Killing Me Softly (16 page)

‘We need to talk to people who knew him, to try and establish a reason for his death.'

‘Then it's true? I spoke to Clare this morning and she told me ... Is it right that he's been murdered? Christ.'

‘I see it's been a shock.'

‘Well, it doesn't happen every day that a friend gets himself topped! Suicide – hell, I found
that
hard enough to believe at first.' He had a way of looking from under his heavy eyebrows. ‘Though frankly, old Tim was a disaster waiting to happen. He'd been sliding down the slippery slope for some time. You know he was a Lloyd's Name?' Yes, said Abigail, they'd heard that. ‘Lost a packet over it – but didn't we all?' His eyes involuntarily strayed to the winking screen, where columns of figures from the realms of fantasy appeared and disappeared. With difficulty, he tore his gaze away. ‘Trouble was, he'd dug himself in too deep. Staked more than he should have, had a run of bad luck and didn't have the wherewithal when they came to call it in. In hock to his last pair of braces, he was, poor sod.'

‘When did you last see him?' Carmody asked, his face wooden. Abigail sympathized with the feeling. It wasn't easy to shed tears for anyone who let themselves in for unlimited liability just to make a quick buck, pledging assets they didn't now possess.

‘Saw him a couple of weeks ago. We took Nancy Norton over to Fécamp.' Pardoe's eyes went to an outsize, blown-up colour photograph prominent on the wall above his desk.

Carmody blinked. Abigail could see him adjusting, as she was, to the fact that Pardoe was speaking of his yacht,
Nancy Norton,
which, in the picture, was riding at anchor on a blue sea with a grinning crew holding champagne glasses up to the camera.

At that moment Mrs Pardoe brought them tea, served it and then left them to it. ‘Housekeeper's day off,' she explained abruptly and unsmilingly. ‘Lots to do.'

While she was pouring the tea, and Pardoe's eyes were straying compulsively back to the screen, his fingers towards the keyboard, as if unable to keep his mind off insoluble mysteries like futures and commodities and options, Abigail took the opportunity to study the room. It was big, approached through his assistant's office (pin-neat, custom-built limed oak, cherry pink soft furnishings and grey walls) whereas this room was a tip. Or ordered chaos, your viewpoint perhaps depending on whether you could imagine having to clean it or not. The contents of the overflowing bookshelves appeared to be mainly files and sailing manuals. Seafaring pictures occupying much of the wall space underlined that sailing was Pardoe's main leisure interest and maybe his other passion, the first being money, though a golf bag stuffed with clubs leaned in one corner, and there was a picture of him with his wife, taken on some sunlit ski-slope or other. The window overlooked a large paddock in which three beautiful horses grazed.

It became evident as they spoke that Wishart had shared the interest in sailing, though not, as Pardoe's next words showed, to the extent of owning his own yacht – or not now. ‘Old Tim used to come out with me on
Nancy
whenever he could,' he was continuing. ‘Had to sell his own boat when they began to tighten the screws.'

‘Lovely vessel.' Was that the right word for a yacht, vessel? wondered Abigail, whose knowledge of all things appertaining to the sea was abysmal. ‘Where do you keep it, Mr Pardoe?'

‘She's moored on the south coast, near Gosport. We're about as far as you can get from the sea here, but I couldn't abide piddling about on reservoirs.
Nancy's
a sea-going yacht. I like to get over to the other side when I can, though finding time's a real problem.'

‘Long way to go for a bit of sailing,' Carmody said, his heart evidently bleeding for the problems of the very, very rich.

Pardoe smiled thinly, but Abigail shot a warning glance at the sergeant. Pardoe had sensed his antagonistic attitude and didn't like it. ‘Not so far in a fast car,' he replied shortly. ‘We can be down there in two or three hours, depending on traffic.'

‘You and Mrs Pardoe?' she asked.

‘No, whoever's crewing for me. Marianne has her horses, I have my boat, it works very well. Not too much proximity – know what I mean?' One suggestive eyebrow was raised, good humour restored. He smiled a white smile; his teeth had evidently been capped. The skin under his eyes looked a little puffy. He wore a royal blue cashmere sweater and his slacks were expensively tailored to fit a slightly expanding waistline. He seemed overly pleased with himself – didn't it ever occur to him that Marianne might enjoy the lack of proximity, too?

