The Chalon Heads (23 page)

‘And you hadn’t met her? She hadn’t come over to see him here, to see his house?’

‘No. I never saw ’er until October, when they came back from their honeymoon.’

‘Did you realise that she was going to be quite so young?’

‘He’d kept good and quiet about that. When she stepped out the car I thought at first she must be a step-daughter or something. I was looking past her, looking for the wife, until Sammy told me this was her.’

Kathy smiled. ‘What was she like?’

Sally considered, then spoke carefully. ‘She was fresh and excited, like a kid. Well, she
was
a kid. Sammy looked embarrassed and ecstatic both at the same time. She gave me a kiss, I remember, and some presents because I hadn’t been invited to the wedding.’ Kathy noticed the way Sally’s eyes narrowed as she said this. ‘French perfume, and some small pieces of jewellery. Modern, like. Not really my taste, but the thought was there.’

‘She was young enough to be his granddaughter, Sally. It must have been very awkward for you.’

She conceded a nod. ‘We were careful with each other, so as not to cause offence. She could see, when she changed things—the curtains in the dining room that Brenda had chosen—she could see that I . . .’

‘Didn’t approve?’

‘Felt sad. It wasn’t for me to
approve.
But I did find it difficult. Some of the things she tossed out we’d ’ad for thirty years.’

We
’d had, Kathy thought. She sensed Brock becoming impatient, and she told him that she was finished. She wondered what they could have hoped to get from Sally. An admission that Eva visited her on her trips up to London? It seemed unlikely.

They returned to the front of the shop. The rain had subsided to a light shower, the sun struggling to glimmer through breaks in the cloud cover.

‘Let us know if you see any sign of Keller, or anything else unusual, Sally.’

‘I’ll keep the carving knife handy, Mr Brock.’

‘A security alarm would be better. And a mobile phone.’

‘I’ve got those too, don’t you worry.’

They drove for a while in silence, then Kathy said, ‘What did Brenda Starling die of, Brock? Keller said something about Sammy’s wives being accident-prone? What did he mean?’

Brock didn’t reply for a whole block. Then he stirred in his seat and sat more upright, as if he’d come to a decision about something.

‘She killed herself, Kathy,’ he growled. Another block passed before he went on. ‘She walked down to Farnham station one summer evening, while Sammy was playing with his stamps, and laid her head on the track.’

‘God . . .’ A woman with a pram stepped out on to a pedestrian crossing ahead of them and Kathy forced her concentration back to the road, so that at first she didn’t register what he said next. Then she pulled to a stop and asked him to repeat it.

‘I said, her head was destroyed.’

Five minutes later he stunned her a second time. She had crossed Westminster Bridge and manoeuvred through the traffic streams gyrating around Parliament Square, and then spotted a likely parking space on the approach to Queen Anne’s Gate when he said, ‘I think it would be best if you came off this case, Kathy.’

‘What?’ She was so surprised that she responded as if it were a joke. ‘I thought you needed my unique blend of female rationality . . .’

‘I made a mistake,’ he interrupted quietly, and she realised that he wasn’t joking.

She gripped the wheel tightly as she reverse parked, waiting for more, but none came. ‘Have I done something wrong?’

He frowned at his hands, balled into fists on his lap. ‘Nothing like that. it’s just a matter of judgement. I haven’t been . . .’ he searched for the right word ‘. . . comfortable, about you working on this case, from the beginning. Let’s just leave it at that. I think you’d be more suited to some other area.’ He turned away from her, looking out of the side window.

She flushed. More suited to some other area? She repeated his words in her head a couple of times, trying to extract some additional meaning from them. ‘You have another case you want me to switch to?’

‘Another area,’ he repeated. ‘SO6 have been looking for bright young women.’

‘Fraud Squad! Brock, I—’

‘It’s not a debate, Kathy,’ he said, opening the door. ‘I’ve already arranged it. You’re to report to Superintendent McLarren in the morning.’

11
A Parting of Ways

A
s she followed him along the twisting corridor through the offices at Queen Anne’s Gate Kathy felt numb. She’d never been sacked before, and the building heightened her sense of displacement. It was so unlike the usual police office building, so particular to Brock and his team, that its eccentricity emphasised the sudden fact that apparently she no longer had a place here. She knew Brock meant it when he had said it wasn’t a matter for debate—she’d seen him do this once before, to another DS who’d let him down. The man had vanished without a word to anyone, his desk swept clear of its neat rows of family photographs. But he had deserved it: he had made a mistake. What mistake had she made?

