A Dish Served Cold

by Diney Costeloe

  “A watch?” Roger looked uncertain. “A watch? Whose watch? Whose is it?”

  “We are hoping you’ll be able to tell us that, sir,” Crozier replied. “We have it down at the police station and would like you come and have a look at it.”

  Roger thought quickly. If it was Pam’s watch he could always say it wasn’t. But maybe it had already been identified. Hers was an old watch, one she’d had as a child and he had the feeling it had her initials on the back. He didn’t want the finding of the watch to put Pam in the stolen car. Perhaps he could say that it was hers, but that she had lost it months ago. He’d have to go one way or the other; he could hardly say he didn’t know. He decided to pave the way a little, just in case.

  “It could be hers,” he said carefully. “She lost hers sometime before Christmas. She thought the strap had broken and it had fallen off while she was out shopping. It could have come off in the car I suppose, though you’d have thought we’d have found it before now. I gave her another one for Christmas.”

  “It would be a great help to us, sir, if you’d come to the station and take a look,” said Crozier, getting to his feet. He had been watching Roger carefully and though the man’s hesitation to answer had been momentary, it had been there and Crozier had seen it.

  “What, now?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, sir.”

  “It’s not very convenient…” began Roger, but Crozier cut him off.

  “The sooner the better, sir. It won’t take long.”

  Roger elected to follow the police in his own car. He was terrified of being seen in a police car, even an unmarked one. When they reached the police station Roger was taken into an interview room. It was furnished only with a table and some straight-backed chairs. It looked like something from a police drama on the television. Roger felt a prickle of apprehension as the door closed behind him.

  “Do sit down, Mr Smith,” invited Crozier. “DS Grant won’t be long.”

  “Do I need a solicitor?” Roger asked abruptly.

  Crozier looked surprised. “No sir, I wouldn’t have thought so. You’re only here to see if you can identify the watch we found in your car. If it isn’t your wife’s, it may well belong to the thief.”

  Roger thought fast as he waited for Grant to come in. Perhaps it would be better after all to deny all knowledge of the watch, unless of course it did have Pam’s initials on the back. He decided to wait and see.

  It was only minutes before Grant came into the room carrying three plastic bags. He handed them to Crozier who put two down on the table and passed the third, a small one, over to Roger, saying, “Here we are, sir. I’m afraid you can’t take the watch out of the bag, but I am sure you can see it well enough to know if it belongs to Mrs Smith.”

  Roger took the bag and turned it over in his hands. It was certainly Pam’s watch, but there was no question of a broken strap as he’d suggested to the police earlier. The strap, though it was old-fashioned, was a sturdy, blue leather one. He peered through the clear plastic of the evidence bag, trying to see if there were initials on the back. No, almost certainly not.

  “It is a bit like hers,” he said cautiously, “but I thought hers had her initials on the back.” There! he thought with satisfaction, now you bastards can’t catch me either way.

  Crozier thanked him, and making no other comment, passed over one of the larger evidence bags. It seemed to contain a navy fleece jacket that Roger had never seen before…except…a thought struck him. Hadn’t Pam been wearing a fleece the night she came back?

  “What’s this supposed to be?” he asked.

  “It’s a fleece,” replied Crozier. “It was found in your car. I wondered if it was yours.”

  “No.” Roger shook his head firmly. “I’ve never seen it before. Perhaps that belongs to the guy who took the car.”

  “Quite possibly,” Crozier agreed, and taking it back passed across the third bag.

  Roger looked through the plastic. Inside was his blue striped shirt, or one very like his. It was dirty and blood-stained. What the hell was that doing in the car? He stared at it for a moment trying to remember when he had last worn it, then shook his head and said, “No, don’t recognise that either.”

  “I see, sir,” Crozier stood up as he spoke. “Well, thank you for coming in. I don’t think we need to take up any more of your time at present.”

  “What about my car?” demanded Roger.

