Death in Leamington (10 page)

*

Normally Penn’s forwardness would have been far too fast for me, but after the morning’s events I wasn’t anywhere near the mood for normality. This was just what I needed. I felt myself really beginning to get into this guy. God and he was
so
cute.

‘Hey, what about you,’ I said determinedly and began to pull at his shirt until he raised his arms and it was released over his head. He had a boyish, smooth chest, nicely formed but not muscular, unlike most film actors these days. In any case I didn’t mind, I didn’t need a muscle-bound action hero right then; this one would do just fine. Things were moving very quickly and I had absolutely no intention of slowing things down. I felt the excitement welling up inside my body. I sensed where we were going, first date as well. I reached into my bag just in case to find what I wanted.

‘Are you sure you’re OK with this?’ he said, sensing my excitement, beginning to kiss my neck again. I couldn’t believe he was actually seeking my consent and felt another tingle inside at this sensitivity.
Is this one for real?
Now I was really getting nervous.

‘Absolutely sure, it’s only the thought of this that has kept me going through the night shift,’ I whispered, barely able to speak. Suddenly he stopped kissing me and stared into my eyes as if he’d thought of something. I wondered what was wrong.

‘I have dubious morals you know.’

‘What do you call having dubious morals?’ I groaned.
Where did that come from?

‘Largely being dubious about other people’s morals,’ he replied. ‘I have the wrong genes, all inherited, a tendency towards being a waster.’ I shook my head.

‘Given what I’ve seen of the quality of your acting, I find that hard to believe,’ I said, now pulling his ear lobes with my lips to encourage him to continue undressing me.

‘No really, I’m afraid it started with my grandfather on my mother’s side. He was a total philanderer, one of the lesser-known beatniks, but possibly the best poet amongst all of them.’

‘OK, so what’s a beatnik?’ I asked, now getting somewhat exasperated.
Was he just teasing me?

‘You know, Kerouac –
On the Road
. He knew all of them, Burroughs, Snyder, Holmes. Alan Ginsberg was apparently infatuated with my grandfather. Bob Dylan even used a line from his prose in one of his Vietnam songs.’

‘Wow that’s cool.’ I wasn’t sure where he was going with this but I changed tack and decided to engage in the dangling conversation for the time being, waiting for the right moment to resume our earlier intimacy.

‘My mother was the product of one of my grandfather’s many affairs. Her own mother was a Native American and like my mother was apparently very beautiful. My mother got married to another man after she had me, but died when I was still very young.’

‘Really? That’s so sad, I’m really sorry. What about your father?’

‘I’ve not much idea about him; I’m a bastard son of a bastard daughter. Arnold was my adoptive parents’ family name. The only thing I know about my father is that he was English, a writer, with the nickname ‘Poshizmo’. Unfortunately, I am just the wasted product of a whole series of lusty affairs from a family of serious dropouts. Not a great bloodline, is it?’

‘I don’t know.’
Poshizmo… I think I’ve heard that name before somewhere
I thought
.
‘Anyway your family actually sound quite exciting, especially compared to endless generations of Irish labourers.’

‘I just wanted you to know what you’re letting yourself in for, that’s all.’

Gregory Corso,
Elegiac Feelings American

‘That’s OK, thanks for the health warning, but right now Mr Penn a waster, with or without a checked flannel shirt and ankle boots, suits me fine. All these years I’ve been looking for the perfect man and now I’ve suddenly found myself an impossible
lover
,’ I said ironically, hoping he’d get the hint.

‘All these years? OK, so how old exactly are you?’

‘Twenty-three.’

‘Twenty-three?
Jeepers, wait until you’re at least thirty before you say ‘all these years’. Look at me for heaven’s sake!’

‘You look fine to me.’

‘Yes but I’m an extra, not exactly James Dean taking the world by storm.’

Now James Dean happened to be my pet subject and I had just the right rebuttal ready from the hero himself: ‘
Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.
’

‘That’s really nice, and well-remembered. Anyway I really don’t know who I would be even if I could be someone else.
Do what you’ve got to do
works for me.’

