Cobweb (13 page)

‘D'you read anything serious into the attack or was it just a random mugging attempt by a drug addict?' he enquired by way of a greeting.

‘A random mugging attempt by an armed drug addict not being a serious crime in your eyes?' Patrick said in amazement. ‘Superintendent, if I'd been an ordinary member of the public and not someone trained in self-defence, Ingrid likewise, you'd probably have a another murder case on your hands right now. But to answer your question: yes, it could well have a bearing on other inquiries, John Gray's for one.'

‘We're still awaiting the initial results of tests on the knife,' Knightly said. ‘But as you know, DNA testing will take longer. I understand you're suspicious of the findings of the inquest on DCI Derek Harmsworth and have a list of names of possible suspects that Gray compiled.'

‘That's right, and Sergeant Paul Boles has given a statement to me to the effect that he thought Harmsworth tried to tell him in his dying moments that he'd been stabbed.'

‘Boles is bloody useless, frankly.'

‘Someone thought him good enough to be promoted to sergeant.'

‘Before my time here,' Knightly said darkly. His heavily lidded eyes came to rest on me. ‘It's unusual, you know, for men to have their wives along.'

‘Sometimes we swap,' I retorted. ‘Some days I do the talking and sleuthing and have
him
along. Most of the time, though, we work together. Thank your lucky stars it's his turn today or I might just have given you a real piece of my mind and you'd have happily joined that tabloid crap in the drawer.'

He sort of gibbered before managing to get out, ‘No – no offence, Miss Langley, just stating fact.' He uttered a strained falsetto laugh. ‘The force is changing all the time – every day, in fact. For the better, I'm sure. I just wanted to ask your opinions of the affair. Well, shall we not waste time and get on with it, eh?'

Outside, Patrick turned a pained expression on me but could not keep up the pretence and rocked with mostly silent laughter. It was unfortunate then to run head on into someone for the second time – only Greenway this time. He stared straight through us.

‘I'd better go off and do something truly heroic,' Patrick said under his breath. ‘Meanwhile it had better be coffee – no, not there,' he added as I turned right to follow a direction sign to the canteen. ‘Somewhere where you can drink the bloody stuff.'

W
e concentrated for the rest of that morning on activities not at all heroic, just plain hard work: doing as Michael Greenway had ordered, trying to trace the six remaining names on Inspector Gray's list. Postponing looking for Peter Forbes, the one whose house no longer existed, we headed for Romford in search of Ungumba Natolla, only to be told by an openly hostile father – and I was thanking everything holy that Patrick was with me at this particular high-rise block of flats – that he had just started a life sentence for murder, having been in custody for three months. This same sink estate was also the address of Clem and Ernie Brocklebank, who I had just noticed were mystifyingly listed as one entry; but there was no answer when we rang the bell. Patrick hammered on the door with his fist as well, in case it was not working, but there was still no response.

‘Remind me who else there is,' Patrick requested as we were driving away.

I consulted the list. ‘Zak Bradley, last known address in Tower Hamlets; Anthony Babbington-Jones, whose last whereabouts was Guildford, and another one who used aliases – might be calling himself Francis Applejohn or John Appleton – and was of no fixed address.'

‘Any murderers among them?'

‘Anthony Babbington-Jones was sent down for being a con man who got high on drink and drugs one night and battered to death someone who had just rumbled him. The others seem to have been career criminals who Harmsworth caught after painstaking detective work.'

‘Any knife artists?'

‘Yes, Ungumba Natolla, but we now know we can discount him. The Brocklebanks sound nasty: Harmsworth managed to get them to court for a gangland murder, but then several witnesses refused to testify or changed their stories. Gray's made a note that the pair are probably responsible for other killings. They've done time for GBH and violent robbery.'

‘I reckon the Met can be asked to look for Bradley, ditto Surrey police with Babbington-Jones. That leaves Forbes, the Brocklebanks, who sound the right grade of hoodlums to murder a copper, and the bloke with no fixed address. Now, though, lunch.'

