Loose Head (7 page)

“And yet here you sit, arguing, when my decision has already been made. Why?”

I chose my words with care. “I suppose it’s because I feel it’s my duty to him, sir.”

“Your duty, DI Reed, is to me, and to the Metropolitan Police Service – not to your teammates. No –“ he held up a cautioning hand “– not another word. It’s a done deal.”

Seething with a fury I dared not express, I returned to my cubicle. Brian only had to glance at me, and his large features sagged in dismay. “You’re off the case.”

“Yes.” I sighed bitterly. “Apparently our boss has less confidence in my professional judgment than I thought.”

“Now, now, Dex. I know he thinks highly of you. Just the other day, he told me your work on that Notting Hill drive-by was absolutely top-shelf.”

“He did?”

Brian looked away, a grin lurking in the corners of his eyes. “Well, not in so many words. He did say your report had rather less shit about it than most of the rubbish he has to sort through.”

I managed a sour grin of my own. “Once more my life has purpose. Just do me one favor, Brian.”

“Name it.”

“Delicacy. The light touch, to the greatest extent possible. Weathersby wasn’t exactly my closest mate on the team. But some of the others you may have cause to investigate... let’s just say I’ve seen them in action on tour, and I’d hate to see anyone get hurt who isn’t essential to the case. I don’t know that this had anything to do with rugby. But if it does, promise me you’ll be discreet?”

“Oh, absolutely, lad. The soul of discretion. You have my word”

IV

Sir Steven Barnes, CVO, OBE, removed his white wig and set it carefully on the bust of the Duke of Wellington atop the marble mantlepiece. Everything about him – the Greys Inn office where Charles Dickens once toiled as an apprentice, with its walls of well-loved, leather-bound books, the tailored suit of charcoal-grey wool, the cup of Earl Grey steaming on the gleaming expanse of his inlaid desk – bespoke wealth and solidity. Even this morning’s Times had been ironed to a voluptuous crispness by his clerk.

He picked it up now, a frown creasing his fleshy brow. There, just below the fold, was the headline he didn’t want to read: “House of Lords Member Found Dead; Murder Suspected.” His  eyes, surrounded by pouchy folds of skin like a tortoise’s, flicked over the lead: “A peer of the realm who was as well-known for his prowess on the rugby pitch as he was for his Conservative political views died of a gunshot wound at his Notting Hill home early Thursday morning.

“John Weathersby, Lord Southampton, 45, who was once invited to try out for the England rugby team, was slain by a single shot from a large-bore hunting rifle. A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman described the violence of Lord Southampton’s wounds as ‘savage in the extreme.’ A coroner’s inquest is scheduled for later this afternoon.

“The police were called to the Penhurst House in Notting Hill by Lord Southampton’s housekeeper, Edith Chatham, 57, who was awakened by the sound of a single gunshot about 3 a.m. A search of the house revealed Lord Southampton’s body. The house’s security system had been disabled, and sources say police found evidence of forced entry at the scene.

“Lord Southampton, who had served in the House of Lords since 1989, was a well-known collector of antique sporting firearms. The apparent murder weapon was a Holland & Holland elephant rifle once owned by the legendary African sportsman Denys Finch-Hatton...”

Sir Steven let the newspaper fall to the polished surface of his desk with a disgusted “fwap!” It was always a bad business when one’s client met an untimely end, but murder? What
had
Weathersby been mixed up in?

After a moment’s thought, Sir Steven arose ponderously and made his way to the heavy safe that crouched in one corner of his office, opened it. He rummaged for a moment among the safe’s contents – heavy parchment envelopes bound with silk ribbon, case-files, ledgers, a World War II-vintage Webley service revolver – before he found what he sought.

The object of his search was a single envelope, sealed, inscribed “To be opened in the event of my death – John Weathersby.” Sir Steven re-crossed the room, set the envelope in the geometric centre of his desk, and sat looking at it for some minutes, long, steepled fingers tapping his chin.

Not for the first time, he wondered what it contained. Some sort of small lumpy object – that much, a blind man could deduce. But what was really inside?

