Loose Head (27 page)

I filled them in on Atkinson – the possibility that he was a previous blackmail victim, that he had the necessary electronics knowledge to disable the alarm, and about his somewhat mercurial temperament.

“Right,” said Wicks. “Here’s what we’ll do. DIs Burnett and Goodspeed, go and see Sir Chester Atkinson. Find out whether he’s got an alibi for the night of the murder, for starters, and ask him politely whether he was being blackmailed back in the late ‘90s. Find out where he lives, what time he left the party the night Weathersby was killed, what time he arrived home, whether anyone can verify that, and whether or not he could’ve returned to Penhurst House in time to kill Weathersby. That will do to be getting on with.”

Chairs scraped, and the various members of the team went about their duties. I took a deep breath. “DCI Wicks,” I said. “Lord Delvemere. I don’t think he’s our boy. We did arrest him, at DCI Oakhurst’s insistence, but that was mainly to punish me. Lord Delvemere didn’t kill Weathersby. I’d like to release him”

“Why do you say that?” Wicks’ parrot eyes regarded me keenly.

I ticked off the points on my fingers. “One, I spent some time with him the night of the murder, and he was too drunk to cope with the logistical difficulties – getting over the fence, disabling the alarm, breaking into the study, loading and firing the rifle with such a high degree of accuracy. Two, he had nothing to gain – he’d already paid Weathersby, and he knew that if Weathersby died, the videos would be sent out anyway. That only leaves revenge for a motive. I’ve known Delvemere for three decades, drunk and sober. In my opinion, he isn’t capable of murder.”

“And what if you’re wrong?”

“We can confiscate his passport, make him post bail. But I’m not wrong about this.”

“All right, DI Reed. I tend to agree, but I’ll need to clear his release with the powers that be. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, if Delvemere didn’t kill Weathersby, who the hell did?”

I sighed. “I don’t know – yet. But we’re close, sir – the answer is there. But so far, it’s just out of reach.”

III

Just before he was attacked, Brian had waved a sheaf of papers at me, papers that had some relevance to his upcoming interview with Devilliers, which he had assembled with the help of someone in Computer Crime. I rang Emma Kwan.

“I’m sorry, Dex – I don’t know what that was all about,” she told me. “I was out of the office on Tuesday.  But I’ll see if I can find out who Brian was working with.”

“Do, please,” I said. “I need to know what was on that printout. It’s important.”

“I’ll talk to everyone here. How’re you holding up, Dex?”

It was the first time anyone had asked. I was momentarily taken aback. “All right,” I replied. “Not so well, to be honest, Em. Equal parts homicidal rage and burning guilt that I wasn’t there to help him. I want to find the bastards who did this to Brian, and Weathersby’s killer. I have a sick suspicion the two are connected.”

“I’ll ring you as soon as I know anything. And, ah, Dex.” There was an awkward pause.

“What is it, Em?”

“I was wondering – d’you... would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. The delectable Emma Kwan, as beautiful as she was intelligent. How often had I thought of asking her the same question? But then I thought of Jane. “Em, you’ve made my day. Can I take a rain check? I’m going to be working late for the foreseeable future.”

“Of course, Dex. When you come up for air, we’ll talk.”

IV

According to the call log for Bob Leicester’s mobile, he had called Tim St. Cloud, his chief of security, at 2:07 a.m. on the night of Weathersby’s murder. I had met St. Cloud on several occasions. He was ex-SAS, an uncanny dead ringer for Kevin Costner, highly competent in all of the deadly skills that become second nature to those Special Forces trained. Suffice to say that, despite the myriad of security challenges associated with a network of 23 facilities serving some of the most troubled youth in Britain, the Magwitch Project had never had a serious problem – no murders, no rapes, no violent assaults. It was a testament to Tim St. Cloud’s skill as a problem-solver.

That competence, presumably, explained why Leicester had woken St. Cloud from a sound sleep on the night of Weathersby’s murder. I had perused St. Cloud’s file in preparation for my interview with him; in addition to top-of-the-line general security expertise, his skill set included clandestine insertion and extraction, computer infiltration, electronic wiretap and surveillance, and all sorts of deadly weapons training. No wonder Bob found him useful.

