Ten Guilty Men (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 3) (17 page)

‘£14.99 at WH Smith,’ Ayala said. He produced a printout of WH Smith’s website showing the kit for sale.

‘Then it’s a forger’s dream. Print it out, fill in the blanks. It doesn’t need to be checked by a professional. It can be done at home. It’s a bog standard generic will. Do you know how much probate fraud is worth every year?’

‘No, but I gather you’re about to tell me.’

‘A hundred and fifty million a year. That’s not chump change. I suspect that’s a conservative estimate. If I was in the game, I could find an old lady with no family easily enough and switch out her will. Who’s going to challenge it?’

‘The courts?’ Ayala suggested.

‘Hah. No. Someone has to challenge the will. If there’s no next of kin, and no named beneficiary to challenge it, then it’s probably going to slip by. Think about this. I could pose as a will-writer going door to door in the suburbs during the day. That’ll find me people without family and who don’t have a lawyer’s will already prepared. I ask them what they want in their will. Then I fill out the form on my laptop, bring it back and let them sign it. Then just forge a copy later on with me as the beneficiary. I could even charge them for the service and make a bit extra while I wait.’

‘Don’t wills need to be witnessed?’

‘Yup. But who checks those? No one, unless there’s something fishy going on. With no one to challenge the will, it’s not hard to just put any old name on there. Or I pick another couple of old people as my witnesses. Chances are they’ll have either died or gone senile between me picking the mark and the time of probate. It’s almost the perfect crime.’

‘You sure you’re not still a criminal?’

‘I’m just a consultant these days. My days of stealing from the unwitting are long gone.’

‘How much are we paying you, anyway?’ Morton asked.

‘£850 per day plus VAT and expenses.’

‘Bloody hell. You are a bleeding criminal.’ Morton looked across at Ayala, horrified they were spending so much to get Radley’s expertise.

Radley laughed heartily. ‘I said stealing from the unwitting. I’ve no problem taking money willingly given.’

Morton had to give it to him. He’d found the perfect mark in Ayala. ‘You said almost perfect. Why almost?’

‘Yep. I could see a few forged wills being caught. If the marks’ve got distant relatives. If they promised money to someone, or a charity perhaps. Or if the forgery is just plain obvious.’

‘Is this will obviously forged?’

‘Nope.’

‘It’s not obvious or it’s not forged?’

‘Not obvious. Firstly, it’s been crumpled up, a lot. Someone’s spilled a liquid on it too. Looks like coffee. That means the fibre of the paper is damaged. You ever seen paper up close? Here.’ Radley produced a microscope from his bag, then placed a small piece of A4 paper under a slide for Morton to look at.

‘See how this is rough, textured and almost like interwoven fibres?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now take a look at the corner of the will.’

Morton peered through the microscope. ‘It’s flat.’

‘It is. The crumpling smoothed out the fibres. It means we can’t effectively use EDSA–’

‘ESDA?’

‘Electrostatic detection analysis. I’d normally look for impression marks in the paper to see if other documents were placed on top of it and pressure applied. It’s a little more complicated than that but between the mishandling and the liquid, we’d be wasting our time. If it was in good nick, I could have compared the paper with manufacturer samples to tell you what paper was used and what ink.’

‘Could we use that to link the will to the printer that printed it?’

‘In theory, though it’s not specific. The combination of high street generic paper and a common printer means we’d narrow it down but not definitively. I usually do civil cases, so I don’t know how much good that sort of circumstantial evidence would be for proving a crime.’

‘If not the paper, then what?’

‘The signatures. Ideally, I’d have exemplars for all three of those who signed this.’

‘Two of them are alive. We can get comparators.’

‘If they’re alive and willing to testify that they signed this, then they’re a dead end forensically, as there’s no reason to claim a forged signature.’

Morton frowned. Paddy had been paid off, he was sure of that. But why had Culloden signed? Did Kal have something on him to keep him quiet?

‘Therefore,’ Radley continued with a wave of his giant right hand towards the bottom of the document, ‘this is the money shot. Look at Miss DeLange’s signature. It’s loopy, slants at about fifteen degrees. Quite girlish, and a lovely signature for autographs.’

‘I agree. So how does it compare with the comparator?’

