Cold Relations (Honey Laird Book 1)

by Gerald Hammond

  Honey rather hoped that Sandy would be that one man but she was not inclined to put him to the test. ‘And is that why you wanted a woman officer? You thought that a woman would be less shocked by a little sex?’

  His already florid face turned a duskier red. ‘Good God no! I’ll admit that I didn’t want a lot of male officers sniggering together and passing the story around, but from what I’ve heard women are just as addicted to smutty gossip. I thought that a woman detective might get some sort of a lead from what comes next.

  ‘I helped her, just as she asked. And, believe me, she was all kitted out in the very classiest, top-of-the-range, most alluring underwear that you could imagine. It wasn’t wet; if it clung it was for a different reason. This was definitely not the cheap-and-tarty kind nor minimalist bikini things, nor even the high quality but modest sort, but real quality in every respect. I try to see that my wife has the best, but this was much better than I’ve been able to find in Edinburgh. Cream silk with a tiny patterned texture depicting flowers woven in, and so fine that I swear you could have read a newspaper through it. Lace that definitely came from Brussels. And the whole ensemble matching and superbly designed, not only to conceal but at the same time to provoke. It was one of a kind. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly.’ There could be no doubt that the lady had left home with every intention of leading some man into dalliance and Honey knew exactly what symbols of femininity could be guaranteed to rouse the devil in the man of a certain age.

  ‘How long was the dress?’

  ‘Below the knee.’

  ‘Stockings and suspenders, I presume?’ He nodded, looking away. That confirmed that the woman had definitely been expecting sex and probably with Mr Blakelove. ‘Could you draw the designs?’ she asked. ‘Or describe them clearly?’

  ‘Hopeless,’ he said. ‘Quite hopeless. I didn’t notice the designs, just the effect.’

  If the woman who had functioned as the bait in the trap had shopped for lingerie somewhere very special, it might furnish a link. ‘Excuse me for a moment.’ She went out into the hall and used her mobile phone. She gave instructions to Control for a car. June answered her next call immediately. There was a book that Honey had bought soon after leaving finishing school, when she had seemed to be on the threshold of a modelling career and before her father had put his foot very firmly down. She told June where to find the book, to wrap it in paper and to hand it over to the driver of a car who would be at the door within minutes.

  She returned to the QC and resumed her seat. ‘Finish the story,’ she said. ‘You had sex.’

  ‘Why are you so sure —?’

  ‘The way your housekeeper found you. Naked.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He had some of the shamed look of a scolded dog yet at the same time she thought that he was savouring a memory. He swallowed, secretly salivating. With an effort he drew himself up and recaptured some shreds of his dignity. ‘You’ll understand that by that time my – ah — passions were inflamed. My wife has been abroad for several weeks and this woman was in fact the summit, the very pinnacle of femininity. You know what I mean?’

  Honey, who had in her time aspired on occasions to that same peak, said that she knew what he meant.

  ‘I had no thought left about locking the door or resetting the alarms. I may say that she was more than willing.’

  ‘And where did this transport of delight take place? You escorted the lady upstairs?’

  ‘There’s a big couch in the hall. You must have seen it.’

  She had difficulty keeping the laughter out of her voice. The embarrassment of this usually domineering figure was so total. She was tempted to ask whether the couch was in the hall for use when his passions were too inflamed to allow of any delay, but she refrained. ‘Go on,’ she said severely.

  ‘That’s really all. I was only aware that an intruder had followed us in when the muzzle of a shotgun dug into my ribs. The man was in dark clothes and he had a dark ski-mask on, so I can only tell you that he was about average in height and not overweight. He seemed fit. He had trainers on his feet.’

  ‘I suppose you didn’t happen to notice the shotgun?’

  This time he proved to have been more observant. She supposed that his attention might well have been focused on the gun. ‘A rather commonplace side-by-side boxlock, twelve-bore,’ he said. ‘Possibly a copy of the AYA. Varnished stock with a semi-pistol grip. Well worn – much of the blueing had been rubbed away in front of the fore-end – but it looked as though it had been cared for.’

