by Iain Cameron
‘I suppose as a motive it borders on the weak,’ Neal said.
‘Keep your eye on him, Vicky, he sounds a problematic character.’
‘Will do.’
‘What did he have to say about his missing security card, the one used by the perp to get into the building?’
‘He said he had no idea how he lost it. It was in his jacket pocket at all times. When I asked if he always wore his jacket, he admitted he took it off when he arrived in the morning, and put it back on at night when he went home. Draw your own conclusion.’
‘If we assume someone took it out of his pocket, it wasn’t one of the employees of Jonas Baines, as none of them, as you said earlier, bore Martin Turner any malice. It had to be someone visiting their offices on that day, or is it days? Does Robinson know when he lost it?’
‘He didn’t notice the card was missing for 3 days. During this time, he was giving an intern a lift, a friend of the family, apparently. When they arrived at the office, the intern’s card was used to open the door.’
Henderson sighed. ‘How many visitors are we talking about?’
‘Including window cleaners, sandwich sellers, job interviewees, and clients of Jonas Baines, we’re looking at about fifty people.’
‘My God, this is all we need.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Vicky, compile the list of names. I’m not sure it will tell us much, although if any of their names come to the fore in the course of the investigation, it will give us another piece of evidence to throw at them.’
‘Will do, gov.’
‘What about the other lawyer you mentioned, Alex Vincent?’
‘He works in the office next door to Martin Turner, in the place where the body was found. We asked him if he thought the victim or the perp had been in his office for a reason. He handles divorce, and while he admits the people who come to see him are rich, he didn’t think there were any grounds for believing his work was in any way connected to the incident.’
‘Why?’ Henderson said. ‘Divorce generates as much hate and anger as any other issue in life. Maybe more.’
‘He said if one person in a relationship hated the other enough to kill them, they were doing the right thing by coming to him and initiating divorce proceedings.’
‘We’ll park that thought for the moment,’ Henderson said, ‘because it leads us down a different path, a place I don’t want to go at the moment.’
‘Just a random thought,’ Carol Walters said. ‘Do we think the perp was in Vincent’s office and Turner came in to see what he was doing, or was Turner in Vincent’s office when the perp showed up?’
Henderson thought for a minute. ‘In the former scenario, it suggests Turner heard a noise, came in and confronted the perp. Given the undressed state of the body, I think this is the more likely. In the second…I’m not sure it hangs. It implies Turner was in his colleague’s office in the middle of the night, wearing only his underwear, rummaging through his files. If he wanted to, all he needed to do was find an opportunity during the day when Vincent was out at a client meeting, or at lunch, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose, it was just a thought,’ Walters said.
‘Vicky,’ Henderson asked, ‘how did Alex Vincent get on with our victim?’
‘Very well by all accounts, although not enough to socialise together. It was Vincent’s concern for the welfare of the former Mrs Turner that came to our notice. As we’ve discussed before, Joanna didn’t seem too upset to hear about her ex-husband’s murder. Despite this, Vincent’s been over to see her several times. To comfort her in her hour of need, we were told.’
Vicky Neal’s words had switched on a light bulb in Henderson’s head. All the pieces slotting into place like a child’s shape sorter toy. It would be easy for Vincent to steal Robinson’s security card, and he would know when Turner was going on a bender, forcing him to sleep on his office floor, probably down to the day. In addition, he knew the layout of the Jonas Baines offices, and would have no trouble finding his way around the place in the dark.
‘Have other staff mentioned goings-on between Vincent and Turner’s ex?’ he asked Neal.
She shook her head. ‘No, they haven’t.’
‘Sorry, Vicky,’ Henderson said, ‘now I think about it, it’s a stupid question. If they were engaged in a clandestine affair, why would anyone else know?’
‘You’re right,’ DC Sally Graham said, ‘and don’t forget, lawyers are noted for their discretion.’
‘Good point, Sally. Vicky, anything else to say about Vincent?’
‘Nothing more, gov.’
‘This sounds like a good lead. The next step is we’ll bring Vincent in here to discuss it.’
‘I agree.’
‘Harry, where are we with the rest of Turner’s criminal clients? From memory, six people from the ten-year-plus category are still to be tracked down.’
‘We’ve made contact with four. Two are back in jail and were there at the time of the murder.’
‘Okay. What about the other two?’
