Death in Leamington (12 page)

After the housekeeper had prepared the requested lunch of cold cuts and smoked salmon, she explained to him all the other delights that she had stocked in the fridge, made sure he had all the towels and linen he needed, demonstrated the workings of the various electronic gadgets in the house, showed him the book of instructions she had carefully written out – including contact numbers – and then, seeing her chance to escape his wandering hands, finally added that although she did not usually work weekends, she could always pop over if he needed her. She then asked him if there was anything else he needed for now. In other words she had done her job and had no intention of hanging around all weekend at his beck and call unless he was paying overtime.

He was blind to her messaging but all the same thanked her for her diligence. He told her his plans for the weekend and that he was sure he could now manage by himself. He would see her first thing Monday morning. He had been unusually polite in this discussion, quite against his normal sharpness. He could not fail to notice that she too had her own womanly attractions and was somewhat disappointed, but not without hope, to learn that she was newly married.
Still, she may be a good back up later
, he thought, he was sure she could do with some extra cash.

*

By now it was 11am on Saturday – a little more than three hours after the fatal shooting. Detective Inspector Hunter was irritated. His train of thought had just been interrupted by a totally predictable phone call from the chief constable. He hated this kind of political interference, especially with such a complex and dynamic situation. He looked out over the neat files and empty coffee cups grouped on the desk in his office. Unlike most DI’s offices, his was decorated with artwork and books. The crime squad was based in the oldest part of the Justice Centre complex – the original 1970s police buildings that overlooked the park. The chief constable had been short with him:

‘Hunter, this is already getting out of hand in the press… a knife attack, a drive by shooting, the involvement of a senior politician… you need to get a grip and take drastic action,’ all rendered in a raised and directive voice. Hunter was polite but had no intention of being browbeaten by such pressure.

His new assistant recently assigned from uniform branch, Penny or DC Penny Dore as he should more properly refer to her, sat opposite the entrance to his office, typing reports into her computer. Hunter called her in and asked her to collect the squad together in the major incident room. Before he finally released her, he said one further thing:

‘Look, Penny, err DC Dore, I really want you on this case but I realise that you have pretty close connections with the witnesses as well as family connections. If you ever feel compromised you must let me know. I will monitor the situation carefully of course, do you understand?’

‘Of course, Sir, but you can absolutely count on me. There won’t be a problem. And please call me Penny, guv.’

*

The team crammed into the constrained space of the incident room, where other officers were busy pinning photos on maps and filling the situation whiteboards with the information that was flowing in from the field.

‘So what do we have now?’ Hunter asked Detective Sergeant Jones, his deputy, who immediately began to summarise the situation. Hunter had a gold Crossman pen in his hand that he tapped against the desk rhythmically but impatiently, as if he were a conductor marking time for the Welshman. Jones proceeded with his exposition.

‘At approximately 8am this morning, there was a knife attack by two assailants outside No. 6 Clarendon Square. One assailant had a large hunting weapon and approached and stabbed the victim, the other was backing him up with a scooter a few yards down the street. The attack was aborted following the intervention of a neighbour, but was followed by a single rifle shot to the same victim’s head from range a few minutes later. We believe this shot killed him outright. The victim was Mr Arish Nariman, a respected, retired foreign businessman and houseguest of Sir William Flyte.’

‘Thank you, Detective Sergeant, but maybe we could have a few more details?’

‘Yes Sir, of course. Mr Nariman emerged from and then shut the front door to No. 6 accompanied only by his two dogs. He apparently intended to walk to meet an American visitor at the station. He was struck in the chest with a knife by the first assailant. Seconds after this initial attack, this first assailant, still holding the knife, was approached, tackled and then frightened off by a neighbour, Ms Alice Roberts, who of course we all know well as one of the forensics team. As they were escaping, the two assailants were knocked off their motorcycle by a black car. Ms Roberts applied immediate first aid to arrest the victim’s bleeding while an ambulance was called by a passer-by. Her assessment at that time was that the wound was severe but probably not life-threatening. She assumed she’d witnessed a mugging. She left the victim in the care of her husband while she went to attend the RTA involving the assailants down the street.’ He paused but the inspector indicated for him to continue.

