The Chalon Heads (28 page)
Starling blinked uncertainly, then nodded.
‘A number of those stamps have now been shown to be forgeries.’
Kathy recognised Starling’s now familiar reaction to shock: his features switched off and went into a state of immobility. To Hewitt, this reaction appeared simply obstructive.
‘That’s fraud, Mr Starling,’ he said harshly, his voice louder. ‘Passing forgeries off as the genuine article. You’ve been guilty of serious fraud.’
‘No,’ Starling muttered.
‘Well, what’s your explanation?’
‘I didn’t know . . . Are you sure?’
‘How could you not know? You’re an expert, aren’t you? You get advice from experts. Of course you would know.’
‘No. It’s impossible.’
‘That’s right, it’s impossible you couldn’t have known. That’s the view the court will take, before they put you away.’
Starling stiffened at this, and McLarren broke in, speaking almost caressingly after Hewitt’s harshness. ‘Aye, Mr Starling, fraud on this scale can only lead to prison.’
‘Scale? How—how many stamps?’
‘Oh dear, oh dear, our lab people’ll be busy for weeks before we know the full extent of it. And the longer you keep us in the dark, Mr Starling, and the more you make us work it out for ourselves, the harder will be the penalty of the court, believe you me. But, then, you know how hard the court can be with cases of serious fraud, don’t you? Not that your earlier assistance to the court in providing damning evidence against some of our former colleagues will help you now.’
Hewitt seemed to lose patience. Out of a folder he snatched the enlarged photographs of the three Tasmanian stamps and threw them down in front of Starling. ‘Recognise these?’
Starling focused on them, then nodded slowly. ‘The ransom notes. The stamps . . . probably came from my collection.’
‘Forged!’ Hewitt barked angrily. ‘How did you acquire them?’
‘I—I don’t know. From Cabot’s . . .’
Hewitt shook his head. ‘Their records show not.’
‘Well, Gibbons, perhaps, or Christie’s . . . I don’t know. You say these ones are forged?’
‘You must keep a record of your purchases, don’t you?’
Starling stammered, ‘I’m afraid not.’
Hewitt threw back his head in disbelief. ‘Oh, spare us!’
‘Truly.’
‘When did you buy them?’
The silence stretched longer this time, before Starling said, ‘I have no idea. I can’t remember.’
Hewitt glared at him. ‘Mr Starling,’ he said, voice full of menace, ‘you know where these forgeries come from—you must.’
‘No.’
‘It’s sometimes claimed,’ McLarren said, musing, ‘that the courts are harder on crimes against property than those against the person. Your case should provide an interesting test of that, Mr Starling. It’ll be fascinating to see whether your sentence for fraud is longer or shorter than that for obstructing the course of a murder inquiry.’
‘You think the forger murdered Eva?’ Starling whispered, brow wrinkled in concentration.
McLarren pointed a bony finger at him. ‘And you know who he is, don’t you, Mr Starling?’
Starling looked from McLarren to Hewitt and back again, as if just now realising what they were saying. ‘I want a lawyer,’ he said. ‘I won’t say any more without a lawyer.’
They broke for lunch and to give Starling time to call his lawyer. When the detectives were alone, McLarren said, ‘A pathetic figure.’
‘A bloody irritating one,’ Hewitt said angrily. ‘You can’t tell what’s going on inside that balloon of a bloody head. Can’t see his eyes.’
‘He’s a
starling,’
McLarren said. ‘A greedy wee scavenger. But he’s been hit by a real predator, a hawk. When he’s had time to absorb that, I’m sure he’ll understand that he has no choice but to lead us to him. But I’d like something to convince him that he should be more frightened of us than of Raphael. I have no doubt that his lawyer will advise him that we would need a great deal more incriminating evidence than we presently have to charge him with intent to defraud Cabot’s.’
‘The idea of prison seemed to put the wind up him,’ Hewitt offered.
‘Aye, that’s true.’ McLarren nodded thoughtfully. ‘Kathy, that information you had about his wife’s drug habit, were his properties thoroughly searched for drugs?’
‘We didn’t know about the drugs when the searches were done, sir.’
‘Well, why don’t you organise another, more thorough search? You know what to look for now.’
‘Sir, if I may say . . .’
‘Aye, lassie. Go on.’
‘Sir, you’re wrong about Brock and Starling. I’m quite sure DCI Brock wouldn’t have done anything wrong.’
