One of the hill farmers chose that very morning to transport twenty tons of hay from the outskirts of Heckley to his barn up on the moors, so I was stuck in the half-mile procession that followed his tractor and trailer most of the way, bits of dry grass swirling in his wake like confetti. It’s a sign of a hard winter when they stock up with hay. I was ten minutes late when I parked outside Broadside and Lisa would be worried I wasn’t coming, if she remembered I was supposed to be. The big gate was half open, but I left the car outside. The gate swung shut on well-oiled hinges and the galvanised catch held it there, like a man-trap gripping an ankle.
A lilac Toyota MR2 stood outside one of the garages, with ‘Lisa Davis Agency’ and a phone number emblazoned on the side. It pays to advertise.
The front door of the bungalow was ajar. I knocked and pressed the bell, simultaneously. After about forty-five seconds I repeated the exercise.
‘Mrs Davis!’ I shouted through the gap.
No reply. I eased the door open a little and called again. ‘Lisa! Are you there?’
There was a movement in the shadows at the far end of the hallway. I pushed the door wide to admit more light, and saw the parrot on the floor, waddling towards me.
‘Lisa!’ I yelled.
The macaw was nearly on me. When I’d told Sparky about it he said they cost about two thousand quid, and this one looked bent on freedom.
‘Good boy,’ I said, followed by, ‘LISA!!!’
It kept coming, picking up each foot with the deliberation of a deep-sea diver, the long tail swishing from side to side on the carpet. I stepped inside and tried shooing it back, but it wasn’t having any.
I closed the door behind me, and a few seconds later the bird had me pinned against it. That’s when I did the bravest deed of my career. I pulled the sleeve of my jacket over my fist and offered my arm to it, like that hapless fool at the dog-handling centre who spends his working days rolling about under a slavering Alsatian. The macaw gently gripped the material in a beak that looked as if it came from Black and Decker’s R and D department and decorously placed one foot on my arm. Its claws went straight through to the skin as it juggled for balance, then it stepped aboard with the other foot and the pressure eased a fraction. I stood up, the bird wobbling alarmingly, but it may have been me. I had a sudden panic attack as I realised why so many pirates wore eye-patches.
Parrots like to climb, and that means upwards. Unfortunately that’s in lesson two, and I was still struggling with the first. I should have raised my arm, but I didn’t. The bird pulled its way up my sleeve like a rock climber — beak, claw, claw, beak, claw, claw — until it reached the back of my neck. I stood there, bent over like Quasimodo meets Long John Silver, and wailed, ‘Lisa! Help! Please!’
But no help came. You’re in this on your own, Priest, I thought, and slouched towards the door into the lounge, where the bird’s stand was. The door was open, the room much as I’d seen it before, except for some magazines strewn on the floor. Fashion and gossip. It was easy for me to read them because my eyes were pointing downwards. I sidled against the perch and made jerking movements to encourage the bird in that direction. It banged its beak against the bell once or twice and stepped off my neck, on to the perch. I straightened my back gratefully and said, ‘Phew! Good boy.’ I was speaking to myself.
The poor bird’s food tray was empty, so I gave it an apple from a bowl on a low table. The macaw held it down with a foot and its beak carved a great wedge out of it as easily as a spoon passes through a bowl of custard. I’d had a narrow squeak.
But where was Lisa?
I was in the hall, calling her name, when my foot kicked something. I looked down and saw a mobile phone lying there. The room opposite was the kitchen, where she’d entertained Annabelle. Next was a dining room, then two bedrooms straight out of a film set and a third done out as an office. This was where Justin kept his trophies and souvenirs. I’d have liked to have studied them but this wasn’t the time. The last door, I presumed, was the bathroom. I knocked, and pushed the door with the tip of my knuckle. It swung back, revealing a white and gold suite but not much else. I wasn’t in the mood for gathering ideas about interior decoration.
So where was she? I shouted her name again, for no sensible reason.
Surely there’s another bathroom, I thought, probably en suite with a bedroom. I went back to the biggest room and stepped on to the thick shaggy carpet. The curtains were closed, so I put the light on.