‘A few seconds later, while Ms Robert’s husband Eddie Peters was tending to the man, there was a shot to Mr Nariman’s forehead that appears to have killed him instantly. It looks like it came from a high velocity rifle. Mr Peters mentioned a red laser spot appearing on the man’s head in the instant before the shot. He did not hear anything so we are assuming the shot was from long range, maybe with a silencer.’ Hunter scowled as he heard about the red spot and interrupted his sergeant’s account.

‘Sergeant, are you sure about the red spot? Eddie didn’t mention that to me when I saw him earlier. Nobody round here would use laser sights for a robbery, that’s just for the films.’

‘Mr Peters was pretty sure about it, Sir.’

‘Then that indicates to me that this was an assassination and someone was probably shooting from a moving platform, maybe at shorter range. Was it a pistol or something like an assault rifle? Did we find any rounds?’

‘There’s nothing yet, Sir.’

‘OK that must certainly be one of our priorities. Do we know anything about these men with the knife and scooter yet?’

‘No identification yet, Sir. They had absolutely no paperwork on them. They both seem to be of Indian sub-continent extraction, very dark skinned. Ms Roberts told me that she had seen men similar to the two assailants the night before in the tunnel under Jephson Gardens, cooking fish and using a similar knife. She noticed them again with the scooter as she wheeled her bicycle up the steps from her basement flat. The attack occurred while she was getting the bicycle through the gate. Uniformed officers are being asked to look urgently for any sightings of these two men around the town in the last few days, but we’ve got nothing more yet.’

‘And tell me more about the RTA.’

‘After Ms Roberts frightened them off, the two men made to escape on the scooter but were hit at the corner of Clarendon Square and Clarendon Place by an unknown black car or cab. This part is still a bit confused. It appears to have then halted for a few seconds and subsequently been driven off again at speed. There is one report of a man getting out of the car, possibly the sniper. There was also a report of a black cab a few minutes later down the street doing a pickup, which may or may not be the same vehicle we don’t know. One of the assailants, the pillion passenger who had the knife, was killed instantly by the impact of the car hitting their bike, the other, who was wearing a helmet, died from severe internal wounds and a severed artery before the ambulance arrived. Ms Roberts, a friend – a Mr Hugh Powell – and one of our off-duty uniformed officers tended to the surviving assailant while waiting for the ambulance. They thought they heard him saying something like
ningma
just before he died.’

‘Ningma?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Which officer was it?’

‘Sergeant Singh, Sir.’

‘I see. What about the sniper, did our man see him?’

‘No, he was down by the fire station when it happened and ran up to help. There are no other accounts, nothing more than I just mentioned, Sir. We are searching the square for evidence, but nothing yet and no other witnesses to the shooting.’

‘Ok well our second priority is to find that car. It sounds like it quite possibly may be linked to the sniper.’

‘Yes, as I said, we do have a report from the resident of No. 10, the corner house, who was working in his study at the front of the building. Mr Richard Baxter. He thinks that the vehicle was a black cab and he was the one that reported that another man with a turban got out of the car before it sped off. He thought he saw the same cab pick someone up down the street a few minutes later. DC Dore also spoke later to a witness in the top floor of the care home opposite – a former actress who now suffers with dementia I’m afraid. It seems she got a good look and referred to a black vehicle. She was heard shouting ‘Busy Mab’ just after the incident happened. However we have not been able to get anything else out of her yet.’

‘‘Busy Mab’, as in a registration number maybe?’ said Hunter, as sharp as a whistle. Jones looked at him as if he had just spoiled his party piece.

‘Yes, Sir, we thought the same; based on other evidence it could well be a reference to the registration number of the cab. We have not been able to get anything more specific, but we have specialists there, seeing what they can coax out of her. There are no cabs with the registration ‘BU51 MAB’ or anything close to it locally, in fact DVLA have just confirmed there are no vehicles nationwide with that registration number so, if our assumption is correct, they may be false plates. Of course you know, I assume, that there are no licensed black cabs in Warwick District, but we are also checking in Coventry and Birmingham to see if any black cabs have been reported stolen there recently.’

‘Good work, sergeant, and a nice summary of a serious and perplexing situation, but remember we have to keep looking at every detail, that’s where the clues will be.’