  “I’m afraid we shall be holding on to that for the moment, sir,” replied Crozier. “Our forensic department will be running some more tests on it in the next few days.”

  “Forensics? What on earth for? What’s going on?”

  “Just some fingerprinting and such,” replied Crozier rather vaguely. “Before you go today I’d be grateful if you’d let us take your fingerprints, purely for elimination purposes.”

  Roger sighed. He knew it would be no good to make a fuss about that and agreed to have them taken straight away.

  “We really need your wife’s prints as well,” said Crozier. “They’re sure to be in the car as well, aren’t they? If we could eliminate her prints too, it would make life much easier. You say you’ve no address for her?”

  “No,” Roger replied wearily, “I don’t have an address for her. I told you, I don’t know where she is.”

  “Well, perhaps we can find something in your home that would have only her fingerprints on it, a hand mirror or something else from her dressing table.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Roger said.

  “I’ll send someone to collect it sir, better not to handle it any more than necessary.” Crozier paused and then added, “there is just one more thing. What blood group is your wife?”

  Roger looked blank. “I haven’t a clue,” he said. “Why?”

  Crozier didn’t answer this but said, “Then when my officer comes to collect whatever it is, I’d like him to bring something from which we can establish Mrs Smith’s DNA.”

  “Her DNA? What the hell do you want that for?” demanded Roger, and then a dreadful thought struck him. “Have you found her body? Is she dead?”

  “No, sir, nothing like that,” soothed Crozier. “It just the blood in the car. We need to establish whether it’s hers…or perhaps yours.”

  “Mine!” The word came out as a squawk.

  “Well, sir, it is your car. We do need to eliminate both of you.” He looked across at Roger and said quietly, “The shirt I showed you has blood on it, too.” Roger said nothing, feeling trapped, and Crozier went on, “Are you quite sure it isn’t your shirt? Perhaps you’d like to look at it again, sir, just to be sure.” The inspector reached for the plastic bag and passed it back to Roger. Roger slumped back onto the chair and took the bag.

  “Do take it out and examine it properly,” Crozier said, and with slightly unsteady hands, Roger pulled the crumpled, filthy garment from the bag. It was definitely his shirt, he recognised it immediately. It was one of two Karen had given him for Christmas, and as he looked at it his heart sank; beneath one patch of dull red-brown that stained the front, he saw something which he had not noticed when looking at the shirt through its polythene. There, embroidered on the pocket in small, swirling letters were his initials, R A S; the letters entwined with each other, delicately stitched. In an unusually extravagant gesture, Karen had had them placed there as part of her present. For a long moment he looked down at the shirt and when he looked up he found Crozier watching him, a hint of polite enquiry in his eyes and he knew that the time for pretence was over. The police had seen the initials; they already knew that the shirt must be his.

  “Yes.” Roger’s voice came out as a croak and he cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said, “it is one of mine. I see my initials now I look more carefully.” He gave an awkward laugh. “A bit ostentatious really, but my daughter gave it to me.” Crozier nodded encouragingly but said nothing and after a moment, Roger, uncomfortable with the silence went on. “It must have got left in the car at so
me time. I don’t know why it’s there, or how it got into such a dreadful state. I mean, I’ve never seen it stained like this…” his voice trailed away, and he dropped the shirt back onto the table.

  “If it was left in the car, it could be anyone’s blood,” Crozier said easily. “If it was in the car and the thief was injured, he could have used it as a cloth or a bandage. If we have your wife’s DNA to compare we can eliminate her from the enquiry.”

  “But I don’t understand why she is in this enquiry in the first place,” Roger snapped, some of his earlier belligerence returning. “For God’s sake, what are you investigating here? My car was stolen, and now you’ve found it. Surely that’s an end to it.”

  “Not quite, Mr Smith,” Crozier said. “Your wife hasn’t been seen since the end of February, by anyone. It is now the middle of May.”

