Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (8 page)

‘And Gervase is definitely in Portugal?’ Petra’s whole body seemed frozen.

‘Yes! I told you, Reggie has been in touch with him. Gervase is on his way back, may have arrived by now for all I know.
He’s not the body in the ruins
.’ Kit leaned forward to emphasise her words, but something more than alarm in her sister’s face made her ask, ‘Or did you think Gervase might have put him there, whoever the victim is?’

That served to unfreeze her sister’s attitude. ‘No! Of course not! How could you ask that? Why should Gervase murder anyone? He’d be pretty daft to do it in his own house, if he did. But he wouldn’t. He didn’t!’ Petra’s face had reddened. Energy suddenly surged through from some hidden source. She waved her hands. ‘And if he’s in Portugal, just as you keep saying, he couldn’t be here doing such an awful thing. Honestly, Kit, I know how you feel but even you can’t believe Gervase could be a deliberate murderer?’

‘It’s been years since you last saw him, Petra, since any of us saw him. You don’t know what he might or might not do. You only remember the numbskull show-off that he was. If he’s matured to resemble his father in character, he’ll be pretty ruthless now. But yes, he was in Portugal at the time of the fire and no one is accusing him of anything.’ She tried to smile but it didn’t work. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I’m shocked, I suppose.’

‘Of course you are. Mother must be. I am. Reggie and Serena, too. We all are.’ Petra looked down at her folded hands.

There was a pause and Kit added ruefully, ‘I’m still blaming him for smashing you both up in that car, but that’s back then. I can’t accuse him of anything more recent.’

There was a long silence. Petra stared out of the window towards the barn. ‘I must get back to work, Kit. Sorry to hurry you along. But I have got a delivery date for the picture.’

Kit carried both mugs to the sink where she rinsed them under the tap. Turning, she saw that Petra still sat as she’d left her, staring at the view from the window.

‘Petra, if the louse should turn up here …’

‘He won’t,’ Petra said curtly. ‘Why should he?’

‘He
shouldn’t
, precisely. No decent man would do that. But Gervase lacks basic decency. He was always thick enough and conceited enough.’

Petra burst into laughter and turned her head towards her sister. ‘If he comes, I’ll ring you and you can rush over here and beat him up.’

‘Just you remember, if he does appear, get on the phone straight away. I’ll come immediately. Promise?’ Kit’s voice was sober.

‘Sure, yes, I’ll tell you at once. But Kit, he won’t. Tell Mother, if that’s what she’s worrying about, that this is the last place Gervase Crown is going to turn up.’

‘I want to speak to someone. I need to speak to someone now. It’s urgent!’

The voice was clear, young and well educated. The desk constable for the day, Abby Lang, looked up from the register of lost and found. She’d been trying to collate the two and decide whether the worn engagement-type ring handed in by a conscientious citizen, as found on the pavement outside the Oxfam shop, was the same one as an engagement ring reported lost by an agitated elderly woman three days before. The problem was that the elderly woman had declared her ring to have four diamonds set in platinum and the ring handed in had three stones. Normally that would mean it wasn’t. But the owner of the lost ring had been in a ‘real old sweat about it’, so the desk officer of the day had remarked, adding, ‘She was bit vague, too. You know, dithery, not sure of the time of day if you ask me!’

Abby closed the book and took measure of the young female visitor who stood before her, hands jammed into the pockets of a leather, or leather-look, full-length coat. Dealing with lost and found had made Abby cautious about descriptions.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked automatically.

The newcomer was about twenty-six or -seven, at Abby’s estimation, slim, short, shiny black hair cut short with a fringe from beneath which glared striking green eyes. Her whole manner bristled. Not aggressive in the drunk-on-Saturday-night way: more ‘I pay my taxes and I expect something for it!’

‘Yes, I certainly hope so. I told you, it’s urgent!’ Perhaps it was agitation, not aggression. People sometimes sounded belligerent when they were only frightened.

‘What seems to be the problem?’ Abby asked. She was well aware the phrase was well worn, but it served the purpose. Not everyone who came in here declaring they had an insoluble problem that the police must solve at once turned out to have nothing but a lost cat to report.

‘I want to report a missing person.’ The words came out in a rush.

Abby drew a notepad towards her. Not a lost pet, then. But sometimes people are ‘lost’ because they choose to be. ‘Can I have your name and a contact phone number?’

