Roland Fearnside is a commander with the National Criminal Intelligence Service. We’ve worked together on a few cases, and I was probably instrumental in giving him a leg-up from being a mere chief superintendent. I normally try to avoid him, because he usually has a dirty job in mind for me, but this time I rang him.
‘I’m afraid Mr Fearnside is busy,’ a plummy voice told me. ‘Please leave me your number and I’ll ask him to contact you.’
‘Convenience busy or really busy?’ I asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Tell him you have Charlie Priest on the line and I’d like an urgent word with him. Please.’ No point in admitting to being a lowly inspector.
Twenty seconds later he was booming in my ear. ‘Charlie! How are you?’
‘Fine, Mr Fearnside. And you?’
‘Oh, so-so. And Annabelle?’
‘She’s fine, too.’
‘Still got the E-type?’
‘Sure have.’
‘Bloody hell! You’re a lucky bugger, Charlie. To tell the truth, I’d thought about giving you a bell.’
This was what I’d dreaded. ‘Oh, that usually means bad news,’ I declared.
‘No, not at all. I need a joke for an after-dinner speech I’m giving tonight. Thought you might be able to help.’
Typical. I cultivate a contact in N-CIS and he regards me as the force comedian. He probably believed I did the northern club circuit in my spare time. ‘Who’s it to?’ I asked.
‘Accountants. City types. Bunch of bloody deadbeats. Keeping them sweet is all part of the job, I’m afraid. All you have to bother about is collaring villains.’
‘Mmm. Rather you than me. I’ll have to think about it.’
‘If you would, old boy. Now what can I do for you?’
I told him about Goodrich, and the SCTs against his name, and that we now suspected he may have been laundering drugs money by investing it in diamonds. ‘Yesterday,’ I said, ‘I interviewed his girlfriend and she told me that Goodrich was in cahoots with a character called K. Tom Davis, who was MD of the investment diamond company. She said that Goodrich told her, in a moment of alcohol-induced weakness or high passion, that Davis was involved in the Hartog-Praat bullion robbery.’
I heard Fearnside say, ‘Jeeesus!’ under his breath.
‘So,’ I went on, ‘what can you tell me about the bullion robbery?’
‘Right. Well, it was World War Two gold, recovered from a sunken destroyer — British — by treasure hunters, somewhere in the Baltic, I believe. Hartog-Praat is a Dutch security company, and it was their job to transport the bullion to the assay office in Sheffield. They went for the hush-hush approach, rather than maximum security, but somebody spilt the beans. It was a nasty job. If I remember rightly they doused a guard in petrol and threatened to ignite him. One guard died, but much later.’
‘Was anybody caught?’
‘Ye-es. Can’t remember his name. He was a known bank robber, who handled the actual hijack. Definitely not the brains. He went down for a long time and a couple of minions were given a year or two for allowing their premises to be used, something like that. I’ll have to dig the file out, put you on to the investigating officer.’
‘Was any of the gold recovered?’
‘No, not a bloody sniff of it. Tell you what, Charlie: gold would be a damn sight more attractive to these drugs dealers than diamonds. Gold can’t tell lies.’
‘Mmm. One of my DSs said exactly the same thing. I’ll be grateful if you could send me anything relevant, soon as pos.’
‘I’ll put someone straight on to it, Charlie. Good luck, and it’s been nice talking to you.’
‘Likewise. Just one last thing, before you go.’
‘Yes?’
‘What’s pink and hard, first thing in the morning?’
‘Ha ha! Go on.’
‘The Financial Times crossword.’
‘Hee hee! That’ll do, Charlie. That’ll do.’
Another unwanted reputation reinforced. I replaced the phone and drew a doodle on my pad. It showed a ship, long and lean, with a gun on the front. I added some fish and bubbles, to indicate that it was on the sea-bed. Bits of the story came back to me. There was a big controversy after the wreck was discovered. It was an official war grave, sacred to the memory of the men whose bodies were still down there. But even sanctity has a price, these days, and when the value of the destroyer’s cargo was estimated there were an awful lot of noughts after the pound sign. Had it been Communist gold, coming here to pay for the convoys? Or allied gold, to support the carnage on the Russian front? I didn’t know, but either way, it was blood money, and no good could come of it.