In an alcove was another door, slightly ajar. ‘Are you there, Lisa?’ I called, softly, but there was no answer. I placed the knuckle of my first finger against the door and slowly pushed it open.
This was Lisa’s bathroom. A large Victorian bath stood in the middle of the room, and she was in it.
Her throat had been cut.
Her head lolled sideways, face as white as the porcelain, and one knee was drawn up. She looked like a discarded Barbie doll, with another mouth where there shouldn’t have been one, trapped in a bowl of strawberry jelly.
I reached a finger down towards the surface of the water, smoother than a newly opened tin of paint, and saw its reflection coming up to meet it. A drip fell from the tap, plinking into the surface and sending a single ripple arcing outwards, so a wave of distortion passed through the image, a momentary glitch on the TV screen. The water was cold.
A warbling noise startled me. After a moment’s confusion I realised it was my mobile phone. I took it from my pocket and said ‘Priest,’ into it.
‘Hello, Hinspector Priest,’ Sparky greeted me in his music hall Yorkshireman voice. ‘This is ’Eckley po-leece station. Could you cum back quickly becoss we’ve got a murder for you to investigate.’
I stared down at her. No matter what I thought of her morals she’d been a good-looker. She’d run her own business and successfully managed Justin’s affairs. But she’d loved life just a little too much for her own good. Her hair was dry except for where it dangled into the water and capillary action had carried its dark stain upwards a little way.
‘I know, Dave,’ I mumbled into the mouthpiece. ‘I’m already there. Believe me, I’m already there.’
I was sitting on the wall when Les Isles arrived, fifteen minutes later. There were no hay-wagons to slow his progress.
‘What’s this all about, Charlie?’ he asked, slamming his car door.
I told him about my conversation with Lisa the night before, about the suspicions that her father-in-law was mixed up in the Hartog-Praat robbery, and about her intimation that she knew all about it. He gave me a sideways look, as if to hint that there were other reasons, too, for my visit.
‘And her throat’s cut?’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
‘Tell me what you know.’
‘Front door open — wide open, that is. I’ve had a look round the outside and there’s no other sign of entry. Either the door was unlocked or he had a key. No sign of a struggle. He must have known exactly where she was. It’s an en suite bathroom, not where you’d find it if you didn’t know the layout of the house. The water was flat cold. No rigor mortis, but skin macerated. She rang me about ten last night. I reckon she died not long afterwards. The killer left in a hurry. Are you having a look?’
‘I believe you, Charlie. No, I’ll wait till the anoraks have done their stuff.’
‘One more thing. There’s a mobile phone lying on the hall carpet. With a bit of luck he’ll have dropped it on his way out.’
Les’s eyebrows shot up. ‘In the hallway?’ he asked.
‘Mmm.’
‘Just inside the doorway?’
‘About three yards inside.’
‘C’mon, then. Let’s see it.’
It was a Sony. We knelt on the carpet and examined it. Look but don’t touch, as my mother used to say. There really should be a standard for what all the buttons do.
‘Looks to me as if it’s still on,’ Les observed, pointing at the display. ‘Any idea what’s what?’
I shook my head. ‘No, but one of them should tell you the number of the owner.’
‘But which one?’
‘No idea. On mine you press the F button and another, but don’t ask me which. Have it checked for prints, then consult an expert.’
‘I suppose so.’
Someone outside shouted, and we let the SOCOs in. We showed them the phone and they cordoned-off that side of the hall with their coloured tape. Superintendent Isles donned a disposable overall and went with them to examine the body, while I waited outside, where the air was fresher.
He was visibly ashen when he emerged, ten minutes later. ‘It’s at times like this I wish I still smoked,’ he admitted.
‘I doubt if it would help,’ I said.
‘Probably not. How long had you known her, Charlie?’ he asked, concerned.
‘Only met her once, plus a long phone call. She was lonely. She hinted that she’d rung other people, but nobody wanted to talk to her. A look at her list of calls might be a good idea.’ I didn’t mention that I’d suggested she have a hot bath and go to bed.
‘Mmm. She was certainly a looker. Can I leave the calls with you?’
‘No problem.’
‘Where’s that bloody pathologist?’ he snapped.