  ‘Did he hold it as though he was accustomed to holding that particular gun?’

  He frowned portentously as he struggled for recall. ‘I don’t have a lot to go on but I would say yes.’

  ‘Go on, then. What happened next?’

  ‘Next?’ He was visibly relaxing now that they were back onto subjects of masculine awareness. ‘There was hardly any next. They made me sit in the hall chair. He had brought in a new coil of sash cord and they tied me up, tightly, and taped my mouth. He had also brought in a carrier bag with dry clothes for her, but commonplace, nothing distinctive. They took the carrier bag away with them, but it was green and I think it came from Marks and Spencer. They left me there all night. It was bloody cold after the heating went off, I can tell you. It will be a miracle if I haven’t caught a chill or pneumonia.’

  Honey was not particularly interested in the QC’s future health. She took the best part of a minute for thought. ‘I’m going to bring my dog in,’ she said at last. ‘You can help me to lead her to wherever your two visitors stood or sat. I want her to get the scent of them both. Then there’s a good chance that she’ll let me know if we meet up with either of them in the course of our enquiries. It’s one of her tricks.’

  ‘Very well.’

  She fetched Pippa. Ian Fellowes’s car had vanished. The rain was going off. According to Mr Blakelove, the visitors had traversed no more than a small part of the hall, a large and elegant drawing room where the two pictures had hung and the safe in the study. Mr Blakelove opened the garage and his car for her and Pippa sniffed the seat where the woman had sat and the newspapers that had been put down to save the leather. Pippa showed a stirring of interest, limited to the areas pointed out by Mr Blakelove, but that might have been because one of the visitors had trodden in something that was, by her standards, edible.

  ‘They got the safe keys out of your pocket?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She was returning Pippa to the Range Rover when a police Jaguar swept into the drive and made a circle on the sweep of gravel. A uniformed constable delivered a heavy parcel, neatly wrapped in brown paper. She found Julian Blakelove QC back in his deep chair and on the point of falling asleep. He awoke and regarded her with only slowly returning recognition.

  She unwrapped the heavy book – High fashion through the 20th Century – an Encyclopaedia – Volume 4. ‘I want you to look at the last chapter,’ she said. ‘See if anything rings a bell.’

  He browsed through the beautifully drawn illustrations of lingerie, modelled by ladies only mistily portrayed. She had to recall his attention several times when his concentration seemed to wander, but at last he stabbed a page with a plump forefinger. ‘That’s it.’

  The design identified was a set that she acknowledged to be one of the most exquisitely designed ever. She recalled from her modelling days, and was reminded by the text, that it had been designed to the order of a film company for a very special sequence. The film star Anne Munro had appeared thus clad in the film Heat of the Night. The sequence had only lasted for a little over thirty seconds, but the shot had figured prominently in the stills and posters. The combination of a beautiful young woman in beautiful lingerie had caught the public attention. Men had returned to the cinemas to see it again and the posters were now collectable items and commanding remarkable prices at auction.

  Inevitably there had been offers to purchase the right to reproduce the designs, but the stud
io had refused to sell while the film was being shown and revived. Attempts to pirate the designs had attracted lawsuits, generating more valuable publicity, but the copies had never attained quite the jollity of the originals. As a result, the set had never been commercially produced. When the copyright reverted to the famous designer, she preferred to retain her rights and allow the design to be purchased, in the form of paper patterns, only by individuals for their personal fabrication.

  ‘That will do for the moment,’ she said. ‘As to the lady, you’ve been almost lyrical about her figure and her underwear, but can you improve on your descriptions of her face and hair? Or did you not look at her face?’

  He flushed and seemed about to make a furious retort. He reined himself in. ‘I will let that insult go by. Yes, I looked at her face. Her hair was up and it was dressed in a French roll. Her face looked classically beautiful, but clever make-up had a lot to do with it. I know how deceptive you ladies can be.’

