Cold Relations (Honey Laird Book 1)

by Gerald Hammond

  Some members of the team had worked late or through the night and there were fresh reports on the desk. Dawn was coming up outside the window before Honey put down the telephone, straightened her back and said, ‘Yes. I think I see my way. I told you once that I thought timing was the crux of this case and now I’m sure of it. There has to be a reason why things happened in the sequence and at the times that they did.’

  Ian looked up from a file. ‘Which case?’

  ‘There’s only one. Well, one and a half.’

  ‘Now you’re being deliberately abstruse.’

  ‘I may be mystifying myself as well. Has anybody told the Colebrook brothers about the pathologist’s report?’

  ‘I gave explicit orders that it was not to be mentioned yet. As soon as they know that it’s a case of murder, they’ll clam up.’

  ‘You’re not as daft as Deborah makes out. So we have a fifty-fifty chance of their still being in ignorance. They’re not exactly unclammed now,’ Honey pointed out. ‘In fact, I think the reverse may be true. Mention of murder at the right moment may open them up, but the moment will have to be right. Follow my lead and if I start to be hard on a witness you can jump in and play the good cop. Right?’

  ‘Right. We start with the most vulnerable?’

  ‘No. I think we let the housekeeper stew for the moment. If Vernon Colebrook has had his breakfast, let’s see him now. There must be an interview room free at this time of a weekend morning.’ She picked up the phone again. It was still warm from her previous calls.

  Vernon Colebrook was waiting sullenly in the interview room, in the care of a uniformed sergeant, when they entered. Ian went through the preliminaries. Vernon listened patiently to a reiteration of the statutory warning. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Because I am not saying a word until my solicitor is present.’

  ‘No lawyer takes calls at this time of a Saturday morning,’ Honey said.

  ‘I made my phone-call last night. He promised to be here early.’

  ‘That’s perfectly all right,’ Honey said cheerfully. ‘I’ll do the talking and you can listen. Then you’ll be able to tell your solicitor exactly what you’re up against. The body that was recovered four days ago has been identified as that of your father. But it is not the body of the man who has been impersonating him for the past nearly seven years. That, Mr Colebrook, was you.’

  Vernon roused suddenly and then subsided. His face had begun to collapse and his eyes had clouded as if in death. He cleared his throat but remained silent.

  ‘You were about to remind me of the dentist’s identification,’ Honey said. ‘But in our innocence we had referred to Mrs McLaghan, your father’s housekeeper, for the name of his dentist. Further enquiries reveal that the dentist who produced X-rays matching the teeth of the corpse had not attended that patient for more than seven years. Before that time your father had attended faithfully every six months. We have been unable to find any record of any dentist treating your father since then, yet the corpse’s teeth were his own and corresponded exactly with X-rays taken seven years ago. We should all be so lucky as to need no fillings over such a period. You may care to save us some time and trouble by telling us the name and address of your dentist.’

  There was no answer. Vernon Colebrook was looking blankly over her shoulder.

  ‘We have just been on the phone to the factory. Even in the absence of yourself and your brothers, your staff is arriving at work. It appears that there was a clearout of secretarial staff around seven years ago. Your father’s secretary was given early retirement. Her replacement is being invited to come and attend another identity parade. I think that she may well recognise you as the recent occupant of Mr Colebrook’s shoes. I myself sat behind the putative Mr Henry Colebrook in the Land Rover on the Tinnisbeck Castle shoot and I noticed that he had three small spots or freckles on his neck, in a roughly triangular pattern, just to the left of his spine and above his collar. Those spots were not present on the corpse but I recognise them on you. There is no doubt in our minds that your father died shortly after making the gifts to you and your brothers with which you started your business. The tax burden would have crippled you. You therefore froze his body and this is confirmed by the pathologist’s report.

  ‘One of his sons took his place. You are the son most strongly resembling your late father in face and voice. Your father’s face had changed shape very little as he aged. The network of fine lines would easily be simulated in watered ink; and greying of the hair would be no problem at all. Moreover, as the buyer of the firm your place was out among the shoots and the big estates. I would not expect any current member of staff to be quite sure of distinguishing you from your late father. But there was little risk, because it was given out that your father was leading a very reclusive life in retirement. It is also noted that your father suddenly stopped using cheques and operated almost entirely by cash and credit card, thus averting the need to sign cheques. We have obtained some recent credit card slips of yours and several purporting to have been signed by your father and the signatures are remarkably similar.

  ‘You live alone and your small house is in a rather isolated situation. Your father’s house is similarly rural but is overlooked from the farm and from the factory. It would therefore be necessary for you to spend much time and most nights there, to be seen coming and going. Your absence from your own house would be largely unobserved but we are checking on your milk deliveries. The bedlinen and your father’s clothes are being sampled for DNA and we shall see whose DNA makes a perfect match. Mrs McLaghan is also in custody. The impersonation could not have happened without her full knowledge and participation. How long do you think she will hold out under questioning?’

  Vernon was sweating and his face was drawn but he was pulling himself together. ‘I have no comment to make until my solicitor is present,’ he said shakily. ‘Except to say that I would like a cup of tea.’