I drew a line down the middle of the page. At the top of one column I wrote ‘Drugs Dealers’, at the head of the other, ‘Gold’. The drugs dealers were awash with cash. Cash that they needed converting into something more solid, more negotiable across the world. Such as gold.
The bullion men were just the opposite. They needed their collateral converting into something more acceptable in straight society. Cash, for instance.
They needed each other like Yorkshire pudding needs onion gravy. I drew a circle round ‘Drugs Dealers’ and wrote ‘The Jones Boys?’ against it.
But what about the diamonds? The first payments were invested — wrong word — in diamonds. But the diamonds went bust and the payments kept on coming in. So what did the dealers get for that money after that? Gold? When we were role-playing, Jeff Caton said he preferred gold. I pinned the sheet on the wall above my desk, next to the photograph of Shirley Eaton.
Gilbert was clearing his desk, prior to his holiday. ‘Put the kettle on as you pass,’ he greeted me as I walked in.
I tested its weight and clicked the switch. He was rummaging in a filing cabinet so I flopped down into his chair and swung my feet on to the desk. ‘I think I could get used to this,’ I told him.
‘Then go for it,’ he said, lifting a whisky bottle from a drawer.
‘No, the boredom would get me down.’
Gilbert stood the bottle on the cabinet and crouched, squinting at the level, and carefully drew a line on the label.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ I told him. ‘We just widdle in the bottle to bring it back up to the mark.’
‘That I can believe,’ he said, nodding enthusiastically.
We discussed priorities and a couple of low-level meetings he wanted me to attend. I didn’t mention the raid on Michael Angelo’s planned for Wednesday. I would have liked to have grilled him about Dominic Watts, the father, but resisted, in case he asked why I wanted to know.
Nigel was in with several of the other troops when I arrived back in the CID office. We spent an hour discussing ram raids and burglaries, and generally slagging-off some of the problem families that give us most heartache. Sometimes, a programme of selective assassination sounds highly attractive, until you realise where it would lead. Plenty of my colleagues would be prepared to risk it, I’m ashamed to admit. Then we all went home.
Tomorrow was the big day. Once a year, towards the end of his term of office, we have a Lord Mayor’s parade, to raise money for his nominated charity. This time it was for the children’s ward of Heckley General Hospital. A cavalcade of vehicles would start at the Town Hall at noon and slowly wend its way round the town to the sports field, where there would be various other events taking place. The classic car section of the Police Sports and Social Club would take part in the parade, and I was invited. It was their only event of the year. When I got home, I reversed the E-type out of the garage and gave it a wash and leathering. Then I sat on the wall and just gazed at it until the street lamps came on.
Last year, Annabelle came with me, and we had a good day. This time I’d be on my own, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I picked up the phone and dialled Sparky’s number. His wife answered.
‘Hiya, Shirl. It’s Charlie,’ I said.
‘He’s out,’ she responded. ‘No, he’s drunk. That’s it: he’s had three pints of home-made lager and is in no fit state to drive, or anything else.’
‘Relax, it’s you I want to talk to.’
‘Oh. In that case, hello, Charlie, how are you?’
‘It’s nice of you to ask, eventually. Look, it’s the Lord Mayor’s parade tomorrow, and I’ve promised to take the Jaguar along. If the kids aren’t doing anything I was wondering if they’d like to come, too?’
‘Oh, that’s nice of you. But won’t Annabelle be going?’
‘Er, no, she’s got something else on.’
‘Right. Hang on, I’ll see if they can be torn away from the television.’
They weren’t doing anything, and they would love to come to the parade with their Uncle Charlie.
Hunger drove me out of bed early Saturday morning. I settled for toast and marmalade for breakfast but decided to treat myself that evening. I trimmed the fat from a couple of pork chops and seared them in the frying pan. I arranged them side-by-side in the slow cooker and covered them with a selection of vegetables and a can of condensed soup. They’d be done to perfection by tea time.
Nigel was in the office when I swung the long nose of the Jag into the super’s place in the car park. We discussed the Dean brothers’ case that was coming to court, and, after great deliberation and much soul-searching, I wrote ‘No further action’ on several documents Gilbert had left for me. The feeling of power made me feel light-headed. At eleven thirty I tore myself away and drove round to Sparky’s.
