by Janet Neel
‘Did you use the lift?’ McLeish kept his voice dead level.
‘No. Walked up. Didn’t want to make a noise.’
McLeish drew breath, carefully, and heard Davidson do the same. ‘Why did you come back?’
‘I wanted to see Selina.’ Richard Marsh-Hayden sounded simply surprised. ‘We had a row. I told you. Wanted to make up.’ He looked across at them and his mouth went tight and pulled down, and his eyes blurred and he reached unseeingly for one of the grubby handkerchiefs.
‘How long did you stay on the premises?’ Davidson had got too anxious to sit still.
‘Mm. Well, I was a bit pissed, so I had a slash in the men’s downstairs. Did that first. Then went up to the office, sat there for, oh, ten minutes or so, just thinking. Then I looked around and found some water in the office fridge, I needed something. Then I decided I’d better go.’
McLeish sat, in silence, considering this history. Davidson was fidgeting again, unobtrusively, but he didn’t need reminding of the difficulty.
‘So you didn’t go home? Although you were trying to find your wife?’
‘Had a chance to think about it. Didn’t want to get home pissed and have another row. So I was sick – made myself – in the gents downstairs and went to the baths. Thought I’d only be an hour or so, but I went to sleep. Got home around ten, but she’d gone. Like I told you.’
This bit accorded with the records at the baths. It was a deeply unconvincing recital, but the man appeared to be unconscious of its deficiencies. Well, he was, utterly, soddenly, drunk and McLeish hesitated. It was a temptation to take him into custody, now, but no matter how much Richard Marsh-Hayden was estranged from his family, they were a powerful lot, and there would be an expensive solicitor round his neck inside a couple of hours, hampering investigations. As he deliberated, Richard laid his head on the desk and slept, fitfully snoring. McLeish leant over, abstracted the bottle and jerked his head at Davidson who followed him out. ‘I’ll do this in the morning, but put a watch on him. This lot can get him home.’
They clattered downstairs and found Michael Owens, huddled in the kitchen with Judith and Tony. ‘It’ll be quiet in a minute,’ she called over the noise. ‘Mac’s people are going off to eat, and the joiners who are coming to clear the next lot don’t come in till nine thirty.’
He waited, with acquired patience, as a blessed silence fell and the crew in the kitchen unhuddled and went to make coffee and sweep the dust off a couple of tables while McLeish addressed himself to Michael Owens. ‘Can you get him home? Yes? If you give him an hour to sleep it off you can get him into a cab.’
Michael Owens sighed, exasperated. ‘Cabs won’t take him and I don’t blame them. I’ll have to take him.’ He chewed his lip in frustration. ‘Anyway. Our problem. Nothing more we can do for you, Chief Superintendent?’
McLeish confirmed that he, too, was on his way home, and went, leaving Davidson to make sure the watchers were in place.
11
‘Judith. The safe’s open.’
Mary, plump and blonde, neat in short-sleeved top and pleated Terylene skirt, was standing, irresolute, looking at the big safe, the heavy door an inch or so open. ‘Were you in earlier?’ she asked, as Judith, in clean boiler suit, deposited a briefcase on her desk.
‘No. I must have left it last night. I had it open two or three times yesterday, but I did think I’d left it shut.’ She sat down behind her own desk and thought about the safe. Mary had had yesterday off, so it was no good asking her. ‘There isn’t any cash in it,’ she explained to Mary’s reproachful face. ‘I put the cash in the little old safe … oh … yesterday.’
Mary blinked at her.
‘The cash from Saturday’s take. I thought we’d need it with all this lot on site. Indeed, we will on Friday, but I haven’t actually used it yet.’
‘But you put it in the old safe.’ Mary was honestly puzzled, and Judith felt herself redden.
‘There were a lot of people about.’
‘And you didn’t want them to know we kept cash in the safe.’ Mary obviously felt she was getting closer to understanding, but to Judith the whole explanation sounded less and less likely. Where did sane business people keep cash if not in a safe? Why have a safe if it was not used as a depository for cash? But it would be wholly unfair to Richard to share her suspicions with Mary.
