Loose Head (6 page)

DC Inns, glad to have something to do, scurried off to begin collecting the videos. Brian and I returned to the study. Nothing had changed; the lads and lasses from forensic were taking it slowly and methodically. John Weathersby was a member of the House of Lords and had a lot of influential friends. Although it would run counter to MPS policy to treat this crime differently from any other – even a suggestion that we were giving preferential treatment to an upper-class victim was taboo –  there was nevertheless going to be intense pressure to get this one right, and to slap the steel bracelets on his killer, straightaway.

The first rays of the rising sun had found John’s head, still lying in the corner where it had come to rest. His eyes bulged in horror; his lower jaw was gone, atomized by 480 grains – just over an ounce – of lead, moving at 2,000 feet per second. There were no powder burns on the face; obviously the shot had come from some distance away. That, and the position of the rifle against the desk, made any thought that he might have committed suicide a non-starter.

Looking at John’s terrible wound, something suddenly occurred to me. I beckoned Brian over to the torso and gingerly pulled open the shirt. The purplish recoil bruise stood out lividly against his chalky skin. “What’s this?” Brian asked.

“Recoil bruise. Showed it to me earlier tonight – he fired the rifle two days ago.”

A sudden avaricious light gleamed in Brian’s eyes. “Ah. And when we find our murderer, chances are he’ll be wearing its twin.”

“Possibly.” I looked over at the scarf, crumpled on the floor next to the gun, as if seeing it for the first time. “But it looks as though he may have had the sense to use a pad.”

Brian whistled. “Clever boy. But would that be enough to absorb the recoil?”

I smiled mirthlessly. “Only one way to find out. Flip you for it.”

Chapter 5

Here’s a soul-chilling thought. Or perhaps, in some cases, a comforting one. If, as you inevitably will, you form a bond of affection with even one other person in this world – a parent, child, friend, sibling, lover or spouse – no matter how passionate, indelible, constant or all-consuming your feelings may be, there will come a day when you will see that person for the very last time. Even your spouse, if you are so blessed, of 20, 30, 40 years or more. Think about that. Someone you’ve seen every day, or every week, for decades, and of a sudden, that cheerful morning conversation, that midnight caress, that weekly “How are you, mate?” phone call is the last you’ll ever receive.

If you’re lucky, you’ll die first. Or if, God forbid, that person acquires a terminal illness, you might at least have time to say goodbye properly. If you’re unlucky, they might simply vanish from your life. If you’re very unlucky, like my friend Jerry Stewart, whose father died in a fiery car crash, you’ll have a huge, screaming row with the person you care about most in the world, and the last thing you’ll ever have said to him or her will be “I hate you, you miserable prick/cunt, and I hope you die!”

My conscience was only slightly clearer, in this regard, with respect to John Weathersby. True, we had parted on less-than-gracious terms. But it had been at his instigation, not mine. Or had it? After all, I had hypocritically allowed my disapproval of his philandering to show. But the nagging question remained: how had he known of my affair with Jane, give the fact that he had been 4,000 miles away at the time it occurred?

We didn’t have to wait for the Crown pathologist’s report to know that John Weathersby had died by violence. The obvious question then became: who had wanted him so thoroughly dead?

Contemplating his untimely end, I thought back over my own complicated relationship with John. He was a year older, a distinction that made no difference later, but at school, had been a gulf to be exploited and emphasized. Even as a boy, John had possessed a bull-like strength and, perhaps even more valuable from a rugby standpoint, a finely-calculated recklessness. Despite his bulk – upwards of 19 stone, nearly 270 pounds – he retained, to the end, a surprising nimbleness and turn of speed. To encounter the quintessential fat prop, who canters forward a few yards, then gratefully accepts the tackle, goes to ground and presents the ball, is a rugby cliche. To encounter John on the pitch was to meet a rugby Range Rover, fast, agile and elegant in all sorts of terrain.

Though outwardly jovial, there were steely depths to John I had never been able to plumb, even after 35 years of acquaintance. One thing that had been obvious from the beginning was his absolute need to have the upper hand – some trick, some strategy, some information that gave him an advantage in everything he did.