Daniel hadn’t changed much since I last saw him, just grown a little bigger and cheekier. He was the type of exasperating fourteen-year-old that you curse one moment and then say a little prayer of thanks for. ‘Hi, Uncle Charlie,’ he greeted me as they came down the garden path.
But Sophie had changed. No wonder Sparky’s grumpier than ever, I thought. In less than a year she’d grown up. She was my god-daughter, and just past her seventeenth birthday. I reluctantly accepted that this was possibly the last time she’d want to be seen out with an old fogey like me. I held the door open and Daniel scrambled into the back. ‘Thank you,’ Sophie said, swinging her legs into the low car as if she’d been doing it for years. I waved to Shirley and slipped into the driving seat.
The parade was fun. Sophie practised her regal wave and Daniel pretended to be manager of Manchester United, back from another triumphant visit to Wembley. At first we were behind a steamroller, but we out-gunned him on the High Street without too much trouble. It was driven by the local scrap dealer, whose skin is the colour of an oily rag and who drives the biggest Mercedes in West Yorkshire.
The rest of the afternoon was a drag. While the kids enjoyed the fun fair and the police dog demonstration, I stayed with the car, and told several hundred people that it did a hundred and fifty miles per hour and nineteen to the gallon. They brought ice-creams back with them and Sophie presented me with a fridge magnet she’d won. It was a little plastic Sherlock Holmes, complete with magnifying glass. Then I left them in charge while I took a stroll round.
They were deep in conversation with an older boy and girl when I arrived back. ‘We’ve had our pictures taken for the paper,’ Daniel boasted when he saw me.
‘Ask him, he won’t bite,’ Sophie said to the young couple, adding, ‘he’s quite nice, really.’
‘Ask him what?’ I said, giving them a smile.
She was quite bonny, and he looked presentable, with the obligatory earring. ‘It’s a fabulous car,’ the boy said, his expression supporting his words.
‘Thank you. Do you want to buy it?’
‘Uh, chance’d be a fine thing,’ he replied.
‘We were wondering if you did weddings,’ the girl said.
‘Weddings? No. My name is Priest, but I can’t marry people.’
‘No! We meant with the car. Like, a taxi service?’
‘Oh, I see. Well no, not really.’
They looked disappointed. ‘Never mind then,’ the girl replied. ‘I hope you didn’t mind us asking. We wanted a white Rolls-Royce, but we’ve been let down. We just thought you might…you know.’
I tried, but I couldn’t think of a decent reason for not doing it. ‘When do you get married?’ I asked.
‘Next Saturday.’
‘Leaving it a bit late aren’t you? Er, for the taxi, I mean.’
They both blushed, which made three of us.
‘My Uncle George has a Granada,’ she said. ‘We’ll use that if we can’t find anything else.’
‘Which church?’
‘St Bidulph’s.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you know it?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Annabelle lives in the old vicarage. ‘So where’s the reception?’
She was smiling now. ‘At the Masonic Hall,’ she said.
‘In the town centre?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Right. Give me a number where I can contact you, and I’ll give you a ring through the week. But I’m not making any promises.’
I took the kids for a drive on the M62 to the Birch services, where we had hamburgers and chips. Daniel said, ‘Doctor, Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains.’
‘No wonder you look drawn,’ I replied.
‘No! You should say, “Pull yourself together.”’
Sophie said, ‘I think Uncle Charlie’s answer was best,’ to which Daniel retorted, ‘Well you would, wouldn’t you,’ and poor Sophie blushed like only a seventeen-year-old can. Anybody watching would have thought we were a family.
I was in trouble for feeding them when we arrived back. Shirley, their mother, teaches cookery and had prepared beef stroganoff for us, with jam roly-poly to follow. I wasn’t hungry, but still managed large helpings of each. The pork chops made a pleasant change for Sunday breakfast, before I went to the office for a couple of hours. Paperwork, like rust, never sleeps.