We stood in the doorway, arranging the mechanics of another murder investigation to go with the two unsolved ones that Les was already overseeing for other divisions. I was hoping he’d leave this one to me, as with the Goodrich case. A red grouse landed on the wall, saw us, and flew off again, cluck-cluck-clucking impatiently as he went. Spots of rain were blowing about in the wind.
My phone was ringing again. I plunged my hand inside my jacket and withdrew it, clutching the dreaded instrument. ‘Priest,’ I said.
The warbling continued. It wasn’t mine. ‘It’s yours,’ I told the super.
‘No, it’s not,’ he said, looking at it. We both turned and stared through the open doorway, to the phone on the floor, chirruping its song of greeting.
Someone was determined to get a reply. ‘Answer it,’ I suggested.
‘God, what if it’s someone for her?’
‘Then they got a wrong number.’
We stepped inside and resumed our kneeling positions around the raucous piece of electronic wizardry. Isles removed a pen from a pocket and pointed at a button. ‘That one, you reckon?’ he asked.
‘I’d say so.’
He eased the aerial out with a fingernail, pressed the button with a little green telephone on it and said, ‘Hello.’
I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, so I stretched upright. Isles listened, careful not to touch the phone with his ear. An earprint is as distinctive as a fingerprint, and we use all the help we can get.
‘Yes, sir,’ I heard him say, ‘we were hoping you’d ring. Your mobile phone has been handed in to the City Police headquarters.’ More listening, then, ‘Earlier this morning. Would you like to collect it, sometime?’
I couldn’t help smiling. This was too good to be true. Isles said, ‘Shall we say in about an hour. That would make it twelve noonish. If you could give me your name, sir…’ He held a hand up to me, for writing material. I pulled the cap off his pen for him and held my notebook at an open page.
‘And your first name, sir… Thank you. And your address is…’
I couldn’t read his scrawl upside down. He lowered the pen and said, ‘Thank you, sir. So we’ll see you in about an hour. Goodbye.’
I turned the book around and held it towards the light.
‘Know him?’ Isles asked, standing up and flexing each leg to restore the circulation.
I nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I said, when I’d deciphered his hieroglyphics. ‘I know him all right. We go back a long way.’
I’d only met Dominic Watts the day before, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
Personally, I’d have hung on to the phone and let Watts go. Made some feeble excuse about doubting his ownership of it, but we’d let him know, soon as pos. We could have picked him up any time. Mr Isles arrested him and made him strip bollock naked. Even confiscated his shreddies and leather hat for forensic examination. I could have gone down to the cells at City HQ and gloated at him, sitting there in his nifty paper one-piece suit, but I didn’t.
What I did was spend several hours explaining to Isles, a fresh-faced DCI unknown to me and a couple of DSs the relationships between Watts, Goodrich and the Davis family. They met, we suspected, through the diamond investments, which were legitimate but unwise. How Goodrich and K. Tom talked their way out of that, when they crashed, was only conjecture, but maybe the Hartog-Praat gold came into it.
‘Did Watts know Lisa Davis?’ Isles asked.
‘Can’t be sure,’ I told him, ‘but there’s no reason why he should have. Maybe his address book will tell us different.’
‘He’s denying everything,’ Les told us. ‘Claims he never heard of her. He lost the phone somewhere in town and is threatening us with a wrongful arrest suit. He’s an indignant so-and-so.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said.
We were interrupted several times as bits of information filtered through. First of all it was the fingerprint section. The mobile phone was covered in marks, as one might expect, but they didn’t match the ten-print form made by Dominic Watts after his arrest. A small piece of lateral thinking and a call to Criminal Records did produce a comparison, though, indicating that the phone had been last used by Michael Angelo Watts, son of Dominic.
‘Shit!’ growled Isles. ‘It looks as if Sonny Jim borrowed his daddy’s phone. We got the wrong person.’
‘Let’s drag the son in, then,’ the DCI, who was called Makinson, suggested. ‘Then see what Forensic can come up with to put one of them at the scene. One of them did it.’
‘Maybe Forensic won’t find anything,’ I argued. ‘Picture what happened. Someone walks straight in, cuts her throat, walks out again. If they got blood on their clothes they had over twelve hours to destroy them or lose them somewhere…’
‘We’re looking,’ Isles interrupted.