In 2001, the Hastewicke Gentlemen had toured South Africa. In our final match, against the Transvaal Baboons, their tight-head prop, a black farmer named Robby Wiitburg, had manhandled John throughout the game – lifting him, pulling him down, shoving him off-balance. He was a physical prodigy, so strong that I could feel John yawing and stumbling as I leaned against him in the scrum. Despite everything I and the second row could do to steady and support him, he was jerked about like a small child wrestling his father. We lost the match, and afterward, in an unforgivable breach of rugby etiquette, John had refused to shake Robby’s hand. For me he reserved a look of bitter scorn, and turned wordlessly away from my proffered pint of beer.

Returning to Hendon, I thought about that side of Weathersby as Brian and I discussed motive. It seemed that whoever had killed John had wanted to utterly obliviate him, although we couldn’t rule out the possibility that it had simply been a crime of convenience – a panicked burglar who had seen the rifle and used it. It seemed unlikely though. After all, whoever had killed John had had to load the gun first.

I knew that Weathersby was well-off, divorced, and had derived his income primarily from an invested inheritance. An only child, he had come into Penhurst House and a tidy stack of cash when his mother, Lady Southampton, died in 1982. There was a country house as well, somewhere in Kent. John’s teenaged children, a boy and a girl, stood to inherit his estate. Of course, his ex-wife, Tess, would have the use of it until they reached 21. “Shall we pay her a visit?” Brian asked.

Tess Weathersby lived in Reading, in a semidetached house that seemed, like the rest of the neighborhood, to have been stamped from a mold. It was solid and respectable, and the small garden out front had obviously been tended with loving care. But given John’s circumstances, I was surprised at its modesty.

I had always liked Tess, but I hadn’t seen her since the divorce nine years ago. She appeared promptly at our knock, a short, angular woman, fit and comfortably dressed in blue jeans and t-shirt, her greying chestnut hair confined in a French braid, and gazed up at me in surprise. “Dex! I didn’t think it would be you! Come in!”

“You’ve heard, then? Tess, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not.” And she led the way inside.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you,” she said, as we settled ourselves around the pleasantly-sunny iron table in the back garden. “I know you liked... I know John was your teammate. But he was such a massive prick to me and the children that I can’t pretend to be sorry he’s dead.”

“How do you mean?”

She frowned toward a nearby azalea as if it needed pruning. “The first few years we were married, it was magic. He was kind, romantic, faithful, a good father. He made me feel like a fairy-tale princess. But then, about 10 years ago, something changed.”

“What changed?”

She thought about that. “I don’t know. I suppose he started to show me who he truly was. It was as if we had crossed a border, somehow. I found that he despised me. Do you know what that’s like, to live with someone for 11 years, and then to discover, quite by accident, that they wouldn’t scratch their arse to save you from a burning house?”

I nodded. I had seen that side of John. “What about the children? How was his relationship with them?”

“That was the worst. They’re 14 and 16 now. But their monthly support – he was always behind. I’ve had to call and remind him almost every month, and it’s been excruciating. Wizened, bloodsucking harpy, relentless bitch, housecow – those were some of the kinder things he called me.” She shook her head bitterly and unconsciously slipped into the present tense. “He never calls them. He never even remembers their birthdays. Sophie – she’s 16 now. Applying to university. Do you know what John told me last month? That he wasn’t going to pay for her schooling. He was a slag.”

“Nice friends you’ve got,” Brian smiled at me. “But the reason we’re here, Mrs. Weathersby, is to ask whether John had any enemies. The kind who might want to blow his head off with an elephant gun.”

Tess managed a rueful smile of her own. “You probably think it was me. And the thought has occurred, believe me. But it wasn’t me – the children and I were on holiday in Cornwall when John was killed. You can check.”

Brian shook his head. “Can you think of anyone else? Someone John had a business relationship with? A lover?”

“I don’t know who John was seeing romantically, at least not now. He knew lots of people through his work in Parliament, of course, but the only real friends John had were his rugby mates. And the people he knew through his collecting. He was obsessed. Do you know, he paid £200,000 for a rifle, just last week?” She flicked her fingers contemptuously. “He still owes me £6,000 in back support.”

“So he had money troubles?”