‘There’s one more thing, Sir,’ added DC Dore. ‘I was off duty on Friday night and by chance met up with Eddie Peters and his friend Hugh Powell. Hugh said at the time that he saw something strange as we were passing through the Covent Garden car park on the way to ‘Spice’. He was walking a few yards behind us, so he was the only witness but I made some notes at the time about what he told me he saw, just in case. He said there was a car with a similar sounding registration, he mentioned it ended in ‘MAB’. He saw four men talking and exchanging a parcel. Two of the men match the description of the assailants; another was a Sikh wearing a turban. Hugh believes he was the driver of the black car, and there was another man, short and stocky with a heavy tan, silver hair and gold glasses.’

‘OK, well that’s very helpful Dore, yes Eddie Peters mentioned that to me also. Two Sikhs, although I guess that’s not so unusual in Leamington, is there anything else, anybody?’ he asked, looking round the room. He was already gathering a picture in his mind, and some of the missing parts to that picture and the coincidences were disturbing him. This was clearly no drive-by hit and run or attempted mugging.

‘Yes, two things,’ said one of the other junior detectives. ‘It appears the landlines to Sir William’s house were cut some time during the early morning, which also suggests it was a professional job. Secondly, one of our uniformed officers interviewed the members of the film crew that have been working in the square. The director told us he has heard from one of the actors, a Mr Tristan Arnold, who saw a man outside the nursing home walking dogs opposite the square late the night before. We have not been able to interview him directly yet as he is not answering his mobile, but the description matches that of the victim. Apparently the actor mentioned that he had thought it curious at the time that the man seemed to be being followed by a large black car moving slowly.’

‘So it seems as though we may be looking at a contract killing, we definitely need to find that cab and this Sikh fellow,’ murmured the inspector. ‘But I’m perplexed why there were two methods of execution. Was the sniper the backup if the knife attack failed? What more do we know about this businessman, Mr Nariman? I’m going to need to know chapter and verse on him as soon as we can. And get hold of that actor, we need a better description of the driver of that cab. Meanwhile, DC Dore, you and I will go and talk to Sir William again. And by the way, has anyone tracked down Mr Nariman’s friend yet?’

There were blank stares around the room; this was something they had all overlooked. Trust Amadeus to pick up straight away on some detail like that.

Wikipedia,
Enigma Machine

I was over the moon when they offered me the opportunity for a reassignment from uniformed branch to work with DI Hunter. It was exactly what I had been hoping for. I joined the police force straight from college. I guess I surprised everyone when I said that I wanted to be a policewoman. As a teenager I suffered from a stammer and wore braces. For some girls my age that combination might have resulted in a lack of confidence, but I’m not one to hide behind something like that. I’m kind of a tough girl at heart. I worked incredibly hard to get over my speech impediment. I also trained every day to gain my judo black belt while still in sixth form.

On joining the police, I spent the first two years doing standard beat policing, but Hunter’s reputation was already growing fast and I was desperate to get into his crime squad, sure that I was going to learn a lot from him. I’m twenty-two, single but not unattractive, with long reddish hair that I tie into a topknot for work and ice-blue eyes; the sort of girl-next-door look that grows on you, they say.

My friends often tease me about my weird resemblance to Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter’s love interest in the films and secretly I enjoy the comparison. But what everyone seems to notice straight away about me, and I think the thing that marked me out from the crowd in the selection process, is my sheer determination. Apparently I’m pretty scary. Somehow, I give the air of being organised and knowing exactly what I’m doing on pretty well any task. It’s probably lucky they can’t see how untidy and disorganised my room is! I’m also quite creative and learn quickly. And I always try to be courteous and professional. I like to think Hunter knew exactly what he was doing when he selected me to be his assistant from the pick of the new recruits in Warwickshire. By the way, I hate that nickname ‘Amadeus’ that everyone uses. He was mad wasn’t he, Hunter certainly isn’t mad.

*

With Hunter’s encouragement, I quickly set about researching the background of both of the two assailants and Arish Nariman himself, I trawled the police computer as well as searching the Internet. Mr Nariman was easy enough: he was a very well-known figure in his home country having run a large multinational organisation for many years. I printed out details about his career to make a little summary for Hunter and then neatly added some information about Nariman’s company. The surprising thing for me, given all the business information that was available, was that there was very little on his personal life. It was really only a handful of formulaic interviews about his recent retirement. The contrast was surreal; there was basically almost no tittle-tattle about him on the Internet. But it appeared that he was a very private man who had never been married.

