Fatal Legacy (36 page)

‘So what’s this?’

‘It’s his whole file on Sally’s background, sir, all one hundred and fifteen pages of it. These are copies; the originals have already been logged. It appears that Mrs Wainwright-Smith has something of a chequered past. He found nothing on her before the age of seventeen, so he knew little of her childhood. But apart from that, he’s found out virtually everything about her. And he told Graham.

‘He had a team of two investigators working on this for six weeks, with unlimited funding from Graham Wainwright so he was able to dig deep. This is her police record.’ She handed Fenwick a thick file that he could tell at once was authentic. ‘She was arrested for soliciting aged seventeen and two months, and for actual bodily harm two years later, following an affray in Brighton town centre.’

‘Brighton!’ Fenwick couldn’t help himself.

‘Exactly. She escaped a custodial sentence on both occasions. After the second conviction, she was ordered to do one hundred hours of community work. She spent it in a council-run old people’s home: gardening, cleaning, doing refurbishment. By the end of her time there she was trusted enough to be sent on shopping errands, and as an additional carer on excursions. Beck tracked down the matron of the home who was full of praise for her, called her a reformed character; except that she wasn’t. The following year she used her experience to get a job at another old people’s home, far more up-market this time, and in the course of the next few months two of the residents, both old men, died leaving her a small legacy. The first one was five hundred pounds, the next, one thousand five hundred pounds and a small boat. This didn’t go down too well with the owners of the home and she moved to another one. Within six months she was engaged to a retired army Major, aged seventy-five. Just before they were due to be married he died in a car accident. Sally was driving and escaped with a broken arm. He ended up going through the windscreen. He left her twenty-two thousand pounds and a house in Wittering.’

‘Were there suspicions at the time?’

‘None at all. Eyebrows had been raised when the Major had announced his engagement, but car accidents happen, and there were no unusual circumstances. And, of course, she had been injured herself.’

‘What did she do next?’

‘This is the really surprising part; she went to college. She did a course in business administration and then, at the age of twenty-two, she found a job as office administrator for a local charity.’

‘So she
was
a reformed character.’

‘On the face of it yes, but Beck, the private investigator, is unconvinced. Whilst she was at college, he’s fairly sure that she returned to prostitution. Don’t ask me how, but he found the building society where she had a savings account and it
increased
from the twenty-thousand she had been given by the Major to over thirty-five thousand whilst she was studying, apparently without a job! And later she had a series of wealthy boyfriends, all much older than she was, and she was somehow able to afford to move from the house in Wittering to rent a cottage on the outskirts of Midhurst by the time she was
twenty-five
.

‘She joined local societies – cooking, flower-arranging, the choir, drama – and continued to work for charity. By this time she was describing herself as the orphaned only child of wealthy parents who’d lived north of London. A year later she met the Wainwrights at a musical function in Harlden, and married Alexander within twelve weeks. Three months later, her husband’s uncle died and she jointly inherited an estate worth fifteen million.’

‘And who is the beneficiary under Alexander’s will?’

‘According to Beck, it’s Sally Wainwright-Smith.’

There was a silence in the room, broken only by a soft crackle from the fire. Fenwick gathered the papers together and returned them to their files.

‘Why didn’t Beck hand all this over, Nightingale?’

‘He said he was scared stiff following Graham’s death. That might be true, but I wonder whether the thought of those millions had tempted him with the idea of blackmail. He’s
coming in to make a statement tomorrow afternoon.’

‘It’s the final piece. She probably knew Amanda Bennett from her time in Brighton.’

‘I was looking through the arrest reports for anything on Amanda anyway, whilst I was waiting to find Beck, sir. I’ll go back to them tonight. With these dates, I’ll be able to concentrate on the time we know she was there. And Fish?’

‘I don’t know, perhaps Amanda told Fish about Sally’s past and he tried to blackmail her with it, or even to expose her. We know there was no love lost between them. You’ve done a good job, Nightingale, yet again.’ His praise brought the colour to her cheeks and he smiled to see it. ‘You’d best be getting back. I’m going to come in tonight, as soon as the nanny’s home.’

