Stealth (19 page)

‘It's only a tentative theory.'

‘I really like your tentative theories.'

‘It's possible Miss Smythe wrote another letter to us, which she either hadn't finished, or not posted, or – as how would they know what she was doing? – it's slightly more likely she might have removed something from next door, or their garden, that was hugely incriminating, as proof they were up to no good and they noticed whatever it was had gone missing.'

‘A weapon?' Patrick put in. ‘A load of money? Drugs? Stolen property?'

Greenway was getting really fired up. ‘Which Hamlyn, if he did personally kill her,
was
searching for when he turned the place over.'

Patrick said, ‘But according to scenes of crime people he didn't touch the loft, which might be just the place she'd conceal something like that for a short while.'

‘He might have been disturbed, say by someone at the door collecting for charity,' I said.

Greenway leapt for a notepad and pen and scribbled rapidly. ‘We'll find out – ask the local vicar, he'll know. I really like the sound of all this!'

Patrick then gave his account of events finishing by apologizing for his unprofessionalism in not going armed. Greenway showed no interest in his regrets either; in his mind, I was convinced, he was already rummaging in Miss Smythe's attic.

‘It's not quite the end of my daft ideas,' I said into the silence that followed.

‘Say away,' Greenway encouraged.

‘I almost rang you about this when I was sitting in the garden,' I said to Patrick. ‘If I had, mentioning that there was a light on in the house, you'd have come straight over, wouldn't you? Another bad mistake I made.'

‘Most probably as the single malt was particularly good I would have strongly advised you to leave everything very much alone and go home and then called out the cops to deal with it,' Patrick said with a big smile. ‘Hindsight's no bloody good, ever.'

‘It occurred to me that this group of crooks could each supply something for the whole – for want of a better word – business,' I resumed, knowing he was being kind. ‘Trent with his house for meetings, a safe place to store booty and so forth, Anthony Thomas for providing hit men, and Hamlyn as he knows the people they're targeting and also his way around in criminal circles. But he's a heavy drinker and appears to live in his plots, Trent's pathetic and Thomas doesn't seem all that bright. Who's in the driving seat and organizes all this?'

‘That is really worth considering,' the commander murmured.

‘The senior cop in a spot of bother?' Patrick offered.

‘No,' Greenway said quietly. ‘He was found hanged in his garage three days ago. There was no point in bothering you with it until now.'

Another death, another victim.

‘Did he leave a note?'

‘He did,' Greenway said. ‘Admitted receiving payments in cash from criminals in exchange for information – no details unfortunately – and that he couldn't live with the shame of letting down his colleagues any longer. His wife said she knew nothing about it but wasn't all that surprised, in her words: “Recently he'd become unrecognizable as the man I married”. He'd refused to talk about what was worrying him but they already had money problems as he'd been a compulsive gambler for years and apparently she'd been planning to divorce him over it.'

‘Someone must have found out about that,' Patrick said. ‘But surely it can't have been Hamlyn in this case. Trent? They were friends. It was he Trent complained to about Miss Smythe and she ended up with the ASBO. But somehow I can't see Trent being up to putting the screws on him. As Ingrid said, he's pathetic, as well as presumably already having had his own reputation on the line. And all our late cop needed to have done was report him for trying to bribe a police officer, money worries or no. It doesn't quite add up.'

‘OK, we'll work on it from the point of view that Trent was aware of the money worries and merely gave the information to someone else,' the commander said. ‘Who? Who's in a position to put pressure on a fairly top cop?'

‘A fairly top mobster he once put inside on phoney evidence and who might have even been his snout when he was in a more junior, hands-on role?' I hazarded.

‘The imagination of writers,' Greenway whispered, getting up to shake my hand gently. ‘That is so neat, so splendidly possible, Ingrid, I feel like crying. I'll work on it from here. You both look exhausted so please go and rest while I get on the computer and I'll keep you right up to date.'

I followed this advice but Patrick stayed put, although I gather he dozed off in that warm, quiet room, the only intrusion the soft sound of the commander tapping keys. The information Greenway was to gather would, predictably, be highly complex and extensive and, later that day, he wasted no time in sending everything he had found so far to his team at HQ to ensure that it would be waiting for them in their in-boxes on Monday morning. That would be just the start. Before he began, I also found out later, he arranged to have Miss Smythe's house resealed and ordered that someone be on duty there at all times until it was searched.

The next day Hereward Trent's battered body was found dumped in reeds at a nature reserve at the northern end of Hackney Marshes recreation ground. After a vicious beating he had been killed with a single shot to the head. Forensic examination would soon reveal that he had been dead for several days.

‘I
n Greenway's opinion he paid the price for having cold feet,' Patrick said, placing his mobile back on the table.

We were at home having been given strict orders to return to Hinton Littlemoor for forty-eight hours, the commander having said, ‘No, don't argue, see your family and recover a little more. Travel first class on the train and taxis everywhere else, on expenses. Your car'll be fine right here at my place.'

The news had come through during the rail journey and I had wondered if, had we been in the Range Rover, Patrick would have turned around and gone straight back. I admired the commander's tactics in reducing our mobility at a time when neither of us was really fit enough to drive for long distances. With this latest news I now found myself utterly sickened by the case and the thought of returning to London to tackle it again was awful.

Family members, of course, were horrified by the visible signs of our ‘accident', Vicky, the second youngest, hiding from ‘Mummy's and Daddy's hurts', and Patrick's father, John, insisting on a laying on of hands in the church and offering up a healing prayer for us which, for reasons that I simply cannot explain, helped me enormously. Vicky soon recovered from the shock of our appearance having been given a ride around the garden on Patrick's shoulders, her absolute favourite occupation in life right now.