‘Right,’ I continued. ‘Then there’s the possibility of the transfer of fibres the other way. Watts’s suit looked like silk to me. Something shiny. Not the sort of material that sheds like a moulting labrador. And the son doesn’t exactly wear Harris tweed. We could be on a loser.’
‘We found several tyre tracks,’ Les told us, glumly, popping a Polo mint into his mouth. ‘None match Dominic’s car and it’s looking doubtful for Sonny’s. Anybody want one?’
I took one from the tube and passed it on. Makinson shook his head. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘And what was the motive supposed to be? Remember motives?’
‘If we can put one of them at the scene of the crime at the right time,’ Makinson argued, ‘we don’t need a motive.’
‘We don’t need a motive,’ I told him. ‘But they need a motive, unless you’re saying one of them is a psychopath. We’re relying too much on forensic evidence. When I retire I’m setting myself up in business as an expert on forensic evidence. For the defence. I reckon I could drive a motorbike and sidecar through most of it, and that includes fingerprints and DNA.’ There. I’d ridden my hobby horse in front of Les’s shiny new DCI. He looked at me as if I’d peed in the font.
The next interruption saved us from a falling-out. A female DC came in with a list of Lisa’s telephone calls for the day before. Les studied it, checking the date against the calendar and writing against the entries until the relevant bits emerged. ‘OK, pin back your ears,’ he said. ‘She made…ten calls in the morning and four in the afternoon. All the names are here but they don’t mean much to me at this stage. Presumably they’re to do with the agency she ran. Did she work from home, Charlie, do you know?’
‘Sorry, Les, I don’t,’ I admitted.
‘What sort of agency was it?’
‘Office temps, I believe, but she also handled the publicity, and whatever, for her husband.’
‘OK. We’ll check ’em out. Let’s jump to the relevant time. According to this she rang K. T. Davis at nine thirty-seven, the call lasting seventeen minutes. At nine fifty-six she rang Heckley police station. That’ll be when she asked for your number, Charlie.’
‘Yep.’
‘That call lasted three minutes. Did you ring her straight back?’
‘Yes. It was about ten o’clock. Not much later.’
‘And how long did you speak for?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Ten minutes, at a guess. It felt like longer, but I don’t suppose it was.’
‘That’s all right,’ Les said. ‘That takes us to ten past ten. According to this, Lisa rang K. T. Davis again at nine minutes past ten. This time they were only speaking for two minutes. What does all that tell us?’
I’d been making notes, adding the times, as all the others were. I said, ‘She rang K. Tom and they spoke for seventeen minutes. Immediately after that she rang Heckley nick and asked for me. I spoke to her for, say, eight minutes. As soon as I put the phone down she rang K. Tom again. This time their conversation was short and sweet.’
‘So what do you make of it?’
‘Plenty, but it’s all conjecture. She’d told me that nobody wanted to talk to her. She was playing me off against K. Tom. It’s painful to admit it, but it was really him she wanted to see, not me. Maybe she rang him to say I was coming round to see her, this morning.’
‘Mmm,’ Les nodded. ‘He refused to go round and fettle her, so she rang you. Then she told him that if he couldn’t do the job, she’d found a nice policeman who would.’
‘Well, I, er, wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ I protested.
Les reached out and put his hand on my arm. ‘Don’t worry about it, Charlie. You’re a single man, and I’m satisfied that your reasons were completely noble. Wouldn’t like to have to convince a jury, though. Seriously,’ he went on, ‘you think there’s a lot more in this, don’t you?’
Les is older than me, but has slightly less service. He joined after an unhappy spell in the army, and I showed him round for his first few days. He’s ambitious, and very thorough, but sometimes lacks imagination. Or maybe I have too much.
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I believe the Hartog-Praat gold figures in this somewhere. Perhaps Lisa told her father-in-law that I knew something about it. Maybe she threatened him. Told him I was coming round in the morning, when she would fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Hell hath no fury, and all that.’
Isles said, ‘So Davis hot-footed straight over and silenced her.’
‘Mmm.’