‘I’ll let Sergeant Cooper know, sir. Thank you for the whisky and coffee.’

She closed the front door behind her, and walked on shaky legs to her car. There was a tremor in her hands as she tried to insert the key in the ignition, and it took several seconds. Her thoughts were in turmoil. She knew now what had been happening to her, and cursed herself for her stupidity. She’d broken her engagement; had no interest in any other man since her fiancé had gone; pined in Brighton, and had been dumb enough to put it down to a miserable working environment. She had craved his attention, yet put it down to professional pride. What a stupid, stupid idiot she had been. How could she have been so blind to the emotion that had been building inside her?

As soon as she was sure that she was out of sight of his house, she pulled the car over on to the verge and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. It was hopeless, he was barely aware of her. And he was her boss, for heaven’s sake, so professional that the very idea of a relationship with a colleague would be anathema to him.

As the cold of the night chilled the heat inside her, she told herself sternly that she would just have to resign herself to the impossibility of anything developing between them. Her feelings for him – which she surely couldn’t deny any longer – were doomed to be unrequited, and she would just have to get used to the idea. She shook herself and squared her shoulders, a look of clenched determination on her face.

‘Grow up,’ she said out loud, ‘this heartsick nonsense is worthy of a teenager, not a grown woman.’ She nodded her head firmly in agreement, sure that she was in control of her emotions once again. She turned the key in the ignition, and, without warning, burst into tears.

Wendy returned at ten thirty, full of apologies for being late, and Fenwick explained that he had a case that was developing fast and he might be away all night. She promised to give the children his love in the morning if he wasn’t there for breakfast.

It was an unusually quiet night in Harlden. No road traffic accidents, an absence of post-pub brawls and not one domestic disturbance. The veneer of calm in the reception area of the police station was deceptive, though, because in the incident room two floors above, a team of a dozen officers was frantically reviewing every single report, file and piece of evidence associated with the Wainwright and Fish cases. Cooper had called in every officer on the case and set them to work rereading all the files. The sight of Chief Inspector Fenwick arriving shortly before eleven o’clock merely added to the tension. He called Cooper and Blite to his office and handed them mugs of coffee he had made himself.

‘What have you got?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ the two officers answered in unison.

‘There has to be a link. We know for certain that Fish visited Amanda Bennett on the night they both died, and he gave her the tape to hide. But why on earth did Sally want Fish dead so badly that she’d risk paying someone like Fielding to kill him? He must have had a hold on her, or threatened to expose her. Yet I can’t believe he had the guts.’

Cooper blanched visibly at Fenwick’s choice of words.

‘Amanda knew her killer, the neighbours confirmed that.’

‘Good point, Inspector. So if we can prove that Sally met Amanda whilst they were both prostitutes in Brighton, it would improve our chances of making a case against her.’

‘Except, sir, that the tape we recovered from Amanda’s didn’t mention Sally in any way. It was all about criminal activities at Wainwright’s. Perhaps Fish was killed to shut him up about the company, and it had nothing to do with Sally.’

‘Perhaps, Inspector. But we have a confirmed sighting of her with Francis Fielding on the night of the murders. Supposing Fish knew about her background and had threatened to expose her – or even attempted to blackmail her. He wouldn’t have known about her instability and history of violence. He would have expected her to react to a threat of public humiliation like any rational human being.

‘No, my money’s still on Sally as the person behind the killings of both Fish and Bennett. I can’t believe that Fish would have been murdered so openly and so soon after Alan Wainwright’s death by anyone associated with the
money-laundering
we think’s going on at Wainwright’s. It’s brought too much police attention on the company.’

‘
If
Sally knew Amanda as well, sir,’ Cooper didn’t fully believe the DCI’s theory but he was willing to go along with it, particularly in front of Blite, ‘she could have assumed that Amanda had either already been told about her by Fish or that she would make a connection once Fish was dead.’