Plucking an ivory-handled letter opener from his desk drawer, Sir Steven slit the envelope open. An object clattered to the desktop – the key to a left-luggage locker, number 182. There was a single sheet of note-paper inside. “Euston Station,” was all it said. Something – perhaps nothing more than ingrained solicitor’s instinct after more than 40 years of reading law – warned him that whoever received the locker’s contents would find no joy in the experience.

It had seemed an eccentric codicil when Weathersby had come to see him three weeks ago. But there was no doubt about Lord Southampton’s instructions; the wording was unambiguous. The locker key was to be used if Weathersby died, under any circumstances, before August 11, 2012, and the instructions contained in the locker followed to the letter.

Sir Steven sighed. It was a bad business. But after all, when you were called to the bar, how often were you so blessed as to be the bearer of good tidings? Not bloody often.

He knew he should dispatch his clerk to Euston Station without delay. Perhaps he was wrong – perhaps the locker contained a trove of riches, to be distributed to Weathersby’s heirs with philanthropic largesse. Having known Lord Southampton for more than two decades, Sir Steven snorted derisively at the thought.

Glancing at his watch, Sir Steven decided he had done enough for one day. Whatever pain lurked in the locker at Euston Station had waited this long to ooze forth. It could wait another day.

Chapter 6

For the next couple of days I moped about the office, searching Artemis Paul’s laptop, filling a legal pad with the names and contact information for the miscreant’s enforcers, clients and, shall we say, “service professionals.” By the time I’d finished, I was staring at a list only slightly shorter than the MPS telephone directory. With the help of Detective Constables Burnett and Goodspeed of the Hendon SCD outside inquiry team, I spent the rest of the week doggedly calling each entry, making appointments and interviewing. By Friday, we’d made it about a third of the way through the list of names, without a great deal of substance to show for our efforts.

In the course of my research, I came across one interesting tidbit I had failed to notice the first time I had seen Bernie’s name on Paul’s client-list. I started to reproach myself for the oversight, then realized that it was because the list I’d seen had been a Computer Crime-lab compilation, not the information on the laptop itself. The missing item consisted of a single Christian name appended to the end of Bernie’s entry: “Boris.”

Brian appeared only intermittently in the course of the week; he was devoting the initial stage of his investigation to a meticulous examination of the house and crime scene, and of Weathersby’s personal and business affairs.

Late Friday afternoon, I returned from an interview with a singularly uncooperative but wonderfully-named male prostitute called Crevice Delver to discover Brian, morosely overflowing his chair. He consulted his watch. “I believe The Chandos is serving Sam Smith’s Museum Ale from the oak,” he said. “Care to join me for a pint?”

Twenty minutes later we sat in one of the old leather couches in the quiet upstairs bar of the Chandos, just up the street from the National Portrait Gallery, hands wrapped around cool, gently-carbonated pints of the working man’s friend. The malty elixir slid down my throat with marvelous ease. Brian set his empty glass down with a thud and a satisfied smacking of his meaty lips.

“How’s it going with Paul?” he asked. “The case proceeds?”

“At its current rate, I hope to bring Paul to trial before he dies of old age. He’s not talking – refuses to answer the simplest question on the grounds that it might incriminate him. His loan-sharking clients won’t admit they know him. His rent-boys are as closed-mouth with me as they’re open-mouthed in their daily duties; his kneecappers all claim to be bouncers at Blue Hour. And no one’s ever heard of Martin Wallace, naturally. Still, I don’t think he’ll wriggle out of it entirely.” I finished my pint. “What about you – any sign of John’s laptop?”

“Not a sniff of it.” He arose and fetched us two more of the same. “And not a sniff of motive, either. Although we did find his will.”

“And?”

“There was one rather suggestive codicil, added two moths ago. His solicitor was to use the key Weathersby had entrusted to his care to open a locker in Euston Station, and follow the instructions it contained to the letter.”

“What instructions?”

“We don’t know what’s in the locker, do we? More to the point, we have no idea which locker it is.”

I gulped meditatively. “Anything else?”

Brian scratched his short-cropped beard thoughtfully before downing another half-pint at a gulp. “I’ve been going over Weathersby’s financials. One thing doesn’t add up. His wife told us he’d paid £200,000, only last week, for the rifle that killed him. Yet over the last year or so, the markets have given his trust a walloping – his income was down, not up. And I don’t see a payout of that magnitude from any of his accounts.”