This was a working one, in the canteen, while we questioned people in order to try to find witnesses to Harmsworth's last hours. We spoke to the staff there and then progressed to the civilian clerks, probationers – anyone to whom he might have mentioned a sudden change of plan. Those who could actually remember that night of the third of April – and there were only a handful – had nothing useful to tell us. We found the constable to whom the DCI and Boles had spoken in the park after Giddings's murder and another who had accompanied him to question a suspect in an unrelated case the day before he'd died, but they could shed no light on anything either.

‘Nothing,' I said round about two thirty. I had a thumping headache. ‘Shall we go back to the bridge and see if there are any houses nearby where people might have seen something?'

‘It did happen in the early hours of the morning,' Patrick said dubiously. ‘But let's go anyway – I could do with some fresh air.'

A preliminary report on the knife with which we had been attacked indicated that there were no actual fingerprints, but the entire weapon, a flick knife, was very smeary, as though it had been wiped with a greasy cloth. Minute deposits in the mechanism might –
might –
be blood and further tests would be carried out. We were asked if either of us had been scratched by the blade, to which we answered in the negative.

‘Everything's so green and beautiful,' I said as we got out of the car, having parked it in the same place as we had on our first visit, in a small lay-by at one end of the bridge. I found myself yearning for the wide-open spaces at home.

Patrick took a deep breath. ‘I'm getting really bloody-minded about this business. But if we don't get a good lead soon and are able to present Greenway with proper evidence then …' He left the rest unsaid.

‘Have you phoned Brinkley yet?'

‘No, like cheese, I've left it for a bit to ripen.'

I gazed about, the unceasing roar of the traffic below us somehow reminding me how impossible it can be to re-create the past: the world grinding on uncaring.

‘There's a big house just up there on the hill,' I said, shading my eyes against the glare of the sun. ‘It seems to be the only one from which there could be any kind of vantage point of this road.'

‘A big upper-crust house,' Patrick said thoughtfully, taking a look for himself. ‘Perhaps if we tug our forelocks they'll give us a cup of tea.'

It always amuses me, Patrick's total obliviousness to the fact that he comes across as pretty upper crust himself.

He was right about the house, Buckton Manor, though; a butler answered the door. ‘I shall ask her ladyship if it's convenient,' he said, asking us to wait in the hall.

A Lutyens house, no less, every last inch of the place straight out of
Country Life
magazine.

‘This lady isn't going to be the right person to ask about possible dodgy goings-on down on the road below her home,' I whispered.

Just then the butler returned and, after a longish walk along a panelled gallery lined with paintings, mostly portraits, ushered us into a light, bright room with views over a terrace and immaculate garden. A thin, elderly woman sat reading by a log fire.

‘Lieutenant-Colonel Gillard, I understand,' she said in an amazingly strong voice for her frail-looking frame, ‘from the Serious and Organized Crime Agency. How fascinating!' She waved away Patrick's proffered ID card. ‘Do sit down. What can I do for you? Tea first, though? Yes, tea, please, Hurst – for three. And a few pastries.'

We sat on a settee that would have accommodated six.

‘I hope you're not overwarm in here,' she went on. ‘I feel the cold rather and as the house is listed as well as being ferociously draughty we can't have proper double glazing fitted.' Her gaze came to rest on me, ‘My dear, I feel sure I know you from somewhere.'

It turned out that she had read most of my books.

‘Your ladyship …' Patrick began.

‘Oh, call me Thora, do. Hurst gets a bit carried away by it all and by the time some poor souls get to see me they're practically curtseying, men and all. It puts up a barrier immediately.'

Patrick explained the reason for our presence.

‘I clearly recollect the night,' said Thora. ‘I was woken by sirens and even up here the flashing blue lights flickered on my bedroom ceiling. But prior to that I confess I heard nothing.'

‘Perhaps a member of your staff did?' Patrick suggested. ‘Or His Lordship?'