‘Well, anyway, I put it in the old safe, but I could swear I shut the big safe. I did put the management accounts and the back-up disks in there. We’d better look.’
They looked and Judith sat back. ‘It’s all there. I must just be going round the bend.’
‘You’ve had too much, and now this awful fire. I’m ever so sorry I had to take a day’s holiday, but Liz couldn’t change.’ Mary, in addition to her other burdens, shared the care of an increasingly old and forgetful parent with her only sister. ‘Shall we check the old safe?’ She was making for the small inner office as she spoke, and Judith followed her meekly. ‘It’s moved,’ they both said, simultaneously, and stared at it. It had been pulled away from its corner and turned slightly towards the light, but it was closed. Judith, hands trembling, turned the wheel, counting to get the combination right, and swung the door open. The cash was there in a pile on top of a heap of papers, as she had left it yesterday. ‘It’s all right.’
‘We’d better count it,’ Mary suggested.
They did that, and it was all there, and Judith sat back, pale with relief.
‘What’s that file?’ Mary had squatted beside her, and reached over to pull out a red envelope file, labelled ‘Insurance policies; old’.
‘I suppose what it says? Better look, though. I’ve been finding papers in all sorts of places they shouldn’t be.’
Mary struggled to her feet, apologising for the creaks, and opened up the file while Judith sat on the floor, irresolute, trying to decide what to do with the cash.
‘Oh. Oh dear, Judith.’
‘What?’
‘There are letters. To Selina.’
‘What sort of letters?’
‘Well, very personal ones.’
They looked at each other.
‘Mr Marsh-Hayden ought to have them …’ Her voice trailed away as she looked down, distressed, at the file.
Judith clambered ungracefully to her feet. ‘Let me look. Oh.’ She read the first one, feeling a blush come right up from her neck. ‘We can’t,’ she said slowly. ‘The police were here over the weekend, checking Selina’s desk for anything personal. They’ll want them.’ She considered the file, anxiously. ‘I suppose Selina thought they’d be better in the safe and the police didn’t look.’
‘But they did,’ Mary said. ‘I opened it for them on Friday and they had a look through. It was only rubbish. This – these letters weren’t there, I mean, they’d have found them.’
Judith gaped at her. ‘We’ve had all sorts through the office, when we were moving things around on Sunday, but I couldn’t get in here most of yesterday.’
‘You were too busy, I’m sure,’ Mary said, helpfully.
‘No. Richard was here, getting drunk. We couldn’t get him out.’
They stared at each other, and Judith, moving like a sleepwalker, went to find a telephone.
*
‘It’s ten thirty. The Hon. Richard was due here at ten. Will I get the lads to fetch him out?’
‘Ah. So it is.’ John McLeish, dictating to his secretary, was two-thirds down the in-tray. ‘I wondered why I was doing so well, I’ve had an extra half-hour. Have you rung him up?’
Davidson retreated to do that, and McLeish took a run at the Annual Leave table, neatly summarised for him by his secretary on a Post-It.
‘No one below the rank of DI plans to be here at all from 20 December to 5 January, I see.’ He dictated a note to four detective inspectors, reminding them of the minimum practicable level of staffing needed, and asking for a plan agreed between all four of them by the end of next week. The trouble with all administrat
ion was that you had to keep on top of it; ignore the stuff that didn’t immediately need doing for a couple of weeks and it all needed doing at once. And it would have taken the opportunity to multiply, somehow, inside the pile of papers like neglected weeds, as Francesca had observed one exasperated day when they had dug jointly down to the bottom of the domestic in-tray to find multiple compounded problems.
‘No answer.’ Davidson appeared in the doorway. ‘But he’s there unless he’s managed to get past a sergeant and a DC.’
McLeish looked up at him. ‘I’m getting old. I forgot we had a team on him. Get them to ring the bell, looking as if they have been just sent out from the local nick.’ Davidson gave him an old-fashioned look and he grinned. ‘You were going to tell them that?’
