Stolen

by Roberta Kray

  An appeal to the public had already gone out on the radio. The newspapers, apart from publications like the London Evening Standard and Evening News, wouldn’t be able to publish until tomorrow. Later today the story would be shown on the TV news. Doubtless, they would be inundated with false sightings, everywhere from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

  The ferries and airports were on red alert – they couldn’t rule out a fake passport – but as yet there hadn’t been a sniff of him. There was no sign of the white Hunter either.

  ‘Where would you go?’ he asked Barry. ‘If you’d just committed murder, which direction would you head in?’

  ‘Dover, I suppose, if I thought I stood a chance of getting across the Channel. Or a big city: London, Birmingham. Hide in the crowd until things calm down a bit.’

  Latham nodded. Back at the station the team were already starting to sift through a long list of known associates, many of whom had been present at the party last night. The owner of the Hunter had come under particular scrutiny – it wasn’t impossible that the keys had been left in the car deliberately – but he had turned out to be a film producer of some renown who had never even met Mal.

  ‘There’s something else come up,’ Barry said. ‘We just heard back from Kellston. Jude Rule was interviewed over another murder six years ago: a girl called Amy Wiltshire who was stabbed to death on the Mansfield estate.’

  The case rang a bell with Latham. So far as he could remember there had never been a conviction. ‘Lots of people must have been interviewed.’

  ‘Yes, except he was pretty high on the list of suspects at the time. The girl’s best friend pointed the finger, said he’d had a “thing” about Amy, that he was always following her around. And here’s the interesting part: guess who gave him an alibi?’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘None over than Lolita Bruce. Swore blind, apparently, that she was with him for the entire time.’

  ‘Any reason to suspect she was lying?’

  Barry shrugged. ‘That pair seem to be unlucky. Caught in the middle of two murder investigations. What are the odds?’

  ‘Pretty short if you live in Kellston, I should think.’ Latham moved away from the summerhouse and strolled down towards the lake. Barry walked beside him. They stood and stared out across the shimmering water.

  ‘I thought you had Mal Fury pegged for this,’ Latham said.

  ‘I did. I do. But maybe those two were involved as well. I’m not sure about that Jude Rule. There’s something not quite right about him.’

  ‘Better lock him up then.’

  Barry, not renowned for his sense of humour, scowled. ‘You know what I mean. His relationship with Esther Fury wasn’t what you’d call normal, was it? And the Bruce girl was down by the lake. How come she never heard anything, saw anything? It doesn’t add up.’

  Latham had his own thoughts on the matter, but he kept them to himself. ‘We’ll talk to them both again, see what they’ve got to say now the dust has settled.’ His gaze scanned the water until it settled on the weeping willows. A sigh came from deep within him. ‘If I believed in such things, I’d swear this place was cursed.’

  45

  Thursday 22 September. Kellston

  Lolly was only half listening to what Nick had to say. She sat at the table chewing her fingernails while he told her about his visit to Heather Grant. The words floated around in her head, jumbled up with Terry’s more aggressive ones. What was she going to do? There was no way she could raise the money to pay Terry back and very little chance of getting information on Laura Sandler either.

  ‘She doesn’t think it was Jude, although she wasn’t with him at around the time it happened so it’s just an opinion and I’m not sure how much that’s worth. For all we know they could be in it together. Or she could be covering for him.’ Nick scratched his chin. ‘I don’t know why she’d do that though. And she reckons the grand announcement was about a film part Esther had got, nothing else.’

  Lolly made a vague noise, something to confirm that she was taking in what he said.

  ‘I know you’re worried, but no news is good news. He’s probably miles away by now.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Mal. He’s probably miles away. So long as he keeps his head down, he should be okay. And if you stick to your story that you had no idea he was at the house, the police can’t prove otherwise.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘We’ll just have to hope the real killer made a mistake, left a clue behind, some kind of evidence that proves it couldn’t have been Mal. Do you think we should try and talk to Jude? Heather says she dropped him off at the Mansfield.’