DCI Makinson could contain himself no longer. ‘All this is getting too complicated,’ he complained. ‘We have a suspect in the cells and another in the frame. What’s the point in dragging up all this farfetched stuff about Hartog-Praat just because Inspector Priest’s girlfriend had too much to drink. I say we concentrate on what we’ve got. In my experience if there are two theories then the simple one is invariably the right one. It’s called Occam’s razor.’
A DS sitting opposite raised his eyebrows at me with a wicked grin. Makinson had clearly heard of my service record: inspector at twenty seven, then zilch. I drummed my fingers on the chair legs and bit my tongue.
Superintendent Isles pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
The DS broke the awkward silence. ‘What did we learn from the Watts’ mobile?’ he asked.
‘Not much,’ Isles replied. ‘Only half a dozen numbers stored on it. We’re looking at them. Haven’t received a record of calls made, yet.’
I said, ‘Did you find an answerphone at Lisa’s house?’
The DS nodded.
‘Was the last message still on it? Mine stores the last one until it’s recorded over.’
‘Yeah. So does hers.’
I looked at him, inviting him to reveal its contents. After a few seconds he said: ‘It was from her mother, inviting Lisa to join them for Sunday lunch. That’s all.’
‘Jesus,’ I mumbled.
The other DS said, ‘You reckon K. Tom Davis was in debt to the Wattses, because of the diamond failures?’
‘Mmm,’ I agreed.
‘Any idea how much?’
‘Not accurately, but we could easily be talking about a million pounds.’
‘That’s a lot of money,’ he observed. ‘Maybe killing Lisa was a warning. Like, a last reminder.’
‘A final demand, calling the debt in. Could be.’
Superintendent Isles was deep in thought. ‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘you told us that the son’s house, which adjoins Dominic’s, is fortified.’
‘Yep, that’s right.’
‘But you reckon there’s a door knocked through between the two.’
‘Can’t be sure, but I’d gamble your salary on it.’
‘Fair enough. OK, here’s how we handle it. We go for the simple explanation. You, Charlie, hang fire for a couple of days and see what we turn up. We can search Dominic Watts’ house because he’s under arrest with a murder charge hanging over him. Michael Angelo Watts is implicated, so we take out a warrant to search his house. But we don’t go in waving the warrant. We enter via the internal door from Dominic’s and then we wave the warrant. Hopefully we’ll be able to shepherd everyone downstairs before they know they’ve been busted.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I declared, rising to my feet. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Not so fast,’ Les replied. ‘I’ve told you to hang fire. We’ll see to the Wattses, one way or the other, then you can take it from there. OK?’
I sat down again. ‘Yeah. Fair enough,’ I said. ‘But do I get to talk to Dominic?’
‘I can’t see why not. And we will have to interview your witness, K. Tom Davis, about the telephone calls.’
‘OK. You talk to them about the murder, I’ll concentrate on their financial dealings. Another thing. Can I send someone from the Fraud Squad with you on the raid? They know what to look for. Then we’ll compare notes, what, Monday morning?’
‘No problem. Monday it is,’ Les replied, gathering his papers together to indicate that the meeting was over.
Makinson said, ‘You have a weekend off, Mr Priest. I’m sure you’ve earned it. Monday morning you’ll find that it’s all neatly sewn up. Then you’ll be free to run about after your money-launderers.’
Isles turned to him and smiled like a May morning.
‘Inspector Priest,’ he confided, ‘has a tendency to see bogeymen where the rest of us see nothing. He believes that behind every little crook there is a conspiracy of big crooks feeding off him.’ His face hardened as he added, ‘The only trouble is, he’s caught more big-time villains than you and me put together have ever dreamt about. When Charlie speaks, I listen.’
Thanks, Les. I don’t like slapping down senior officers. These young ones can’t take it; go running for the rule book. It causes unpleasantness.
On the way home I called in at a jeweller’s and asked to see the top man. He confirmed that it was normal practice to melt gold with a butane flame. It didn’t oxidise or corrupt in any way.
The wedding wasn’t until three o’clock, Saturday afternoon, so I had plenty of time for other things. I swapped the cars round after breakfast and waited for the postman, but there wasn’t a letter or card from Annabelle.