‘Well, Mr Confused, whoever you could be, I am really getting to like who you are right now,’ I ran my finger down his chest, stopping suggestively just above his belt loop.

‘
You may not like me when you know my politics, I know you English girls are so restrained…’

‘What?’

‘You know, conservative.’

‘OK, Mr Penn, I really sense we are getting the confessions out of the way early here.’ By now we were sitting on the floor half undressed, him seemingly earnest in his questions, me getting increasingly frustrated the longer that this verbal foreplay continued.

‘So, confession, you get the full works with me. I aspire to be a hobo songwriter, a modern day Jack London, anti-war, anti-fascist, anti–’

‘Well I hope that doesn’t extend to anti-women,’ I interrupted.

‘Sure, animal rights are cool with me too.’ I threw my bag at him, narrowly missing his head. He ducked and then dived to tickle me, but I was too quick and turned him onto his back, pinning his arms to the carpet, my thighs astride him.

‘OK great, so are we finished now, or is there something else you want to get off your chest? Some other deep philosophical point before you get laid, because you are going to get laid, Mr Penn, whether you like it or not.’
God, I never normally talk like that
I wasn’t sure exactly what had come over me.

‘Sometimes we just have to avoid thinking about the problems life presents. Otherwise we’d suffocate,’ he said, feigning inability to breathe. I sighed, bent down to kiss his chest and then had an idea how to get this back on track again. I rolled off him and took the empty water bottle from the kitchen table, spinning it. It stopped, pointing toward him.

‘So, are you religious then by any chance?’ I asked, guessing the answer already.

‘I’m a non-practising atheist.
I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.
’

‘Now don’t make me laugh, that sounds like a cop-out.’

‘It’s the only way to go. Are there any more difficult questions?’

‘I don’t know. Well yes, in fact. Tell me right now, just how many lovers have you had?’

‘Now you are making assumptions. I’m not like other guys. They say sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship. I’ve been celibate for years you know. By the way men or women?’ I pointed down at his socks, which he removed.

‘Well I’m hardly surprised, if you’ve put all your girlfriends through this kind of nonsense.’

‘Well, I guess I do more or less.’ I span the bottle again and it pointed towards me this time. He was silent.

‘OK
,
this is supposed to be truth or dare; so it’s your turn to ask me a question.’

‘That’s easy, so where’s the most unusual place you’ve ever made love?’

‘Now who’s making assumptions, you rat? So you don’t think I’m a good Catholic virgin?’

‘Heh, don’t get so uptight. I wasn’t implying anything, but the evidence is to the contrary,’ he said, pointing at the unopened packet on the floor by my side.

‘Well it’s probably none of your business then,’ I blushed and hid the offending item behind my back.

‘OK, so I guess if you’re not going to tell me, I’d better tell you.’

I put my finger to his lips and removed my own vest and then span the bottle again. It pointed towards him this time.

‘OK then so what about you, which exotic beach with which sun-kissed babe?’

‘There were a bunch of them but actually it was probably Times Square in the rain after the New Year celebrations. At the time it seemed romantic, now I’m not quite sure about getting my name up in lights like that.’

‘Yes, you’d probably best not advertise that one, I agree. Your turn, it looks like it’s going to have to be those cargo pants next.’ He picked up the bottle and looked at the label.

‘Evian is naïve spelled backwards,’ he said.

‘So you’re into the philosophy of advertising now?’

‘They make advertisements for soap, why not for peace?’

‘OK, this is ridiculous. That’s enough talk.’

But a sudden wave of tiredness had come over me and I abandoned my earlier amorous thoughts, instead snuggling up to him and lying quietly in his arms. He let me sleep in the shadows cast by the blinds across the room. While I slept he began to compose the verses of a poem for me that he would later set to music. He sang it to me later that afternoon, sang that I looked like beauty personified, like a little angel curled like a cat amongst the pillows. I slept right through to 2pm when he woke me with a cup of tea and finally we made love.