  The QC was giving way to a series of enormous yawns. He could not have had much if any sleep. ‘I’ll leave you now,’ she said. ‘I suggest you go to bed. I’ll be in touch.’

  He was looking at her as though taking in her appearance for the first time, but his look was of puzzlement rather than lechery. ‘Haven’t I encountered you before?’ he asked her.

  ‘You have,’ she said. ‘But I can’t blame you for not recognising me – it was several years ago and I was in uniform at the time. You cross-examined me in the Archibald Warren case. You suggested that I had taken a bribe from his victim’s family to tamper with the evidence. I had to face an enquiry. I was cleared, but it can’t have done my career any good. Warren got off and he killed again. Good morning.’

  And that, she rather thought, would probably spoil his sleep for him. She very much hoped so.

  Chapter Eleven

  She was back in her office by mid-afternoon. She spoke first to Ian Fellowes. When she broke it to him that she had no intention of giving him the details of what she had learned from Julian Blakelove, Ian was loudly resentful. ‘You can trust my discretion,’ he said.

  ‘Do you trust mine?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Would you still trust my discretion if gave away some details that I had been told in confidence and off the record?’ She waited but there was silence on the line. ‘I have a faintly possible lead,’ she told him. ‘I’ll follow it up. If anything comes of it, you’ll be the first to know. For the moment, I abide by my promise.’

  ‘This is irregular.’

  ‘It’s not and you know it,’ she said. ‘It’s normal to protect informants’ information and identities. We may want his trust and cooperation in the future. If I don’t keep my word this time, he won’t trust us again.’

  Ian sighed and they ended the call on a note of frustration.

  Honey was in a fever of impatience. Friday was running out. Sandy was coming home for the full weekend and she was due to go off duty. The High Fashion Encyclopaedia had mentioned that the patterns were in the hands of the country’s biggest postal retailers of dress patterns but the phone number quoted proved to be out of date. While the only available DC wrestled with directory enquiries, she rattled down a carefully edited report.

  She got the retailers on the line at last, identified herself and asked for a list of customers for that particular set of patterns. The voice was not helpful. ‘We do not give out that sort of information over the phone,’ it said. ‘There are matters of copyright and confidentiality.’

  ‘There are also matters of police business.’

  ‘You’re only a voice on the phone to me. How do I know that you’re a detective inspector?’

  Honey had met this kind of Jobsworth in the past and she knew that trying to hurry it up would only cause it to think of more and more reasons to be obstructive. ‘Phone me back,’ she said. She gave the number. ‘You’ll find that you’re speaking to Lothian and Borders Constabulary. Ask for Detective Inspector Laird.’

  ‘Very well. If that checks out, I’ll fax you the list. Is that the same number?’

  She gave the fax number. ‘When will I get it?’

  ‘It’ll be Monday now. The phone line will be open for orders for another few hours but the rest of the office is closing down.’

  She bit back a vitriolic comment which would only have formed an excuse for more delay. She contented herself with making a horrible face at the ceiling, clenching her fists and saying the very rudest word that she could think of. She said it several times in succession. But she said it silently. She was alone in the shared office for the moment, but she still had to protect the bland and imperturbable face that she presented to the world.

  *

  Not even the tranquil state induced by a clear weekend with a loving and virile husband was proof against the frustrating times that were to follow. The promised fax only arrived, following three reminders, on the Thursday.

  She had lost the services of Ewan Picton for the moment because his dog, Dancer, rather than Picton himself was needed elsewhere. To her relief, Picton was replaced by a woman DC. Stella Weems was plain and dumpy but cheerful and efficient. Honey was able to delegate to her, in confidence, the seemingly endless task of tracking down, by telephone, the sixty-odd sets of paper patterns that had been sold. Several still languished in drawers, being considered too difficult to attempt until the purchaser had attained a higher standard. Some had been copied once or twice and then put away. Still others had been passed from hand to hand. And even such sets as had been made from the patterns might have been sold or given to a friend, relative or client. Seldom was there much indication as to what material or colour might have been used. The possibilities were endless, but somewhere among the jungle of names Julian Blakelove’s seductress, or somebody connected to her, might be lurking.

