The Murder House (20 page)

Could James be the body in Orchard Street? She couldn't get rid of the niggling fear at the back of her mind. She was shaking when she arrived at New Bridewell and demanded to see Oakley, who had at least listened to her and been polite. She paced impatiently in front of the reception desk until he arrived. In his hand was a book about nanotechnology for DI Davis.

‘Giles Farnaby,' she declared without preamble. ‘Ask
him
what happened to James.'

Oakley regarded her warily. ‘Why?'

‘Because he's jealous of James. If James leaves Urvine and Brotherton, then Giles Farnaby' – she spat out his name – ‘will be promoted.'

Oakley was aware that other people in the reception area were staring at them – a young mother in a tight black skirt that showed rather too much fat white thigh; an Asian bus driver, the knees of his uniform shiny with age; and a businessman with an umbrella. He took Maureen to one of the interview rooms and invited her to sit down.

‘Do you have new information about James?' he asked, politely but firmly, so that she would know he didn't have time for speculation and unfounded accusation.

‘No,' she admitted. ‘But one of his colleagues has done something to him. They're jealous, you see.'

‘Done what, exactly?' He saw her hands shaking, and was sorry for her distress.

‘Foul play,' she whispered, a quiver in her voice. ‘I want you to ask Farnaby what he's done to James. He lives in Bath. Here's his address. I got it from the telephone directory and I gave the number a call, so I know he's in.'

‘You
phoned
him?' asked Oakley in astonishment. ‘What did you say?'

‘Nothing. I hung up when he replied.' Her voice hardened. ‘I shall be at home this afternoon, so you can contact me there when you have answers.'

Davis ploughed through twenty pages of the scientific textbook Oakley had given her before admitting that she didn't understand a word. There were too many terms she didn't recognize, and too many assumptions were made about the reader's level of understanding. Oakley had offered to follow the nanotechnology lead, given his layman's interest in physics, but Taylor had assigned it to her instead. With a sigh of frustration, she tossed the book on the table. She glanced up and saw Oakley leaving.

‘Where are you off to?' she asked.

‘Bath,' replied Oakley, taking his jacket from the row of pegs in the hall.

She blinked. ‘You're going to visit this Farnaby on the say-so of Paxton's lunatic mother? Come on, Neel! We've got a murder investigation here! We don't have time for her crap.'

‘Actually, I'm going to speak to Professor Jinic in the Balkan Studies Department at Bath University.'

Davis grabbed her bag. ‘Can I come? Anything's better than this boring book.'

Oakley disagreed, thinking a couple of hours reading would be infinitely preferable to the congested roads to Bath. They inched along the A4, sticky and uncomfortable as enforced stops and an unrelenting sun heated the car to furnace levels. Yet again, Oakley wished he'd had the air conditioning fixed, and wondered if he'd have time to stop at the garage that week. Of course, the moment he did, the heat wave would end.

They reached Jinic's office at three o'clock and gratefully accepted a secretary's offer of a cool drink, after which they were shown into a book-lined room. The professor was elderly, with vast curling eyebrows and comfortably shabby clothes.

‘You want to know about Albania,' he said, sitting in a large leather armchair and lacing his fingers over a sizeable paunch. There was barely a trace of accent left in his voice, although a clipping of vowels suggested he wasn't a native English speaker. ‘Do you have a couple of days to sit here while I answer?'

Oakley smiled. ‘Perhaps we could just ask you some questions?'

‘Would they concern Marko Kovac? I read his name in the papers.'

‘Do you know him?'

‘Not well, but no one does – in England, at least. He dislikes being away from his family, and makes his trips shorter than he should, given the amount of work he hopes to do. He spends all his time here working, and socializes little.'

‘He's unfriendly,' surmised Davis.

‘Not at all. He's very friendly and very polite. He just works extremely hard. I suspect his reluctance to leave his family has more to do with Albania's inherent instability than with him not being able to cope without them. He's a responsible father.'

‘You like him?' asked Oakley.

