Deadly Intent (42 page)

"Enough already, Gordon! We'll concentrate on the start date of whoever bought the stolen jeep from Leymore. You got anything on the Mitsubishi?" Phil asked.

"Not yet. For the hot vehicles, he had a whole lot of legitimate documents for vehicles bought from car auctions; there's a load of equipment for respraying, et cetera. I've also got a stash of receipts for paints and electrical spare parts. They were stuffed into a black bin liner."

"What about his personal bank account?"

"We've got two accounts, a savings and a current; there is really not that much in either, but..." Anna and Phil waited expectantly ... "he's got a time-share on the Costa del Sol. I'm waiting for a bloke there to get back to me with more details, but Leymore has had it for years; he could plow his cash into the villa and carry it out in a suitcase."

"So when he wasn't up to his elbows in grease, he was sunning himself in Spain?" Phil said, swearing under his breath.

"Hang on, Gordon," Anna said suddenly. "The Mitsubishi that was stolen: had it had a respray?"

"No, but it's only got thirty-five thousand miles on the clock."

"So whoever got it from Leymore might have done so almost as soon as it was stolen?"

"Could be."

By now, both Anna and Phil were standing beside Gordon's desk. The grubby papers were stacked in piles, dated, and clipped together; there were still hundreds more in black bin liners to sort through.

"You've got your work cut out for you," Anna said, smiling.

"You can say that again!" Gordon held up his hands; some of the grease from the stained papers had rubbed off onto his fingers.

Anna turned as Cunningham signaled for her to return to the interview room: Mrs. Brandon's bathroom break was up.

As they left the incident room, Gordon got the call in from the property company in Spain. They confirmed that Stanley Leymore had bought from them a time-share apartment on the Costa Del Sol for £150,000; with inflation, it was now valued at over £200,000. He had paid the previous owner in cash.

As Gordon took down the details, he accidentally knocked over a stash of papers he had not yet checked. When he finished the call and picked them up, he noticed a receipt for a Mitsubishi taillight from the main dealers of the jeep. When Gordon checked with them, they were able to give him more details: the taillight was for a 2008 Mitsubishi jeep. The date was one week after the vehicle had been reported stolen in Brighton: March 15, 2008. It was highly probable that Stanley Leymore had the jeep in his garage by that time.

Julia was sitting with her back pressed into the chair, her legs crossed. Fa-gan's arms were folded, his leather-bound notebook closed on the table.

"Can we now return to the date you say you moved into your home in Wimbledon?" Cunningham asked.

Julia sighed. "It'd be early March. I owned the house before that, maybe five weeks before, but it needed furnishing and redecorating."

"You were with your children and their au pair?"

"Yes, I'd got the girls into a local nursery. Mai Ling came from an agency; she had a place of her own, so she would just come in for the day and evening, then go home. She didn't move in full-time until March."

Cunningham inteijected. "I would like to know the date that you first employed Frank Brandon."

Julia looked to the ceiling. "It'd be about a month after I'd moved in." "You say you put an advert in the local paper?"

"Yes. I needed someone for the garden, and someone to drive for me."

"A chauffeur?"

"Call it what you like. Frank contacted me and came round, and we discussed wages."

"When I spoke to you originally, Mrs. Brandon, you said you actually wanted a bodyguard as well as a driver."

"Yes, well, you know I am a woman alone. I have some very valuable jewelry, so 1 thought it would be best to hire someone with experience."

"So you knew he had been a police officer?"

"Yes, he told me. He said he could maintain my car, do whatever I wanted. Mostly, he was driving the children to school and back, because I was always scared, you know—in case someone found out I had money. I felt protected having him around, and he got on well with the children."

"So this was in late March?"

"Yes."

"So when did the relationship become more personal?"

Julia sniffed, and smiled. "Well, if having sex is personal, then it was a few days later."

"When did you ask him to move into the house?"

"Maybe in May? I can't really remember the exact date; it just happened."

"But Mr. Brandon was also working as a driver for someone else."

"Oh, that. Well, it wasn't as if it was an everyday thing. This man would call him and ask him to do odd pickups when he was too busy."

"Did Frank work for Donny Petrozzo?"

Julia shrugged. "I never knew his name, I never met him. He would call Frank on his mobile and Frank would say yes or no. Often he would drive to wherever and pick up a car to do the chauffeuring, mostly to the airports."

"Frank had his own car, a VW?"

"Yes. Just like I said, he would go in his own car to wherever this

man lived and then he would use a Merc, 1 think it was." Julia sniffed and began tapping her foot against the leg of the table. She kept on glancing at Fagan as if he should say something. He remained silent.

"So when did you see Mr. Brandon in possession of the black Mitsubishi jeep?"

"I never saw it."

Cunningham slapped the table with the flat of her hand. "Stop lying, Mrs. Brandon! You knew that Frank Brandon drove this vehicle; you also knew where it was parked—you gave Detective Inspector Travis directions on how to get to the garage he used to park it in."

"Of course I knew about the garage—I paid the rent on it. I had my two cars, so we needed another garage."

Fagan leaned forward. "I think Mrs. Brandon has answered your question. She did not know Mr. Brandon had this jeep; she has clearly just said that she never saw it."

"Thank you," Julia said curtly.

"Let's go to the date you were married."

"I am getting sick and tired of this. I have told you about the wedding." She jerked her head toward Anna.

"I just need to know when you and Mr. Brandon agreed to be married."