‘Good point. We need to prove that a connection existed between Amanda and Sally, and then we can link her to all the murders. Have Sergeant Gould check Amanda’s arrest reports again. Find out who the arresting officers were; we need to talk to them.’

Blite left the room and Cooper rose to go.

‘Stay a moment. I want to talk about Alexander. Is he in on all this? He knew about Sally’s past, yet he married her, and he’s the major beneficiary, after all.’

‘You think it’s a conspiracy between the two of them?’ Cooper had difficulty in keeping disbelief from his voice.

‘Not quite, no. Let’s just say a happy coincidence for him. What if he started to realise that she has a capacity for violence and sexual manipulation? Does he try to limit it or direct it? Supposing that he encouraged her seduction of his uncle because of his desire to progress within the family firm? Then he sees that there is even more potential – an inheritance. His mother died penniless, leaving him nothing, largely because his uncle spent years disinheriting her from every vestige of the family fortune. Alex feels he’s been neglected and
ill-treated
. Enter Sally, the perfect little temptress of older men,
and suddenly life has new possibilities.’

‘This is all conjecture, and even if it were true, sir, it stops a long way short of murder.’

‘Yes but supposing Sally
doesn’t
stop. We know that she has a history of violence. She was arrested for it in Brighton, and she nearly killed Donald Glass. She knew death as a child; she watched her father systematically beat and starve her brother and sister. Perhaps death has a different significance for her.’

‘You mean she’s a psychopath?’

‘That’s a word that’s often used because we just can’t believe the evil that lurks inside us, Sergeant, but every now and then I think it does apply. For someone with no moral judgement or self-control, and scarce understanding of what they are doing when they kill, perhaps. And yes, I think that could be Sally. It’s essential we have Claire assess her formally tomorrow. And as for her husband, we know from the officers still tailing him that he hasn’t been home for a few days, which is very odd behaviour.’

There was a hesitant tap on the door and Nightingale walked in. Even Fenwick noticed how deathly pale she looked, and Sergeant Cooper insisted that she sat down.

‘We have cross-checked Bennett’s arrest reports with those of Sally Price,’ she said. ‘Amanda Bennett was arrested three times. The first two were for soliciting, the third for living off immoral earnings. That’s the one she went to jail for.

‘On the night of her first arrest, three other prostitutes were picked up at the same time, including one Sally Price. No charges were brought against either woman.’ The silence in the room was so intense that they all heard Sergeant Cooper’s empty stomach gurgle, but all ignored it. ‘On the night of her third arrest, six customers from Bennett’s brothel were also taken into custody, in case any of the girls turned out to be underage. One of the customers was Arthur Lawrence Fish, resident of Harlden.’

‘So Amanda Bennett knew them both and Fish could have known Sally. He might even have been a client. My God!’

‘Yes, sir, and Amanda knew her killer; her neighbour was certain of that.’

‘Who was the officer in charge on the night that Amanda and Arthur Fish were arrested?’

‘Inspector Black, Brighton Division Vice. He’s retired now. Sergeant Gould called him earlier this evening, but he said he couldn’t remember the case.’

‘I’m going to see Black tomorrow – let Sergeant Gould know. And you can tell the team upstairs to go home and rest; we have the connection we need.’

‘What are you going to do, sir?’

‘Work on my report to the ACC and Superintendent Quinlan. As soon as Sally’s formally identified tomorrow, I want her arrested without delay, so the paperwork needs to be ready.’

‘I’ll help if you like.’ Cooper did his best to smother a yawn.

‘No, I’m fine. You’ll both need your wits about you
tomorrow
, so get a few hours’ sleep while you can.’

Fenwick took a further hour to finish his report. Then he found an empty, clean cell in the detention block, which had remained unnaturally silent throughout the night, and slept until the custody sergeant shook him awake with a cup of coffee at seven thirty the following morning.