Bren and Leon Desai were waiting outside Brock’s room, talking quietly together. They continued their conversation as Brock unlocked his door, strode in and threw his wet jacket aside over a chair. They hardly acknowledged Kathy hanging back.

‘What’s the story, then, Leon?’ Brock said, sitting heavily behind his desk and waving them to chairs. He rubbed a hand across his face, as if trying to wipe something away. ‘You’ve got some results already?’

Desai seemed even calmer and more collected than usual. Kathy envied him his composure as she tried to decide, as feeling returned gradually to her, whether she felt more anger or despair.

‘We’re hopeful that the cardboard box will tell us something. It seems to be a distinctive type. They’re looking into that now.’

‘Yes? That all? What about the courier envelope?’

Desai hesitated. He drew himself more upright in his chair, an attaché case across his knee, and said, ‘Yes, the envelope. It was brought into the company’s dispatch centre at Lambeth at eight this morning by a man, but we can’t get a useful description. As you know, the envelope contained the Canada Cover and a note, cut into four pieces—the former, not the latter.’

The latter, Kathy thought, feeling a niggle of resentment now against Desai and his immaculate English. My career just collapsed without warning, and he’s distinguishing between the former and the latter.

Desai opened the case and took out two photographs, which he handed to Brock.

‘As you can see, the note is like the others.’

Brock read its message out loud:

‘THIS MADE ME VERY
ANGRY SAMMY.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked.

‘We think he’s referring to the Canada Cover.’

Brock frowned, staring at the second photograph. ‘Yes, but why? He’s making a protest against money? I don’t understand. Why does a million-pound stamp make him very angry?’

Desai cleared his throat. ‘It seems that it isn’t the right stamp.’

‘Eh?’

‘The fellows in the lab believe that that cover isn’t the one that was auctioned yesterday.’

‘A forgery, you mean? Sammy gave them a copy?’

Desai nodded. ‘Actually, they believe that cover is the copy that the lab made for us.’

Brock sat forward in his chair and stared intently at him for a moment before he said, very deliberately, ‘That’s not possible, is it, Leon?’

Desai lowered his eyes but didn’t reply. The room was very silent.

Eventually Bren said, ‘Hang on. I thought you blokes told me yesterday that we didn’t use that lab copy?’

Desai stayed silent. He sat apparently unperturbed, eyes lowered. Then Kathy noticed the tip of a pink tongue appear briefly between his brown lips, and for the first time wondered how composed he really was.

‘Kathy? You were there, weren’t you?’ Bren asked her, but she continued watching Desai and said nothing. She remembered clearly Brock putting the envelope containing the laboratory copy cover into his jacket pocket after they had decided not to use it. It was the same jacket now lying, wet, across the chair in the corner. She wondered where Desai was going with this.

‘Leon,’ Brock said at last, an edge to his voice, ‘why don’t you tell Bren what’s on your mind? You’re the one playing detective.’

Kathy noticed Desai give the slightest flinch at the word ‘playing’. As laboratory liaison officer, he wasn’t really one of them, a ‘real’ detective.

‘The lab fellows are quite convinced that this is their copy,’ he replied, voice calm and evenly modulated. ‘They have a list of fifteen points of identification. If necessary we could get Dr Waverley, Cabot’s expert, to confirm it. He worked on the copy too.’ He met Brock’s eyes. ‘That’s really all that I have, Brock. How it could have happened . . . I’ve no idea. But I thought you should know.’

‘In front of witnesses, Leon?’ Brock asked softly.

Desai met his eyes and said carefully, ‘The two fellows from SO10 were at the lab when the document people came up with this. They seemed extremely interested. I thought we . . . you should be careful.’

Brock considered him thoughtfully. ‘I see. Thank you, Leon. Gallows and Heath, eh? Who invited them, I wonder? I thought they’d packed up and moved on.’

‘I don’t know that anyone invited them,’ Desai said. ‘I have the impression that they are very unhappy about what happened yesterday. They seem to be digging around.’

‘I can confirm that,’ Bren added. ‘Central File Office were on to us this morning for a file on Sammy Starling that we’re holding. SO10 had requested it, apparently.’