McLarren smiled at her. ‘Very loyal, Kathy. I like that. But, in any event, it’s others that’ll be pursuing that one— I was only shaking the tree to see what might drop out, and sowing one or two seeds of doubt, to mix my metaphors. Oh, and there’s something else apart from drugs that you should be looking for—the records of his stamp purchases. I have little doubt that he did keep records of some kind, and he would have had no reason to destroy them up until now. Paperwork is the thing, you see, Kathy, that trips most of us up in the end. That’s why you should be very wary of the kind of methods that DCI Brock no doubt insisted upon.’
‘Sir?’
‘Aye, the focus, I mean, on understanding the subtleties of human nature and motivation, and so on. Was that not his way of it? Well, in my experience, human nature is depressingly predictable and uniform, Kathy. What is amazingly various are the means we find to disguise it. And it’s usually the paperwork that exposes our fraud. You should concentrate on that. Get a degree—statistics, something like that, or information science. That’s the way of the future for policing.’
T
here was some relief from the heat of the city up on the North Downs, where a light breeze stirred the heavy foliage along the woodland lanes as the two cars made their way towards the house. Another car was already there in the forecourt, empty, but as they came to a stop Leon Desai appeared at the far corner of the house and walked towards them. Kathy had the key, and as the others unpacked their gear, she opened the front door. The interior was still and airless, the silence heavy as if the place had been brooding on its owners’ fate. Another vehicle arrived in the driveway, and a dog-handler got out with a beagle on a lead. They moved to the front of the group, the dog perky, wagging its tail happily.
‘We’ll start at the top and work down,’ Desai said, and the team of SOCOs, dressed up in their nylon overalls, shuffled forward to the stairs.
‘This is the bit I don’t like,’ Kathy said, hanging back.
‘How do you mean?’ Desai was pulling on his latex gloves with a look of purposeful detachment.
‘I don’t mind so much searching a place with the owners there,’ she said. ‘It’s in the open, everyone knows what’s going on. But coming into an empty house I feel like a thief, or a spy, prying. I don’t like it.’
‘That’s a bit of a fine distinction for someone in our line of work, isn’t it?’ he said.
His calmness, his indifference to the atmosphere in the house, niggled her. ‘Don’t you know what I mean? Don’t you feel anything?’
‘Shame? Is that what you mean? No, of course not. I’m doing my job, Kathy. So are you.’
‘I just sat in on McLarren interviewing Sammy Starling. He told him everything that you told us last night, about the forged Canada Cover. He seemed so confident that Brock is guilty.’
Desai nodded but said nothing.
‘We’ve got to do something, Leon. They’ve really got the knives out for Brock.’
‘I think it may be too late for that, Kathy,’ he said quietly. ‘My advice is to look out for yourself.’
She froze as he reached forward and took hold of her arm.
‘Really,’ he said softly, his mouth coming closer to her ear. ‘I mean it, Kathy. Let it go. Start again.’
She met his eyes, trying to read what was going on in his mind. He turned away and went up the stairs, two at a time.
They began in the roof space, beneath the clay tiles baking in the afternoon sun. It was hot, slow and uncomfortable work, checking the hidden corners around rafters and trusses with flashlights, wearing face masks as they groped through the fibreglass insulation quilts laid between the joists. By the time they clambered down the loft ladder and pulled off their masks they were red-faced and soaking in sweat inside their overalls. The overalls themselves were filthy with dust and debris from the roof space, and they peeled them off and put on fresh ones. Then they spread out through the upper rooms. The only disconcerting find was something that Desai pointed out to Kathy in the dressing-room attached to the Starlings’ bedroom. He opened a wardrobe door and pointed to a steel cabinet inside. Its door was open, several umbrellas inside.
Did you notice this before?’ he asked her.
‘No. What about it?’
‘I’ve just realised what it is.’
Kathy still didn’t get it. ‘What?’
‘It’s a security cabinet. For guns.’
He swung the door closed, showing her the heavy lock.
‘Sammy has a gun?’
‘If he does it isn’t there now.’
After a fruitless search of the first floor they moved on downstairs, gradually, imperceptibly, becoming resigned to failure as their search yielded nothing. The final straw was the safe that they discovered set into the floor beneath a corner of the carpet in the room Sammy Starling used as an office and den. Its door was unlocked and wedged open with a fold of paper, as if to tell them that they needn’t waste time damaging the door trying to open it. There was nothing inside.