“Only of his own making. His trust paid him £50,000 per month. He owned Penhurst House outright, and he wasn’t supposed to touch the principal of the inheritance. But he fancied himself a speculator, and he was always looking for what he called the super-deal.” She looked bleakly off into the distance. “There were times, when we were married, that he worried about money. In fact, just a year or so before we were divorced, he was really frantic about it – he’d invested a goodish chunk in some stock Ian Chalmers tipped him on, and it turned out to be a real dog. John was furious. But then, a couple of months later, another investment came in and he was laughing. Took us all to Portugal for a month.”

“Thank you, Tess. If you think of anything else, will you call me?”

“Sure. And Dex?”

“Yes?”

“When you catch John’s killer, be sure to thank him for me, will you?”

II

Back in our cube, I found a note on my desk: “Dex: ballistics are ready.” I fished out a pound coin. “Flip you for it.”

Brian grinned. “How about a game of darts instead?”

“No, thanks. I want to win.”

I flipped the coin. Heads – I lost.

We drove south through the city, across Lambeth Bridge to Forensic Science Services headquarters. Simon Vickery, the diminutive, bearded FSS Chief of Ballistics, met us at the door to his lab. Finch-Hatton’s rifle was almost as tall as he was.

“Right,” he grinned. “Who’s the lucky one?”

The ballistics tank was a water-filled metal cube four feet square and 10 feet long, painted drab tan, with a rubber port to receive the weapon. Brian handed me the white scarf we had found on the floor of John’s study; I wordlessly folded it and tucked it inside my shirt. I took the rifle and opened the breech; Simon handed me a cartridge and stood back, smiling, to watch. I slipped the round in, inserted the barrel of the rifle into the port, snugged it to my shoulder and, grimacing with apprehension, fired.

There was an apocalyptic boom! like a subterranean clap of thunder; at the same instant, my shoulder felt as if it had received a right cross from Lennox Lewis. I rubbed it while Simon opened the tank and, with a long-handled net, retrieved the slug. “All right, you great baby?” asked Brian smugly. I opened my shirt. The shoulder was sore, but the scarf had absorbed most of the recoil. In my estimation, based upon my lifelong experience with rugby, there would be little or no bruising. “No joy,” I said.

Brian looked troubled on the drive back to the office, and not just at the failure of Finch-Hatton’s rifle to produce a livid bruise on my shoulder. “I think we’re missing something. Was Weathersby a photographer?”

“I’ve seen him taking photos and videos on tour. He seemed moderately obsessed with it. Why do you ask?”

“His missing computer. It was a Mac Powerbook. Do you know what they’re known for?”

“No.”

“Graphics. Photos, video. You can make your own movies on them, store and edit a feature-length film. I can’t help but think that the fact that it’s gone missing has something to do with why he was killed. Without it, we’re working in the dark.”

“No question about that.” We had arrived at our cube; there was another note on my desk. “Wicks wants to see me. What shall we tell him?”

“That we’re pursuing a promising lead. Of course, he’ll know you’re lying through your teeth.”

III

“You’re off the case.” DS Wicks stood with his back to me, ostensibly admiring a photo of himself with Tony Blair at the Lord Mayor’s ball.

“Sir, there’s no need...” I began, but he cut me off with a wave of the hand.

“You’re too close to this. You had a personal relationship with the victim. You’ve played rugby and swilled beer out of the same trough with him since you were both kids. Can’t help but cloud your judgement.”

“Yes, I knew Weathersby. But we weren’t exactly friends. Sir, I can bring an objective view to the case.”

Wicks turned; surprisingly, his expression was almost sympathetic. “And what if, as is extremely likely, the killer turns out to be someone you both knew? A rugby mate, or wife, or girlfriend?”

“Sir, I want to find John’s killer as much as you do. Perhaps more.”

“I know, Dex. You’re a fine detective, when you stop and think. But you’re off this case. Brian can handle it. God knows there’s enough on your plate already, with this Artemis Paul business.”

I clenched my fists in frustration. In my heart I knew Wicks might be right. But John Weathersby had been a teammate. “Sir, please. I’m aware of your concerns. But I know I can do this properly. It’s true I knew Weathersby. But we weren’t close enough to compromise my objectivity.”