Wendy was buttoning Chris’s coat and checking that he had his latest project in his bag when the phone rang. Fenwick explained that it was going to be a busy day and asked her to bring a fresh shirt round to the police station for him on her way to the school. She was already running late, so she cursed under her breath as she found a freshly laundered white shirt in his wardrobe and ran with it to the car, where the children were already huddled in the back.

Sally was awake, dressed and fully alert when Ebutt called for her at nine o’clock. She had resisted the idea of both drink and pills, and her mind ached with a dreadful clarity. She had spent over an hour on the phone to Alex the night before. He was staying in a hotel right next to the office and had insisted that he had to stay away, despite her pleading. He had again cautioned her to silence with the police. She hadn’t told him about the block and tackle they had removed from the estate; she knew he would be very angry that she had kept such potentially incriminating evidence rather than throwing it away in some distant builder’s skip. He was concerned, though, about the identity parade, and the thought of it made her shiver.

Inspector Blite started the tape recorder and began to repeat his questions. That Keating woman was with him again. After about twenty minutes, in which Sally had successfully resisted the temptation to give in and correct some of the Inspector’s more stupid assumptions, the woman stood up and moved her chair to sit next to the policeman. He nodded to her and she spoke for the first time.

‘Sally, my name is Claire Keating and I’m a psychiatrist.
The police have asked me to talk to you. Would either you or your solicitor mind?’

Her lawyer had no objection, but Sally was confused. Was she allowed to talk to this woman or not? Alex hadn’t told her how to handle questions that didn’t come from the police.

‘I’m not going to ask you about the allegations the police are making against you. I only want to get to know you a little better.’

‘All right.’

The woman asked a lot of meaningless questions about her childhood, which Sally answered with ease. This was just like talking to the social workers all those years ago, and she slipped into the role of traumatised child with ease. As the subject matter became more recent, she was surprised at how much this woman Keating knew about her past, and she became more guarded in her answers. Whilst they changed the tape, the woman asked for tea and biscuits for them all, reminding Sally of how hungry she was. When the biscuits arrived she ate three, one after another, and couldn’t concentrate until the plate was empty.

‘Would you like something else to eat?’

‘Can I?’

‘Of course – anything you like, within reason.’

‘A bacon sandwich – with tomato sauce?’

‘No problem, I’m sure the Inspector will arrange it.’

Sally enjoyed the look of displeasure on the policeman’s face as he went out to fetch her late breakfast, and gave the woman opposite her first smile. As soon as he returned, the tape was switched on and they started again.

Claire wanted to talk about Alex this time – how they had met, what she called their ‘whirlwind romance’. They seemed harmless enough questions. She was curious to know what he looked like; was he handsome?

‘Sort of. He’s tall and strong-looking. He’s always clean and smart.’

‘Is he clever?’

‘Oh yes, and hard-working.’

‘He sounds perfect! Who fell in love with whom first, do you think?’

‘Oh, Alex with me; he was very persistent, always taking me out for meals and buying me presents.’

‘What sort of presents?’

‘Clothes mainly, even shoes. He had great taste for a man – he knew exactly what I should look like.’

‘So he was a fashionable dresser himself, then?’

‘Alex? Never, but he made sure I was.’

‘Tell me about your relationship now.’

‘What about it?’

‘Are you close to each other – forever talking on the phone when you’re apart, that sort of thing?’

Sally looked away from the woman’s friendly eyes.

‘Sometimes, but he’s very busy and I don’t like to trouble him at work.’

‘I have to ask you this, Sally: did you marry him for his money?’

The unexpectedness of the question shocked her and she wasn’t sure how to answer it. Sometimes she wondered whether what she felt for Alex was this love thing that everyone seemed so besotted with. Whether it was or not, she both needed and feared him just as she had once needed and feared her father. Claire Keating was still waiting for an answer.

‘That’s none of your business.’

The woman didn’t seem put off by the answer and kept on asking apparently meaningless questions. At the end of an hour, Sally’s lawyer called the interview to a close. Before they left, the policeman went to confirm the time of the identification parade. Sally could see that he was annoyed at her continued silence in the face of his questions, whilst she had happily talked to the woman.

