Murder on Page One (3 page)

McNeill looked shocked. ‘No. We sort of drifted apart. We first got together at university.’

‘No other relationships at all?’

‘I don’t think she had anyone. I didn’t check on her, of course. And, well, I … but she didn’t mind. It was after we’d split.’

‘What’s your lady-friend’s name?’

McNeill frowned. ‘I don’t see how that’s relevant, but it’s Claire. Claire McNeill. We married three months ago.’

‘And your ex-wife didn’t resent this?’

‘No. She sent us a wedding present. A pile of books, actually.’

‘Did she drink? We found alcohol in her flat.’

McNeill screwed up his face. ‘Yes, a bit, but not excessively.’

‘What about enemies? Maybe writers she’d turned down?’

‘Can’t think of any names. I suppose there must have been …’ His voice caught.

‘When was the last time you went to her office?’ Flick asked softly.

‘Months ago. Let me see. September, it was.’ He consulted a diary. ‘Yes, the tenth. There was a document to sign in a hurry for the Spanish lawyer. Not that he ever hurried.’

‘Have you seen her since?’

‘No.’ He gulped. ‘I’ve just remembered. When I was in her office in September, Aline-Wendy argued with someone on the phone. She told them not to be so persistent; it wouldn’t get them anywhere. She hung up on them. I remember because it was so unlike Aline-Wendy.’

‘And what were you doing last night between five and ten?’ Osborne made it sound like an accusation.

‘Oh. Yes. You have to ask, don’t you?’ McNeill put his diary on the table and indicated an entry, ‘5.30. Snowie’. ‘Alan Snow, he’s my dentist. Lambeth, St Georges Road. He always gives me the last appointment of the day and we go for a pint afterwards.’

‘Where?’

‘Pig and Whistle. It’s practically next door to the surgery. I got home about eight.’

‘And just one pint?’

‘Well, two or three, actually, if you want to be precise.’

‘Drive home, did you?’ Osborne asked sharply.

‘No. Tube. Bakerloo then Jubilee. Claire was cross. The toad-in-the-hole was cremated.’

As Flick took a note, Osborne said, ‘We need to have a formal identification of the body. Would you mind?’

McNeill shut his eyes for a moment then sat up straight. ‘Yes, Inspector. Of course. She could be a royal pain, but I … I’m still very fond of her, in an odd way.’ He turned his head and breathed deeply. ‘One thing. Do you know what’s being done about Stanley?’

‘Stanley?’

‘The cat. Burmese. He was ours, but she got custody, if you call it that. Erm, I’d like to have him now.’

Osborne said, ‘Find him and keep him, as far as I’m concerned.’

Flick said, ‘We’d rather not get involved in that.’ Neither officer had given the cat a thought after his speedy exit from the flat.

4

‘So the ex’s alibi checks out, her finances seem okay, and we don’t know of anyone arranging to meet her the day she was killed.’ Osborne summarised their lack of progress. It was noon on the second day of the investigation, and he had called Flick, Peters and Baggo into a corner of the CID room. He did not want them to be overheard.

‘Anything interesting from the phones, Baggo?’

‘Not a sausage, gov. It was all dull as ditch-water. Authors and publishers, taxis and restaurants. Same goes for the computers. Nothing for you to get your teeth into.’ Baggo’s eyes twinkled as he glanced sideways at Peters.

‘No help from CCTV, and no unexpected fingerprints at the scene.’ Flick said, frowning at them. Long ago, she had ceased to find Osborne’s gluttony amusing. ‘I suppose you’ve tried Facebook?’ she asked Baggo.

‘A very boring entry, Sarge. Mostly about her cat. There were some nice comments from authors she had helped.’

‘She seems to have had no lovers, no sins. Well, just the one …’ Osborne leered at Flick then continued: ‘What do we know about that receptionist, the eyelash woman?’

‘Seems okay,’ Flick said.

‘She was really upset,’ Peters said.

‘Well let’s look at her more closely. My old Sarge, Thumper Binks, always suspected the person who found the body, specially if they were the last to see the deceased alive. Felicity, you do that.’

‘What about the wannabes and the other agent? Shouldn’t we at least try and find a link?’ Flick asked.