The chief constable had no reason to be visiting the City HQ on a Saturday morning, so at precisely eight forty-five I swung the long nose of the E-type into his parking spot.
Les Isles was in, looking out of his window. ‘Saw you come, he said. ‘The car looks fabulous. Your dad would have been proud of it. Did he ever see it finished?’
‘No. He died two years before it was completed. Thanks for yesterday, Les. I’m grateful.’
He screwed his face up, like when you don’t want to laugh out loud, or even cry, so you give the muscles something else to do.
‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’
It was a laugh he was suppressing. ‘Something’s amusing you.’
He leant back on the radiator and waved a mug at me, his composure regained. ‘Want a coffee?’
‘No thanks. I’ll pop down and see Dominic Watts, if you don’t mind. You still have him, I presume.’
‘For another five hours. I was thinking about your dad.’
‘Go on.’
‘Oh, I just owed him one.’
‘I’ll accept it on his behalf. Call it paid back in full. What did he do?’
He smiled at the memory. ‘It was during that time we were all sergeants. You’d gone to Leeds, I was here with him. I dropped a bollock. An almighty, gold-plated bollock. One of those that either finishes you or makes you a figure of ridicule for the rest of your career. Did he ever tell you about it?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Well, I’m not going to. I don’t know what he did, who he had a word with, but he covered up for me. Nothing happened. Years later, when he was ill, I went to see him in hospital. I thanked him for what he’d done. He said we had to stick together. Times were changing. He said that he worried about you, because you were reckless. He asked me to look out for you.’
Now it was my turn to gaze out of the window, over the roofs and chimney pots and tower blocks and steeples, without seeing any of them. Les was suggesting having a pint together sometime when his phone rang. He said, ‘Yes, sir,’ into it, and rolled his eyes at me. I gave him a wave and sneaked out.
Dominic Watts’s expression made me feel about as welcome as a shit fly on a prawn sandwich. ‘I presume you have come to rejoice at my predicament,’ he said, every consonant present, the cadence rising and falling like a waltz rhythm.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘I derive no pleasure from seeing a man of your age in a cell.’
‘Then why are you here? I have nothing to say to you or anyone else. First you accuse my son of dealing in drugs, now you are attempting to pin a murder charge on me. These are false accusations.’
‘I want to ask you some questions, I said. ‘As you know, you are entitled to have a solicitor present. Do you require a solicitor?’
‘I have nothing to say, either in the presence of a solicitor or without one.’
‘How well did you know Hartley Goodrich?’ I asked.
‘I have no comment to make.’
‘Did he act as your financial adviser; arrange some investments for you?’
‘You have examined his papers — his books — I presume.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you know the answer to your own question, Inspector Priest.’
‘We know he placed some money for you with a variety of financial institutions. Do you know anybody called Jones?’
‘No, I do not.’
‘Then how do you explain these?’ I removed some photocopied pages from my inside pocket and passed them across to him. When his house was searched, Maud had found entries in a notebook that corresponded with the amounts of money paid into one of the Jones accounts.
His eyes flicked downwards for an instant, before he said, ‘I cannot explain them, Inspector, for I do not recognise them.’
‘They were found in your house.’
He didn’t reply.
‘And similar lists were found in Michael’s house.’ He stiffened at the mention of his son’s name. ‘Along with a quantity of cannabis and a few hundred ecstasy tablets. What’s gone wrong? Can’t he afford heroin any more? Starting at the bottom again, is he?’
‘They were planted by your officers.’
‘That won’t do, Dominic,’ I told him.
‘And I am not a murderer. No doubt if you try hard enough you will pin one of these crimes on us.’
‘Did you know Lisa Davis?’
‘No!’
‘So you didn’t cut her throat?’
‘Does it matter how many times I deny it?’
‘Your son keeps a Filofax. Handy things, Filofaxes, though I never felt the need for one myself. Lisa Davis’s phone number was found in it. He knew her, and his fingerprints were found on the phone.’
He shook his head in frustration. ‘I have been over this many times with Chief Inspector Makinson. I did not murder that unfortunate young woman. My son did not murder her. What will it take for me to convince you?’