‘What do you think?’ Radley passed Morton the will and a copy of the exemplar, which was a photographic print belonging to Ayala.

‘They look the same to me.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So it’s real then,’ Morton said.

‘No. I said exactly. As in, they’re exactly the same. Here,’ Radley passed Morton a pen and paper. ‘Sign this twice.’

Morton did, then looked closely at them.

‘See what I mean? Similar, but not the same. No one signs documents exactly the same way every time.’

‘It’s been printed?’

‘Again, no. The ink has made a bit of an indentation on the page, and it’s not the same ink as the printer. It was done with a pen. It’s not the same pen as the other signatures either.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Her signature is in black. The other two are blue.’

‘How is it so similar then?’

‘My guess is an autopen,’ Radley said. ‘Your victim was famous. She obviously signed prints of her photos. Did you find an autopen in her house?’

‘Ayala?’ Morton turned to his deputy. It had been Ayala’s responsibility to fill out the evidence logs for the crime scene.

‘What does one look like?’ Ayala asked.

‘The smallest are about forty-five by forty-five centimetres, usually metal with a boxy end on one side and arms sticking out of it to hold the pen or pencil.’

‘One sec.’ Ayala dashed out of the room, then returned panting two minutes later holding a binder full of crime scene photos. Ayala flicked through quickly, then settled on one page. He turned it around so Radley could see it.

‘Like this?’

‘That’s the boy. She’s got a USB one port, so it’s not massively new.’

‘How would it work?’

‘The signature is recorded, loaded onto USB or smartcard, then inserted into the autopen. Then it’s easy to put the paper in the right position and hit the “sign once” button and you’re done.’

‘No PC needed?’

‘Not if you’ve got access to the USB key with the signature on it. I can see it in the photo, so it looks like accessing it would have been relatively easy. Whoever did it might have needed a few tries to position the signature on the dotted line, but that’s about the only complication.’

‘And we’ve no way of knowing who used the machine.’

‘You could dust for fingerprints. It wouldn’t prove what it was used for, but it would show who had been near it.’

‘Unless they took the obvious precaution of wearing gloves.’

‘Like I said, it’s the perfect crime.’

***

Once Radley was on his way out, Morton and Ayala turned their attention to the crime scene documentation.

‘Damn!’ Ayala exclaimed.

‘What?’

‘Purcell dusted the autopen already.’

‘And?’

‘He only found prints belonging to our victim. I guess our footballer is smarter than we gave him credit for.’

‘Maybe. The will-writing software. How does it work?’

‘You fill in the blanks, click export, get an RTF file–’

‘A what?’

‘Rich text file. It’s a really common format for saving text documents.’

‘When you save one, is it like when I upload a photograph to my computer?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is it date stamped?’

‘Yes, boss, I suppose it is. It’d be stamped with whatever time the system is set at.’

‘So if we find the computer that created the will, we’ll be able to check the system time against the file’s timestamp to see when it was created–’

‘And if that time is after our victim died, we’ve nailed it,’ Ayala finished for him.

‘Then get me Kallum Fielder’s laptop.’

‘We’ll need a warrant.’

‘Go get it,’ Morton ordered. ‘And clear us going back to pick up the autopen from Edgecombe Lodge. We might need it to exhibit as evidence.’

‘You got it, boss.’

Chapter 32: The Findy-Windy Thing

Wednesday 16th April – 14:00

Kallum Fielder’s Wednesday afternoon nap was cut short when DS Mayberry arrived on his doorstep. Sleeping in the afternoon was pretty normal for Kal. Filming from six every morning would throw anyone out of sync with their circadian rhythm, so it took a while for him to realise that there was a forensic team on his doorstep.

Mayberry was about to ram the door down when Kal finally answered, bleary-eyed and wearing only boxers and a t-shirt.

‘W-we have a... a... f-findy-windy thing to c-come in.’

‘Excuse me?’

Mayberry handed him a copy of the warrant, fresh from the magistrate’s court. ‘L-look at t-this.’

Kal squinted at the paper. He didn’t have his contact lenses in. The words search and warrant swam into focus.

‘What in God’s name are you looking for?’

‘It’s in the... document. P-please step outside, s-sir.’