‘I was, aye.’
McLeish was reading, slitty-eyed, a tricky proposal about secondment, which appeared to be a method of avoiding giving him the two extra detective sergeants he needed. ‘Where’s he live? Fulham? I’ve got at least an hour.’
Ten minutes later Davidson reappeared. ‘He’s not answering the door. Nor the phone.’
McLeish sat back, his attention engaged, and they looked at each other.
‘And he’s nowhere, you’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. Will we break in? Get a warrant?’
‘Hang on. Jenny, get me Mr Owens – Michael Owens, will you? At his office.’
‘He’s in a meeting.’
‘Get him out, would you?’
They drank coffee, catching up on the morning’s information, while Jenny struggled with a range of secretaries and assistants, and finally rang through with Michael Owens on the line. McLeish explained the problem.
‘You don’t have a key to the house? No. Well, we can get a warrant, or go through a window, but I’d like someone who knows Mr Marsh-Hayden there. Well, that would be helpful. Certainly. Inspector Davidson will meet you there.’
He put the phone down. ‘He’s worried. Says Mr Marsh-Hayden was in a bad way last night, very low, very depressed, still not sober. He got him into bed or rather he and Gallagher and Rubin made a joint effort, but he – Mr Owens – didn’t stay, although he felt he ought to have done. He wanted to get Miss Delves to leave the restaurant and go home. And the other two had places to go to of course.’
‘Now he feels badly?’
‘Now he feels badly. So you and he are going to have a race to get there. Take a car and get someone from the local shop to meet you.’
‘I’ll take my wee pickaxe.’
‘Mr Marsh-Hayden’s probably just sleeping off yesterday. But hurry.’ This last was addressed to Davidson’s back as he left the office, shouting to a passing detective constable.
McLeish called his secretary and bent his mind to the problem of secondments, but realised he wasn’t going to crack it this time, not with half his mind on it. So he went down the corridor and did some useful staff work, congratulating the team that had found the gap in Richard Marsh-Hayden’s account of his movements, and stopping to read a painstaking report on the Marsh-Hayden financial position.
‘A good bit of this is guesswork,’ the man who had done it warned him. ‘He could have some assets hidden away. But I don’t think so. If you’re in business you don’t want CCJs – that’s County Court Judgements, sir – on your record. I think he’d have paid those bills if he could. Oh, phone for you, sir, Inspector Davidson. On that line.’
‘The good news is he’s alive.’ The gritty Glasgow accent, emphasised by the telephone, informed him. ‘But no’ at all well. Another few hours and he’d have been gone, they say.’ A scuffling noise and voices in the background intervened. ‘St Stephen’s, is it? Wait for the lad, he’ll go with you. You’re going too, Mr Owens? Ring us up later, will you?’
‘What had he taken?’
‘Empty packet of paracetamol by the bed. And a bottle of whisky. I didna let the paramedics take it. I’ll get them printed.’
‘Good man.’ The attending paramedics would have been trained to take with them any bottles or pills found by the side of an attempted suicide; Bruce Davidson was trained not to let any clue out of his sight, except for forensic examination, and the clash of training must have been interesting. And Davidson had sent a DC to the hospital so nothing Richard Marsh-Hayden managed to say would go unrecorded.
He sat back, feeling flat. After several days of intensive work on this murder the statistically likely solution, that the husband had done it, seemed to be right. Ninety per cent of murders of women are committed by their husbands, or their lovers. And many of these men understand, in horror, that they cannot live with the result, either because they had not meant to kill at all, or because, having willed the death, they cannot live without their victim. Richard Marsh-Hayden’s suicide attempt was a classic piece of behaviour. And, he thought grimly, it would have saved a lot of police time had Davidson and Michael Owens got there a few hours later when it was all over. If Richard Marsh-Hayden did recover, all precedent suggested that he would then decide in favour of life and would fight like a tiger to avoid responsibility for his wife’s death. So there would be no point just now in telling the labouring teams down the corridor to stop work. He would wait and see what a modern casualty hospital could do, and in the meantime he would settle, finally, these blasted secondments.
