The TV Detective (32 page)

‘Are you alright?' Adam chuckled. ‘You look in pain.'

‘I was trying to prompt you to tell me about Paget.'

‘I'm aware of that. Subtlety isn't your strongest suit.'

‘I don't suppose you've ever heard of the dubious art of delayed gratification?' Dan countered, with heavy irony.

‘I may have done. I might even confess to practicing it occasionally.'

‘So then?'

‘So what?'

Dan sighed. The burgeoning desire to throttle the maddening detective was back. ‘Tell me what you know about Paget, and what that little scene in her office was about?'

Adam leaned back on his chair, took another sip of beer, and finally he did.

Eleanor Paget was not all she seemed, or certainly not quite the person she liked to present herself as. Her commitment to the hospice was not in doubt Adam said, but as so often with people, there was a subtext, an agenda or way of working hidden beneath the fine public face.

Her history had been examined and a series of interesting events revealed. Several years ago, probably as her initial move into the world of business, she had run a successful interior design company. It was a relatively small business, but still employed a dozen people, was well thought of and appeared set for considerable expansion.

Then had come a problem. The company's major customer went bust and the cash flow faltered markedly and dangerously. Paget struggled to keep the business going. She had done well from it in just three or four years, to the extent she had a lovely house on which the mortgage had been paid, and a fine car.

The bank had offered to refinance the company to keep it going, but the price would be Paget's home as security.

She closed the business and made the staff redundant.

‘OK,' Dan said. ‘So she's ruthless. She protected herself. But so what? It was her company. That's a tough stance, but it's a judgement call and entirely defensible. Isn't being tough part of the brief if you're in business?'

‘Listen on,' Adam replied calmly. ‘I'm only just starting to build up the picture for you.'

Paget had taken a couple of other jobs at companies, one as a Marketing Manager, one as a Development Executive. At this stage, her CV had a sense of someone treading water, dabbling in work to keep busy and solvent while she waited for the next opportunity to come along. But then, what plans she had were knocked off course, in a way familiar to anyone who has walked the surface of this earth and breathed the planet's air.

Relationship troubles.

The man she had been living with in that fine house, a Stephen Wicks, had been seeing another woman and decided to leave her. But, although the house was in her name and they didn't have children, he had been working, contributing to the upkeep of the place, supporting her in her career, and thus in the view of the lawyers was entitled to a share of the property. Naturally they weren't going to be living together any more and she didn't have the money to buy him out, so a sale was mooted.

At this point, the story of Eleanor Paget became markedly more interesting.

She got involved with a new man, and one of no fine repute. Jimmy Masters was a local lad, good looking enough, but not averse to stepping onto the wrong side of the law to make a living, and even less concerned about settling a score with his fists.

The view of her friends was that Eleanor was upset, a little unbalanced by the break-up of her relationship, and that this was just a fling, one which would help to restore her self-confidence. She would soon be back on track and move on.

Then came the sting in the tale.

Masters met Wicks in a pub one night, and there was a fight. Wicks came off very much the worse, courtesy of a swinging bar stool to the head. He was put in hospital for several months, before beginning a slow recovery at his brother's house. Masters was charged with grievous bodily harm. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

The only one who emerged from the episode well was Eleanor Paget. With Wicks out of the way she was able to raise the money to buy him out of the house. Anyway, he was hardly in a state to want to make an issue of it. And while Masters was in jail, Paget found herself another man and on her life moved.

‘OK,' Dan said. ‘So things got nasty. They sometimes do in relationships.'

‘Indeed,' Adam replied. ‘So let's continue. Let me tell you a little about Masters' trial.'

The sentence the man had been given was probably on the lenient side, and much of that put down to the eloquent pleadings of his barrister. Jimmy Masters, he said, had been blinded by love. He'd fallen deeply for Eleanor Paget, held out great hopes for a future with her, and it was, in Masters' view, only Mr Wicks who stood in the way. Paget, it was alleged, had told poor Jimmy she could never commit to a future with him so long as she was locked in such a bitter dispute with Mr Wicks.

Dan almost spat out his beer.

