All Quiet on Arrival (10 page)

‘Any more joy on the fingerprints, guv?' asked DS Charlie Flynn.

‘Yes, but first things first, Charlie.' I thumbed through the latest report to have arrived from the forensic science laboratory via Linda Mitchell, the senior forensic practitioner. ‘The good news,' I began, ‘if you can call it that, is that the DNA of the semen taken from Diana Barton's body matches the DNA of the hair that James Barton was clutching in his hand. So it looks as though the same guy was responsible for both murders. Maybe. But at least we can be certain that James Barton's killer was at Diana's party.'

‘So it was one of the four men whose names are up there, guv,' suggested DI Kate Ebdon.

‘Not necessarily, Kate. We don't know that we have a full list of all the guests yet. As you already know, Linda's team lifted a whole load of prints from Tavona Street, and they're still being processed. And you also know that she has eliminated those of James and Diana Barton, and that one set tallies with Thomas Hendry. Fingerprint Branch has now turned up another, by the name of Barry Pincher.'

Colin Wilberforce crossed to the whiteboard, and added Pincher to the name of Barry, and Potier to Gaston. Then he put question marks after each of them. Very careful is Colin.

‘Pincher has several previous convictions for theft and burglary, and one for armed robbery. His last recorded address was in Lambeth. While you're on to the DVLA, Tom, you might as well see if they've got a different address for him than the one in records. The one we've got might be false.'

‘Right, guv.' Challis made a note.

‘Kate, hang on until Tom Challis has made his phone call,' I said to DI Ebdon, ‘but if he doesn't turn up anything, take a DC to Pincher's last known address and bring him in.'

‘Got it, guv,' said Kate.

‘I think that'll do for the time being,' I said.

As I was about to send the team on its way, Colin Wilberforce replaced the receiver of his telephone. ‘That was the head office of James Barton's bank, sir,' he said. ‘Half an hour ago, someone attempted to draw money with Barton's debit card from an ATM in Kensington High Street.'

‘But we advised the bank of Barton's murder, didn't we?' I said. ‘And they put a stop on the account,

‘Exactly so, sir,' said Wilberforce. ‘The withdrawal was refused, and the card retained by the machine.'

‘Where's the card now?'

‘The bank's head office has made arrangements for it to be held by the Kensington branch until we collect it.'

‘And everyone will have put their bloody fingers all over it, I suppose,' said Dave gloomily.

‘Doubtless,' I agreed, ‘but the experts might just be able to do something with it.' I turned to DC John Appleby. ‘Get up to this Kensington bank straight away, John, and take the card direct to Fingerprint Branch.'

Tom Challis returned from making his phone call to the DVLA. ‘I've got addresses for both Gaston Potier and Barry Pincher, guv,' he said, referring to a slip of paper. ‘Pincher lives at Hake Road, Lambeth, which was the one we already had, and Potier was last resident at Rawton Way, Harrow on the Hill.'

‘So Potier's still here,' I said. ‘Excellent. That'll save me the cost of a bottle of brandy for Henri Deshayes. OK, Kate, away you go to Pincher's drum. Take Ray Furness with you, and feel Pincher's collar for him.' Ray Furness was an experienced DC, and he and Kate were more than capable of bringing in a suspect. ‘You might as well turn over his drum while you're at it.'

‘Of course, guv,' said Kate, a slight lifting of her chin indicating that she was going to search his house anyway, and didn't need to be told what to do.

‘Finally, there might be some benefit in tracing Diana Barton's first husband. According to James Barton, he was married to Diana about seven years ago.' I looked at DC Nicola Chance. ‘Perhaps you'd take that on, Nicola.'

‘Right, sir,' said Nicola, and made a note.

‘Dave, you and I will pay M'sieur Potier a visit, but I think that'll keep until later today. You never know, he might be in gainful employment.'

‘Yes, sir, you never know,' said Dave pointedly. He held the view that villains were unlikely to work for their living, and he had already classified Potier as a villain.

At two o'clock that afternoon, Kate Ebdon telephoned from Charing Cross police station to announce that Barry Pincher was being held there. She also mentioned that he was complaining about having had his house searched, and being wrongfully arrested and falsely imprisoned. He also wanted a lawyer. Knowing his form, I wasn't surprised that Pincher knew the sort of noises to make when he was nicked.