I’d strayed over into the wrong investigation. ‘Know what I like about you?’ I asked.
‘No, Inspector,’ he proclaimed. ‘I am surprised to find that I have any redeeming features, in your eyes.’
‘It’s your use of the language,’ I said. ‘Day after day we interview people who were born in this country who cannot string a subject, verb and object together — they communicate in grunts — but your English is impeccable. Under different circumstances it might be a pleasure to talk to you.’
‘Thank you. I was taught by nuns — the Little Sisters of Saint Theresa. Thou shall not kill was another of their precepts that I took to heart.’
I smiled. ‘Nice one. I walked into that. I believe you, Dominic, but Mr Makinson doesn’t.’
‘I find your confidence in me most moving. Presumably you believe my son did it.’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t believe he did it, either.’
‘You don’t?’ he repeated, wide-eyed. ‘You amaze me.’
‘No,’ I confirmed.
‘Then why are we being harassed?’
‘It’s not my case. I’m interested in your financial dealings. It’s Makinson wants to do you for murder. Tell me all about K. Tom Davis, and the diamonds, and I might have a word with him.’
‘Inspector!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you suggesting we do a deal? That is not the way I thought justice worked in this country. Whatever happened to innocent until proved guilty?’
It went out of the window, along with full employment and respect for old people. ‘Not a deal,’ I replied. ‘Just cooperation. You were laundering money through Goodrich. First of all into diamonds, then into gold. We’ll find the proof, slowly. You’d be making it easier on yourself if you realised that and helped us.’
He leant his chin on his fists and nibbled his thumbnails. After a while he asked, ‘Has Michael been arrested?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We can’t find him.’
‘He’s a good boy. He would never kill anyone, I swear it.’
Not by drawing a Stanley knife across their throat, I thought. But he’d feed them drugs until they crawled away and choked on their own vomit in a dark corner. ‘If you say so,’ I replied.
We were talking in his cell. Ten by eight, eau-denil walls and a grille on the door. He was sitting on the bunk and I was on a plastic chair I’d taken in with me. Someone had brought him his own clothes — a pair of slacks and a polo shirt. Very Anglo. He leant forward, conspiratorially.
‘Is it safe to talk in here, Mr Priest?’ he whispered.
‘There’s no one in the cells next door,’ I told him. The Friday night drunks had all gone home and the other remandees were across the corridor. ‘Business is bad. And the custody sergeant is at his desk. You can talk.’
He moved forwards, squatting on his heels close to me. ‘This…cooperation you mentioned, Mr Priest.’
‘What of it?’
‘I think a spirit of cooperation might be to our mutual advantage.’
‘In what way?’
‘Nothing very heavy. Just, let us say, helping each other. Believe it or not, I trust British justice — it is the police I have no respect for. Eventually the courts will set me free and prove that Michael is not a murderer. Then life will go on, for all of us. We are not evil people. We are businessmen, and business is difficult in the present economic climate, as I am sure you are aware, Mr Priest.’
‘I read the papers,’ I said. And clean up the debris, I thought.
‘I am sure you do. Someone in your position could be very useful to us. We could call it a…consultancy. I imagine you have not many years left before you retire. On half-wage, if I am not mistaken. That would make running an expensive car very difficult, would it not, and I believe you have a certain penchant for the good things in life. Why don’t you go away and think about what I have said, Mr Priest?’
Two-thirds salary, actually, but yes, the Jag would have to go. I stood up and hooked my arm through the chair and lifted it. ‘Sorry, Watts,’ I said, ‘but that’s not the kind of cooperation I had in mind.’ I tom-ti-tom-tommed on the cell door and heard the latch click on the outer gate. A few seconds later the grille slid back and the jailer peered in at me.
‘All done?’ he asked.
I nodded, then turned to Watts as the door swung open. ‘The nuns let you down,’ I told him. ‘They forgot to drill into you the golden rule of English grammar.’
‘And what is that?’ he snarled.
I gave him my most disarming smile. ‘Never start a sentence with a proposition,’ I said, and walked out. My visit had been a waste of time, but at least I got the one-liner in. Sometimes, that makes it all worthwhile.