Despite Jessica Stanhope’s exotic private life, which suggested a number of leads, that investigation had stalled. Like McNeill, she had been murdered in her office. She had been working late and was found strangled the next morning. An article in Publishers’ Weekly, in which she had deplored the lack of emerging talent, had been scrumpled into balls and put in her mouth. Again, CCTV did not help and fingerprints had been wiped, even off the paper balls.

Six weeks on, Osborne was far from making an arrest, although his gut told him a jilted lover, Frank Lowe, a financial journalist who owned an extensive collection of handcuffs and whips, was the killer. His alibi depended on a Filipino masseuse in a Soho sauna and his photograph had been posted below the dead woman’s on the whiteboard, the words ‘kinky journo’ scrawled beside his nondescript face.

‘In the old days, Thumper Binks and I would have beaten a confession out of him, even if he was a bleeding masochist,’ Osborne had muttered to Peters, who had gleefully told the rest of the station.

Osborne glared at Flick. ‘Always wanting to use your English degree, aren’t you? All right. On you go. But no going behind my back to the ’Ercule bloody Poirot Association. Peters, you put the squeeze on the receptionist. See if she stood to gain by McNeill’s death. These eyelashes could be hiding something.’

‘And don’t forget to ask her about the caller George McNeill told us about, and see if she can now remember any would-be authors who were very persistent,’ Flick added.

Peters nodded. ‘I’ll go this afternoon. I didn’t get the impression that Aline-Wendy wanted to take over. I heard her talking to someone about other agents.’

‘Anything on the techy side for me to do?’ Baggo asked. His instinctive talent for IT and a desire to keep his Brahmin complexion out of the sun made a computer desk his natural habitat.

‘Go over the computer and phone stuff in Stanhope’s case and see if you can find a link with McNeill,’ Osborne instructed. ‘These cases are not going to solve themselves,’ he added unnecessarily.

* * *

Jessica Stanhope had worked for Creech, Haldane and Laughton. They were a large agency with many clients. Their office was off Mostyn Road at the Gardens end. As Flick stepped into the imposing hallway she looked round the newly-installed cameras. Had they been there six weeks earlier, Stanhope’s killer might have been arrested and McNeill might still be alive. A lift whisked her up to Carol Edwards’ office and Stanhope’s former assistant got straight to the point.

‘I’ve prepared a list already, actually,’ Edwards said, handing over seven closely-typed A4 sheets listing names and addresses. ‘These are the people Jessica rejected during the last year. She was our main crime agent, so she had more submissions coming to her than the others. Our guidelines are strict: first three chapters and a synopsis in hard copy. Once a week, generally on a Friday, I’d take her what had come in. She’d look at them all. Some she’d reject after a page or two, but a few would be asked to send the complete manuscript. A reader would give their view, and if it was positive, Jessica would read the whole thing herself. We took on just two new writers last year.’

‘What about the rejected material? Do you still have any?’

‘No. We sent it back if they’d enclosed the postage. Otherwise we re-cycled it. If we’d let it build up, we’d have been swamped.’

‘But you kept a list?’

‘Some people kept sending in the same stuff. I checked each new submission on the computer and if they’d submitted within the previous year and didn’t tell us, I’d bin it straight away.’

‘Can you think of any wannabes who were particularly persistent or aggressive?’

Edwards thought for a moment. ‘There was one man. He was disabled. An ex-soldier. He kept on going on about that, as if he should be taken on because he was in a wheelchair. I had to be quite firm with him over the telephone. I think his name was Wallace.’

‘Could you check, please?’

Edwards reached for the list and ran her finger down the column of names. ‘Here we are. Ralf Wallace, Flat 2B, 12 Hope Crescent, Bracknell. He could be seriously objectionable.’

‘Anyone else?’

Edwards shook her head.

‘You list names and addresses, but nothing else?’

‘Correct. I’ve no idea what their writing was like.’

‘Well, thank you very much. I don’t suppose you’ve had any new thoughts about enemies she might have had?’

‘’Fraid not. I did think the paper in her mouth pointed to someone she had rejected, but your inspector seemed more interested in her private life. Do you think this is connected to Lorraine McNeill’s murder?’