‘By the way, I was planning spaghetti bolognese for dinner?’

‘I thought I told you, I’m a vegetarian.’

‘Well that will now be tofu spaghetti then.’

‘It sounds delicious; very
Lady and the Tramp
.’

‘I told you I was a vagrant at heart.’

Let man and beast appear before him,

And magnify his name together.

Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter,

Bind a leopard to the altar

And consecrate his spear to the Lord.

Benjamin Britten,
Rejoice in the Lamb

Detective Inspector Hunter arrived early at the new Justice Centre in Newbold Terrace first thing on Saturday morning. He had a postponed appointment with the CPS in preparation for the next stage of a case. It seemed to him to have dragged on forever in the magistrates’ court. Now he was required to take the stand again in the Crown Court on Monday. It had been a long week and he was tired; he much preferred being in the field on active investigations, but everything was remarkably quiet on that front. He speculated to himself about whether Leamington’s criminals had found better things to be doing over the summer holidays. All the same, at least this meant he would be able to spend the rest of the weekend at home, quietly, with his music. He had a ticket for a concert that afternoon, and an invitation for dinner with friends in the town’s best restaurant, but he was in two minds whether to attend either event. A good cognac, a little jazz or maybe Beethoven, seemed more in keeping with his somewhat reflective mood. He poured himself a coffee from the machine, thumbed rapidly through the local newspaper he had bought on the way in and waited impatiently for the brief to arrive.

*

DI Hunter was a man commonly acknowledged as a prodigious talent for the future. He was held somewhat in awe by his colleagues. He was meticulous and always carefully dressed, courteous, with a clipped, precise way of speaking that slightly betrayed his mixed nationality. He also had an enviable track record of getting results through endless questions and careful observation. In fact, he seemed to have the miraculous ability to extract new evidence in cases that others would file in the ‘hopeless’ category. Despite this growing reputation he was a private man. Although friendly enough at work, he did not tend to socialise with the rest of the team. For instance, he had never been one for drinking with the lads, he was a lifelong non-smoker and partial to fine dining and expensive wines – none of these attributes fitted well with typical detective inspector material.

As a result, although respected, he was regarded as somewhat aloof and a bit of a loner by the team. Formally he was known around the station as DI Hunter, hardly anybody addressed him by his first name; in fact few actually knew what that name was. He had recently collected a nickname though, which was commonly used when he was not present – Amadeus – on account of his well-known interest in classical music and his half-Austrian ancestry. His paternal grandparents were early political refugees from the Nazis but although they had changed their name from Jaeger to Hunter, they had not managed to escape British internment during the war.

Hunter was still a bachelor; tall, skinny and blonde with chiselled, somewhat Aryan features and a lean, athletic figure. He’d had no shortage of female admirers over the years, with a number of shorter and a few longer-term relationships, mostly platonic. However, the inescapable truth was that, charming as he was, his expectations in a partner were so unrealistically high that no woman ever quite managed to penetrate through the polite formality of his external persona deep enough to capture his heart. He was quite comfortable with his single status, jealously guarding his continued independence and privately polishing his aura of existential angst.

Earlier in his life, he had thought about going into the church, but his continued religious circumspection had made a priestly future improbable. For him the basic narrative of Christianity was a myth, a delightful and decorative myth, but a myth all the same. In his view, even its basic ethical teaching was more a product of the inhibitions and complexes of modern, domesticated man than of some eternal truth. The received conventions of morality were for him boundaries to be tested. Elements of behaviour that some treated as gospel truth and others treated as a hobby to be paraded on Sunday and ignored for the rest of the week. He was quite cynical about this in a way. He believed in the man, the Servant King, but all the rest of it he regarded as invention, quaint superstition. They were appealing ideas, but not a coherent philosophy. Unable to reconcile these views with a ‘divine calling’ he eventually rejected the priesthood and instead joined the police force. But in some ways he still retained some of his monk-like spirituality. Joining the police and its world of drug addicts and hoodlums was a life choice even he would now struggle to explain.