  ‘What’s the point? He’s not going to tell the truth, is he? Not if he killed her.’

  Nick gave her a long, steady stare. ‘I know it’s a shock, Esther being dead and everything, but so long as you hold your nerve you’ll be all right.’

  Lolly rubbed her face with her hands. She didn’t want to ask for help, but she was running out of options. ‘Do you know where Laura Sandler lives?’

  Nick looked understandably bemused. ‘What on earth do you want to know that for?’

  ‘I have to talk to her – about Vinnie.’

  ‘And say what? Christ, Lolly, you can’t go near that woman, not unless you want to get yourself arrested. She’ll view it as intimidation.’

  ‘How could anyone be intimidated by me?’

  ‘You’re a friend of Vinnie’s, and Vinnie has just been charged with her husband’s murder. How do you think it’s going to look if you approach her? She’ll be straight on the blower to the law.’

  ‘I have to try.’

  ‘And say what? “Hey, is it true that you had your old man topped and set up Vinnie Keane to take the rap?”’

  ‘I wasn’t going to put it quite like that.’

  Nick shook his head. ‘There’s no good way of putting it. Haven’t you got enough to deal with at the moment? Vinnie’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.’

  ‘And how’s he supposed to do that when he’s banged up?’ Lolly could see that she’d have to come clean or she’d never find out where Laura lived. She took a deep breath and bit the bullet. ‘Thing is, I’ve got a bit of a problem. You remember the necklace and ring I gave to Mal? Well, the diamond ring wasn’t fake and it wasn’t strictly speaking mine. I was holding on to it for someone else.’

  Nick sighed. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you’re going to tell me next?’

  ‘You won’t,’ she said. The ring belongs to Terry Street and as you can imagine he’s not overjoyed about my generosity. I couldn’t tell him about Mal so now he thinks . . . God, I’m not sure what he thinks, but I’m not top of his list of favourite people at the moment.’

  ‘So he wants you to find out what, if anything, Laura Sandler is up to?’

  ‘That’s about the sum of it.’

  ‘How much is the ring worth?’

  ‘A lot. About a grand.’

  Nick winced. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘And as that’s not the kind of money I can spirit out of fresh air, I’m figuring the Laura option is the best one going at the moment.’

  ‘I thought you were friendly with Terry.’

  ‘I was . . . sort of. Let’s just say things have cooled a little since he found out what I did. Look, all I want is her address, nothing else. Then I’ll . . . ’

  ‘Then you’ll do what? Get yourself arrested, probably.’ Nick stood up and put on his jacket. ‘It’s madness and you know it.’

  Lolly watched him, unsurprised by his imminent departure. Why should he help? First, she’d landed him in the middle of an inquiry over Esther’s murder, and now she was asking him to give her details that could jeopardise his job. He wasn’t, she was certain, supposed to divulge the kind of information she was asking for.

  Nick stood, looking down on her. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Are you coming or n
ot? I’ll take you to the house on one condition.’

  ‘Anything,’ she said, leaping to her feet.

  ‘We just keep an eye on the place, see who comes and goes, nothing else. You don’t go near that woman. Do you promise?’

  ‘I swear. Thank you.’

  Nick gave a wry smile. ‘Please don’t make me regret this.’

  46

  Thursday 22 September. Primrose Hill

  Nick had found a parking space about fifty yards down from the Sandler residence and it was from this position that they’d been watching and waiting ever since. He hadn’t asked Lolly why she’d been holding the ring for Terry. There were some questions you preferred not to know the answer to. And he’d only decided to bring her here because she’d have probably found out the address from someone else, come to the house and done something crazy. Crazy being anything that involved trying to talk to Laura Sandler. At least this way he could keep an eye on her.

  Primrose Hill, near Regent’s Park, was leafy and expensive. The house was large, detached and more than any average solicitor could afford, but of course Brent Sandler hadn’t been any old solicitor: he’d been making a tidy living from helping out the likes of Terry Street.