‘Neither of them had any real qualms about Turner’s performance, other than to complain that he didn’t get their sentences reduced far enough.’
‘I can imagine. So, apart from your missing two, Harry, that leaves Nolan, Green, and Schofield. DS Walters and I have talked to Bruce Nolan, and I’m still convinced he’s hiding something. I think we’ll be speaking to him again at some stage. Green hasn’t been around, so we’ll catch up with him when he returns. As for Schofield…’
He tailed off, thinking of Houghton’s veiled warning and Schofield’s highly public acquittal. There didn’t seem to be any point in talking to him, as he had been extremely satisfied with Martin’s Turner’s work. Then again, he was someone who knew Martin Turner well. ‘…we’ll put him on the back-burner for now.’
Henderson left the room ten minutes later, all attendees with follow-up instructions, including the job of producing typed-up transcripts of interview notes. Normally, he would take a detective’s word for it when they said the people they’d interviewed didn’t bear any malice towards the victim. Now, with so little to go on, he would spend this evening and the one following reading the transcripts, looking for a single chink of light.
TWELVE
It was bitingly cold when Trevor Robinson stepped out of the offices of Jonas Baines. He buttoned up his coat, cursing the firm’s stuffy dress code which didn’t allow him to wear his puffy skiing jacket, a thickly quilted garment designed for conditions much colder than this. It would have done a better job of keeping him warm than his smart-looking coat, but then again, it was bright yellow and people often mistook him for a council worker.
He walked down Queens Road. At the Clock Tower, he took a right and headed along Western Road in the direction of Hove. He walked everywhere as he didn’t own a car despite a generous contract scheme being offered by the firm. He was no ecowarrior, he just didn’t like them much.
He didn’t like things he couldn’t understand, and one thing he didn’t understand was cars. His father was a sales rep for an industrial pipe-making business, and he used cars as anyone else would use a bus. He dumped rubbish on the floor, didn’t care if the windows were smeared, and only put the thing in for a service after receiving a terse email from the firm’s vehicle manager.
It was a cold evening, but despite this Churchill Square Shopping Centre was busy with eager shoppers. He liked it busy, as he often walked past when everything was locked up, making it appear abandoned, desolate. He lived in a flat close to Palmeria Square, but hadn’t resided in the town long enough to remember when Brighton and Hove had become a unified city. In an argument between gentrified Hove or bohemian Brighton, his apartment was definitely in Brighton.
It was located on the top floor of a building in Lansdowne Place. It had been converted about eight years before, and as nothing much had been done in the way of updating by the previous owners, he bought it at a discount. He’d spent money he couldn’t afford installin
g a new kitchen and having the whole place painted magnolia, and now it exuded a fresh, clean look.
He wasn’t the tidiest of people, but he couldn’t bear to live in a slum. Despite not washing, ironing, or vacuuming as often as he needed to, after each meal he tried to leave the kitchen tidy. Today it looked neat, with only this morning’s breakfast dishes to sully the worktop.
For a couple of hours he watched some TV, made a meal, drank a few beers, and called Miranda Moss. He had been divorced for six years and despite being a modern man and understanding enough about computers and social media not to make a dick of himself online, he couldn’t get along with internet dating.
There was something sad about seeing his modest achievements and shallow characteristics in black and white. It didn’t take long, only a few dates, for him to discover he was the one being honest, while most of his companions not only embellished their profiles, some had downright lied about them.
He’d met a ‘thirty-two-year-old’ woman who didn’t look a day less than fifty, a ‘vivacious and outgoing party goer’ who hauled him into Waterstones to listen to a dreary author talk about diversity, and an ‘intelligent and ambitious actress’ who worked in a dingy hairdressing salon while awaiting her big break.
He’d met Miranda this way. She was the first person who hadn’t lied about her lack of success or the insecurity she felt when meeting new people. She was warm and smart, and he was helping her come to terms with life after a difficult divorce from her childhood sweetheart.
When he finished the call, he headed into the bedroom to change. The business suit he wore to work was smart enough to wear into most places, but to be still wearing it while out in the evening smacked of a hapless office worker with nothing much to go home to. For casino night he liked to adopt the rich, smart-casual approach, much like the Middle-Eastern guys did. Difference was, they bought theirs in stylish boutiques in Brighton and London, had a Lamborghini parked outside, and a penthouse flat overlooking the sea to back it up.
