Jigsaw Man (23 page)

‘Have you seen her today?'

‘Yes. I stopped by on my way in. The good news is her dad's out of danger, although
he won't be well enough to travel for a while.'

‘Thank God. What about her?'

Fuller made a face and pushed her glasses up her long nose. ‘She keeps asking me
all sorts of things about the case, wanting to know a whole load of stuff that I
don't think she should know. Or at least I don't think I should be the one to tell
her.'

‘Like what, exactly?'

‘She wants the nitty-gritty, of course. I gave her a few little bits and pieces to
keep her quiet, but it wasn't enough. She wants to know exactly what we know, every
little detail. I think she'd even like a copy of the pathologist's report, if she
could
get it. To be honest, I'd want the same in her shoes, but I don't think she's
ready for it, I really don't.'

He nodded, picking up something else in her tone. ‘It's way too soon. What else are
you thinking?'

‘I know she's on all sorts of pills so maybe it's just me being a bit silly, but—'

‘What's the matter?'

‘I've been in to see her every day since it happened, just keeping an eye on her,
like you asked me. I get the impression she can't wait to see the back of me, which
is OK, I don't want to force myself on her. I know everybody deals with this sort
of thing differently and some people need more space than others. But she doesn't
seem right to me.'

‘In what way?'

She sighed. ‘I can't put my finger on it, Sir. She's barely eating, which doesn't
help, But she's a bit . . . well . . . weird, if you ask me. If only her mum was
here. I think she should be watched.'

‘Watched? What do you think she'll try and do?'

‘I don't think she's suicidal, if that's what you're thinking. She's just a bit odd.
Not acting and reacting normally, if you know what I mean.'

He nodded. ‘Thanks for telling me, Sharon.' Based on the little he'd seen of Donovan,
particularly the previous night, he had to agree with Fuller. She had seemed so distant
and preoccupied, not at all her normal self, but he'd just accepted it as par for
the course and thought no more about it. Maybe he'd been too wrapped up with everything
else to take proper note, but it wasn't good enough. ‘The drugs don't help,' he said,
feeling a little guilty.

‘Maybe that's it. She does seem a bit fuzzy. I'd be more worried that she'd step
out in front of a car or a bus by
accident. It's like she's not all there, like her
mind, her thoughts are somewhere else.'

‘In the circumstances, that's perfectly normal.'

‘Yes, I know, but she
is
going out places. Yesterday when I went over to see her
she was just coming back from somewhere.'

‘You mean during the day?'

‘Yes. She said she'd been for a walk, but she looked a bit frazzled. I don't think
she should be out on her own, that's all.'

‘If we didn't already have our hands full, I'd suggest you do a bit of unofficial
surveillance, but I can't spare you – or anyone else – at the moment.'

‘I'm happy to do it in my own time, Sir. If necessary, we can organise some sort
of a rota. I know Justin, for one, will want to help. But that still leaves the daytime.
She was up and about when I dropped by this morning, with the whole day ahead of
her.' She looked at him as though she expected him to know these things.

He had left the flat very early that morning and hadn't seen or heard anything from
Donovan since the previous night. Given everything that was going on, he couldn't
possibly keep an eye on her, but Fuller had a good feel for people and knew Donovan
well. She was married, with three children, so for her to offer to give up her precious
family time meant it must be serious.

‘OK. I'll talk to Steele and see what she thinks.'

‘Thank you. It would be terrible if something happened to her.'

Tartaglia picked up a black coffee from the machine in the corridor and took it into
the meeting room where Wightman was waiting. A monitor sat on the table, linked to
Wightman's laptop. Tartaglia sat down beside him.

‘Where do you want to start?' Wightman asked.

‘The day of his disappearance, or as close as.'

‘There's nothing that day. The nearest was the weekend before.'

‘He had a busy week,' Tartaglia said, thinking back to the entries in Smart's diary.
‘Maybe he didn't get the time. So what have you found?'

