some degree.

  THIRTEEN

  Police Sergeant Leon Knott was one of the safer neighbourhood team covering Brentford. When the call came in he was on patrol with PC Neil Faraday.

  A body had been discovered in the lock at the Thames end of the Grand Union Canal.

  Knott and Faraday were in their squad car heading back to Chiswick police station along the Great West Road. Faraday was driving. He turned the squad car around at the first opportunity and headed back into Brentford.

  The town sits alongside the River Thames, opposite Kew Gardens, where the Grand Union and the River Brent merge and flow into London’s principal waterway. Brentford Dock, now the site of a 1970s housing development, once provided a gateway to the rest of England for international trading vessels which chugged up the Thames and transferred their goods onto canal barges there. The dock, eighteen miles from the coast, was Britain’s furthest inland shipping port, and its location had been chosen because of the huge 28 feet rise and fall of the Thames just outside. Once the canal barges had been loaded, they would enter the Grand Union, the backbone of Britain’s canal system, via the lower part of the River Brent, and a large tidal lock known as Thames Lock.

  This lock could be crossed by a road bridge, and a footbridge, leading to another more precarious footbridge, then Catherine Wheel Road and the Brewery Tap pub. Thames Lock itself, still in effect the gateway to the British canal system, actually comprised of a pair of locks separated by a narrow strip of land upon which sat the lock-keeper’s hut.

  And it was in the lock nearest to the Brewery Tap side of the canal that the body had been discovered by part-time volunteer lock-keeper Bill Cox.

  Knott and Faraday parked in Catherine Wheel Road and walked over the footbridge to where they could see Cox, wearing his distinctive yellow high-vis jacket, standing at the lock-side amongst a small group of people. A narrow boat was moored just outside the lower gates which stood half open.

  Brentford still retained a lot of the characteristics of a small town, in spite of having been swallowed up in recent years by extensive redevelopment causing it to be labelled West London’s latest property hotspot, and Leon Knott was a local man, who himself owned a pleasure boat which he kept in Brentford Dock marina, as did Bill Cox. So Leon knew Bill, and was fully aware of the operating procedure of Thames Lock. Being tidal, access was restricted to just under two hours either side of high tide, and no vessel could pass through without the presence of a lock-keeper, which in October, and throughout the winter and early spring, was by appointment only.

  Bill Cox hurried towards the two police officers.

  ‘We got a body in the lock,’ he said unnecessarily, and continued with a kind of nervous verbal diarrhoea. ‘Am I glad to see you two. I got hold of it with me boat hook. And a nasty turn it gave me too, I can tell you. Almost an occasion to have a vessel come through nowadays, at this time of year. They either stay up in the canals or stay out in the Thames, the pleasure boaters anyway, get the odd work boat, of course, we still have the one working yard, but I’ll tell you one thing, Leon, you know me and canals and boats, what I wouldn’t have given to have been here in Brentford in the days when the big ships was unloading their cargoes into the barges, the traffic, can you imagine what it must have been like—’

  ‘Bill,’ interrupted Leon Knott loudly.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Bill Cox at once.

  Leon noticed that the lock-keeper’s voice was high-pitched and shaky. ‘I’ve had a bit of a shock. You know what, all my years on the river, and doing this job, never come across a body before …’

  He stopped himself this time. ‘Sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘That’s fine, Bill,’ said Sergeant Knott. ‘Perfectly understandable.’

  ‘It’s upset me
a bit, to tell the truth,’ continued Bill. ‘I mean, it’s just an ordinary day and you just don’t expect, I mean do you …?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Leon Knott. Then he continued in an encouraging fashion, ‘Just tell me exactly what happened, Bill. How did you find the body?’

  ‘Well, like I said, we had this narrow boat come through, heading out onto the river. The Hilda May. Going upstream to Maidenhead. The tide was right, gotta catch the tide right with a narrow boat, as you know, Leon, they’ve not the power or the steerage to cope with the Thames, unless you’ve got the tide behind you …’

  ‘I know, Bill,’ interrupted Leon Knott, a note of warning in his voice again.

  ‘Oh yes. Well, she came into the lock all right. No trouble at all. Then when I tried to open the lower gates to let her out the other side, I had the devil of a job, I can tell you. There was obviously something stuck. I got my long boat hook and poked about a bit, and eventually the gate opened enough to let her through. Of course, this lock was built to accommodate vessels wider than a narrow boat, if it had been a standard canal lock she’d have been stuck there, for certain.’

  Bill paused, as if realising he was digressing again. ‘Well, as soon as she was through I got the boat hook again and it snagged onto something pretty quickly, so I just pulled. And up it floated. I let go, straight away, and down it went again. I shouted out, couldn’t help myself, so the skipper of the Hilda May moored up and came back to see if I needed help. But I just dialled 999. Didn’t want to mess with it without the police here. There’s not much more I can tell you, Leon.’

  ‘All right, Bill, so you didn’t see this body very clearly then?’

  ‘No, not really. I was that shocked, you see,’ he added again.

  Leon had one last question.

  ‘You’re sure it was a dead body, aren’t you, Bill?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it could have been a bundle of rubbish or old clothes, or even a guy or something. We’re coming up to Guy Fawkes night, after all, aren’t we?’