‘Yes – as well as I like anyone with whom I have a passing acquaintance. He visited me last year – just before Christmas – to tell me news from the ground, as it were: what people think, what life is like away from government-controlled newspapers and television crews.'

‘And what is it like?'

‘Grim, but no more so than before. Nothing works very well. Roads, buildings and transport systems are crumbling and inefficient.'

‘Yates the technician told me that Kovac had been in Macedonia when there was fighting,' said Davis. ‘Do you think that affected him at all?'

‘Of course,' replied Jinic. ‘It would affect you, too. War is a terrible thing, and anyone involved will remember it forever. But if you want to know whether it affected Marko to the point where he might harm someone, then I'm afraid that's a question I can't answer.'

‘Do you know anything about his work?' asked Davis.

‘Only that it has great potential, and that several multinational companies are interested. Industrial espionage is a reality in the world, so it is possible he was killed for his discoveries.'

‘So,' concluded Davis, ‘Kovac's experiences in the Balkans might have led him to harm someone here, and his work is commercially significant enough for someone to kill him?'

‘That's about it,' said Jinic with a beatific smile. ‘Have I helped you at all?'

‘If we leave now we're going to be stuck in traffic for an hour,' said Oakley as they walked back to the car. ‘But Giles Farnaby lives around the corner. We can wait it out while we talk to him, and who knows, perhaps he'll offer us tea.'

Davis sighed. ‘All right, if you insist. Just don't tell Taylor.'

‘Jinic didn't help much,' said Oakley, opening the car door and flinching backwards as the heat escaped. ‘We already knew Kovac might be mentally unstable and that his work has commercial implications.'

‘Which do you think is more likely? Kovac as the killer, or Kovac as the victim?'

Oakley shook his head slowly as he drove off the campus, all windows wide open. ‘I'm not sure I'm happy with either yet.'

‘Come on, Neel! We have a man who's been through a war, working on a lucrative branch of science. The moment he's due to leave the country, a body appears in his house. It can't be coincidence. Kovac
is
either the killer or the corpse.'

‘I'll wait until we have more facts before I start guessing,' said Oakley stubbornly.

‘I think Kovac is the killer,' said Davis, ignoring his cautionary words. ‘I don't think people are murdered for industrial secrets any more. If Kovac's work was that good, some rich company would have hired him.'

‘If he's the killer, then who's the victim?' asked Oakley, turning into a pleasantly leafy suburban road that was full of detached houses built from honey-yellow Bath stone.

Davis grinned. ‘Even my guessing skills don't extend that far. A colleague, perhaps.'

‘None reported missing.'

‘That's because most are on holiday. Or perhaps he just snagged someone from the street. If he's gone insane, we can't expect a rational choice of victim.'

‘But the victim wore a decent suit and leather shoes. We're not talking about a tramp.'

‘Kovac liked shopping. Perhaps dressing his victims in good clothes is part of his ritual. Did you find out whether there are any unsolved murders in Albania?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Oakley, pulling on to the driveway of a large house with ivy growing up one wall. The lawn was immaculately mowed, with stripes as precise as any stately home. ‘Dozens. It's an uneasy country.'

Davis climbed out of the car and looked around appreciatively. ‘Farnaby's doing well for himself. I'm surprised he needs to be made a partner if he lives here.'

‘This is his mother's place. There's one behind every successful lawyer, apparently. At least at Urvine and Brotherton.'

The man who answered the door was stocky, with a head shaven to hide the fact that its owner was prematurely bald. He wore loose jogging pants and a polo-shirt with a logo on it that indicated it was probably expensive. He looked familiar, but Oakley couldn't place him. He would have asked, but Farnaby's expression was unfriendly.

‘I've already spoken to the police,' he said when both officers showed him their warrant cards. ‘So piss off and catch some criminals.'

‘We're always on the lookout for criminals, Mr Farnaby,' said Oakley smoothly. ‘And we find them in the most unexpected of places.'

‘Look,' said Farnaby irritably, ‘I don't know where James has gone, and I don't care.'

‘If you don't care, then why have you taken the trouble to spread rumours about him heading off to some gay paradise?' asked Oakley.