The Dean brothers were due in court Monday morning. They are considerably brighter than the average tea leaf who passes through our hands. Computers and videos are standard fare for most of them, exchanging hands at about fifteen per cent of their market value. But a young crook can only carry one of each out through the window and up the garden path to his waiting Fiesta, and he looks suspicious with it. The Dean brothers know that it’s the chip, deep within the computer, that gives it its value. And you can carry hundreds of them in your pockets and still have room for a UB40 and a packet of three. They hit the new British Gas offices six months ago at two in the morning. The security videos showed them moving quickly from computer to computer, spinning the screws out with rechargeable drivers and removing the chips and hard-disk drives which represented well over half the value of the machines.
What the Deans didn’t know was that, as they entered the building through a fanlight at the back, they were sprayed with an invisible dye called FOIL — fluorescent organic indexing liquid — that was impossible to remove and would show bright orange under ultra-violet light.
Another thing that they didn’t know was that their getaway driver, a neighbour with a reputation for his skills behind the wheel, had all the imagination of a stuffed warthog. He’d stolen a car and fitted it with false plates. For hours he’d wracked the sawdust inside his skull, trying to think of a suitable registration number. Something catchy, without being memorable. Sort of a Eurovision Numberplate Contest entry. Eventually, in desperation, he copied the number off an old motorbike he’d owned years ago. The video cameras captured his image and later that morning our Nigel captured his substance. The Deans lived next door and glowed like a pair of Jaffas under a u/v light. Because of its organic content the FOIL spray has a DNA fingerprint unique to each installation, and would prove that they had been in British Gas’s offices. The technical term we guardians of the law use in a case like this is ‘bang to rights’.
I did the morning meeting in record time and went over the case with Nigel before he went to court. They were our first FOIL arrests, and the system was on trial as much as the Deans. An expert from the company that makes the sprays was due to attend, to say how foolproof it was.
When Nigel had gone I made a coffee and studied the outstanding crimes printout. Prioritising them is our biggest heartache. Do we concentrate on Mrs Bloggs’ stolen jewellery — sentimental value only, not insured and no chance of recovery — or on the ram raid at Microwaves-R-Us in the High Street? You make your decision and offer a silent apology to Mrs Bloggs.
After that I made a few calls to organise Wednesday’s rhubarb run, when we would hit Michael Angelo Watts’ fortress on the Sylvan Fields estate. Most of all we needed technical assistance from our scientific people at Wetherton. Professor Van Rees is head of the Home Office forensic laboratory that we use, and agreed to loan me a couple of technicians and some equipment. I was arranging some uniformed muscle from the Woodentops when Maggie caught my eye. She was on her phone, and I heard her saying, ‘Put them in an interview room. I’ll tell him.’
‘Tell him what?’ I asked when I’d finished.
‘Tell him that Mrs Joan Eastwood just walked in, accompanied by a brief and asking to speak to you. That’s all.’
I rocked my chair back on two legs and sipped my coffee. ‘Now what on earth can she want?’ I wondered aloud.
‘Perhaps her husband’s finished that boat,’ Maggie suggested.
‘The Temeraire? She wouldn’t know, not living with him. I went to see her on Friday, leant on her a little.’
‘I know. I’ve read your notes. You think she did it, don’t you?’
‘It’s possible. Let’s give them five minutes, then see what it’s all about.’
The brief was female, mid-thirties, in a suit that made her look like a Dallas undertaker and an expression to match. Appropriately sombre, but with one eye on the cash register. She introduced herself as Mrs Bannister, of the local big-wig law firm, and said that her client wished to make a prepared statement. I took the typed sheet she offered and inspected the aforementioned client.
‘Hello, Mrs Eastwood,’ I said, directly to her. She was wearing ski pants and an anorak with embroidery down the sleeves, and alongside her was what looked like an overnight bag. She’d come to stay. Her face was the same shade of pale as the walls and she was trembling. She just nodded a greeting.
A brief glance at the statement told me that Mrs Eastwood admitted hitting Goodrich on the head. The only intention had been to express her anger at him, not to inflict any injury, and there were mitigating circumstances. As she was no danger to the public, bail would be applied for when she appeared before a magistrate in the morning.
I passed the paper to Maggie and leant on my fist, rubbing a forefinger against my cheek.
Mrs Eastwood shuffled in her plastic chair.
‘Would either of you like a coffee?’ I asked.
Neither of them would.