‘You say it was a couple of weeks since you saw Mr Wishart?' Abigail repeated. Pardoe nodded. ‘Then we can take it you weren't at the Lodge dinner in Birmingham on Wednesday?'

‘Ah.' He sat back, elbows resting on his chair arms, and steepled his fingers, pulling a rueful face. ‘I've just gone and dumped my old mate well and truly in the proverbial, haven't I? Well, I suppose you'd have checked, anyway. Fact is, I didn't know he was supposed to be there.'

‘Have you any idea where he might have been?'

‘Knowing old Tim, I'd say it's more than likely he'd a bit of skirt somewhere – but don't ask me to name names. I don't know any, and it'd have taken a better man than me to keep up with them anyway.'

‘You were close to Mr Wishart, personally and in business. Can you give us the names of other friends or associates – and maybe some who weren't so kindly disposed as yourself? You knew, I assume, that he was deeply in debt -'

‘Too right, he was! He owed me a packet, for one thing!'

‘How much would that be?'

‘Never mind how much. More than I can bloody well afford!' His heavy face had reddened slightly, but he soon had himself in control again, and came back smoothly, ‘However, that's water under the bridge, the price one has to pay for friendship. I shan't press Clare for it.' He leaned back expansively. Was he really so magnanimous, or had he exaggerated the implications of the amount Wishart had owed him?

‘Do you own a shotgun, Mr Pardoe?'

He blinked rapidly. ‘I own several, why? Whoa there, just a
minute
– what are you getting at? You surely don't believe ...'

Neither police officer was moved by this, a stock reaction at best:
Moi?
My best friend? Don't even
think
it!

‘We shall need to examine them,' Carmody returned stoically.

‘Check them by all means, but you won't find anything.'

Of course they wouldn't. It was a formality to be gone through, no one with an atom of common sense – and Mr Tony Pardoe wasn't short in the sharp wits department – was going to leave a murder weapon hanging around. But he was rattled.

Abigail asked, ‘Can you account for your movements yesterday? For the record,' she added, anticipating objections.

‘As a matter of fact, I was finishing some important work with Camilla, my secretary.'

Camilla. Abigail could see her, tall, fair, Sloanish. The bossy voice over the telephone went with the image. Camilla had definitely sounded more than capable of lying in her teeth for her boss, if it came to the point where an alibi was needed for Tony Pardoe. At the moment there was no reason to suspect him of anything more than slipperiness.

He added, with a touch of malice, ‘Most of the afternoon, I was waiting for a transatlantic phone call. It came at a quarter to four.'

Impassively, Abigail asked for details, which would certainly be checked. ‘That's all for now, sir.' She slipped her notebook into her bag. ‘Thank you for your time. Don't bother to see us out, we can find our own way.'

He looked distinctly alarmed at the very idea. ‘No, no, my wife will do it.' He pinged a bell on his desk, as if for a servant. Before Marianne Pardoe promptly appeared, his hand was already stretching towards the computer keyboard.

As she left them at the front door, Mrs Pardoe said, ‘Don't try too hard to get him. Whoever had the sense to kill Wishart, I mean. He did us all a favour. And I mean all. No one who knew Wishart would disagree.'

‘Would you care to elaborate on that, Mrs Pardoe?'

‘That's all that needs to be said,' she answered, the door almost closed. ‘He was an out and out bastard, that's what he was. And good riddance.' She shut the door firmly in their faces. But not before Abigail had glimpsed a shine of tears on the weatherbeaten cheeks.

‘And what', said Abigail, ‘d'you make of that?'

‘What the lady said about Wishart goes for his mate Pardoe, too.' Carmody started the car. ‘Slimy sod. He's not shedding any tears over Wishart, he's about as upset over him as I am. He'd have shot him in the face as soon as look at him. I'd trust next door's cat first. I'm not being prejudiced. Want me to go on?'

‘Don't bother, I get the drift. You and me both, as it happens.'

They drove in silence towards the rampant lions at the gate of Norton House. Carmody negotiated the turn into the main road. ‘And maybe he
was
a good mate of “
old Tim's
”, but he's fit to be tied about that money he owed him, never mind forget it.'