I found St. Cloud at his desk at the Magwitch Project’s offices in Clerkenwell Street. I had called ahead; he waved me to a seat as he coped, via phone, with the latest crisis in the Leicester empire. “No. I’ve reviewed the case file, and we need to move him! He needs to be as far from her as possible! That’s right, Edinburgh! No, don’t argue with him – just tell him that’s how it’s going to be! Right! Ta.”

St. Cloud rang off and turned his attention to me. He was handsome, fit, with a chin that might have been carved by Michelangelo and surprisingly warm golden-brown eyes. “Dex!” he said, leaning across his desk to shake hands. “How can I help?”

“Actually, I’d hoped that Lord Palmerston might’ve had a word with you,” I said.

“He did,” St. Cloud replied. “He said I was to answer your questions with brutal honesty.”

“He called you the night of 11 October,” I said. “Late. What did he say?”

“He said he was being blackmailed,” St. Cloud replied without hesitation. “Explained the circumstances. Asked me about the probability of success for a surgical strike – go in quietly, take the computer that held the videos, install a few listening devices, get out again. As a follow-up, we would monitor Weathersby’s activities – make sure that if he tried to mail out the disks, we would be ready to intercept them.”

“And did you?” I asked. “Go to Weathersby’s, and steal the laptop?”

“No,” St. Cloud replied. “The operation was set for October 12. That was the soonest I could get a team in place. But by then, Weathersby was already dead.”

“And you, and your staff, had nothing to do with that?”

“No.” St. Cloud regarded me levelly. “I was home that night, as my wife can attest. Bob’s phone call woke her up, and she didn’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours. I didn’t kill him, Dex, much as he may have deserved it. And as my phone records will show, I didn’t call anyone else after Leicester called me.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Portland Street, Southwark, near Burgess Park.”

Frustratingly far away from Notting Hill and Blenheim Crescent. Par for the course in this case, I reckoned. “Thank you, Tim,” I said, rising wearily to my feet. I was suddenly very tired. “I’ll call you if there’s anything else.” But for now I could think of nothing. This case had more dead ends than a pub ashtray.

V

It was late afternoon when DIs Burnett and Goodspeed returned to the squad room. “We saw Atkinson,” said Goodspeed, a fit, 40-something detective who looked 10 years younger. “His alibi wasn’t that convincing, to be honest.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

DI Goodspeed consulted his notebook. “He said he left Weathersby’s party about 1:30, then went in search of adventure. He found it, apparently, at a club called Obsessions in Chelsea. Said he met two young women there and managed to talk them back to his flat, which is on the Fulham Road in South Ken. He didn’t know their names, and he’s never seen them since.”

“Sounds like Jester,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. “What about the blackmail?”

“He was surprisingly forthcoming about that,” said DI Burnett, blond and moustached, with a bodybuilder’s discomfort in shirt, tie and jacket. “Said Weathesrby blackmailed him back in ‘95. Atkinson was boffing the wife of one of his most important clients, and apparently she had influenced her husband to steer a fair amount of business Atkinson’s way. Somehow, Weathersby got it on video. Atkinson paid him £100,000 to hush it up.”

“Did he know about the most recent round of blackmails? Seagrave, Lord Delvemere, Lord Palmerston, Harry Barlowe?”

“He said no,” DI Burnett replied. “Not surprising, really, since Weathersby told them all he’d ruin their lives if anyone else from the club found out.”

“Quite,” I said, thinking hard. “Check with the taxi companies – find out if there was a pickup anywhere near Atkinson’s house between 1:30 and 2:30 the night of the murder. Let me know what you find.”

“Will do, Dex.”

For a few minutes, I just sat, thinking hard. The more I thought about it, the more I suspected that Devilliers might not have been entirely candid with me. There had been a lot left unsaid – items Brian might have discussed with him during their interview but that, with Brian in a coma, I had no way of knowing, and that Devilliers had not volunteered.

I wished, not for the first time, that Brian’s memory was more like mine, so that he took a few more notes. His notebook, found in the breast pocket of his jacket the night he was attacked, was essentially a barren, featureless desert enlivened by a few cryptic scrawls. “Delvmr yes, Seagrv probably, Lester doubtful, Barlowe no” probably had to do with driving distance from their houses to the crime scene, and the relative probability that each suspect could make it home, then return to Penhurst House, within the allotted time-frame. But what the hell did “CC to Devilliers’ office?” mean? What message or document was being sent to Devilliers, and by whom? There was simply no way to know without talking to Brian.