Given this fact, I was really perplexed for a while about the stated paternity of his ‘daughter’ and ‘granddaughter’ Nadia Flyte. It appeared that he had adopted the ‘daughter’, Nadia’s mother, as a young girl after the death of her parents and at the request of her guardian. Apart from this somewhat odd detail, it all seemed very neat and tidy, even the newspaper stories about his most recent interrogation at a parliamentary committee appeared to be very respectful. It seemed he was only an incidental player in that particular corruption scandal and no mud had stuck on him.

When I googled for any other scandal or enemies I also found very little, apart from the usual corporate intrigues and some past misdemeanours by overzealous affiliates that appeared to have been put right years ago. The most satisfying part of my investigation was probably my discovery about the ring he was wearing. I was able to quickly identify it as a ring of the APX fraternity, founded at about the time of the First World War at the University of Michigan: the only US architects’ fraternity. It appeared that he had had ambitions as a young man to practise architecture and had studied at U of M in Ann Arbor, but all of that had been put aside when his father had died suddenly. He had been called back to take up the reins of the family enterprise. That was kind of interesting.

This and the snippet about the adopted daughter were all that I could find that cast any light on the human side of the man. It was weird, almost as if someone had wiped the slate clean of any other details of his life outside the company itself. I wondered about this as he had clearly been forced to abandon his earlier dreams in order to become a company man; maybe he had sacrificed more than ambition as he did that.

I continued to research the fraternity connection further and found out that one of the fraternity’s most famous members was a certain Eliel Saarinen, a Finnish architect who became famous for his art nouveau buildings in the early years of the twentieth century. Incredibly, this was a name I already knew from my own fine art studies in sixth form. Not the father, but the son. Eero Saarinen, who was on the jury that had selected the designs for the Sydney Opera House – a project that I had studied for A level. But that Saarinen was probably better known in our household for his Tulip kitchen chairs that had been ripped off by a host of 1990s furniture stores. My father had a set in our breakfast room.

I was sure Hunter would be very interested in these fragments of information, given his interest in almost anything about the art world. When I had got all that I could from the Internet, I put in calls to the appropriate contacts in both New Scotland Yard and Colombo to find out if there was anything more they could tell me about Nariman’s business arrangements and any other contacts or leads that might be relevant to our investigation. All in all it was a very pleasing couple of hour’s work. I was sure the governor would be pleased.

The picture became much more difficult when I started on the assailants. There was really nothing to go on, no identifying documents or marks, nothing very unusual about their faces that I could see. Initial checks with the Sri Lankan, Indian and Pakistani embassies in London brought up nothing about any relevant wanted persons. We might of course be able to check the dental records later with various agencies once the autopsy was available, but for now I was at a dead end. Checks with New Scotland Yard on flights out of the sub-continent over the last few weeks into Britain also drew a blank; there was nothing unusual at all that we should be aware of, no suspicious arrivals. I added all this information neatly into my growing folder and eagerly awaited my chance to show off my diligent work to Hunter on his return.

*

About the same time Penny had been doing this research, Hugh Powell had returned to his own flat in the Old Town. His recovery from his hangover had been made more challenging than normal by the stress of attending a murder scene, a motorcyclist dying in his arms and his best friend being covered with the brains of an elderly Asian businessman. Of course he had seen some pretty terrible things over the years during his various tours of duty in the army, but then he had been prepared and trained to deal with such situations. The shock of these events occurring before his eyes in his comfortable hometown, and the feeling of helplessness as he struggled to work out what exactly he should do, had left him shaken. In contrast, Alice had been absolutely superb. She was in full professional mode and control from the start. After the initial assistance he gave her, he had soon realised that he was really not needed and probably getting in her way.

After the ambulance arrived, he had gone back to help Eddie, who was shaking uncontrollably; assisting him back down to the flat to help him clean up. He had also helped to deal with a hyper-excited Carrie. Hugh was Carrie’s godfather and she adored him but it was all he could do to keep her in her bedroom and stop her running out on to the street to watch. Both he and Eddie were still shaking an hour later. He had left the two of them about 10am when he was sure they were OK and gone back home to shower and change. As he emerged from the shower, Penny called to ask him to come into the station to make a statement. He just had time before meeting up with Bas. They were both due to travel to watch a rugby match that afternoon.

