A Very Private Murder (13 page)

Oscar was the problem. He’d worshipped his motorcycle-riding, football-playing father, and turned against him when he left without so much as a goodbye. Now the reason for that leaving – his mother’s adultery – would be splashed across the tabloids for all to see, and she was fearful that she’d lose her son, too.

Her desk was nearly as untidy as mine. Two huge TFT monitors, wireless keyboard, obligatory photo frame, Pukka Pad and pen, two telephones and piles of correspondence and trade magazines that were poised to slide off the end. Another desk in a corner was equally piled high, awaiting the attention of a secretary who didn’t appear to exist. So much for starting with a clean sheet. She had, I noticed, fallen for the spiel of the executive chair salesman.

‘Where is your husband now?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. He had links with a friend in Portugal. I suspect he’s working in a bar over there.’

‘What’s his first name?’

‘Barry.’

‘And Oscar has no contact with him?’

‘No.’

‘Can you be sure?’

‘Mmm, I don’t suppose so. If he has, he’s kept it secret from me.’

‘Does Oscar work here at all?’

‘Yes. He spent a lot of time with the electricians. Now he’s in the control room, ironing out the gremlins.’

‘Do you have many?’

‘A fair few.’

‘Tell me about Arthur. Did he ever talk about his enemies?’

‘No, not really.’

‘In other words, he did.’

‘Just, you know, how he’d pulled a fast one on somebody. I never listened. Found it all a bit boring.’

‘Any names come to mind?’

‘No. None.’

‘Did he ever talk about horse racing?’

‘A little. He liked to show off about that. And name-drop.’

‘What names?’

‘The Curzons, who else?’

‘Any others?’

‘None that meant anything to me.’

I said: ‘What about pillow talk, Miss McArdle? He must have let slip some indiscretion when you were together in bed. What did he talk about?’

The colour returned to her cheeks. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He liked to talk about, you know, what we were doing. That’s all.’

Now it was probably my turn to blush. ‘And afterwards?’ I said. It was Clint Eastwood who said that at his age there was a lot of afterwards.

‘He fell asleep.’

I went for a stroll around the mall, checking the positions of the exits and emergency exits. And the price of trainers and hiking gear. And CDs in the HMV shop. Dave and Maggie were in the food court, behind large lattes and doughnuts.

‘Anything from the PM?’ I asked, slipping into the plastic chair alongside Dave. Three girls who looked too young to have left school were manoeuvring three buggies alongside a nearby table. Maggie pulled a chair out of their way and the prettiest girl thanked her. The children all looked well fed and happy, pleased to meet their little friends in what appeared to be a daily ritual.

‘Morning, Chas,’ he said, pushing a plate towards me. ‘I saved you a doughnut,’ but I shook my head to decline it. ‘Right then,’ he went on, ‘the PM. Nothing to add to what we already know, I’m afraid. He was in good shape physically apart from some signs of liver damage. Traumatic gunshot wound … Wait for it …’ He pulled out his notebook and flicked it open. ‘Here we are …
traumatic wound to posterior parietal bones in the location of the sagittal suture
, if that means anything to you. Otherwise, shot in the back of the head. No other injuries, no exit wound. Partly dressed to go out, no sign of a struggle. Possibly taken by surprise, or restrained at gunpoint, or he knew his assailant. Radio was playing therefore may not have heard his assailant approach.’

‘What station?’

‘Radio Two.’

‘Just checking. Go on.’

‘Only item of interest is the bullet. It’s soft-nosed and therefore too distorted to be much use, but the prof weighed and measured it and reckons it could be a .32 calibre. Not one you come across every day.’

‘Hmm. I believe the target shooters use them. It’s not the chosen weapon of your average Yardie. Anything else?’

‘Nope.’

Maggie said: ‘Are you still going to East Yorkshire or is that line of enquiry abandoned?’

‘I want to pick Curzon’s brains,’ I told her. ‘He was a social contact, probably knows about his business dealings. I might find something out. Otherwise, yes, I think it’s a waste of time. What are you two on with?’

‘We’ve traced the route taken by the graffiti artist,’ Maggie told me. ‘Inside and out. Here, I’ve marked it on one of the store’s you-are-here diagrams.’ She slid it across the table and spun it round. ‘It looks as if he used this fire exit. We were wondering if there was any point in having forensics look at it.’

I was hoping the graffiti incident was dead and buried. Before I could pass judgement we were disturbed by the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, with
three-part
harmonies.