  As yet there was no sign of the grieving widow and to pass the time – surveillance could be a tedious business – they’d been going over the case against Vinnie.

  ‘If it was Laura,’ Lolly said, ‘who would she get to do something like that?’

  ‘Oh, she wouldn’t be short of volunteers, not in London – so long as the price was right.’

  ‘But you can’t just pick up the phone and order a hit. I mean, you have to know people, don’t you? And it has to be someone you can trust.’

  ‘Brent Sandler was mixing with all sorts. She probably got introduced to some of them.’ Nick thought back to the file on Sandler, to the detailed list of all the places he’d been and all the people he’d met. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been taking much notice of the wife. ‘Maybe she had Vinnie lined up for the job but realised he wouldn’t play ball.’

  ‘So she set him up instead?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  Lolly was quiet for a while and then she said, ‘You still think Vinnie could be guilty.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But you can’t dismiss the possibility. On his own or in collusion with her. And she’s never going to admit to having an affair. That would put her right in the line of fire.’

  ‘The police must still suspect her. I mean, she’s the one with the most to gain, isn’t she? Money, property, freedom . . . ’ Lolly stared at the house. ‘That place must be worth a fortune for starters.’

  ‘They’ll be more inclined to believe her than him, especially with Vinnie’s background. Although I doubt she’s off the hook just yet. They’ll be looking to see if there’s a link between the two of them. If she’s smart, she’ll have made sure she didn’t leave a trail: no meetings in public, no phone calls to his number, no love letters or anything like that. If all this was carefully planned, she’ll be clean as a whistle.’

  ‘And Vinnie will just be a murderous fantasist.’

  ‘That’s about the sum of it.’

  It was warm in the car. Lolly wound down the window and put her elbow on the sill. ‘What else do you know about Brent Sandler? Did he have any enemies, do you think?’

  ‘Men like Sandler always have enemies. But all I was doing was following him around. I didn’t get to listen in on any conversations.’

  ‘What about the girls, the prostitutes? You told me he seemed to prefer their company to hers.’

  ‘He went to Marcie’s a lot. It’s one of Terry’s clubs in Shoreditch.’

  ‘Is it worth trying there, do you think?’

  ‘I can’t see anyone wanting to get involved.’

  ‘But off the record,’ she insisted. ‘They must know Vinnie, at least some of them. Surely they’d want to try and help him.’

  Nick wasn’t so sure. In his experience, working girls preferred to steer clear of trouble rather than invite it in. ‘It depends how much they liked him . . . Although even then they’ll be cautious, afraid of saying something they shouldn’t. They won’t want to get on the wrong side of Terry, and they won’t want to get dragged into a murder investigation.’

  ‘Terry’s not going to object to them helping.’

  ‘Unless they say something that incriminates him, like the fact that most of his clubs are nothing more than knocking shops. He’s got a business to protect, remember, and he isn’t going to want the law rooting around in it.’

  ‘He won’t want Vinnie going to jail either.’

  ‘Well, that’s an occupational hazard in their line of work.’ It came out sounding harsher than he’d intended, and he quickly qualified it by saying, ‘But I get what you mean. I suppose even villains like Terry have some sort of loyalty.’

  Lolly glared at him for a moment and then transferred the glare to the house, as if by sheer effort of will she could get Sandler’s widow to emerge. ‘What does Laura Sandler even look like?’

  ‘Tallish, slim, dark-haired, mid-thirties probably. Attractive. She looks a bit like Jackie Kennedy, the younger version. Stylish, well-dressed, usually wears sunglasses.’

  ‘Not that you were paying attention or anything.’

  ‘She might have slipped into my line of view occasionally.’

  ‘Well, I wish she’d slip into it today.’ Lolly fidgeted in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs, glancing at her watch. ‘How do you bear this, just sitting around for hours on end?’