‘Endless shots of some sort of family gathering with lots of kids,' Wightman said,
clicking on a folder. A slideshow of a family lunch party flicked past the screen.

‘OK, next.'

‘This is the day before. Saturday seventeenth. Lots of photos of Barnes. I recognise
most of the places. He's particularly keen on the river, and boats.'

‘So his daughter said.'

‘There were loads of the boat race earlier in the year. You'd have thought a handful
would be enough.'

‘You're not a photographer,' Tartaglia said, with a smile. ‘Show me what he took
in the two weeks before he disappeared.'

He sipped his coffee as he watched. Like Wightman, he recognised many of the places
Smart had photographed in and around Barnes. There was a short series of pictures
of a large Victorian house and garden, including a well-kept vegetable patch, presumably
the one where Smart had worked; shots of the embankment, and the river with the sun
setting; views of the common and its duck pond, and general shots of people walking
along the high street. Nothing stood out as sinister, or even odd.

‘Are there any other pictures of people?'

‘I haven't gone back very far yet, but there are some of a woman taken a few weeks
before he died.'

‘You'd better show me.'

Wightman consulted a list of entries and opened a file for the twenty-eighth September.
The photos showed a young woman with shoulder-length dark hair, sitting in the sunshine
outside a pub or a café. She was laughing, and holding up a glass as though toasting
the man behind the camera.

‘That looks like the Sun Inn,' Tartaglia said, peering at the screen.

‘She's pretty.'

‘Yes, and a good thirty years younger than Smart. Maybe this is the girlfriend Isobel
Smart didn't want me to know about. I'm seeing one of Smart's friends shortly. Do
me a printout and I'll see if he recognises her.'

As he spoke, Minderedes put his head around the door. ‘Ready to go when you are,
Sir.'

Twenty-five

They were twenty minutes early for the meeting with Smart's friend Tony Boyle, and
Tartaglia decided to make a quick detour via the house in Castelnau where John Smart
had gardened in his spare time. Minderedes pulled up opposite on a double yellow
line to let him out.

‘I'll park around the corner,' he said. ‘Shall I come and find you?'

‘No. Go and talk to the neighbours on either side and call me when you're done. I'll
see if the owner is in. What's the woman's name?'

‘Jane Waterman, according to the file. I called around last night but there was nobody
in.'

The house was set back from the road behind a high wall, screened by two huge conifers
as tall as the roof. Tartaglia recognised it from the pictures Smart had taken. He
pushed open the gate and walked up the small semi-circle of drive. There was a garage
to one side, with a door beside it leading to the back. Fallen leaves had been raked
into two large piles on the grass, so it looked as though somebody was around. He
went up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. After a moment he tried again,
but there was no answer. He stepped back and looked up at the house. It was double-fronted,
built in heavy, late Victorian style, with bay windows, gables and a small turret
at either end; comfortable rather than aesthetically pleasing. All the windows were
dark and dirty looking, as though they hadn't been cleaned in years. There was no
sign of
life inside. He caught the smell of burning leaves on the wind. The smoke
seemed to be coming from the back, over the roof of the garage. Stepping into a flowerbed,
he peered through the grime into a sitting room. A huge vase of brown dried flowers
stood on a table in the window, half blocking the view, but he could see a mug and
newspaper sitting on a coffee table beyond. The room on the other side was furnished
as a dining room and equally empty. He was about to leave when a youngish man appeared
through the side gate from the back, pushing a wheelbarrow. He was dressed in overalls,
with a beanie pulled down over his hair.

‘I'm looking for Jane Waterman,' Tartaglia said. ‘Is she here?'

‘Sorry, what was that?' The man pulled out an earphone from under his hat.

‘I want to speak to Jane Waterman. Is she in?'

‘She's away at the moment.'

‘Where's she gone?'

‘Staying with family, I think. She hasn't been well. She went off with her nephew
a few weeks ago.'

‘Do you have a contact number for her?'

‘Sorry.'

‘When will she be back?'

‘Search me. She never says. Comes and goes as she pleases.'