Sparky dived into his pocket to pull out his mobile and pulled a face when he didn’t recognise the pathologist’s number. ‘Yes, he’s here with me. I’ll put him on.’ He passed it to me, saying: ‘It’s the professor.’

‘Hello, Professor,’ I said. ‘What can we do for you?’

‘How are you getting on with the hunt for Shergar, Charlie?’

I hesitated for a few seconds, then: ‘Now, who might have mentioned that to you, I wonder?’

‘Ha ha. Don’t be too hard on him, he’s a good lad. But it did set me thinking, so I rang Huntingdon to check with them and I was right. .32 calibre soft-nosed bullets are used in humane killers, as held by slaughtermen, some farmers and people in the horse racing business. Thought you ought to know.’

‘Don’t they use fixed-bolt guns?’ I asked.

‘Apparently not. Fixed bolt are just for stunning, prior to cutting the jugular. For humane killing the gun is modified to fire a single bullet. And as a matter of interest, when used at racecourses the Jockey Club rules require it to be fitted with a silencer. Don’t want the poor spectators upset every time a horse is put down, do we?’

‘No indeed. So our man could have horse racing connections.’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘Thanks for that, Professor. You’ve just changed the direction of the enquiry.’

Dave and Maggie looked mystified. I handed him his phone and said: ‘As we were. The East Yorkshire mafia is back in the frame.’

Toby answered the door. ‘Charlie!’ she exclaimed and for a few worrying seconds I thought she was about to launch herself into my arms. ‘Daddy said you were coming so I’ve been looking out for you.’ She was wearing cut-down jeans and a T-shirt covered in paint splashes.

‘I drove as fast as I could,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine. Did you drive here with your blue light flashing?’

‘My car doesn’t have a blue light. You look as if you’ve been painting.’

‘Only wallpaper. Don’t you have one that you can stick on the roof in an emergency, like they do on the television?’

‘No. They have lots of things on the television that we don’t have in real life.’

‘Daddy’s in his workshop. C’mon, I’ll take you.’

She led the way into the gloomy interior and I felt the temperature drop as we left the sunshine behind. No wonder they all died of consumption, I thought, and that made me think about Toby and her illness.

‘Is it true you beat up ten yobs at the hospital?’ she was saying.

‘An exaggeration,’ I replied. ‘There were only six of them.’

‘Cor! I wish I’d seen it.’

Up a servant-sized staircase, down a corridor lacking windows and carpet, through several doors and we were there. ‘Grizzly was impressed,’ Toby said as she turned the knob of the final door and bumped it with her hip. ‘She said there were bodies flying all over the place.’ The door was sticking and I noticed she was breathing heavily from the climb up the stairs, so I reached over her and leant against it until it gave way.

Curzon looked up from what he was doing as if we’d caught him working on some fiendish experiment, but the impression was soon dispelled when I saw the fruits of his labours, lining the walls of his workshop like some exercise in Lilliputian town planning.

‘Like ’em?’ he said, coming round his bench to shake my hand.

I slowly turned, taking them in. He made dolls’ houses. Most were three-storey town houses, Georgian style, with a smattering of country cottages and modern detached dwellings. There was even a corner shop with its fare spilling out onto the pavement, where a delivery boy’s bicycle leant against the kerb.

‘I’m amazed,’ I said. ‘Just amazed. They all look terrific.’ I stooped to look inside one, and saw a scene from an Edwardian childhood, where a comely woman in a white tunic was reading a bedtime story to a little girl while her parents, dressed to the nines, tiptoed furtively out of the front door to their waiting Rolls-Royce. ‘The detail’s incredible.’

‘We buy the figures in,’ Curzon confessed, ‘but we make everything else ourselves. They’re
one-twenty
-fourth scale.’

‘I do the wallpaper,’ Toby announced.

‘And a lot of the furniture,’ her father added. ‘She makes a mean Welsh dresser, don’t you, Pumpkin?’

It was a big room with a sloping ceiling, smelling of wood and glue and equipped with junior versions of every woodworking tool you could think of: bandsaw; jigsaw; circular saw; mitres and routers; planers and sanders; various jigs and templates; all neatly stored but easily reached. Toby showed me her desk in a corner with a high stool, where she painted sheets of lightweight acid-free paper with suitably reduced wallpaper designs from the period of the house her father was working on. An old-fashioned cast iron radiator, like the ones in my infant school, stood next to her workplace, but it obviously wasn’t on. An equally ancient pyrene fire extinguisher hung on the wall above it.