‘Sarah Gresham, look, here’s my business card.’ She drew a small white card from one pocket of the leather (or leather-look) coat, and handed it over, Abby read it. Ms Gresham’s card only gave her name, the name of a local bank and a business contact number, but she was pointing at the card and making an irritable circular motion with a finger at the same time. Abby, interpreting the gesture, turned the card over. On the other side an address had been written by hand. ‘Chestnut Lodge,’ Abby read aloud. ‘What sort of building is that?’

‘It’s an rambling old Edwardian house and you’ll see I’ve written “basement flat”,’ Sarah said impatiently. ‘Look, don’t you want to know about the missing person?’

‘How long has the person been missing?’ asked the unruffled Abby. If it turned out to be a mere twenty-four hours it would be far too early to panic, and this girl was definitely panicking under that demanding exterior.

‘Three days. That is, two nights and this is the third day.’

‘I see.’ That sounded much more serious. ‘What is the name of the missing person and can I also ask, what is the relationship?’

‘His name is Matthew Pietrangelo …’ The speaker paused and then carefully spelled the name, watching as Abby wrote it down. ‘He’s my boyfriend – my partner.’

Oh dear, thought Abby. Has he done a bunk, I wonder? Left her in the lurch? Didn’t have the courage to break it off? Time to be tactful. On the other hand, they’d only just been told to pass all reports of missing male adults straight up to CID.

‘Does Mr Pietrangelo live at the same address? Can you tell me his age?’

‘He’s thirty. Yes, he lives there. We’ve been together two years. He’s never done anything like this before. I’ve phoned his sister and she hasn’t heard from him. I didn’t want to worry his mother, not yet, anyway, and his sister – her name is Georgia Evans – agrees. But she did ring her mother and ask in a roundabout way if she’d heard from Matt lately and she – Mrs Pietrangelo – hasn’t. Matt’s mother is beginning to wonder why; because Matt rings her regularly, once a week, and he’s missed his usual day.’

‘Where do these ladies live?’ asked Abby practically. ‘Both in the UK?’

‘For crying out loud, of course they do! They both live in London, or the London area. Georgia lives in Camden and Mrs Pietrangelo lives in Harrow. I know it’s an Italian name, but that’s because Matt’s grandfather came to Britain in 1950 and opened a café near King’s Cross, of all places.’

Abby realised that the speaker was very near to tears. ‘Just a moment,’ she said.

She picked up the internal phone. ‘Sergeant Morton, please. Oh, it’s Abby Lang down at the front desk, Sarge. Someone has come in to report a missing male, aged thirty. I saw the internal memo and I thought you’d— Yes, right away.’

‘Come into one of the interview rooms,’ she said more kindly to Sarah Gresham. ‘I’ll organise a cup of tea and someone will come down and talk to you in a few minutes.’

It wasn’t Morton, but Jess Campbell who came downstairs to interview the visitor. Now that Sarah Gresham had a sympathetic ear to pour her troubles into, her manner relaxed slightly. But she remained a frightened woman.

‘It not like Matt just to drop out of sight like this. Where’s he living? He hasn’t even got a change of clothes. I checked all that out. Everything is at home where it should be, right down to his toothbrush and electric razor. His collection of DVDs, his sports gear, all of it … I know you’re going to suggest Matt has left me. I don’t believe he has. But even if he had, he wouldn’t have vanished off into the blue and left everything behind, not even a change of socks with him.’ Sarah began to sound combative again.

‘What does he do for a living?’ Jess asked. ‘If he’s not turned up for work …’

‘He’s a freelance website designer and works from home, our home. But his car’s gone. It’s the one thing he has taken.’

‘Had he had been behaving normally recently? Feeling OK? Depressed about anything? Money worries?’

Sarah’s face was white. ‘He hasn’t topped himself somewhere. He wouldn’t do that to me. Anyway, he wasn’t depressed. Work has been slow recently, from his point of view, perhaps. But he’s confident another job will come along. If you’re self-employed it’s like that. I work for Briskett’s bank and so there is regular money coming in. Matt’s work is well paid. It’s just not a monthly salary like mine.’

Jess changed tack. ‘So tell me if there is anything at all that Matt’s been doing recently that’s a change to the usual pattern?’

Sarah hesitated. ‘He’s had a bit of time on his hands, as I said. He didn’t want to hang round the flat. We’re hoping to buy a place of our own. We’d like an old traditional house in the country somewhere round here, near enough for me to drive in to work and with pleasant quiet surroundings for Matt to do his work. The trouble with our flat is that it’s noisy. The road outside is busy; it’s on a bus route. The other people in the house, other residents, are always coming and going. The flat’s not very big and rather dark and we don’t have a garden. You can see why we’d like to move somewhere more secluded and roomy.’