It was a lovely sunny August day, and to Dave's undisguised horror, I decided that we'd walk up Whitehall to the police station in William the Fourth Street, a matter of half a mile or so. Unfortunately, Whitehall was thronged with tourists, and anyone who looks like a native of London will be stopped and asked inane questions. But luck was with us, and it didn't happen until we were almost at Trafalgar Square.

‘Excuse me, sir,' said the speaker, a well-fed German with a thick, halting accent, and a limited command of English. ‘Are you happening to know of the way at Buckminster Castle?'

I debated with myself, albeit briefly, whether he was interested in the location of Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle. As he was in Whitehall I guessed that he wanted the nearest: the Queen's London residence.

I declined to show out that I spoke fluent German, about the only benefit of having been married to Helga for sixteen years. Helga Büchner was a physiotherapist at Westminster Hospital who, years ago, had pummelled my shoulder into working order again after a punch-up with a group of yobs in Whitehall. Following a whirlwind courtship, we were married. But she insisted on continuing to work even after our son Robert was born. One day she left him with a neighbour, and the little chap fell into the pond and drowned. He was only four. I was on the Flying Squad at the time, and I'll never forget that awful day. The guv'nor called me into his office and broke the news. Then he told me to take as much time off as I needed. The Job's good like that. But that tragedy, followed by blatant adultery on both sides, signalled the end of the marriage.

‘I think you want Buckingham Palace,' I explained to the German. ‘Go through Admiralty Arch over there,' I said, pointing, ‘and you'll find it at the other end of The Mall.'

‘Is that so far?'

‘About three-quarters of a mile.' I knew this because I'd walked a beat along The Mall when I was a young PC. ‘Very nearly a kilometre,' I added, trying to be helpful.

‘Ach! So far? Is it that you can call for me a taxi?'

‘No, I can't,' I said. I indicated a passing black cab. ‘All you need to do is wave at one of those, and he'll take you there.' I had a feeling that the cabbie might take our German friend on the scenic route via Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus and Hyde Park Corner. Taxi drivers always seem to think that foreign tourists want to see as much of London as possible.

We reached Charing Cross police station without further interruption. Kate was with Barry Pincher in the interview room, but she had sent Ray Furness back to Curtis Green.

‘I'm Detective Chief Inspector Brock of Scotland Yard,' I announced.

‘Oh yeah, and what you going to stitch me up with this time, then?' Pincher was sprawled in a chair, and appeared unimpressed by my awesome announcement. ‘An' I wanna know why I've been nicked.'

‘You haven't been arrested,' I said, and turned to Kate. ‘You didn't arrest Mr Pincher, did you, Inspector?'

‘Certainly not, sir. I asked him to accompany me to the police station in order to assist us with our enquiries. And he did so, willingly.'

‘Like bloody hell I did,' exclaimed Pincher. ‘She had me arm up me back quicker than that. Anyway, if I ain't been nicked, I can go, yeah?'

‘There's no hurry,' I said. ‘Now then, Pincher, you were at a party at twenty-seven Tavona Street, Chelsea, on Saturday last, the twenty-seventh of July.'

‘Who says I was?' Pincher attempted to sound confident, but the fact that we knew of his presence at the Bartons' house had clearly thrown him.

‘Several of the other people who were also there told me,' I said.

‘So what? It was a party. T'ain't illegal having a party, or going to one.'

‘No, but murdering the hostess is,' put in Dave.

‘'Ere, bloody hold on.' Pincher sat bolt upright. ‘I ain't had nothing to do with no murder. D'you mean someone topped Diana?' He contrived, not very successfully, to look surprised.

Dave raised his eyebrows to the ceiling at Pincher's use of a treble negative. I imagine he was regretting that there was no law against the use of bad English. ‘Don't you ever read the newspapers?' he asked, and then answered his own question. ‘No, I don't suppose you get any further than the sports section. Or, in the case of the
Sun
, page three.'

‘I don't know nothing about no one getting topped. Diana was all right when I pushed off.' Pincher was beginning to sound a little desperate now.