  ‘Your mouth going dry?’ Honey said. ‘As well it may. Yes, I think we’re all due a little refreshment.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ian said. ‘Tea all round is it?’

  As the door closed behind him Honey said, ‘I shall continue. When the seven years was almost up, it was nearly time for your father’s death to take place. Another few weeks and the inheritance tax burden would have been lifted altogether. As it is, it will be very much reduced.

  ‘You were preparing the ground for his official death. The discovery of his body might carry more conviction if he were known to have been walking around and meeting people shortly beforehand. You were still wary of anyone who might have known him well enough to detect small differences in appearance or gaps of memory, so you went on a cruise, mingling with many people who had not known your father. You became friendly with the Carpenters. Discovering that you also lived in southern Scotland and to the south of Edinburgh, they invited you to their shoot. It seemed to be far enough from your home to be safe so you accepted. It was pure bad luck that a young couple who lived near to Moonside House also attended and even worse luck that, to bolster the indications that your father rather than yourself was present, you made a great fuss of the two spaniels. As the party was breaking up, you discovered that they lived just over the hill from your father’s house, which had been left to you and where it had long been understood that you would ultimately take up residence.

  ‘The dogs would betray you. You are known to be nervous of dogs but you had been forcing yourself to feed the spaniels snacks and especially the peppermints to which they are addicted. Your mind may have been exaggerating the danger, but it seemed to you that a pair of strange dogs fawning over a man who was known to dislike the whole canine species might initiate an undesirable train of thought. So the dogs were stolen and lodged with the remotest kennels to be found in the Edinburgh Yellow Pages. Your youngest brother, Leo, has been identified as the man who brought the dogs to the kennels.’

  ‘Leo knew nothing,’ Vernon said huskily. ‘He was only doing me a fa
vour.’

  ‘I see,’ Honey said. Inwardly, she was smiling. Once a silent suspect opens his mouth, she thought, the thin end of the wedge is already inserted and only needs to be wiggled about a bit.

  Ian returned, followed by a civilian employee with a tray bearing four cups of tea. He settled down to listen.

  Honey resumed. ‘Perhaps you could help me with something else, unconnected with this case and reflecting no discredit on any of you as far as I can see. In going through your father’s older papers we came across a cheque, dated before the imposture began and made out to Cash. No other cheques from that period were preserved – indeed, I think it dates from after banks stopped returning cancelled cheques unless by special request – but this one had been put into a plastic envelope and placed in his filing cabinet in a folder of its own. There is no such person as Cash and so the banks don’t usually require a countersignature on such a cheque. In this instance they may have been suspicious, because the cheque is signed on the back. The signature is a scrawl and appears to be Patrick Hale.’ She paused for a moment. Another faint bell was ringing somewhere on the border between her conscious and subconscious thinking processes. For the moment she couldn’t pin it down. ‘An expert gives an opinion that the cheque has been altered. Can you tell me anything about it?’

  For a moment it seemed that Vernon was going to abide by his policy of unhelpfulness. Then he shrugged. ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘I remember him being angry because he’d given a building tradesman a cheque for some work done and the cheque had been altered and cashed. His anger was mostly against himself, for leaving spaces that a forger could slip extra words into, but he had written it out of doors, in a hurry and on a cold and windy day, so I suppose his carelessness was understandable. He was going to go to the police about it, but the man had vanished and Dad wrote it off to experience and thanked his stars that the amount hadn’t been larger.’

  ‘Do you remember the man?’

  ‘I don’t think I ever set eyes on him.’

  Honey was interrupted by the arrival of Vernon’s solicitor, a portly man that she had never previously encountered. Several more questions remained to be asked but she had got most of what she wanted and could infer the rest. ‘We’ll leave you two together for a client conference,’ she said. ‘I’ll rewind the tape and start it playing and you’ll get a copy later. The sergeant will be outside the door and when you’ve heard it through you can tell him and he’ll stop it. There are no other listening devices.’ She pressed the STOP and then the REWIND keys on one recorder and the STOP key on the other.

  Outside the door, they looked at each other. ‘Pat Kerr next, I think,’ Honey said. She put her cup down on a windowsill; a habit that she knew would annoy the staff. ‘I’ve just remembered something.’

  ‘Remembered what?’

  ‘Mrs McLaghan’s maiden name. Let’s have a word with Mr Kerr.’

  Ian seemed about to protest. Then he shrugged. ‘Whatever you think. You’ve had the lead in these cases. I’m just along for the ride.’

  ‘Bless you for the generous soul that you are. Tell me when you feel ready to do some of the hard work.’

  Ian looked at her hard. ‘I’ve known you for a while, Honeypot. I’ve seen the penny drop before. You’ve just seen something. Did Vernon tell you something I missed?’

  ‘Pay attention,’ she said, ‘and all will be revealed. Most probably the fact that my guesses have missed the mark and I’m making a bloody fool of myself.’

  *

  Pat Kerr, dark and macho as ever, was soon brought to another interview room. He refused the services of a solicitor on the grounds that that profession was usually on the side of the law and therefore no friend of his. He was ready, at first, to explode but it seemed that his anger stemmed from anxiety. He calmed when Honey explained that his dog was being cared for by George Brightside.