Curzon asked Toby if she’d mind leaving us alone, and as she left she said: ‘Will I see you before you go, Charlie?’

‘Toby, don’t be so impolite,’ Curzon told her.

I turned to him, saying: ‘How about a cuppa in the tea shop when we’ve finished?’ And when he agreed it was a good idea she scampered away.

‘Now, how can I help you, Charlie?’

‘Tell me about the dolls’ houses,’ I said. ‘Presumably you sell them.’

‘Two. I’ve sold two, but the grand opening of Curzon House Dolls’ Houses is in August at the village fete. We hold it on the car park. It all started when Ghislaine was small. We bought her one and when she outgrew it we consigned it to the attic. Toby wasn’t interested; she doesn’t do dolls. Two years ago I advertised it on eBay and the response was unbelievable. I can make them, I thought, and here we are.’

‘What’s that you’re making?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t look very dollsy-housey.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s a small display unit to hold a collection of egg cups, for the main house. We do them for thimbles, too.’

I looked at him, puzzled, and he said: ‘Don’t ask.’

‘OK, I won’t, but good luck with it. Looks like a winner to me.’

‘They pay me for them, and every little helps. Believe it or not, bespoke egg cup racks are difficult to come by. I do it for Toby. She’s really involved with them. Do you have children, Charlie?’

‘No.’

‘You worry about them. Toby doesn’t enjoy good health, as you’ve probably noticed.’

‘Yes. She soon starts to puff. Is the atmosphere in here good for her?’

‘Not when the saw is in use, but that’s only now and then. If necessary she works in her bedroom. Today I’m assembling, so that’s OK.’

We fell into an awkward silence until I said: ‘Tell me about Threadneedle. How did you meet him?’

Curzon smiled at the memory. ‘Ha! He organised a soirée, didn’t he. He and his relatively new wife had moved into a house over in Dunkley, near Malton, that had been owned by a racehorse trainer called Jonty Hargrave. You may have heard of him: he trained some good winners. There was a stable block and Threadneedle had ambitions to obtain his trainer’s licence and keep the yard going. Unfortunately it’s not that easy. You need a lifetime’s involvement to get your licence and owners won’t risk their horses with anyone. He ended up as just another livery yard, catering for the local hackers and pony club kids.’

‘He went downmarket?’

‘That’s right. It must have been a disappointment to him. Then there was a fire and he lost the lot.’

‘Tell me about the fire.’

‘Not much to tell. One horse died, I believe, and most of the block was destroyed. Arson was suspected, but nothing ever came of it. Someone may have had a grudge against Threadneedle, or possibly against Jonty Hargrave, not realising he’d moved on. Horse racing is a tough business, as you probably know. Fortunes are at stake.’

‘So I’ve heard. Was there an insurance payout?’

‘No idea.’

I skirted round the subject for a few minutes, prompting him here and there, inviting him to tell me again about the time he nearly owned one of racing’s aristocrats. I’d heard it all before but he enjoyed telling the tale and I’m a patient listener when it suits me. The punchline hadn’t changed, though: owning a horse like that was a fantasy, a daydream, that’s all. I said: ‘Were there many more soirées with the Threadneedles?’

‘Only one, perhaps a couple, if I remember rightly. Janet – Mrs Threadneedle – was a classicalflute player. Listening to her was magical. She was a beautiful woman and a lovely person. She and Laura – my wife – got on so well. I was so sorry when you told me about her problems.’

We collected Toby and strolled to the tearoom, discussing the weather. Apparently it was about to break in the south, with us following shortly after. Thunderstorms were due. I confessed to being a painter, saying that I’d like to set up my easel in the grounds sometime and see what I could make of the view. They both thought it a great idea, and so did I: it gave me an open invitation to come and visit any time I liked.

I paid the bill – ‘my treat’ – and left as soon as I could, saying I had a long drive home. Out on the highway I studied the map to see the quickest way to Dunkley, home of Jonty Hargrave, racehorse trainer to the aristocracy. Driving there I ran the day’s events through my mind. It had been reasonably fruitful, but it was one of little Toby’s comments that was uppermost. She’d said that her sister, the beautiful Grizzly, ‘was impressed’. I was grinning so hard I nearly missed the turn-off.