‘Wait here!’ he said rudely. ‘I’m going to find out how quickly we can do the parade, arrest you, lock you up and bring this fiasco to an end. Once you’re in custody you won’t be such a smart aleck!’

It was the first time that the possibility of being locked up had entered her mind, and Sally froze in horror.

Claire saw the expression on Sally’s face as she leapt to her feet.

‘Sally, are you OK? Sally?’

‘Mrs Wainwright-Smith? Please sit down! Stop that!’ Blite turned to Claire Keating. ‘Why is she screaming like that?’

‘I think it’s a panic attack. We need to calm her down, stop her hyperventilating. Put your hand in front of her nose and mouth.’

‘I’m not putting my hand anywhere near her!’

Claire picked up the paper bag that the bacon sandwich had been delivered in and, grabbing Sally around the shoulders, forced it over her nose and mouth. Within minutes she had swung from acute agitation to semi-collapse.

‘Take her to her doctor before she goes home,’ Claire advised the solicitor as he escorted his zombie-like client from the room.

‘Is she mad?’ Blite was worried that his suspected murderess might be able to plead insanity.

‘I couldn’t say based on one interview, but that was simply a classic panic attack.’

‘Will she be fit enough for the identity parade at one? The ACC is insistent that we can’t arrest her without one.’

‘It depends whether the doctor decides to sedate her, but I’d say it’s doubtful.’

Blite swore, and Claire left him to make a decision as to whether to postpone the parade a second time. She needed to think carefully about her report for Fenwick; it was going to be a difficult one to write.

Wendy dropped the children at school with strict instructions to wait for her in the playground as always until she came to collect them at three o’clock. She watched them skip off into their classrooms before getting back into the car. She had a busy day ahead of her: letters to write and her own washing to do, as well as the breakfast debris to clear away. With luck it should be possible to pick up her dry cleaning, complete the weekly shopping, take the Renault for a wash at the garage and still be back at school in the afternoon in plenty of time.

Detective Chief Inspector Ian Black had retired to a bungalow on cliffs overlooking the Channel. Fenwick found him busily engaged in tending his acre and a half of garden, adding mulch
to a raised bed of azaleas, which bloomed with an almost tropical abandon. He saw Fenwick’s admiring glance and started talking with enthusiasm.

‘It’s a constant battle, trying to grow ericaceous plants on this cliff. Feel that wind! If the lime doesn’t leach through and kill them, the gales do. I lose at least one each year. I’m Ian Black, by the way; you must be Andrew Fenwick.’ He removed a gardening glove and shook hands.

A look crossed Black’s face which Fenwick found difficult to interpret; caution or envy, it was hard to tell.

‘Come on back to the patio and have some tea. Margaret’s at the WI, so you’ll have to make do with my brew, I’m afraid.’

They sipped their tea in a silence which both men appeared reluctant to break. Eventually Fenwick put his cup down.

‘You spoke to one of my officers, DS Gould, last night. He was asking you whether you recalled Amanda Bennett’s arrest.’

‘It was a long time ago, Chief Inspector, and as I told your colleague, I don’t recall that particular incident. If you’ve come all the way down here to jog my memory, I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey.’

Again Fenwick detected a strange defensiveness which seemed out of character. Black was known to have been a solid, dependable officer and it was surprising that he was giving the impression of having something to hide. Fenwick decided to approach him obliquely.

‘How long were you in Vice?’

‘Four years.’

‘Were you in charge whilst you were there?’

‘No, I was an ordinary inspector. I was only made up to chief just before I left; late in life compared with you fellas now, I know.’ It was said with an edge of bitterness. ‘DCI Harris was the boss. He retired years ago and died the winter before last.’

‘It must have been great back then to have a few magistrates still intent on imprisonment; I can’t tell you how frustrating it is now. All that work, for what?’ Fenwick shook his head in mock disgust, hoping that Black would respond. He did, talking at length about the old days, enjoying reminiscences with a younger officer who was showing him respect.