‘And they asked me more questions this morning about how I came to be at the Canonbury flat when Starling returned there from Heathrow,’ Desai said. ‘At the lab I got the impression they weren’t too impressed that I was working on a Sunday. They seemed to expect to have the place to themselves.’

Brock scratched his beard, thinking, then got slowly to his feet and walked over to the window. The rainclouds had cleared, leaving the city sodden under the low evening sun. ‘I came back here after Sammy and Kathy left for Farnham yesterday afternoon,’ he said softly, as if to himself. ‘I took the envelope with the copy cover out of my jacket pocket and put it in the safe over there.’ He pointed to a dark-green government-issue safe standing in a corner of the room. It was the size of a small two-drawer filing cabinet, and an unstable-looking heap of documents stood on top of it. ‘As far as I know, it’s still there.’

He went over to the safe and crouched in front of it, turned the combination lock on the front and swung the door open. He reached inside and straightened up again, holding a white envelope which he handed to Desai without a word. Then he went back behind his desk and sat down, passing a hand across his eyes as if he had many other things on his mind.

Desai opened the envelope slowly, his reluctance apparent. And now Kathy felt sorry for him. It was as if Brock were forcing him into the role of Judas Iscariot. It seemed that she might not be the only one heading for the outer darkness.

From inside the envelope Desai brought out the fold of protective cardboard and opened it cautiously. There was nothing inside.

‘All right, Detective Desai,’ Brock’s voice seemed a long way away. ‘What do you make of that? Give us the benefit of your deductive powers, why don’t you?’

Desai cleared his throat again and the pink tongue made a brief reappearance before he spoke. ‘The inference is that Sammy Starling handed over the copy cover for his wife’s ransom, and the kidnappers realised that what they’d been given wasn’t the real thing. So they cut off her head as punishment.’

‘Go on.’

‘If that was the case, there are two possibilities.’ His voice had hardened imperceptibly in response to Brock’s needling. ‘The first is that Starling knew what he was doing, and did it deliberately.’

‘How?’ Brock insisted. ‘How could he have done it?’

‘He was in the upstairs room at Cabot’s with you for about half an hour from the time you pocketed the envelope to when he went out with Gallows and Heath. Then after he left the auction room he came back upstairs and was again in the same room with you until he left to catch the taxi to Heathrow.’

‘The room had that overactive air-conditioning, remember?’ Brock said quietly. ‘Even with everyone there it was cool. I kept my jacket on all the time, didn’t I?’

Desai nodded.

‘Sammy Starling has been many things,’ Brock continued, ‘but never a pickpocket, to my knowledge. Is it credible that he could have lifted that envelope from my inside pocket, removed the cover from the cardboard sleeve, then replaced the envelope in my pocket, without me or anyone else noticing?’

Desai hesitated, then said, ‘Probably not.’

‘What’s the alternative?’

‘Someone else did it, and gave him the cover to substitute later, in the taxi maybe.’

‘The same objection applies,’ Brock insisted. ‘Only one other person in that room really had the opportunity to do what you’re describing, Leon. Me.’

Desai lowered his eyes and said nothing.

‘Well? Am I right?’

He nodded.

‘But you said there were two possibilities. One, that Sammy knew what he was doing. What was the second?’

‘That he didn’t.’ Leon looked at Brock unhappily. ‘I’m only putting forward a train of logic, sir.’

‘Don’t call me sir. This isn’t the bloody Army, Leon. So where does this train of impeccable logic take us?’

‘Someone might have switched the two covers during the half-hour or so that they were both in the same room, between the time the authentic auction cover was brought upstairs after Sammy had successfully bid for it, and the time he left for Heathrow. He then went ahead with the ransom handover, not realising that what he had was the copy.’

‘And again, who was this someone?’ Brock demanded.

But Desai had had enough. He shook his head and shot a glance at Bren, seeking support. Bren looked deeply worried.

‘I wasn’t there,’ he began cautiously, ‘but isn’t it possible that someone could have lifted that cover from your jacket somewhere else, Brock? Did you go somewhere that wasn’t air-conditioned, perhaps? I don’t know, the gents or something.’ He saw the look on Brock’s face, and the suggestion died on his lips. ‘Well,’ he said instead. ‘What do we do, then?’