After a long silence I said, ‘In that case, with your permission, Mrs Bannister, I’d like to do a recorded interview with Mrs Eastwood.’ I don’t go in for all this ‘my client’ bullshit. Without waiting for a reply I spun my chair round to face the tape recorder and checked it for tapes.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ I pressed the red button and the one with a single arrow on it and peeked through the little window to confirm that the wheels were turning. I read the date off the calendar on the wall and the time off my Timex — waterresistant to forty metres but I’ve no intention of proving it — and introduced everybody.
We started with an ice-breaker: ‘Mrs Eastwood, would you mind telling us your address and date of birth?’
She stumbled through it, hesitating and mixing her words up. Her hands moved from the table to her lap, and back to the table again. Her fingers were long and bony, with no rings on them. She’d left her earrings at home, too.
‘You were formerly married to Derek Eastwood, and shared the marital home at Sweetwater.’
She nodded.
‘For the tape, please, Mrs Eastwood, if you will.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mind if I call you Joan?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you. Will you tell me, Joan, why you are here, today.’
‘It’s in the statement, Inspector,’ Mrs Bannister interrupted.
‘I’d like to hear it in Joan’s words, if you don’t mind.’
‘But I do mind. The statement makes it perfectly clear why my client is here.’
‘Fair enough. According to the statement, Joan, you have admitted hitting Hartley Goodrich on the head with a plant pot.’
She nodded.
‘Mrs Eastwood nods,’ I said.
‘Sorry. Yes. I hit him.’
‘That’s all right. Would you please tell us, Joan, what led up to this?’
She gathered her thoughts for a few seconds, then launched into it. ‘I was…annoyed…mad with him. It was just like you said. I let myself in…picked up the milk bottle from the doorstep. He was watching television. We were supposed to be…supposed to be…’
‘Supposed to be what?’
‘Supposed to be going away together.’
‘I see.’
‘He should have picked me up, Sunday evening, when I finished work. I thought something must be wrong — he hadn’t been too well. When I saw him, dozing in the chair, glass of whisky…I just snapped. I…I…’
‘You picked up the nearest thing that came to hand and hit him with it.’
Our eyes met for the first time. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘It was a heavy plant pot,’ I told her. ‘Surely you realise that hitting a person on the head with something like that was likely to cause a very serious injury.’
‘I didn’t mean to hit him with it.’
‘Come on, Joan. It was on the table. You picked it up and brought it down on his head. How high did you raise it? This high?’ I held my hands level with my face, palms inwards.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she protested.
‘Then tell me what it was like.’
She was ringing a handkerchief between her fingers, twisting it around them. ‘I…I just picked it up. It was there on the table, where he’d left it.’
It had been the only piece of greenery in the house. All else was dark colours, mainly shades of grey, and the only other non-geometric shapes in the place were the curves of the nymphs and bodybuilders that adorned his walls and low tables.
‘What do you mean by “Where he’d left it,” Joan?’ I asked. ‘Did you buy him the plant?’
She sniffed and nodded.
‘Go on, please.’
She realised that she’d strangled the hanky lifeless and put it away. ‘His house needed brightening up,’ she began. ‘I gave him the Dieffenbachia about a fortnight earlier, as a little present. Thought it might encourage him to buy a few more. When I saw it on the table, right where I’d left it, I realised he cared for that about as much as he cared for me.’
‘So you saw his neglect of the plant as reflecting his attitude to you. The plant was a symbol.’
Mrs Bannister shuffled in her chair, but didn’t speak. I was earning her fee for her.
‘Yes,’ Joan confirmed.
‘Go on, please.’
‘I picked it up. I only intended emptying it on his head. I turned it over and the plant pot fell out of the bowl. I hadn’t realised it was in a separate pot. It landed on his head and he fell sideways. I dropped the bowl — the planter — and waited for him to sit up, but he didn’t. I looked at him, and realised he was dead. I’d killed him. I was quite calm. There was no pulse. I was on my way out when I thought about fingerprints. I took the tea-towel and wiped everything I’d touched, just like you said.’
Mrs Bannister sat back in her plastic chair, a why-am-I-always-the-last-to-know expression on her face.
‘Were you and Hartley having an affair?’ I asked Joan.
She nodded, but I let it go. ‘For how long?’