Fenwick let him ramble and expand on his comparison of
old policing methods with new. When he eventually paused for breath, Fenwick took up the theme.

‘I tell you something else they don’t value enough these days, and that’s informants. The number of times I’ve been able to close a case because of the right piece of information at the right time! Yet it’s looked down on now.’

Black nodded vigorously in agreement. ‘Some of the best arrests of my career followed a good tip-off.’

Fenwick encouraged him gently back to his time in Vice, until he was halfway through a story about one of the best informants he’d ever had, a young slip of a thing. Fenwick thought of Sally. With her dominant survival instinct and lack of morals, she would make a perfect snitch. He played a hunch; what had he to lose?

‘Would that be Sally Bates? Or was she Price by then?’

‘Yes, Sally Price. Only about seventeen, but always reliable.’

Fenwick pursued the idea he had been carrying since he’d arrived.

‘Grassing on Amanda Bennett’s house was big-time even for her, though, way up from the usual bits and pieces.’

‘Yes, but she had to deliver or we were going to push the magistrate for a custodial sentence; she had no choice.’

Fenwick let the words settle gently into the silence. He sipped the last of his tea and heard a clock chime two in the distance. Black turned to him and shook his head.

‘You bastard.’

‘You asked for it. Why did you pretend not to remember the Bennett case?’

Black sighed, a long, hollow sound of defeat.

‘Misplaced loyalty, I suppose. Harris was a good policeman even though his methods were a bit near the edge. He ran Sally, but the Amanda Bennett thing was a bit too rich even for him. Sally gave us Amanda but we wanted whoever was behind her. We knew that someone was backing her with a lot of money and connections. The way the house was set up, the clientele, all very classy. Harris was about to retire, and this was his swansong.

‘We raided the place one Thursday night, almost exactly ten years ago. There were eight clients in the place, and nine girls plus Amanda.’

‘Was Sally there?’

‘Not that night. She called in with flu and stayed away. The youngest there was sixteen; she was with a man who ran a local chain of printing shops. I remember him because his ex-wife still goes to the WI with mine. Then there were two patrons tied up in separate bedrooms. One was having his bottom beaten as we walked in, but that was mild compared with the other bloke. I can never look at a bag of pegs now without thinking of him.’

An alarm bell went off in Fenwick’s head, but he let Black carry on talking.

‘The rest were just your usuals. We took all their details and were about to run them down to Division to be charged when the phone rang. It was for Harris. I don’t know who it was or what was said, but when he came back his face was black. I’ve never seen a man so close to a seizure. He told us to take the girls on ahead, that he’d sort the men out with one of the other officers on the scene.

‘I thought nothing of it at the time, but later, when I was reading the reports that had been filed, I noticed that apparently only six clients were on the premises at the time of the raid. Two had disappeared. Someone had pulled strings to save their embarrassment.

‘We never did catch the backers. Amanda Bennett wouldn’t talk. She did her eighteen months and came out and into private practice, as you might say.’

‘Did you see any of the clients’ faces?’

‘Oh yes. I untied two of them! I’m not likely to forget that.’

Fenwick took a photograph out of his pocket and passed it to Black.

‘I know it was ten years ago, but take a look at this, imagine him ten years younger. Could he be one of them?’

Black took the picture with a look of scepticism that changed to incredulity.

‘Good God! How could you possibly have known that! Yes, this is the weirdo who was having his bottom spanked by a girl in leathers. Who is he?’

‘He
was
a Mr Arthur Fish. He was murdered three weeks ago, and I think we finally know the reason why.’

Black raised his eyebrows and sighed as he looked across his
beautiful garden to the white horses in the sea beyond.

‘There’s no such thing as the past, you know, Chief Inspector. The legacy of what you’ve done lives on in the present, shaping everything. I should have known that I couldn’t escape it.’

He rose to shake Fenwick’s hand and show him out.