‘It's police business,' Tartaglia said, showing his warrant card. ‘If she comes home,
can you ask her to give me a call?' He handed the man his card. ‘Who looks after
the house while she's away?'

‘I do.'

‘And what's your name?'

‘Jason. Jason Williamson. I do the gardening and a bit of maintenance. Why?'

‘Have you come across a man called John Smart?'

Williamson looked blank. ‘Doesn't ring a bell.'

‘This would have been about a year ago. He apparently used to do the garden here.'

‘Before my time, I'm afraid. The bloke before me was Polish, but he didn't stay long.'

‘Why was that?'

‘He nicked some of her silver. She had the police after him, she told me, but they
never caught him.'

‘OK, thanks. As I said, if you see her, make sure she gives me a call.'

Tartaglia found Minderedes at the next-door house, standing on the doorstep chatting
to a woman holding a toddler in her arms. The house was similar in style to Jane
Waterman's but recently refurbished, with clean brickwork, gleaming paint and a new-looking
Porsche Cayenne in the drive. Iron gates blocked the entrance and he was forced to
call out to attract Minderedes's attention.

‘Woman's name is Gregson,' Minderedes said, coming back. ‘The family only moved in
a few months ago, so they never knew John Smart.'

‘What about Jane Waterman?'

‘She doesn't know her, but said she saw an old lady in a wheelchair being pushed
out of the house and helped into a car a few weeks ago.'

‘That tallies with what the gardener said. Apparently, she's gone off to stay with
relatives. When you get back to the office, check to see if she reported the theft
of some silver within the last couple of years. Apparently, a Polish gardener may
have been involved.'

Minderedes made a note.

Have you tried the house on the other side?'

‘Nobody in. I'll go back again later.'

Tartaglia checked his watch. ‘Let's walk over to Tony Boyle's house. I could do with
stretching my legs.'

Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the comfortable front room of Boyle's
small terraced house close to Barnes Bridge, overlooking the river. A fire was burning
in the grate and Boyle's wife had provided them with a large tray of coffee and biscuits,
which Minderedes was making the most of. Jim Adams, Smart's other close friend, was
there too.

‘In spite of what the police said, it didn't make sense his disappearing,' Tony Boyle
said. ‘He wouldn't just go off somewhere, so I knew something must have happened
to him.'

‘You saw him the night before he disappeared?' Minderedes asked.

Tony nodded. ‘He'd been working on that BBC thing . . . what's it called?' He looked
over at Jim.

‘It was a play for Radio 4, one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.'

‘That's right. He came into the Sun afterwards for a pint on his way home.'

‘He seemed perfectly normal,' added Jim. ‘Other than some gripe about how little
he was getting paid, not a care in the world.'

‘What did you talk about?' Tartaglia asked.

‘Nothing particularly interesting, as far as I can recall. I remember they'd finished
the recording and he wasn't working the next day.'

‘He didn't mention being worried about anything, however small?'

Tony grimaced. ‘He certainly talked about the plans for his birthday at the weekend.
He was really looking forward to it, although Isobel had insisted on organising it,
which was tricky.'

‘Tricky in what way?' Tartaglia asked.

‘Well, he couldn't exactly ask Rose, could he? But I could tell, even though he didn't
want to criticise Isobel, he really wanted her to be there too and I think he and
Isobel had had a bit of a row about it. They were barely speaking the week before
he disappeared.'

‘Is Rose his girlfriend?'

Jim laughed. ‘Good lord, no. She's his other daughter.'

‘I didn't know he had another daughter,' Tartaglia said.

‘Nor did he, until a couple of years ago,' Jim said. ‘Then this woman writes to him
out of the blue, saying she's his daughter. It was quite a shock.'

‘Is this Rose?' Tartaglia asked, taking out the photo of the young, dark-haired woman
from his bag.

‘That's her,' Tony said. ‘She's a lovely girl. He often used to bring her to the
pub for a drink or a bite to eat. He couldn't take her home, of course, what with
Isobel being so tricky.'