‘I shall really have to go and buy that delightful child a horse,' Patrick said ruefully as he dropped into a chair.

‘She can have little rides on Fudge soon,' I said. ‘And you ought to have been given proper sick leave.'

‘We can have proper sick leave. It's just that . . .' He broke off, shrugged, then muttered, ‘Ouch.'

‘It's perfectly understandable that you want to get on with the job so these wretched people are arrested as soon as possible.'

‘Yes, only they're scum, not people. But what I really want, right now, is
Hamlyn
, preferably my hands around his throat,' Patrick said thickly and quickly left the room, limping a little.

It is never far from my mind that most men who have laid hands on me in the course of our working together have ended up extremely dead.

‘There are some forensic details that are interesting although, as we're both aware, it's too early for DNA and other test results to come through,' Patrick said the next morning after another call from Greenway. ‘As we already know, Trent had been dead for around three days. His body shows signs of dehydration and there's nothing in the stomach, which suggests that he was confined somewhere without food or water before he was killed.'

‘I'm worried about Sonya,' I murmured. ‘I didn't get the impression that she was willingly involved.'

‘You don't have to come back with me tomorrow.'

‘Does it show that much?'

‘I have known you for rather a long time.'

‘If you mean “known” in the legal sense, meaning sexually I was fifteen.'

‘Please don't remind me.'

When I had told him my age – we were both quite strictly brought up – Patrick had attained a shade of paleness that up until then I had assumed to be humanly impossible. This was after most of a whole summer of passionate love-making on an unusually sunlit Dartmoor. Until then he had merely been the Head Boy at school in Plymouth, a figure as remote to me, being three years older, as though we lived in different countries. Then, our fathers being good friends, Patrick had been cajoled into coming round one evening to help me with my physics homework, with which I struggled, whereupon he had sat opposite me at the kitchen table, stared across with those fine grey eyes, and simmered. What had happened next was not physics but chemistry and, holding his gaze, I had known that here was the man I wanted for ever and ever.

He had thawed rapidly and over the next few weeks we walked the dogs, rode our bikes and I discovered that his greatest attraction was his ability to make me laugh. He is a born mimic. And then one day we laughed ourselves helpless, hugging one another under the hot Devon sun and I felt the way his wiry body moved under the thin material of his shirt. As children one minute then and as close as two people can be the next, a little later gazing breathlessly at one another, speechless with amazement at the sheer gorgeousness of what we had just experienced. In short, we were made for one another. Thinking back it still amazes me that I did not become pregnant.

I would go back to London with him.

There was no reason to enter Miss Smythe's house through the back this time, and Greenway, who had not visited the murder victim's home previously and germ warfare would not have kept away, wielded the front door keys with aplomb. I was already having horrible sinking feelings about it, the writer's imagination presenting me with the hostile stares and mutterings of these SOCA personnel who had been summoned for duty on a Sunday should we find absolutely nothing.

Jane Grant had been extremely surprised when asked to attend the search but had arrived on time and now stood with us in the spacious hallway. I had half expected her to have gone the way of all the others, that is, disappeared, but here she was, outwardly composed but with a nervous smile. Initially it was thought risky to ask her along in an effort to find out if she was complicit in what had gone on as she would then be able to report to her ‘friend' Hamlyn that Patrick and I were still in the land of the living. Then the decision had been made that it was imperative to establish, now, how involved she was with his activities for her own sake if nothing else.

Greenway led the way into the sitting room and suggested we seated ourselves for a few minutes while his team got themselves organized. He had already jokingly assured Mrs Grant that there was nothing alarming in the battered state of two of his staff – who were still on fairly powerful painkillers – which was down to a traffic accident. She had promptly flashed us a very alarmed glance, gone on to offer her sympathy, and then concentrated on what the commander was saying to her.

Patrick had stretched back in his armchair, winced, forgetting for a moment, and then assumed his usual, almost catlike passiveness of the one not doing the interviewing – yet. This tends to make people forget all about him until the moment he chooses but I did notice Jane Grant's gaze drifting towards him now and again as she began to relate her findings when she went through her aunt's papers. Nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary, that is.

‘This isn't mere nosiness on my part, you must understand,' Greenway emphasized, pushing the door closed to muffle the clumping of feet up the stairs. ‘We're just wondering if there were any letters that might have been started and not finished, or sealed ready for posting and still among her documents.'

The woman shook her head. ‘No.'

‘Are you quite sure? This is very important.'

‘No, there was nothing like that. Just her birth certificate, a copy of her will and other family papers, a few old postcards, family photographs and nostalgic bits and pieces from her teaching years, the things one would expect to find.'

‘Have you finally established whether you're a beneficiary in your aunt's will?'

‘Yes, I have. Other than a couple of modest bequests to the local church and a children's hospice round the corner she's left everything to me. I've contacted her solicitor to make sure that everything's correct and he assured me that it is.'

‘Are you aware that your aunt had written around a dozen letters to the Serious Organised Crime Agency with her suspicions about the people living next door?'

Mrs Grant sat up poker-straight. ‘As many as that! Oh, my goodness! I knew she'd sent off at least one because she was writing it when I came to see her one day. I'm afraid I told her she was wasting police time and she got a bit short with me so I didn't mention it again.'

‘For reasons that we'll explain in a minute or so we want to search the attic rooms here. Scenes of crime personnel did not do so for reasons best known to themselves but mostly, I understand, because it was fairly obvious from the completely undisturbed layer of dust up there that the murderer had not penetrated that far. We think he may have been put off, panicked perhaps because someone rang the doorbell and he'd left the back door open. I'm curious: your aunt appears to have been a very house-proud lady but she didn't seem to have bothered with the loft. Was there any reason for that, do you know?'