"Why? What business is it of yours?"

"Please answer the question." Cunningham was starting to sound irritated now.

"It was sometime in May."

"He had worked for you for two months?"

"My goodness, how clever of you, yes! After two months we realized we wanted to be married; we loved each other, and we went to the Isle of Man and got a special license and we got fucking married."

Fagan whipped around on her. "Julia, that was not necessary."

"Of course it is! They keep asking me these ridiculous questions that have nothing to do with anything."

"The life insurance policy your financial adviser arranged for Mr. Brandon?" Cunningham persisted.

"Yes, you've bloody asked me about that. I was looking out for him, that is all."

"But it was payable only if he died."

"That is not the point! If he had a life insurance policy, he could get mortgages and things like that."

"Why would he want a mortgage when you owned your house outright?"

"Maybe he wanted to show me he had a pair of balls rather than live off me!" she shouted. Fagan again warned her to be quiet and behave. She sniffed and then rubbed at her nose. "I just want to go home to my children," she said, in a whine.

"Were you afraid? Was someone threatening you?"

"No."

"Can you tell me about the four million you took out recently?"

"It's my money. I have already told you, I paid for the house and I had a lot of things to buy."

"We will need the receipts."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, this is just harassment." She turned to Fagan and pushed at his arm. "Do something, for God's sake! This is driving me crazy."

"Just answer the questions, Julia."

"What the fuck do you think I
have
been doing?"

"Mrs. Brandon, your husband was murdered."

"Well, I didn't fucking do it!" She pushed her chair back so abruptly that the table rocked, and Cunningham's bottle of water spilled into her lap and over the table. She stood up trying to salvage her dripping notebook and soaked skirt. The incident made Cunningham so angry she ordered another ten-minute break.

Cunningham was in her office, using tissues to dab at her skirt. "That bloody woman! She makes me so mad I want to slap her face."

Anna nodded her agreement. She mentioned that the team were pretty certain that the Mitsubishi jeep, that was so important to their inquiry, had been in Leymore's possession a week after it was stolen. This helped with their still-incomplete time frame, because Eddie Court had

seen the jeep being driven by Frank Brandon on the night of his murder. Phil was pressing the team to track back, to see if there was anything that would indicate whether Frank had bought the jeep, or was just using it via Donny Petrozzo.

Just as Anna and Cunningham were returning to question Julia Brandon, a further piece of the jigsaw came from the officer rechecking Donny Petrozzo's diary and work ledgers. There was, in one of his bank statements, two withdrawals of sums of money: one for ten thousand pounds cash, and another, from a different account, for five thousand. The date was March 17; in his diary, he had written the initials
SL
and the time.

The following day there was another cryptic note:
Paid SL, but did not collect faulty light.
This tied in with the receipt for the taillight found at Stanley Leymore's garage. So they now knew that Donny Petrozzo had been the buyer. Four days on, there was another one of his odd memos:
Cash
x
25. Nice 1.
Donny's bank account showed that he had deposited twenty-five thousand pounds into his current account on that date; did he sell on the Mitsubishi for this amount? If he had, they did not have the name or even an initial of the buyer.

Cunningham listened as they updated the incident board, and said: "Take a look into Julia Brandon's accounts and see if she was out by twenty-five grand." She waved her hand toward Anna to join her and returned to the interview room.

No sooner had Anna sat down than there was a tap on the door; Phil gestured for Anna to come out into the corridor. Cunningham started to record her absence for the tape, but Anna returned almost immediately, placing a note onto the table. Cunningham glanced at it. Julia Brandon had signed a check for twenty-five thousand pounds, made out to her husband. The check had been paid into Frank Brandon's account, and he had withdrawn the same amount in cash on March 20.

When this was pointed out to her, Julia simply shrugged and said it was Frank's wages.

"But he withdrew this exact amount in cash."

"That was his business."

"So you have no notion what this amount of money was for?"

"Why should I know? He had a life before he started to work for me."

Cunningham sighed: the woman had answers for everything. Cunningham decided not to pursue the check but pressed on, asking about the dates Julia and Frank married. Julia was trying hard to concentrate; her nose was running and she kept sniffing, and twice got out a handkerchief. She was becoming abusive and quite argumentative as she snapped that they had fallen in love, had sex, and more sex, and then decided to marry.

"There were photographs of the wedding," Anna interjected.

"And I told you that I had torn them up, because he was dead and I didn't want any memories. I had to take them down because the kids were asking me about him and it was making me want to cry all the time."

"You didn't keep any of these wedding photographs?"

"No. They weren't done by a professional—they were just snapshots from his camera and my mobile."

"Who was the older man in one shot standing behind Frank?"

"The fucking vicar. This is getting ridiculous." She turned and glared at Fagan, who leaned back.

"I have to say my client has a point; we have been here for a very long time, and we appear to have come full circle."

Cunningham closed her notebook.

Anna flicked a page in hers. "Why did you recently hire not one but two bodyguards?"

"Christ! My husband had been murdered! Simon here suggested that I should replace him; he was concerned for me, so he arranged for me to meet them. It wasn't my doing, it was my lawyer's."

Fagan frowned.

"He got them from an agency, he took me to meet them—I had nothing to do with it. Go on, ask him! Give me a break!"

"So you were that concerned for your client, Mr. Fagan?"

"Yes, I was concerned, especially as I had received a call from Mrs. Brandon's au pair. She was frightened, and I can understand