‘At what time did you last speak to her, Barry?' I asked.

‘I can't rightly remember.'

‘What my guv'nor means,' said Dave, ‘is whether you spoke to her again after you'd screwed her.'

‘Now look here—'

Kate Ebdon decided to take a hand in the questioning. ‘Look, mate,' she began, her Australian accent becoming more menacing than usual, ‘we know you didn't go there for canapés and a glass of plonk. You went there because Diana Barton liked a bit of rough, and I reckon they don't come much rougher than you. So, if I was you, I'd tell Mr Brock exactly what went down.' She opened her pocketbook, and pretended to read an entry. ‘Yes, I knew I'd got something about you here somewhere. I've been listening to the vibes on the grapevine, and according to my latest information, I hear that the Heavy Mob would like a word with you.' Police and villains alike invariably referred to the Flying Squad as the Heavy Mob.

‘That's a bloody lie. I've gone straight.' Pincher was now beginning to get very anguished, and the threat of an interview with the Flying Squad had done nothing to allay his fears that he was about to be ‘fitted up'. I'd read that some of his previous offences had attracted the attention of the Flying Squad, and that's never a smart thing to do.

‘Who was the bird who came with you?' asked Dave, before Pincher had had time to recover from Kate's verbal onslaught.

‘What bird?'

‘That's what I'm asking,' said Dave patiently. ‘Liz, Debbie or Charlene? Take your pick.'

Pincher was slowly realising that we knew more about this party than he thought. ‘It was Charlene.'

‘Charlene who?'

‘Charlene Hoyle. What d'you wanna know that for?'

‘Because we intend to talk to her,' I said. ‘Where does she live?'

‘With me.'

I glanced at Kate, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘She wasn't there when we invited Mr Pincher to come with us, sir,' said Kate.

‘Well?' I turned back to Pincher.

‘She's working, ain't she?'

‘Where?' This was like pulling teeth, but there was nothing unusual in that with a villain of Pincher's calibre.

‘Some place up Mayfair.'

‘And I don't suppose you know the name of this place.'

‘S'right. I dunno.'

‘And what do you do for a living? Assuming you do something in between your spells as one of Her Majesty's guests.'

‘I'm a short-order cook down a burger bar. In the evenings, six to midnight.'

‘God help us,' muttered Dave. He glanced at Pincher's dirty fingernails and probably decided that he would never eat a burger again.

‘At what time did you leave this party?' I asked.

‘About midnight, I s'pose.'

‘Weren't you short-order burgering that night, then?' asked Dave.

‘How could I be if I was partying?' asked Pincher, a puzzled expression on his face. He seemed to think that Dave was a bit slow on the uptake. Bad mistake.

‘To repeat my previous question,' I said, ‘when did you last speak to Diana Barton?'

‘Must've been about nine. I never saw her after that. She stayed in her bedroom for most of the evening. Leastways, from about nine o'clock onwards.'

‘And I suppose each of the men went up to give her a seeing-to from time to time,' said Kate.

‘Well, if they did, I don't know nothing about it.'

‘Did you have sexual intercourse with Diana Barton at any time during the evening?'

‘What, with Charlene there? You must be bloody joking, lady.'

‘Have you ever had intercourse with Diana Barton?'

‘No, of course I ain't.'

‘Why did she ask you to her party, then?'

‘I done a bit of decorating for her, an' she said she likes to have young people around the place. So I got an invite.'

‘So, who were the other men at this party?' Kate knew what I'd been told by Tom Hendry, but it was a racing certainty that he'd not included everyone. Even if he knew.

‘There was some smarmy French git called Gaston something, a bloke called Dale, and a couple of others. But I don't remember their names.'

‘What was the name of the girl with Gaston?' asked Dave.

‘That was Liz,' said Pincher promptly. ‘She was definitely a fancy bit of stuff was that one. Long blonde hair and big boobs,' he added, confirming word for word what Hendry had told us.

‘And presumably you sampled her,' suggested Dave.

‘No. I told you, Charlene was there.'

I decided that we had got as much out of Pincher as we were going to get. At least for the time being.