‘The sort of country house you were describing would be expensive,’ Jess commented.

‘We realise that. We would like to find a place that needed renovating. It could be really run down. Then we could buy cheaper and take our time fixing the place up. Matt’s been driving round the countryside, looking out to see if he can spot anything within a reasonable journey time from Cheltenham.’

A prickle ran along Jess’s spine. ‘So Matthew has been exploring the back roads recently, looking out for rundown properties?’

‘Yes! I just told you so.’ Sarah sounded impatient again.

‘Had he found any possible property for your purposes?’ Jess tried to keep her voice casual.

Sarah’s gaze sharpened and she measured Jess with a look. ‘He did say there was one place, but he wasn’t sure about it. I don’t know where it was exactly. I think he was worried there might be a problem with ownership … or with the owner. He wanted to clear that up before he took me to see it.’

‘The problem wouldn’t be that the owner lived abroad, would it?’ asked Jess.

Sarah blinked. ‘How do you know?’

‘Did he tell you the name and address or the house in question?’ Jess avoided a direct answer.

‘No, he didn’t. It was out of the way, he said. He asked about it in a local pub and the landlord told him about the absentee owner and directed him to a solicitor who represents the guy. So Matt talked to the solicitor, who was the one who said he didn’t think the owner had any intention of selling.’

‘Name of this solicitor?’ asked Jess, picking up her pen.

‘Began with an F … Fawcott? No, something like that.’

‘Foscott?’

‘Yes, that’s it!’ Sarah’s green gaze held suspicion. ‘You sound as if you know the property I’m talking about. What’s happened?’

Jess again ignored the question. ‘It would help if you could let us have a photo of Mr Pietrangelo.’

Sarah dived into her capacious shoulder bag. ‘Here, I’ve brought you three.’

‘Thank you. We’ll be in touch,’ Jess said.

‘That’s it?’ Sarah blinked and looked taken aback.

‘We’ll be on to it straight away, don’t worry about that. There’s a procedure in these cases.’

Sarah got reluctantly to her feet. ‘I’ve tried the local hospitals,’ she said, ‘in case he’d had an accident. But he’s not in any of them. They’ve no record of him turning up at A and E. If he had smashed himself up, somewhere in the countryside, you’d know about it by now, wouldn’t you? Where’s his car, anyway?’

Where, indeed? ‘Do you have the make and registration of the vehicle?’

‘It’s a Renault Clio. I’ll write the registration down for you.’ Sarah rummaged in her bag and produced a notebook and pen. She scribbled in the notebook, tore out the page and handed it to Jess, who thanked her.

‘That’s fine. We’ll send out the car’s details and someone should spot it pretty soon.’

Sarah wasn’t moving towards the door. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ she said accusingly. ‘And I’m not budging until I know what it is. You do recognise the property from what I told you, don’t you? Where is it? Has Matt been there?’

Jess drew a deep breath. ‘There is an outside possibility …’

‘So it seems the body may be that of Matthew Pietrangelo?’ Carter said. ‘She’s not going to be able to identify him for certain from the burned remains.’

‘I’ve explained that,’ Jess said. ‘It was difficult. She was all for rushing down to the morgue. When I finally managed to convince her that what was there was pretty gruesome and unrecognisable, she broke down. But she’s pulled herself together. She’s a tough nut, in my view. She worried, of course, and even more worried now. But she won’t go to pieces.’

‘Mm … It does seem a distinct possibility Pietrangelo could be our corpse. We need either to establish that or eliminate him from our enquiries as quickly as possible. But all the signs point in his direction! Mrs Trenton saw a man examining the house by torchlight. We know from the girlfriend that it was just the sort of place she and Pietrangelo were hunting for. It’s situated off the beaten track. It was clearly empty. Mrs Trenton says she didn’t speak to the man she saw, and so we don’t know for sure. But, according to his girlfriend, Pietrangelo spoke to someone in a pub about the house and was told the owner lives abroad and does business through a solicitor named Foscott. He took the next logical step to establish who owned it, hoping to get in touch. Pietrangelo looked up local solicitors and found Foscott. He spoke to him and realised immediately there was a problem. The owner didn’t want to sell. A really wealthy expat might well choose to hold on to a property in this country in case he needed to return. Pietrangelo had come up against an obstacle and was working out a way to get over it, not telling his girlfriend too much about the property until such time as purchasing it appeared more realistic.’