Matthew Sutherland, uncharacteristically, was feeling about twelve years old as he tagged after his senior partner. ‘Why didn’t you invite them to the office?’ he asked, trying for a grip on the situation.
‘I would not want anyone to think these people might be clients of the practice.’ Peter Graebner, five foot six inches in his shoes, forged across a road, regardless of traffic, looking like something out of the Old Testament.
‘Well, I’m sorry a client of mine has brought us to deal with them. But it was you they knew.’
‘Such men are always with us.’
This silenced Matthew who, following in Peter’s wake, observed that the crowds on the pavement around the market stalls parted like the Red Sea for his senior partner. And the stall-holders all acknowledged him, unperturbed by the fact that this morning Peter did not see or hear them. He stopped so abruptly that Matthew nearly fell over him and looked up at a pub sign.
‘It’s on the first floor. Ring the bell, please, Matthew. Twice, quickly.’
Matthew complied with a strong feeling that he ought to have been wearing asbestos gloves, and was unsurprised to have the door elaborately unbolted by a heavy man with a big head worn well forward and a look of having received one punch in the face too many.
‘Graebner and Sutherland,’ Peter said, gloomily, and they were led up to a first-floor room, sparsely furnished with a large battered table, two four-drawer filing cabinets and a substantial safe. It also contained two enormous unattractive dogs, of a breed that Matthew had believed to be outlawed, and two smallish men, dark-haired, low-browed and plainly brothers, sitting at the other side of the table. He waited for Peter to sit, which he did uninvited, and sat beside him, silent.
‘Coffee, Mr Graebner? You won’t? Right. You got something to offer us, I understand.’
‘Our client in this matter is Anthony Gallagher. Who owes you £9000.’
‘Bit more than that, I’m afraid, Mr Graebner. There’s interest accrued.’
‘The offer I am authorised to make includes reasonable interest. That is, interest which a court of law would consider reasonable.’
Neither brother moved, but the air in the room seemed to vanish, and Matthew found his hands clenched. Peter Graebner’s hands, he saw, rested on the table, quite relaxed.
‘We don’t go to court much,’ Brother One said.
Peter Graebner looked at him thoughtfully, and transferred his attention to the other brother.
‘We’ve had enquiries about this particular debt,’ Brother Two observed.
‘Presumably as a by-product of the murder investigation at my client’s workplace,’ Peter said, politely.
&
nbsp; ‘They got anyone for that yet?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Your client’s in for that, is he?’
‘Not particularly, as I understand the matter. Matthew?’
‘No more than anyone else there.’ It came out husky, as if he had not used his voice for a very long time, and he fought to sit still and deadpan as the two pairs of black eyes opposite examined him in detail. Their gaze shifted to his senior partner.
‘So what’s your offer, Mr Graebner?’
Peter Graebner, unhurried, extracted a piece of paper. ‘The capital sum had risen over six months, I understand, to £7800 at 3 September. We have added interest at twenty-two per cent – the standard credit card rate – making some assumptions about the dates at which various monies were outstanding, and arrive at a total of £9100 rounded up.’
Brother Two moved his right hand to look at a scrap of paper underneath it. ‘We have £10,600.’
‘Our offer involves payment of £9100 in cash, if you prefer, later this week.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘It is our final offer.’
‘Your client thought about all this, has he?’
‘Extensively.’
His senior partner and the senior brother looked at each other steadily, and Matthew understood that this was an old relationship.
‘I wouldn’t do it for everyone, but for you, Mr Graebner, I’ll take it. He’s a lucky man, Gallagher.’
‘Surely not. Or I would not be here.’
A sudden smile which got nowhere near the black unwinking eyes moved the tight mouth. ‘That’s very good. You tell him he doesn’t invest with us again, that’s part of it. Far as we’re concerned he didn’t pay what he agreed and we won’t deal with him, understand?’
‘I will tell him you are not prepared to do business with him in the future. But our offer is conditional on your agreement not to interfere in any way with my client.’