  ‘The court may insist on appointing a solicitor to represent you,’ Honey said. ‘In any case you ought to have somebody to . . . to paint you in your best colours. In the meantime, I suggest that you listen and when I’ve finished I’ll ask you one or two questions which, as you know, you don’t have to answer.

  ‘It’s my opinion that you don’t have a hope of beating the charge of robbing Julian Blakelove. That, however, is only my personal opinion and you can draw your own conclusions after you’ve heard what I have to say. As you know, we found the proceeds of the robbery hidden inside stale loaves in the van that you’ve been driving for the baker. I suppose that you could argue that somebody hid it there without your knowledge, but you can see for yourself the difficulty of making that stick. In addition, you fit the general description of the male robber given by Mr Blakelove and in your house we found a shotgun answering his description of the one used in the robbery. Over the coming period we will be searching for your DNA in the stolen car and studying your movements in the time leading up to the robbery when Mr Blakelove’s habits and movements must have been studied very closely. Your accomplice, Gemma Kendal, is also in custody and charged.

  ‘You probably also know that courts tend to go easier when the accused has pleaded guilty and saved the considerable cost of a trial. Have you any comment to make so far?’

  Pat Kerr shook his head.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no. Since you made the change from being a witness to being a suspect, we have been trying to complete your record on file. We know a little about your past few years. What you told me in a previous interview appears to be generally true. But so far – and I admit that this is an unpropitious time – we have been unable to find any record of your birth. In fact, you do not seem to have existed until your return to your present home. You must have changed your name. Tell me, what is your real name?’

  Pat Kerr shook his head again.

  ‘Was it Patrick Hale?’

  Kerr twitched. There was another, more violent headshake.

  ‘We’ll take that as another no. I think that’s what it was. Tell me, what relation are you to the late Mr Colebrook’s housekeeper – whose maiden name was Hale? Remember, we already have samples of DNA from each of you and it will not take long for the laboratory to establish the relationship.’

  ‘All right,’ Kerr said hoarsely. ‘So she’s my sister. So what? There’s no law against having a sister.’

  ‘No indeed. So your name was originally Hale. I suspect that under that name you committed a fraud by altering a cheque given you by Mr Colebrook Senior in payment for some small building work. Mr Colebrook had preserved that cheque. Do you wish to make any comment at this time?’

  ‘No, nothing. Nothing at all. I’m fucked if I do.’

  ‘You could be right, Mr Hale. But you could find yourself in even more trouble if you don’t. You met a man who you took to be Mr Colebrook Senior at the Tinnisbeck Castle shoot and you thought that he recognised you. That night the man disappeared and four days ago his body was found floating in a loch not far from his route homeward. Now do you have any comment to make?’

  The prisoner’s eyes were bulging and he had turned very white. ‘You don’t think I killed him?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Honey said. ‘But that’s just a personal opinion. You can see how it might look in a courtroom. I’ll leave you to think it over. You may decide that it’s in your best interests to help us to pin the crime on the guilty party.’

  Outside the room, as they headed for the lifts, she said, ‘I feel just as guilty as anybody else around here. He doesn’t have much to contribute, but in common justice I should have told him who’s guilty. I’m assuming that he doesn’t know. But the law didn’t require me to tell him.’

  Ian had stopped listening. ‘When did Deborah say that I was daft?’ he asked her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Honey paused at a window to look out. The sun was breaking through, turning the snow into a blaze and reflecting enough light to throw their confused shadows onto the ceiling. ‘All along,’ Honey said, ‘I had a feeling that tim
ing was crucial to these cases and that they were linked. Didn’t I tell you that I was sure there was a reason why things happened at those times and in that sequence?’

  ‘You did. Several times. I see part of it,’ Ian said, frowning. ‘But you’ll have to explain.’

  ‘I will. But not yet. I’m not quite sure enough. I want to confirm something.’ The sergeant was still waiting patiently outside the other interview room. ‘The solicitor’s still in with Mr Colebrook?’

  ‘Yes Ma’am. They called me in to stop the tape, that’s all.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ She opened the door. Ian followed her into the room. ‘It’s Mr Walters, isn’t it? I’m glad I’ve caught you. I have some more questions for your client and I think it may be in his interest that they’re asked now and in your presence.’

  The solicitor’s eyebrows went up but he said, ‘Very well.’ He sounded almost relieved. Honey guessed that he had not been enjoying his client conference.

  She started both tapes again and recorded the resumption of the interview and the presence of the solicitor. ‘First,’ she said, ‘now that you’ve had a chance to confer, does Mr Colebrook wish to add anything?’

  Mr Walters was looking worried. ‘Not at this time,’ he said.

  ‘All right. That’s his privilege.’ She paused to add emphasis. ‘The case has a more serious aspect even than fraud and concealing a death. Now is the time to tell you that the pathologist’s report, in addition to revealing that the body had been frozen, reported on the cause of death. You will be given a copy of the PM report later, but it seems clear that Mr Colebrook Senior died from asphyxiation. The presence of a scrap of feather in the airways suggests strongly that he was smothered with a pillow.’