*

It was now 8.15am, the brief was definitely late and Hunter hated lateness. He noticed the sudden increased level of noise leaking through the thin walls of the stuffy briefing room, signalling unusual activity in the corridors outside. When the brief finally entered the room, Hunter made a quick apology and stuck his head outside to see what was going on. He was made aware immediately of the events in Clarendon Square and barked a few instructions to the duty sergeant, asking him to get the whole team in from weekend leave, before returning to the conference room. He then sat in increasing frustration for an hour while the CPS lawyer went methodically through the evidence with him yet again.

By the time he finally escaped and arrived at the incident scene, it was nearly 10am. His capable team was already in full operations mode. They had been keeping him updated during the morning and he was pleased to see that they had sealed off most of the gleaming Regency streets in the immediate vicinity of the attack. Uniformed officers were preventing traffic from passing along the southern, eastern and northern sides of Clarendon Square and had blocked Clarendon Place to the west; a major thoroughfare. There were therefore extensive diversions in operation around the Beauchamp Avenue, Warwick Street and Parade areas. He had to use his blue light to get through all the traffic.

Satisfied that the immediate crime scene was locked down, he went over to talk to the forensics team, who were already working in their specialist gear at the two separate crime sites. Other uniformed search teams were combing the square for evidence of a sniper. There was a calm urgency to their work, which contrasted with the mêlée around the police cordons; a combination of irritated motorists, residents and the gathering mix of spectators and press corps.

As a consequence of the morning’s incidents, all filming had of course been cancelled for the day and the actors and crew were now looking on at the crime scene in morbid fascination at the modern parallel to their own historic set.

After a brief inspection of the murder scene, he received a preliminary debrief from his detective sergeant, learning for the first time about his friends’, Alice and Eddie’s, involvement as witnesses of the murder scene. The DI bypassed the front doorstep of No. 6, where the murder took place. The forensics team were busy taking photographs and tagging samples. He headed instead down the side drive to the tradesman’s entrance to meet with the occupants inside. He heard shouts and questions from the press who were already congregating around the police lines further down the street. He had no intention of speaking to them before he had made an assessment of the situation.

No. 6, or the ‘Napoleon House’, was one of the best-known houses in Leamington, on account not only of its history but also of its present occupant. He had met the owner, Sir William Flyte, a few times before at formal civic functions. He had taken an instant dislike to him, which had not been helped by the politician’s racy reputation in the red-tops. The man appeared to Hunter to be a fake, a somewhat seedy political opportunist who had gained position through money rather than talent. Hunter had a natural aversion to such men. Added to this, he knew Flyte’s first wife, Lady Mary, and her daughters, socially; they were in his opinion the most charming of ladies, and active like him in the local music scene. For this reason, he had felt even more aggrieved when he learnt that they had been so badly treated by Sir William following his divorce and most recent marriage.

He had not met Sir William’s third wife, Lady Nadia Flyte, although he’d heard with interest that she was a cultured and kind person. He considered it so much more a tragedy that she had become involved in the machinery and household of such an unpleasant man.

In any case, he knew that all these personal feelings had to be put to one side. He needed to deal with this tragic and potentially highly political situation in the most professional way he could, whatever his own personal prejudices. He was already prepared to be at his most courteous as he rang the bell. Surprisingly, Sir William himself answered the door, a thin, wiry man dressed like a country squire.

‘Ah, Hunter, at last. I wondered when you’d get here, please come in and join your colleagues,’ Sir William said in his normal, authoritative, slightly bullying way. Hunter sensed a note of irritation in his words, maybe because he had arrived so late.

Two female members of Hunter’s team were already in the building talking to and consoling Sir William’s wife, whose grandfather had been killed on the doorstep just two hours earlier. A couple of uniformed officers were talking with Sir William. Hunter looked around the hall, noticing immediately with disdain that the lanterns hanging from the ceiling were of the wrong period and that the Carlton House desk was too early for the house. He also noticed that Sir William was looking remarkably relaxed for someone whose doorstep was now a murder scene.