  A car answering the general description of the one used by the enticing lady had been stolen several months earlier. It was found, burnt out, near Kelso. Enquiries suggested that it had spent the intervening period in a lockup near Gorebridge, but not even the letting agent could give a reliable description of the driver. Enquiries revealed that it had several times been seen waiting in a lay-by on rainy evenings, but the top was always up and the occupant was apparently female but otherwise well concealed by the dark glass.

  Detective Sergeant Bryant continued to be as irritating as a barley seed in an orifice and Honey soon concluded that he had been foisted on to her because nobody else would work with him. Even though she checked him, almost slapped him down, with increasing ferocity from time to time, his familiar and insufferably patronising manner always made a return. An uninformed bystander might well have thought that he was the more senior of the two. Yet he was an efficient if sometimes lazy investigating officer and somehow they managed to work in comparative peace, largely by dividing up the work and going their separate ways. Their efforts were unrewarded. Reports of young springer spaniels, singly or in pairs, had to be checked although none bore much resemblance to Spot or Honey. In the hope that the two dogs were still alive, she had all the emails repeated. Every report of a red-headed man in late middle age seen behaving in the least oddly had to be investigated despite the difficulties entailed in identifying an individual seen, usually days earlier, alone and in no particular context. Some of these were proved to be irrelevant; others remained unexplained, but of Henry Colebrook there was no sign. His credit cards remained unused, his cheques unwritten. When she thought to ask the question, she learned that his brace of pheasants had still been on the back seat of his car but had soon disappeared, presumably into some policeman’s freezer.

  Every effort had been made to close off avenues through which Julian Blakelove’s treasures, and more particularly those of Mrs Blakelove, might be fenced. They might be lying hidden until the heat was off; but equally there was no denying that the goods might well have gone abroad, quite possibly before the QC’s housekeeper had so annoyingly untied him. Privately, Hon
ey thought that both the investigation and the gentleman’s attitude might have benefited had he been left in situ until the scene and the knotwork had been studied by experts. It was possible, however, that he had been left in his bonds overnight in order to allow time for safe disposal.

  The bank accounts of Mr Colebrook Senior were already available. In desperation she attempted to get access to the bank accounts of surviving personnel involved, but the bank managers were uncooperative and it was felt that there were no adequate grounds for seeking a court order. The mobile phone service providers were more helpful and soon she was wading through several massive lists of calls, some going back for many years. The collator, a civilian recently retired from CID, began to depend on her excellent memory, which made a change from the usually converse system.

  This saga of endless marking time without progress continued for another two weeks. Then, on the Tuesday, Honey returned to her office at HQ, dispirited after an abortive trip to Helensburgh, a quick look at a spaniel she had never seen before and a tiring drive back in poor light and a thin, cold rain, to find several messages on her desk. A man’s body had floated to the surface of a small loch near Galashiels. There was no identification yet but from first reports the body conformed roughly to the dimensions of Henry Colebrook and had greying red hair.

  According to the note from Detective Superintendent Blackhouse, he intended to leave the investigation in the hands of Ian Fellowes in whose territory the body had been found, at least until the pathologist had reported and there was some indication as to how the man had died and whether he was the missing Mr Colebrook. DI Laird was to liaise and keep the DS informed. If it proved to be a case of murder he would take personal charge. An email from Ian requested the assistance of Honey and offered to provide accommodation.

  Sandy Laird was away again so she had no objection to escaping from Edinburgh. She phoned Ian, who seemed to have recovered from his umbrage. He said that there would be no point in going to where the body had been found, and in darkness. The immediate area had already been trodden down and picked over. If she came straight to his house, there would be a meal.