She laughed. ‘Oh, you heard me say “we” just now, didn't you? I meant me and my staff and helpers. No, Manfred won't have heard anything. The silly man went down with his racing yacht and a clutch of girlfriends somewhere off Bermuda thirty-five years ago. Apparently the whole lot were roaring drunk at the time, so they probably never even noticed.'

Hurst appeared with a tray.

‘That night there was the accident down on the bridge when a policeman was killed,' his employer said to him, ‘did you hear anything before the police and ambulances arrived?'

‘As you know, madam, my room's at the back,' said Hurst. ‘No, nothing but the usual owls.'

He made it sound as though the owls were there specifically to annoy him.

Patrick said, ‘There were no other nocturnal sounds that you might have questioned? Nothing suspicious at all?'

Hurst shook his head. ‘No, sir, nothing like that. But I'm quite a heavy sleeper.'

When the butler had left the room Thora said, ‘It would appear that you think what happened might not have been a straightforward accident?'

‘It might not have been,' Patrick agreed.

‘Only I'm aware that a lorry went through those railings a couple of days prior to that, which is a coincidence. It occurs to me that …' She broke off, looking embarrassed. ‘No, it's not my place to offer theories.'

‘Please do,' Patrick said earnestly. ‘We need all the theories we can get.'

A faint flush had tinted the pallid cheeks. ‘I was going to say that if there was any malicious intent, the hole in the railings was a perfect place to stage what would look like another accident. Someone would only have to be aware that a certain person, a policeman, would be travelling along that stretch of road in the early hours and then could run out and wave them down, pretending there was an emergency of some kind …' She stopped speaking again, shyly smiling.

‘That is exactly how it could have been done,' Patrick said quietly, staring into space as he thought about it.

Thora said, ‘I suggest you talk to the gardener. Well, he's sort of a gardener. You have to stand over him all the time or he digs out all the wrong things and prunes the roses to the ground. He's a bit of a reprobate, really – someone told me he used to be a poacher – and Hurst thinks I ought to get rid of him; but he does other jobs as well – chops wood and sees to the fires. He'll turn his hand to most things, really – as long as there's money in it for him.'

‘Where can we find him?'

‘Well, you might have to look for him as I'm not sure whether he's finished clearing out the old greenhouse. I'm hoping to have it restored. In the summer
he lives in the old potting shed in the walled garden – that's where the greenhouse is. It's quite large and there's a stove in there and a room above where the under-gardeners lived donkeys' years ago. Where he lives in the winter months is anyone's guess, but he still walks the boundaries just before dark and keeps an eye out for trespassers. I don't like to ask about his arrangements – he's an independent sort of man but loyal in an odd way and it makes me feel safer having someone keeping an eye on the place. If anyone heard anything that night, it would be Danny – but, obviously, only if he was here.'

Smoke was drifting slowly out of the tall chimney pot on the lean-to potting shed. It was situated just inside the double gates of the walled garden, this now down to grass, a few fruit trees and a vegetable patch, which was freshly dug and raked.

Although our approach was not noisy, we had been detected, a scarecrow-like figure appearing in the doorway of the greenhouse, again lean-to, next to the potting shed. A shovelful of broken glass was dropped into a dustbin with a crash and he stood still, staring at our approach.

Patrick nudged me, a silent request that I should make the introductions and do most of the talking. He knows I have good results with people, and animals, that can be described as fairly harmless semi-feral. My first thought on beholding the man more closely, however, was that if he had not been human or animal, he would have been in the category of something that I would have been told, as a child, to take back immediately and put where I had found it.

‘Oh yes,' said this short, swarthy and none-too-clean individual in bored fashion when I had explained our presence. ‘Well, you're wasting your time; there was no one lurking about 'ere. I see to it.'

‘Did you look over towards the road at all on the day of the accident?' I asked. ‘Would you have been able to see if anyone was hanging about from up here?'

‘Only if it was light and when the leaves aren't on the trees. But no, I didn't see anyone or anything down there. I don't have time to stop and gawp around. Besides, it all happened in the early hours of the morning, didn't it?'