When they had finished in the cellar, they spent a further hour in a search of the outbuildings and grounds. Then Desai told the SOCO team and dog-handler to go home.
Kathy found him standing by the side of the swimming-pool, between the house and the tennis court, screened by hedges and shrubbery. It was just after six, the western sun still hot, its light glittering on the motionless surface of the blue water. He looked defeated, and she realised how much he’d wanted to get a result.
‘Eva probably kept it all in London,’ she said. ‘That’s what the flat was for, wasn’t it?’
‘She was here for weeks at a time. She would have needed to keep some here too.’
‘Well,’ Kathy said, ‘Sammy must have taken it. He must have known.’
Desai shook his head doubtfully, then roused himself and said, ‘I told your lot to go home.’
‘Yes, I know. Can I get a lift back with you?’
‘Sure.’
‘What about the forensic evidence? Is there nothing new?’
‘Nothing that helps.’ He squinted against the glitter from the surface of the pool. ‘The toxicology results have come back, confirming Eva’s use of cocaine, but nothing that helps with cause or time of death. The cardboard box was manufactured in Finland, probably within the last year, and there were traces of raspberry jam on the inside. God knows what that’s supposed to mean.’
He stretched his arms over his head and sighed. ‘Great-looking pool.’
‘Looks very tempting.’ Kathy was feeling soiled and exhausted.
‘There’s a costume in the hut . . .’ He indicated a small rustic changing hut that stood at one end of the pool. ‘Why don’t you have a swim?’
‘You’re the swimmer.’ She smiled, remembering when she’d once come across him in the pool at Pimlico that the Yard staff used.
‘There’s only a woman’s costume.’
‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ Kathy said. ‘Not wear her things.’
‘They’re probably there for visitors. Go on. I’m in charge. I order you to search the pool.’
She laughed and he smiled, a lovely smile, she thought, with beautiful even white teeth, all the nicer for being so rare.
‘All right. Why not.’
There were a couple of towels hanging from pegs inside the hut, some very old flippers, a deflated pool mattress, and a yellow bikini. While she changed and stood under the shower head that stood beside the pool, Desai wandered off to the rose garden that fringed this end of the lawn. Kathy’s reservations about using the pool disappeared when she dived in. The shock of cool water stripped away the disappointments of the day, and by the time she’d swum a dozen fast lengths she felt renewed. She climbed out and was standing dripping on the stone surround, a towel round her hair, when she heard something behind her, rustling among the bushes that formed a screen against the woods. Turning, she was surprised to see a Labrador at the far edge of the pool, Toby Fitzpatrick behind it. His face was an image of shock, the look of horror so intense that Kathy thought briefly that he must be having a heart-attack. She removed the towel, shook out her blonde hair and said, ‘Hello, Mr Fitzpatrick. It’s Sergeant Kolla, remember?’
‘Oh . . . Good Lord, yes . . . I didn’t recognise . . .’ He flushed scarlet, coughed and blinked rapidly. ‘Sorry. I thought I heard voices . . . thought I’d better investigate— Henrietta!’
The dog was on the point of diving into the tempting water.
‘Stay! Sit!’ he cried. It settled reluctantly on its haunches, tongue lolling, eyes pleading. The second dog had now appeared out of the bushes.
‘I’d better get them away,’ he said, turned on his heel and disappeared as abruptly as he had come, calling sharply to them to follow.
‘Who was that?’ Desai had returned to the other end of the pool.
‘A neighbour,’ Kathy said. ‘He looked as if he’d seen a ghost—Eva, perhaps. Now I really am embarrassed.’
Desai smiled and Kathy, feeling her embarrassment grow rather than diminish, threw herself back into the water, diving deep. Fitzpatrick had seen her body in the yellow bikini, not her head, and for a second it had been written all over his face that he thought he was seeing Eva.
Kathy swam hard to the bottom of the deepest part, until her hand touched the grating on the bottom outlet. Desai had said that she should search the pool, and that, she thought, was what she had better do. She tugged at the grating, which lifted surprisingly easily. Beneath it, standing inside the sump, she saw a green tube. She took hold of it, replaced the grating, and returned to the surface. Taking her time, she swam to the steps. Desai was sitting on an oak bench, watching her. ‘I’m very jealous,’ he said.