‘About three years, I think.’
‘Since before you went on the cruise?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Joan, what happened when you left York and Durham? Did you lose your job?’
She jerked upright, staring at me. Mrs Bannister chipped in with ‘Is this relevant, Inspector?’ because she realised she’d completely lost control.
‘I think it might be in your client’s interest to answer the question, Mrs Bannister. Were you sacked, Joan?’
She heaved a huge sigh, as if sloughing off all her worries. ‘Yes, I was.’
‘Could you tell us why?’
‘I suppose it has to come out. I was caught copying the files of some of our wealthier clients. Hartley — Mr Goodrich — asked me to do it.’
‘And then he would approach them with a view to offering alternative investments. More lucrative ones.’
‘Yes, something like that. I couldn’t see any harm in it, but it was dishonest.’
Not really, I thought. The bank would have sold them to him without a second’s hesitation, if there’d been anything in it for them. Disloyal, maybe. ‘And they sacked you,’ I said.
She nodded and gave the tiniest hint of a smile at the memory. ‘Escorted me from the premises. It was very embarrassing for Derek.’ Notoriety can be fun, she’d discovered. I’ve known it for years.
‘Go on.’
‘That’s when my marriage collapsed. I left Derek and found a flat. Soon after, I took a job at the hospital and moved to Leeds.’
‘But you stayed friends with Goodrich?’
‘Yes. He was very supportive.’
I should think so. He’d only destroyed her career and her marriage. I said, ‘And when you received your share of the marital home, he invested it for you.’
‘Yes.’
‘In an investment diamond?’
‘Yes.’
‘So he lost you your money, too, or most of it.’
‘Yes. Hartley said he was trying to recover it for me, but I’m not sure.’
‘Mmm. You might be interested to learn that when we found Goodrich he was clutching a three-carat diamond. I’ve a suspicion that it was yours.’ I turned to Maggie and suggested we check it. ‘Unfortunately,’ I continued, ‘it will only be worth a fraction of what you paid for it.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Mrs Bannister looked at her watch. ‘Could we speed things up, Inspector? I’ve another appointment at twelve.’
She brings in a client to confess to a killing and worries about missing lunch. ‘Joan, you said you and Goodrich were going away. For a holiday or for ever?’
‘No, just a few days together. We…I… We’d considered moving in with each other. Well, I had. He went along with the idea at first, then changed his mind. Said he’d been on his own too long — it wouldn’t work. We decided to go away as a sort of trial, I suppose.’
‘So, come Sunday evening, you finished work and were waiting for him with your bags packed, but he didn’t show up.’
‘No. I mean, yes, that’s right.’
‘And first thing Monday morning you went round to see him. He was calmly watching telly, and something inside you snapped.’
Mrs Bannister stirred in her seat, wanting to object to my putting words in her client’s mouth, but couldn’t see anything wrong with what I was suggesting.
‘Yes,’ Joan agreed.
Mrs Bannister said, ‘We intended offering a plea of guilty to causing GBH, Section Twenty, but in the light of what we’ve just heard I’d suggest a Section Forty-seven assault might be more appropriate. May I have a copy of the tape and hand my client over to your custody, Inspector?’
I had some thinking to do. Section Forty-seven is actual bodily harm, but you can’t commit it against a dead body. Technically speaking, a charge of attempting to commit ABH was possible, if Mrs Eastwood hadn’t realised he was already dead. Attempting to commit a crime is still an offence. If someone puts his hand in your pocket, not realising it only contains fluff, he is still guilty of attempted theft.
Trouble was, she had a good defence. Mrs Bannister would claim that her client only wanted to embarrass Goodrich, cause him discomfort, and who could prove otherwise? If she’d known he was already dead we could have done her for an offence against the coroner’s legislation, but she didn’t, and although it might be a crime to conceal a dead body, there is no compulsion to report one. I felt the case go wriggling through my fingers and back into the river, like the eels I caught when I was a kid. But now, like then, I didn’t mind.
‘No,’ I said.
‘No?’
‘No. I think we’ll let her go home.’
‘What do you mean, go home?’