*

Rohit Dhawan, Arish Nariman’s former assistant, was already on the way to his weekly composition tutorial with Richard Baxter, when Nadia texted him with the news of her grandfather’s death. He heard the bleep from his phone and pulled up in a lay-by on the road to read the message that flashed up on his screen. He had idolised Nariman; for three years he had helped him with just about everything he did. That made their enforced separation so much more distressing. It was not just about losing a job, it was more like losing a father. As for Nadia, he had had to create a shield around their love affair to keep it secret. And now Nariman was dead. Despite his male pride, he felt tears welling up inside.

After waiting for fifteen minutes to calm himself, he got back on his bike. He had cycled all the way from his digs as he didn’t own a car, and in any case had not taken a UK driving test yet. As he arrived in the square he could see the police cordon; it looked like there was no way he would be able to get anywhere near to No. 6 to see Nadia. He texted her back to ask her to call him if she could, afraid that if he called her, she might be discovered speaking to him. They had developed a system of code using their native Sinhalese language to avoid any chance discovery from any of Sir William’s household, but of course that had been made more risky by the arrival of her grandfather. Given the contents of the text message, this was clearly no longer a risk. He looked at his watch and continued on, getting as close as he could to the corner house on Clarendon Square where Baxter lived, where he was allowed through the cordon as far as No. 10.

Richard Siken
, Scheherazade

*

As Baxter held his weekly composition class in the first floor drawing room, he noticed how the young Sri Lankan writer seemed more distracted and nervous than usual. He knew that he was somehow connected with Sir William’s murdered guest, but even so he still expected his full attention. After all, he, Baxter had spent the whole morning preparing for this seminar, and he’d had to witness the whole gruesome thing out of the window as well.

Baxter had asked the group the week before to look at the
Three Apples
story from the Arabian Nights, one of the earliest, if not
the
earliest known detective story. Rohit’s latest essay was of the usual high standard; he had produced an excellent analysis of the symbolism of death within the Arabian Nights stories. In Baxter’s view, there was no doubt that the lad had talent, but his verbal synopsis that day appeared almost morbid in its focus on violence and revenge within the story. He chose to question why Scheherazade allowed the game to go on so long, and didn’t just use her smartness to kill Shahryar, her captor. Rohit argued that she could have avoided her own probable fate and escaped with her lover if she had wanted to by taking things into her own hands and killing him, but that she was constrained from doing this by some misplaced loyalty to her lord.

After the seminar was over and most of the others had left, Rohit began to ask Baxter about the guns on the wall that he collected during his American sojourns. Baxter knew from earlier sessions that Rohit was a committed pacifist and answered his questions cautiously, concerned that he might report the firearms to the police. Baxter did not have the licenses he needed and he knew that Rohit often worked with the police as a translator. He left the room for a few minutes to go to the bathroom. When he got back, he was determined to get reassurance from Rohit on this, but found that Rohit was already oddly more relaxed. He managed to quickly get him focused back on the next week’s assignment, the one he had prepared an introduction for that morning – the ‘greatest first sentence of a novel’.

After attending Baxter’s writing class, Rohit decided to stay in the town and walked over to a local internet café, where he could monitor the news reports of the incident. During the next few hours, he and Nadia exchanged several more texts, Nadia explaining that she wanted to speak with him desperately but couldn’t get privacy at the moment. Her texts became progressively more distraught during the day, and by late afternoon she said that she really needed to see him. She asked him to try and get to her bedroom window later under the cover of darkness.

*

After a quick trip to the station to give a statement, Hugh found Bas in the bar of the Benjamin Satchwell. He seemed oblivious to what had been going on in the town. In fact, he seemed more interested in recounting the results of his ‘chav-hunting’ the night before. Apparently, his subsequent late night attempts at conquest had been at least partially successful, although Hugh was never quite sure whether to believe Bas’s boastings or not. His friends had a fitting name for him – Braggadocio – on account of his frequent tall stories of sexual exploits. In any case, Bas shut up quickly when Hugh recounted the tragic events he had witnessed that morning.