‘Too early to say yet.’ Flick was convinced it was. She returned to the station and pored over the list as she chewed her muesli bars.

* * *

On Mile End Road there was a small, dark pub untouched by designers. In an alcove at the back, Osborne sat beside a thin, gnarled little man whose eyes moved constantly round the bar. He was nearer his patch than he liked, but Osborne had insisted on this place. Two cokes sat on the table in front of them. One was untouched.

‘Just ’cos you’re off the batter, Noelly, it doesn’t mean I can’t drink. My tongue doesn’t work proper without my usual.’

Osborne couldn’t bring himself to buy alcohol. He looked in his wallet and found nothing smaller than a tenner. Reluctantly, he handed it over. His companion got up and returned with a pint and a triple Scotch. If there had been change, Osborne didn’t get it. He watched as his old snout supped the pint.

‘I haven’t all bloody day, Weasel. Have you heard anything about contracts on literary agents or not?’

‘All in good time, Noelly. You haven’t been near me for years, yet today you want me to jump. What’s a literary agent?’

‘Someone who sells books before they’re published.’

‘Oh.’ Weasel put on his thinking face and tasted the whisky. ‘No, I can’t say I have. I can ask around, of course, but that means buying drinks.’

Osborne handed over a twenty.

‘A lot of drinks.’

‘I’ll pay you well when you give me something.’

‘Booze is pricey now, Noelly. You’ll be able to claim it on expenses.’

While payments to a CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Source) were regarded as necessary evils in the modern police world, giving drinking money to a disreputable, double-dealing informant like Weasel needed to be justified by results. Osborne handed over another twenty, hoping his claim would not be closely examined. Years ago, Weasel had been one of his best snouts, one of a number who had brokered deals that, if revealed in court, would have straightened the curls of the judge’s wig. Now he was the only one on his radar, the rest being dead, in jail or out of circulation.

‘That’s it, Weasel. You’d better get me something. I’ll be looking for you at the start of next week.’ Osborne downed the second coke and left.

* * *

‘Wallace? Ralf Wallace? That’s the man Aline-Wendy has just been telling me about. He was wounded in Iraq and is well into disabled rights. He phoned a few times, accusing McNeill of discrimination.’ Danny Peters raised his eyebrows. Back at the station, the detectives were comparing notes.

‘Both these women were killed by someone able-bodied.’ Osborne sounded gloomy. ‘What about her, the receptionist, I mean?’

‘She seems totally genuine, gov. She’s been left twenty-five grand and she’s over the moon. She’s no interest in taking over the agency or anything like that. Apparently a friend of McNeill’s, who’s also an agent, will be approaching her authors, but not all will go with her.’

‘Not worth putting up on the board, then?’ The space below Lorraine McNeill’s photograph was embarrassingly empty.

‘No, gov. Don’t think so.’

‘What about you, Baggo?’ Osborne asked.

‘I have been working a dry well, gov. Sorry.’

Flick said, ‘I tried phoning a couple of people on the list Carol Edwards gave me, but it’s no good. One claimed he’d submitted to so many agents he couldn’t remember if he’d approached McNeill or not. The other refused to answer my questions. There’s three hundred and forty-one on the list. They’re spread all over the country, some from abroad.’

Peters broke the silence that followed. ‘You know, gov, that crap crime writers’ club may be our best bet. We’re struggling.’

Flick kept her mouth shut.

‘I’m afraid we’re running on empty,’ Baggo said.

Osborne took a deep breath. ‘Right, Felicity. Follow it up. Baggo, you help her.’ He got up and left abruptly. It had been a bad day, and the fumes on Weasel’s breath had unsettled him. He had to find something to eat.

5

The next morning, Flick and Baggo drove down the M2 to Sandwich, where Lavinia Lenehan, the organiser of the Debut Dagger Competition, lived. Although it was still January, there was a touch of spring in the air. Tightly-wrapped buds swelled cold, bare twigs, and clumps of pure white snowdrops penetrated the frost-burnt remains of last year’s grass. The outside temperature gauge in the CID pool car didn’t work, but the heater soon became redundant and the low sun caused Flick to put on her dark glasses.