‘Exactly that. Mrs Eastwood, Mrs Bannister, Hartley Goodrich died of a heart attack, sometime on the Sunday evening. When you saw him, Joan, on Monday morning, he had already been dead for about ten hours. You struck a dead body with that plant pot. You didn’t kill anybody. What I propose to do is pass the file to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider. I feel certain that they will deem it unlikely that it is in the public’s interest to proceed further, and recommend that no charges be made.’
I’d considered dropping the whole thing myself, there and then, but decided that this way we would keep the coroner happy, if he asked any questions about the bump on the head.
Neither of them moved, apart from a slight sinking motion. Joan appeared not to comprehend that she was a free woman. Mrs Bannister recovered first. ‘This is all highly irregular, Inspector,’ she declared. I think she’d have preferred a murder-one rap.
‘Mmm, it is, isn’t it?’ I agreed, amiably. ‘But at no time have we said that this was anything other than a suspicious death. Mrs Eastwood has admitted to an assault, but she has aptly demonstrated that she was provoked, and that her intentions were not unduly malicious. As the victim was already dead…’ I upturned my palms.
‘In that case… You said my client is free to leave.’
‘Yes. At no time has she been under arrest.’ I turned to the tape recorder. ‘Interview terminated at…eleven thirty-two.’ I clicked it off and extracted the tapes.
Joan smiled for the first time in a week. ‘I…I don’t know what to say,’ she mumbled.
‘How about “Goodbye”?’ I suggested with a grin.
Mrs Bannister grabbed her briefcase and jumped to her feet. She had an urgent appointment to attend.
‘Before you go,’ I said, ‘do you mind if I have a quick word with Joan in private?’
She hesitated, and a look of panic flickered across Joan’s face, as if she expected me to make a dramatic denouement and tell her that she was under arrest.
‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her. ‘It’s nothing to do with Goodrich’s death.’ I handed a copy of the tape to Maggie, who led Mrs Bannister to the front desk to sign for it.
When they’d gone I said, ‘It must be a great relief to know that you didn’t kill Hartley.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I…don’t know if I’m supposed to thank you, or not.’
‘I doubt it,’ I told her. ‘I’m afraid I did lead you on a bit, but the truth came out, eventually.’
‘Yes, and I wasn’t very honest, was I?’
‘You’re not a very convincing liar,’ I told her.
She blushed, saying, ‘I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you, Mr Priest. And ashamed of myself for being so devious. At one time…before…’
She let the rest of it hang in the air. She was going to say that at one time, before she met Goodrich, she wouldn’t have known how to tell a lie.
‘Joan,’ I began, ‘the conversation you had with Hartley about K. Tom Davis and the Hartog-Praat robbery. That’s what I want to ask you about. Is there anything at all you can remember him ever saying about the gold?’
But there wasn’t. He talked about it once, then warned her never to mention it again, and she hadn’t. It looked as if the trail petered out with him. I walked Joan to the foyer, where we met up with Maggie and Mrs Bannister again. The solicitor asked Joan if she was all right, and she nodded and smiled.
‘There’s just one final thing, Mrs Eastwood,’ I said.
The three women gave me their attention.
‘When we searched Goodrich’s car,’ I told her, ‘we found a packed suitcase in the boot. It looked as if he was about to go away for a few days. Just thought you’d like to know.’
She smiled briefly, and her eyes filled with tears. It was drizzling outside, which must have felt good on her face. When they reached the car Mrs Bannister put an arm around her shoulders. I wouldn’t have told her if I’d known it would upset her.
I collected a hot chocolate from the machine and walked upstairs with Maggie. ‘Another one for the clear-up rate,’ I boasted.
‘Not even a piddling Section Forty-seven,’ she replied.
‘But a blow for justice, Maggie. Who do you think we should catch this afternoon?’
‘Ah, I’d like a word with you about this afternoon. Do you think I could have an hour off to visit the optician?’
‘God, yes,’ I said. ‘In fact, I ought to come with you. I either need some reading glasses or longer arms.’
I held the office door open for her and she gave me one of her exasperated looks. ‘Oh, I can read all right,’ she assured me. ‘Reading’s no problem. Reading’s just fine. It’s the bigger objects that I can’t see. Do you know, about a week ago I examined this car, and guess what? There was a suitcase in the boot, and I completely overlooked it. Never saw a thing.’