‘Bloody hell,' he said. ‘That sounds more than a little familiar.'

Adam nodded hard. ‘Doesn't it just? For Jimmy Masters, read Gordon Clarke. It took us a long time to find that info. It was all down to a very fine up and coming detective called Claire Reynolds, an officer I tend to send on some of the more tricky inquiries as I know I can trust her entirely. Because obviously Paget wasn't mentioned in the charges, only at the trial – where she refused to appear as a witness, by the way – it wasn't on the police computer and so took quite some digging out. That case was where I'd recognised her name from, and gave me the nudge to look into her past a little more.'

Dan swirled his drink and tried to concentrate on the information he'd just heard, rather than the word “Claire”. It wasn't easy. It was echoing through his mind like a harp solo played by a virtuoso angel.

‘OK,' he said, finally. ‘It sounds interesting, to say the least. But being Devil's advocate here, that Jimmy Masters business still doesn't necessarily mean anything. It could all just be an unfortunate coincidence.'

‘Yes, it could,' Adam said, with a raised eyebrow of scepticism. ‘So let me continue with the story.'

Then came the next revelation. St Jude's Hospice was in secret talks with a large healthcare firm about a takeover. It would still be run largely as it always had, but now charges would be introduced. The trustees were seriously considering the proposal, as it would ensure there was unlikely ever again to be a cash crisis which could threaten the hospice's future.

Eleanor Paget was in favour of the takeover. The business case, she had concluded, was compelling. The current guests would not be affected by the change, only new ones. There would be minimal disruption to the hospice, if indeed any, but maximum financial security in being part of a far larger empire.

Adam said he thought that was probably a genuine position, that she really was passionate about protecting St Jude's and believed it to be the best way.

There was though one other little fact which shouted its doubts.

Paget would stay on as Chief Executive, with an enhanced salary package and also lucrative share options. Ironically for such a driven businessman, a free-market thinker to the core, Edward Bray had been vehemently against the move. Adam suspected that was probably because of his emotional attachment to the hospice and his desire to see it continue to run just the way it always had. He had been resolved and resolute in his determination to fight the takeover.

‘Hell,' Dan spluttered. ‘Another reason for her to want him out of the way. This is getting worse. I need some more beer.' He got up to head for the bar, then stopped, turned back.

‘But wasn't the hospice going to be OK anyway? It had Bray to fund it – when he was alive, at least – and when he died, his will provided for it.'

‘The will he'd only recently changed,' Adam said meaningfully.

‘At the request of Eleanor Paget, by any chance? On the off chance, extreme as it might be, that something untoward could happen to him.'

‘We'll never know. But a dreadfully suspicious person like yourself might well think that.'

Dan bought them another couple of pints. The pole dancing had ceased, happily, but a strip tease act had replaced it. Given his physical qualities, the only explanation for the man performing the divestment was that he had been drinking heavily, and quite possibly of large measures of true absinthe.

‘Are you ready for the final detail of Paget's little story?' Adam asked, when Dan returned.

‘Hang on, I might need this first.'

He took a gulp of beer and listened, as Adam continued.

‘Being the suspicious sort I am, I had another look at those reports of when Paget and Clarke met at that business lunch. What I wanted to know wasn't in there, so I sent Claire out to do some more inquiries. How's life with that woman of yours, by the way?'

‘What?' Dan asked, thrown by the conversational tangent. ‘Err, well, I'm seeing her later.'

Adam chuckled into his beer.

‘What?' asked a piqued Dan.

‘Your tone. It was like – later, I'm going to be washing my underpants, then ironing them. If I feel daring enough and the mood takes me, I might even do some hoovering too.'

‘OK, fair enough. I'm not exactly overwhelmed with passion, but I'm trying to give it a chance. So, why the sudden interest in my love life?'

‘Just asking. Just wondering. Just that – I reckon you'd like Claire. I might even have a tiny suspicion you think so yourself.'

Dan felt his face growing oddly warm. ‘Then I'll look forward to being introduced to her another time,' he said determinedly. ‘Now, aside from the matchmaking – Eleanor Paget.'