  “I told you. I told you when you came to the shop the other day, Pamela left me at the end of February. We had an argument and she walked out. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “So you say,” agreed Crozier. “But the trouble is, nor has anyone else. You see Mr Smith, we’ve been doing a little checking and none of her friends has heard from her since that day; none of the neighbours. Mrs Margaret Hillier…”

  “That nosy cow…” interrupted Roger. “What does she know? Pam had nothing to do with her. Always peering out from behind her net curtains…”

  “She has told one of my officers that she hasn’t seen Mrs Smith once since 26th February,” Crozier said calmly. “Don’t you think she might have seen her, even in the distance, at some time since then?”

  “No,” Roger said with exaggerated patience, “because she’s left. My wife has left me. Don’t you think, inspector,” Roger added with some spirit, “that it is pretty mortifying to have to keep repeating, over and over again, ‘my wife has left me’?”

  “Does she have a bank account, sir?” asked Grant suddenly.

  Roger turned to him in surprise. “What’s that got to say to anything?” he demanded.

  “Well, has she?” enquired Grant.

  “She has a joint account with me…if it’s any of your business.”

  “And how is that account funded, sir?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Roger took refuge in outrage while he thought furiously. What the hell was the man getting at?

  “Where does the money for that account come from?” asked Grant. “Is it your only bank account, sir?”

  “It is our housekeeping account,” Roger said. “I pay money into it each month and my wife draws on it to run the household.”

  “Does she have a private account as well, sir?”

  “No she hasn’t. She has no money of her own.”

  “So her only access to money is from your joint account?” put in Crozier.

  “Yes,” Roger said. “I provided for my wife, inspector. I’m old-fashioned enough to think that was my responsibility.”

  “And has your wife drawn on your account since she left?” asked Crozier.

  “I -er- well, I don’t know,” began Roger.

  “You must have your bank statements, the ones from you joint account. You must know if she has written a cheque or used her debit card since she left.”

  Roger was finding Crozier’s un-emphatic voice increasingly irritating and he replied abruptly, “Well, I don’t. I haven’t looked at the statements since she left. I don’t use that account much.”

  “And have you paid anything into it since she left, sir?” asked Grant. The way the two policemen were mixing the questions was making Roger nervous. One minute one was asking one thing and the next the other one went off at a tangent.

  Roger had stopped the standing order that funded the housekeeping account the moment that he discovered that Pam had taken his money from the safe. Now he looked across at the sergeant and said, “No. Once she had walked out, she was no longer my responsibility.”

  “May we see your bank records, please, sir?” asked Grant.

  “My bank records?”

  “Your bank statements, sir. You must have had several since Mrs Smith left.”

  Roger thought fast. He had not lied when he said he hadn’t opened any of the statements which had arrived recently. He seldom bothered with the joint account. Pam was the only one who really used it, and Pam wouldn’t dare to go into the red. Now he wondered. Before he showed them to the police he wanted to look at them himself. “They’re at home, I expect, ” he said, “or maybe at the office.”

  “Perhaps you could bring them into the station,” suggested Crozier, and when Roger did not reply at once her added, “Or Sergeant Grant would be more than happy to come and pick them up.”

  “No, no,” Roger said hastily. “I’ll bring them in.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Crozier, getting up. “Shall we say before the end of the week?”

  “Yes, all right,” Roger agreed reluctantly. “I’ll look them out.”

  “And there’s the question of her mobile phone. She does have one, does she, sir?”

  Again Roger was tempted to lie and say that Pam had never had a mobile, but they might already know, somehow, that she had.

  “Yes,” he answered grudgingly. “She has.”

  “Pre-paid or with a monthly account?” asked Grant

  “Monthly account. Look, sergeant,” Roger felt it was time he asserted himself again, “what has her mobile to do with you, or with my car being stolen for that matter?”

  “And its number, sir?” asked Grant, as if he hadn’t heard Roger’s question.