‘First of all, Sir William, please let me offer my sincere condolences on behalf of the whole force on the death of your wife’s grandfather. This really is a most distressing incident, and you can be assured my team will do their very utmost night and day to resolve what has happened here as soon as we possibly can.’

‘Thank you, Inspector; of course, as you can imagine we are all in a state of complete shock. Nadia, my poor dear wife, is just inconsolable and for this terrible thing to have happened here on our very doorstep, in such a brutal way, is just unimaginably painful for her. It’s just too bad.’

‘I do understand completely, Sir William and you have my utmost sympathies. We’ve already got a full forensics team in place and we are searching the local area extensively. There are several good leads to follow already and of course with the death of the two assailants nearby we will have some hard evidence that we can gather quickly. I know how difficult this must be for you, but I do have a few initial questions; in these cases it’s most important that we quickly build up a picture of what’s occurred without losing any time.’ Hunter paused for a second and Sir William nodded for him to continue.

‘First, Sir, are you able to give me any idea of the context of what may have happened here? I understand that the victim was your houseguest, indeed as you have just confirmed Lady Flyte’s grandfather, and that he was a very senior figure in the Sri Lankan business community? Were there any signs of trouble leading up to this?’

‘No, Inspector, I cannot recall anything of any particular significance. Of course we all know that senior business people have their enemies, but I have no inkling what could have caused such a brutal and unforeseen attack.’

‘May I ask, had Mr Nariman been staying with you for very long?’

‘No. He’d been with us only a matter of a few weeks. In fact he was due to move out today to a villa that he had rented in Lansdowne Circus. Nadia had arranged all that for him through his company. He was exhausted, you know, after all those years of running his family business and had only officially retired a few months ago. That’s the tragedy of this. It was just him and his beloved dogs staying with us and he was looking forward to living a quiet life here for a while, keeping himself to himself. Inspector, this is just so terrible, how can such a thing happen in our lovely town?’

Hunter studied Sir William’s face carefully.

‘Were there any threats, anything he was worried about? Especially concerning his personal security? Have you or any of your household noticed any strangers hanging around?’

‘No, nothing at all, certainly nothing that I’m aware of. In fact, although he was tired and quite ill physically, mentally he already seemed renewed, free at last of all the day-to-day cares and burdens of his business. I’m sure Nadia would say the same, but as you can understand she is in a state of shock at the moment and I really don’t want to disturb her with such difficult questions.’

‘Yes of course, we won’t disturb her yet, but obviously if either of you have any information that would speed up our investigations, please let me know immediately. You can phone me any time of day or night on these numbers.’

He gave Sir William his card.

‘And what about the men with the knife, have you found out who they are yet? They’re, not your typical muggers, are they?’ Sir William asked somewhat impatiently.

‘Not yet. Unfortunately they were not carrying any identifying documentation but I am sure we will track them down pretty quickly.’

Hunter was interested to note that in asking about the knife attack, Sir William had omitted to mention or ask about the rifle shot that had killed Mr Nariman. Did he really believe this was just a mugging? He assumed Sir William must be aware of the gunshot, but made a mental note to check later.

‘Well, Sir William, I think that’s all for the moment. I will need to speak to you a little later, when we have made a preliminary assessment of all the evidence. Will you be around later in the day?’

‘Yes of course, Inspector, I’m not going anywhere with Nadia in this state and am at your disposal any time. The sooner we have cleared up what happened here the better. Might I ask though, what we should do about the press? The party is already on to me to make a statement.’

‘Yes of course they would be, well for now please say nothing other than a straightforward,
this is a personal tragedy; you have full confidence in the police investigation; you are asking for privacy for your family
etc. Please don’t make any comment on evidence or events or speculate on motives as we don’t want anything to compromise our investigation or any subsequent prosecution.’