The normal rules of investigation just didn’t seem to apply to this case. None of the four suspects stood to gain more than the others from Weathersby’s death. True, Seagrave and Leicester hadn’t paid the blackmail money, and so it could be argued that they had more at stake than Bernie or Harry Barlowe. But according to Devilliers, making the required payment would not have imposed significant financial hardship on Seagrave, and it certainly wouldn’t have on Leicester. Indeed, all four blackmail victims had substantially more to lose than to gain, financially and in terms of personal reputation, by Weathersby’s death. Those who did stand to gain financially – his ex-wife Tess and his children – had been in Cornwall at the time Weathersby was killed.

I became aware that my subconscious had at last, ever so quietly, begun to make its opinion known. Tempting though it was to assume that Leicester, Seagrave, Barlowe and Bernie Plantagenet had the most potent reasons to want Weathersby dead, my investigatory instinct was now pointing me in another direction: toward a past blackmail victim who had somehow gotten wind of Weathersby’s recent activities, and decided to put a decisive end to them in order to spare his teammates.

Before I left his office, Devilliers had provided me with two documents: single-page account summaries from some time in the past. I looked at them now. In November 1995, in the midst of an unbroken string of regular retirement contributions, Atkinson’s account showed a one-time payout of £100,000. He had already admitted being blackmailed by Weathersby. Kevin Gleeson’s account showed a similar payout in June 1998.

I rang Gleeson on his mobile and arranged to meet him at the Lamb in Conduit Street, near his office. Kevin was a real estate developer; since the early ‘90s, he was responsible for the conversion of many of waterfront London’s most disreputable warehouses into upscale lofts. I was waiting when he hove into view, looking prosperous and buttoned-down. He went to the bar for a pint, then joined me in my booth.

“Dex!” he said warily. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“It’s the Weathersby case, I’m afraid. I need to ask you a few questions.”

He nodded. “Ask away.”

I consulted my notebook. “In June of ‘98 you withdrew £100,000 from your account with Devilliers. May I ask why?”

Just for a moment, the voluble Gleeson looked flustered. “You may,” he said slowly. “Dex, you have to understand. That was a crazy time in my life. I was going through... personal difficulties. To be frank, I was in a spot of trouble – one of my female employees made a sexual harassment claim. The money was to make that go away.”

“Were you being blackmailed? By Weathersby?”

Kevin looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I think I’d better decline to answer that, until I consult my solicitor.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But I will need to know, one way or another.”

“Was there anything else?” he asked.

“There was one other thing,” I replied, looking him in the eye. “When did you become aware that Weathersby was blackmailing Bernie, Leicester and the others?”

“Saw it on the telly, didn’t I? Same as everybody else!”

“None of them talked to you about it? There were no whispers before Weathersby was killed, before the story broke in the press?”

“I had... an inkling. From Seagrave. I’m pretty close to him, as you know, Dex. I knew he was worried about something. I asked him what it was.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said it was something that happened in Vegas – he was worried Catherine was going to find out. I tried to buck him up – the sacred rugby oath and all that. But he was worried, all the same.”

“The subject of blackmail never arose?”

“Not in so many words. Why do you want to know, Dex?”

“Because Weathersby’s murderer may have been a former victim, someone who wanted to silence him before he could harm his teammates.”

“Dex!” Gleeson turned paper-white. “You can’t think...”

“I’m not thinking at this point, Kev, and I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just assembling facts. Have you spoken to Devilliers in the last few days?”

“I did ring him... on the Wednesday, I think.” The very day Brian had been attacked.

“What did you discuss?”

“Financial stuff – I want to sell the business and retire next year. There’s a lot to talk about.”

“You didn’t discuss the Weathersby investigation, or DI Abbott’s appointment with Devilliers?”

“We might’ve discussed Weathersby, and he might’ve mentioned that your partner was coming to see him. It isn’t every day one of your teammates is murdered, for Christ’s sake!”