‘Eleanor Paget indeed. So, her meeting with Gordon Clarke.'

There had been about thirty people at the lunch. It didn't take the fabled Claire and her detective powers long to track down several who had noticed how Clarke and Paget first met. And their view was uniform.

Paget had made the first move. She'd plotted a vector straight for him and made a point of talking to him, with a beaming smile, a willing laugh and a general and very obvious sense of fascination. And understandably enough he had reciprocated.

Now Dan swore again, but this time at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum's blue. Adam produced a fatherly look of disapproval.

‘Would she have known in advance who was going to be at the lunch?' Dan asked.

‘Yes. A list was circulated.'

‘So, she had plenty of time to do some research on the other guests. Just as we might expect of a diligent businesswoman like her? To maximise the networking opportunities.'

‘Yep.'

‘And look up Clarke, and you find the links to – if not exactly love for – one Edward Bray.'

‘Yep.'

‘And an idea sparkles. A re-run of what happened with poor Mr Wicks and Mr Masters. If fortune favours her, if Clarke should fall for her and if the situation is handled and fomented nicely.'

‘Yep.'

‘It all adds up.'

‘Yes,' Adam said emphatically. ‘I would say that it does.'

The two men sipped at their drinks. The office party and its amateur stripper and pole dancer constituents were heading out of the door, arguing about where to go next. It was like a travelling circus. An older man walked in with a woman holding his arm.

Dan nudged Adam, whispered. ‘That's Joseph McCluskey.'

‘Who?'

‘The famous artist. You know, the one who's dying. The one who says he's going to set that riddle in his last paintings. It's all over the media, you must have heard of it. The puzzle of The Death Pictures, the papers are calling it. I might have a go at it myself. I've always liked riddles.'

Adam stared at the man, without showing much in the way of interest. But Dan had been awaiting his opportunity and added, ‘Talking of riddles, I think I may have an idea what the answer to Bonham's is.'

Now he did have Adam's attention. ‘What? Really?!'

‘Yes, really.'

‘What – who his other victims were and where their bodies are hidden? He's never said anything about them. In prison he's always refused to answer any questions about who else he killed.'

‘I'm not surprised.'

‘Come on then, don't mess about, tell me. Is it because he murdered loads more people?'

‘Not quite. Not exactly.'

Dan rummaged in his satchel and found the piece of paper he'd printed out earlier. It was a copy of the periodic table. He wrote the characters from Bonham's riddle beside it.

992 619U

‘Right,' Adam said, with impatience which would impress a five-year-old. ‘So?'

‘I don't think I should just tell you what it says. You might take offence. It's better if you work it out yourself. Match the atomic numbers with their elements. It helps if you look at the puzzle in a slightly different way.'

Dan wrote:

9 92 6 19 YOU

The detective groaned and shook his head, but started working through the numbers. One by one, he wrote the corresponding letters in the margin by the side of the table. It took less than thirty seconds to decode a riddle which had stood for more than fifteen years.

When Adam had spelled out the word he sat back, swore and stared.

‘The bastard,' the detective added at last. ‘So it was all a bloody taunt. There were no other victims.'

‘I think you're right. That riddle was just his little game to have some small way of getting back at the police and the justice system.'The two men sat in silence for a good couple of minutes. A barmaid dropped a glass and it smashed on the floor, but they hardly noticed.

Eventually, Dan prompted, ‘What do you do about Paget then?'

‘What?'

‘Come on, leave Bonham behind. He's the past. This is more important – Paget.'

Adam blew out a lungful of air. ‘What can I do? I reckon I pushed it about as far as I could with what I said in her office earlier. It's doubtful whether she's even committed a crime. All she's done is manipulate. As far as I can tell she hadn't directly told, or even asked Clarke or Masters to go and carry out an attack. I'm guessing, from her reaction she had no idea Clarke would kill Bray. I suspect she was hoping he'd just have a fight with the man, or renew their vendetta, or something like it, something to distract Bray from the hospice for a while so she could get on with sorting out the takeover. Given where the negotiations had got to it wouldn't take that long. By the time he was back on her case the deal would be done.'