‘Because I saw him going into a gay bar,' snapped Farnaby. ‘All right? It was in Clifton – one of those discreet places.' He smiled nastily. ‘Old Brotherton is pretty peeved about James vanishing, I can tell you! That'll teach him to favour the little shit. A high-flyer Paxton might be, but there's a darker side to him.'

‘And on the basis of seeing him at this bar you concluded that he's taken an overseas holiday with a homosexual lover?' asked Oakley.

Farnaby shrugged. ‘I've been trained to make reasonable deductions. James was seen in a gay bar, then he goes missing. There's only one conclusion that can be drawn – he's come out.'

‘Not necessarily,' said Oakley, disliking the arrogant man who kept them standing in the sun. ‘He might have been meeting a client.'

‘Well, he wasn't,' said Farnaby sulkily.

‘How do you know? Did you follow him inside?'

Farnaby glared at him, caught out. ‘Yes, because I thought someone should keep an eye on the bastard for the good of the firm. It was a fellow in his late twenties or early thirties. Dark hair. Suit. Sunglasses. A briefcase. Probably a businessman.'

‘Why not a client?'

‘Because I can tell the difference between scum like Yorke and Noble and decent human beings.'

‘That's a curious attitude to take regarding your firm's clients.'

Farnaby's expression hardened. ‘Urvine and Brotherton was respectable until James came along and started to represent lowlifes. Yorke and Noble are
his
clients, not mine. And I bet old Brotherton wishes they weren't on our books too – especially Yorke.'

‘Then why did he represent Yorke at the remand hearing?' asked Oakley.

‘Because James had already accepted his business. But it's clients like him who damage our image. They may be lucrative, but money isn't everything.'

‘So you disapprove of Paxton bringing in new and wealthy clients?'

‘Yes. I'm thinking of going to a firm where ethics mean something.'

‘Have you seen Paxton since Tuesday, July the thirty-first?' asked Oakley.

‘No,' said Farnaby tightly. ‘I saw him that lunchtime, bragging about how he was going to win the Yorke trial. And I saw him in the gay bar after work. I suppose he must have realized he'd bitten off more than he could chew, and buggered off before he made a fool of himself.'

‘I thought you said he'd gone off with his homosexual lover,' pounced Davis, the expression on her face making her dislike of the man obvious.

Farnaby made a moue of annoyance. ‘I don't know
why
he's gone. All I can say is that the firm is a lot nicer without him, and he can stay away as long as he bloody well likes.'

‘And that's all?' asked Mrs Paxton, when Oakley called her to say he'd spoken to Farnaby.

‘I don't think he knows anything about James' disappearance.'

She hung up, but the news did nothing to ease the uneasy, sinking sensation in her stomach. When days passed, and there was still no word nor any sign of James, her apprehension increased further still.

I
was on duty at the hospital that afternoon, watching Emma Vinson, the old woman who'd been beaten during one of the Westbury Burglaries. She was taking an age to die, and while Oakley was still hopeful that she might remember something useful, I thought he was mad. Still, I didn't mind when he asked me to sit with her, in case she woke again.

He walked with me to the hospital, which was easier than driving in Bristol's traffic, because she'd asked for him the last time she was alert. While we went he told me about the Orchard Street case, and his growing suspicion that the body wasn't Kovac. Naturally, I did my best to argue, given that I didn't want him to start looking elsewhere for a victim, but he remained stubbornly adamant.

‘Of course it's Kovac,' I said – almost snapped, in fact. ‘Who else could it be?'

‘You sound like Clare Davis,' he said, smiling. ‘But there's something about this whole case … suffice to say that I'm keeping an open mind.'

Bloody man, I thought, gritting my teeth. I was about to argue more, but we'd arrived at the ward. He went in and stood for a long time staring at the woman in the bed, but she didn't stir, and eventually he went away. Despite his annoying refusal to accept the Kovac theory, I couldn't help liking him, and I admired him more after seeing him with the old lady. He was a
good
man, and I wished he'd been my shift sergeant, not Wright. Then I'd have been happy in my work and James would almost certainly still be alive.