  ‘It gives me time to contemplate life.’

  ‘And have you come to any conclusions about it?’

  ‘It’s more of a work in progress.’ He smiled, took out his wallet and said, ‘There’s a deli round the corner. Why don’t you go and buy some supplies – they do sandwiches, coffee – while I keep an eye out.’

  ‘Why, don’t you trust me to stay here on my own?’

  ‘I just thought you might like to stretch your legs. I’ll go if you don’t want to.’

  She hesitated and then took the note from his hand and got out of the car.

  Two hours passed and no one went into the house and no one came out. Sandler’s yellow Jensen-Healey was parked in the drive and behind it was a pale blue MG, presumably Laura’s car although he’d never seen her drive it. The presence of the MG suggested that Mrs Sandler was at home, but there was nothing more to back this up, not a sign of movement from inside, not even the twitch of a curtain.

  The conversation had moved on to Esther’s murder and they were going over the same ground they had last night, trying to figure out who had motive and opportunity to kill her. The latter was tricky as the party had meant a fluid movement of people between the house and the garden, and neither of them could remember seeing the major suspects at the relevant time.

  ‘Mal said there was arguing, but he couldn’t catch what it was about.’

  ‘And the other voice or voices?’

  Lolly shook her head. ‘It was only Esther’s he was certain of. I still can’t figure out what she was even doing by the lake. She hated that place, wouldn’t go near it normally.’

  Nick still wasn’t sure that he believed Mal Fury’s version of events; it could easily be a story made up on the spur of the moment, a story rooted in panic rather than the truth. It seemed to him that Lolly, so untrusting of most people, had a kind of blind loyalty to a few. He still hadn’t decided if this was a strength or a weakness or even if it mattered.

  ‘The Leightons both had reason to hate her,’ he said. ‘And so did Mrs Gough. All those years of devoted service and for what? So Esther could discard her and swan off to Hollywood. Would anyone have noticed if she’d disappeared last night for ten, fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Half the village had reason to hate Esther. She sacked all the staff after Kay was taken: housekeeper, cook, maids, handyman, gardeners. That was their livelihoods up in smoke. They relied on t
he house for an income.’

  ‘But that was years ago.’

  ‘People don’t forget. They still resent her for it.’

  ‘And Jude?’ he asked. ‘What would his motive have been?’

  ‘You’ve seen what he’s like. Maybe he was scared of being dumped or replaced.’

  ‘You think he’s capable of murder?’

  Lolly glanced at him and then away. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps we’re all capable if we’re pushed hard enough.’ She stared through the windscreen at the house, sighed and said, ‘This is a waste of time, isn’t it? Nothing’s going to happen.’

  ‘You want to call it a day?’

  ‘I should be trying to clear Mal’s name, not sitting around here. She’s hardly going to do something stupid now, not if it was all planned.’

  ‘It’s unlikely. Should we go and talk to Jude?’

  She displayed the same reluctance she had earlier, but eventually nodded. ‘There’s no point in both of us going though. Why don’t you go and check out the girls, call in at Marcie’s and see if you can dig up anything new on Sandler?’

  ‘What if it was Jude? You shouldn’t go there on your own.’

  Lolly shook her head. ‘He’d never do anything to me.’

  Nick looked at her closely, wondering how she really felt about Jude Rule. Although she acted indifferent, as though she no longer cared, he suspected this wasn’t the case. Whatever feelings she had once harboured – and Jude had certainly meant a lot to her – might be carefully buried, but they were not entirely dead.

  47

  Thursday 22 September. Kellston

  Freddy Mund loved his mother but he didn’t like her. What was there to like? It was fair to say she had a nasty side, a streak of spite running through her. Her sharp tongue was usually reserved for the neighbours or the tallyman who came to collect his dues every week, but she wasn’t averse to venting her spleen on her son too. He didn’t take it to heart – he was used to it by now – but he still despised her for it.