  “We need to check the mobile phone records sir,” explained Crozier. “It may help us to trace Mrs Smith.”

  “But why do you want to trace her?” Roger was exasperated. “I’m not looking for her, and I’m the one she left!”

  “She has been reported missing….” began Crozier

  “Not by me, she hasn’t,” interrupted Roger.

  Crozier inclined his head in agreement. “No, sir, not by you, nor by your daughter. But she does have friends who have missed her. They’re concerned and have expressed that concern. We’ve been making enquiries, and we are beginning to be concerned ourselves. The last person to see your wife alive…was you. She’s now been missing for nearly three months. How’s she been living? We need to know if she has drawn money from the bank to live on; if she is using her mobile phone, if in fact she is living a normal life somewhere. It is quite possible that she has simply decided to disappear, but it is our duty, in the light of the evidence discovered in your abandoned car, to try and satisfy ourselves that she has come to no harm.”

  Roger’s face had paled to a livid grey and he cleared his throat again. “You think I’ve killed her, don’t you?” he said in a shaking voice. “That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it? Are you arresting me?”

  “No, sir,” replied Crozier, his voice as infuriatingly calm as ever. “No, we’ve invited you here to help us with our enquiries…” Roger flinched at the clichéd phrase… “to help us identify some items that were found in your car. If you didn’t leave them there then we have to try and discover who did, and whether they have anything to do with the disappearance of your wife. To help us to do that we need something which will enable us to match your wife’s DNA…a hairbrush…comb…toothbrush….” His words hung in the air.

  “But she hasn’t disappeared,” repeated Roger in despair. “Not disappeared disappeared.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Roger muttered. “I don’t know where she is. If I did I’d tell you.” He looked across at Crozier and said firmly, “I’m not answering any more of your questions until I have my solicitor with me.”

  Crozier waved an airy hand and said, “That’s fine sir, you’re free to go.”

  “Go?” Roger stared at him. “You mean I can go home now?”

  “Certainly you can,” agreed Crozier. “ We just need your finger prints and the DNA sample, and you’re free to go.” He got to his fe
et to indicate the interview was over and said, “Thank you for your help, sir. One of my men will come round to collect something to provide us with Mrs Smith’s fingerprints and her DNA. He can collect the bank statements and mobile phone bills at the same time.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Crozier asked Grant when the sergeant came back from finger-printing Roger and taking a swab for DNA.

  Grant picked up the shirt and put it back into its bag. “Don’t know, sir. He’s not telling the whole truth and that’s for sure, but what exactly he’s hiding and why…well it could be anything. This stolen car business could be mixed up with his fencing activities.”

  “Yes, and we’re no further forward with that,” sighed Crozier. “There’s been nothing new on all that, has there?”

  Grant shook his head. “No, sir. Gordon Weston seems to have gone to ground at present, and his missus. Not in their own place and neither of them have been round the antique shop in the last few weeks. Perhaps something’s gone wrong with the operation and they had to pack it in. Maybe Mrs Smith got in the way…was in the wrong place at the wrong time…know what I mean?”

  “Unlikely to be connected,” mused Crozier, “but you never know. Did you get the impression Smith was a very frightened man?”

  “Certainly a bit jumpy,” Grant agreed.

  “Yes,” Crozier said. “That’s what I thought, especially when he first saw us. There’s certainly something going on here. So, we’ll keep up the watch on his shop for another week or so, and put a tail on him, too. See what we come up with.”

  Chapter 19

  Saturday morning saw Karen on the early train to London. She hadn’t seen her father for a few days, but she was still determined to carry out her idea. As the train sped towards Paddington, Karen thought about the police visit to her father’s shop. Telling her about it, Roger had seemed, suddenly, much older than his fifty-six years; his face was grey and his eyes were frightened She was certain he was involved in some sort of shady business deals and was in more trouble than he was admitting. She’d felt strangely protective of him. She wanted to help, but she wasn’t sure how.