‘I know. But enough to have killed him? And why? Because he felt there wasn't an earthly, as far as getting it back was concerned? Possible, but not what you'd call a compelling motive, is it? Unless it was a huge amount, which I doubt.'

‘I dunno, blokes like him, they never miss a trick where money's concerned. It
hurts,
even to lose a brass farthing.'

‘Try and find out just how much Wishart owed him. And any other dirt you can dig up about Pardoe. Can I leave that one with you?'

‘It'll be my pleasure,' said Carmody.

The quietly authoritative professional exterior Mayo presented to the world hid a sometimes irascible impatience when results were not as quickly forthcoming as he thought they should be. By Tuesday, he was demanding to know what progress had been made in the Wishart affair.

He had authorized the press office to make a media statement that the death of Timothy Wishart was being treated as murder, with a further appeal for anyone who had information, or who had been in the vicinity at the time, to come forward. It was vital that the man who'd called at Clacks Mill on the previous Thursday evening should make himself known to the police, ‘in order that he could be eliminated from inquiries'.

The first two or three days in a murder inquiry were paramount; after that the trail grew cold and the initial impetus was lost. Sometimes a case could drag on for months. Sometimes it was never solved.

Abigail, sifting through the reports which were beginning to stack up on her desk, devoutly hoped this was not going to be one of the last. A substantial amount of information about Wishart's business affairs had, in fact, already begun to filter through, but it was going to take longer than two days – more like two months, she thought pessimistically – to obtain a complete picture, due to the complexities of his affairs. From time to time he'd been involved in inquiries into financial irregularities, but nothing had come of them; and there'd been a money-laundering prosecution in 1994 from which he'd emerged without anything being proven.

But he'd dabbled in murky waters, and no doubt upset a lot of undesirable people in the process, and that was probably where the roots of his murder lay. A contract killing could not be ruled out. Hell's teeth! Abigail wanted to shut her eyes to this worst-case scenario: a professional hit man, who had no connection with his victim, the only surprise being that the shotgun hadn't been sawn-off, and fat chance of catching the perpetrator. It was increasingly unlikely that this was a domestic, but that didn't automatically let off the hook any person intimately connected with the dead man.

She ran through the names of the few who might be classed as suspects again. Sam Nash for one, pillar of the community though he might be, who'd hated Wishart pretty comprehensively, but who hadn't had the opportunity. As a director of Lavenstock United Football Club, he'd been in the directors' box with his fellow board members from the time the match began until he'd been summoned away by the telephone call which had told him of his son-in-law's death. Had it been possible for him to slip away unnoticed during that time? Unlikely, or not for the minimum thirty minutes he would have needed to get to Clacks Wood and back, plus lying in wait for Wishart. He'd have to be more closely questioned, however. Clare and his grandchildren were obviously the centre of his universe. Would he have been prepared to take such a final step to rid them of Tim? Abigail didn't doubt him capable of decisive – even ruthless – action. But murder was another thing.

Apart from Wishart's family, David Neale was the only other person known to have been in the vicinity, but he'd gone straight to the Centre after leaving Clare, his arrival at twenty to four had been confirmed by several witnesses, and his car had still been in the park until at least half-past five; his, and the one next to it, had been hemmed in by some woman who had (illicitly) parked her car in the Centre's car-park while she went shopping. It all seemed straightforward enough. Moreover, there was nothing to indicate why, as little more than an acquaintance, he should wish to murder Wishart. Unless Clare was a reason. Mere speculation, this, but Abigail had picked up something, from Neale's attitude – though what, it was hard to pinpoint.

Ellie Redvers admitted to being desperately unhappy in a relationship, almost certainly with Wishart, but Abigail herself had been with her until shortly before Wishart had been shot. And there was no way Abigail could realistically see her rushing off after their lunch meeting to find a gun and shoot him.

In fact, unless both Timpson-Ludgate had been substantially mistaken about the time of death, and Fairmile about the shot, none of them had had the opportunity. Except for Clare. The husband or wife was always the strongest suspect, and Clare had a prime motive in that Tim Wishart had been a faithless and unsatisfactory husband.