“He told me he’d scored on the futures market. But maybe it was cash – maybe he had a run of luck in Vegas. Funny he didn’t mention it, though – that was just the sort of thing John would’ve crowed about.”

“Her Majesty’s Customs would’ve had some probing questions if he’d tried to bring a wad of cash that large into the country without declaring it, though from all we know, Weathersby was far from risk-averse.”

“There’s another possibility. You’ve heard what his relationship with Tess was like. If I know John, he had assets squirreled away where Tess’ lawyers would never find them.”

“Offshore accounts, you mean – BVI/Caymans stuff?” He nodded slowly. “Could be. No paper statements – all wire transfers. All of the information would’ve been on his computer. I’ve a call in to the man who sold him the rifle – apparently he made a profit, because he’s been on holiday in Turkey since two days after the sale. When he gets back, maybe we can back-trace the source of the funds.”

“We?” I asked bitterly.

“Figure of speech, lad. But don’t worry. The situation is only temporary.”

II

In my 22 years as a policeman, first as a bobby, patrolling the recently-gentrified streets of  Spitalfields, then as a detective constable, first in narcotics, then Major Crimes, now as a detective inspector in Specialist Crime Directorate, a sort of catch-all for the nastiest crimes no other MPS division wants to touch, I’ve discovered one surprising fact about the criminal mind: no one is completely bad, just as no one is completely good. No miscreant, no matter how twisted, how sociopathic, how indifferent to the misery he has caused, is utterly without redeeming virtue. Even Jack the Ripper probably visited his frail, wizened granny on occasion. I’ve known violent muggers who were volunteer Big Brothers; drugs dealers who were very active church members; I knew a pædophile once who was very kind to his elderly grandparents-in-law. And sometimes, for an experienced investigator, such information can provide a crucial advantage.

So it proved with Artemis Paul, though in his case, as with all genuine sociopaths, self-interest lay at the heart of his actions. There was only one other person he loved nearly as much as he fancied himself – his wife. Paul’s own mother had been a cruel and distant alcoholic. But he had found the ideal substitute in his wife, Debra, by all accounts a woman of rare steadfastness, warmth and solicitude. To her he was as devoted as it is possible for one in his mental condition to be, and her good opinion, as I was shortly to learn, meant a great deal to him.

As I sat at my desk on Monday morning, the buzz of the intercom suddenly rent the air. “There’s a Debra Paul on line 2,” said Jade, the department secretary. “Says she’s Artie Paul’s wife.”

“DI Reed,” she said when I picked up. She took a deep breath. “I know I shouldn’t be speaking to you without my solicitor present. And I know you can’t discuss the case against my husband. But I just want to know...” I could hear her voice catch as she struggled to master her emotions; then out it spilled in a rush. “Is he... is he being treated well? I know he tried to hurt you, but you have to understand that it was my fault. Whatever stupid thing he’s done, he did to protect me. And the children. I shouldn’t be talking to you, I know that. It’s just that I’ve heard...” and now came the choking sobs, “...what happens to people who try to hurt policemen.”

“Mrs. Paul, please,” I said, mentally patting her hand. “Your husband got a knot on his head during the fight on the boat. Beyond that, he’s fine.”

“You must hate him,” she sobbed. “But he’s a good man, you must believe me. A good husband. A good father. He didn’t tell me about his business. I thought he owned a club! I... I  just can’t believe it’s come to this!”

“Mrs. Paul. I don’t hate your husband.” I wouldn’t be inviting him ‘round for drinks anytime soon, but that was beside the point. “But you’re quite right when you say you shouldn’t be talking to me without your lawyer.”

“I know, she told me not to call you, but I’m so worried! I haven’t even been allowed to see him!”

“Haven’t you.” I had a small brainwave. “You know his bail hearing’s this afternoon.”

She sobbed again. “Yes.”

“It’s against regulation but... perhaps I can arrange for you to see him. Just to set your mind at ease. But only for a moment, mind. You’ll be watched, but at least you’ll be able to have a private word with him. See for yourself how he’s doing, tell him how you and the children are holding up.”