Kal stepped outside, then shivered. It might have been late April, but a chill wind cut through Twickenham. A blanket was hastily found, and Mayberry was able to lead Purcell and his team inside to search.

It was a beautiful home, rented according to the Land Registry, but certainly pricey. Kal had very few assets. Losing the rent on a detached house in Twickenham in favour of moving into Edgecombe Lodge was presumably a very appealing prospect to Kal.

The house was pretty empty. Kal had few personal knickknacks, and most of those he did own were football related in some way. He had old shirts hung everywhere. Some were his. Some had once belonged to players that Kal had played against on the pitch. One small shelf was dedicated to television awards. They all seemed to be from low-rent magazines rather than prestigious competitions.

Kal’s prize possession was a television large enough to be used as a cinema screen. Mayberry found Purcell staring at it with wide-eyed admiration.

‘It’s a beauty, isn’t it? Nine feet corner to corner. It’s only 1080p mind you, but if you sit far enough back it’d be a beauty for watching films or sports on. And in the winter, it’ll double up as central heating.’

‘It’s n-nice,’ Mayberry said. He didn’t see the point really. Surely you could just sit closer to a smaller television.

Kal’s office was where Mayberry headed next. They were looking specifically for personal computers and laptops. There was only one in the house. It was a brand new Dell. The box was still on the floor underneath Kal’s desk with the shipping label still attached.

Mayberry bent down to examine the label. It had been delivered the day before. He went outside and found Kal shivering. It had begun to rain.

‘Y-your l-laptop. Do you have a-another?’ Mayberry asked.

‘Nope. Just that one.’

‘D-did you?’

‘I did.’

‘W-where is the o-old one?’

‘Sold it, I’m afraid. I’ve only got the one now.’

***

Mayberry returned to New Scotland Yard in dour spirits. He relayed the news over a pot of coffee in the Incident Room.

‘It’s got to be a cover-up,’ Ayala said.

‘That much is obvious,’ Morton said. ‘He’s used the old one to prepare the will and ditched it before we could come at him.’

‘What do you want to do next?’

‘Pick him up,’ Morton ordered. ‘Make a splash when you do it. We need to be seen to be doing something. I want the media to know, but you aren’t to tip them off directly. If he’s the killer, great. We’ll look like the poster child of good policing.’

‘And if we’re wrong?’

‘Then we hit Kal for fraud. And we hope that Kal’s arrest allows the real killer to sleep more easily. The more relaxed they get, the more likely they are to make a mistake which will let us catch them. Grab him first thing tomorrow morning. Do it on set at the BBC in the middle of filming. He’ll be all over the news before breakfast.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we watch and wait. Have someone stake out all our suspects, and call me if any of them starting acting strangely. I’ll get Kieran to meet me here tomorrow morning so we can sweat Kal.’

Chapter 33: Making a Splash

Thursday April 17th – 06:40

Security at Broadcasting House weren’t best pleased to see Ayala and a half-dozen constables walk into the lobby.

‘Kallum Fielder. Where is he?’ Ayala demanded of the reception staff, though he knew the answer. Kal was in the middle of filming on Studio One, which was being beamed live to the nation. Morton wanted a splash, and Ayala planned to give it to him.

After only the briefest of arguments, security escorted them through to the studio, where they found filming in progress. As soon as they made it into the studio the show’s producer, Simon Keller, stepped forward. Ayala ordered one of his team to escort Keller out lest he repeat cut to adverts before Ayala made a splash.

Kal was sat on the sofa opposite a bungling would-be politician called Hudson Brown. He was a right-wing nut job who’d been getting airtime for his outrageous views. Kal’s eyes flicked briefly in the direction of camera five when Ayala walked in, and his facial muscles twitched in recognition before he continued with his interview segment.

‘Mr Hudson, if you were to come to power, what would be the first thing you would do?’ Kal read from the teleprompter.

‘British jobs for British workers. I would make it illegal to hire out if local talent could do the job. A booming economy starts with a booming Britain.’

‘But how? Would you repeal our equality legislation?’

‘Damn right, I would. If you’re a white man, born here in good ole Blighty, then working here is your birth right. This country needs to forget political correctness.’ Hudson stared pointedly at his host, knowing full well how offensive he was being.