Robinson left the house and walked towards Hove. He was a member of four casinos in Sussex, but the Belgravia Casino in Hove was his favourite. Not because it didn’t require him to hop on a bus to get there, as the one in Brighton and the other in Worthing did, or a train like the one in Haywards Heath, but he often had more success there. He needed it tonight, as late on Saturday night, after a date with Miranda, he had become engrossed in an online poker game. He’d been trying to learn the game for a while and had wagered too much on his overrated ability.
Robinson nodded at the doorman before pulling out his membership card. He took it and wiped it across the slot in a card reader and his details popped up on the tablet he was holding. They must have checked out, no reason why they wouldn’t, although there was always a flutter at the back of his mind in case they didn’t. He handed the card back and said, ‘Have a successful evening, Mr Robinson.’
‘Thanks, I’ll try to.’
He loved the buzz that walking into a casino generated: the soft music, plush carpets, and the clack-clack of dealers as they shuffled cards and scooped the counters from the roulette table. He’d been in casinos as far apart as Las Vegas and Macau, where gambling was brash and genuine billionaires mixed with ordinary punters. He preferred the British model, a touch of opulence and class, with the faint whiff of a gentleman’s club, a fixed point in an ever-changing world.
Gambling was in essence, a male-dominated activity. If he ventured into the poker room he would find perhaps no more than four or five women sitting at the five tables, and looking across at the roulette table, blackjack, and one-armed bandit room, there was a clear prevalence of men. A woman he’d met on a Bumble date had explained it thus: men were more stupid than women. Women, she’d explained, were nest builders, while men were hunter-gatherers, risk-seekers, and predators. Needless to say, she didn’t make it to a second date. In his mind, and he suspected in the minds of many of his fellow punters, it was because men enjoyed taking risks and were able to focus on one subject for a considerable period of time without distraction.
He walked to a cashier and handed over his credit card to the vivacious brunette in the low-cut dress behind the screen. He felt flush, for reasons he couldn’t understand, so he asked for fifty pounds in chips instead of his customary thirty.
He was a novice at poker, so he didn’t plan on heading into the poker room any time soon, but reckoned he was a top-dog at blackjack. As a kind of warm-up before playing blackjack, he would spend around twenty minutes playing roulette.
Four rounds later, he was doing all right. Years back, he would bet on a single number; now he was doing splits – two vertical numbers, and streets – three numbers in a line. A woman he had never seen there before was giving him her best smile as his winnings were pushed towards him, but he vowed never to go out with anyone he met in the casino. One gambler in a relationship was bad enough, two was a car-crash waiting to happen.
For the final five minutes of his warm-up session, he lost. He stayed on an extra five to try to recoup his losses, but Lady Luck had deserted him and the smiling woman had moved off. He took his depleted pile over to the blackjack tables and sat down.
Blackjack was a posh name for a card game he’d played as a kid. His father called it Pontoon, he Twenty-Ones, and sweets would be used as chips. The principles of the casino game were the same, only the value of the chips was different. In essence, he would beat the dealer if his cards added up to more than the dealer, and they didn’t exceed twenty-one.
He played for an hour and slowly his chip pile went down. The losses sustained at roulette had left him with less to play with, and as a result, he was playing with caution. He left the table and headed over to the cashier’s office. He handed over his credit card and asked for another thirty pounds’ worth. She gave him a beautiful smile that on another night, and in another situation, would have stirred hormones, encouraging him to switch on his charm. Tonight, however, it was adrenaline not testosterone rushing through his veins, and it was taking all his resolve not to tap his fingers irritably on the counter, or shift nervously from foot to foot as they waited for the little machine to respond.
‘I’m afraid this card’s been rejected, sir. Do you have another you’d like to use instead?’
‘Rejected? How?’ His mind didn’t compute. He was thinking about cards, the playing variety, not credit, and wondering why his oft-used strategy of counting the royal cards wasn’t working.
‘Do you have another card, sir?’
He took the proffered credit card back and looked at it, as if there had to be some obvious explanation written there. Had he given her his building pass by mistake, or was there something covering the chip? He had a five-thousand-pound credit limit and couldn’t believe he had spent that amount in a month. He pulled out his wallet, put the useless credit card away, and handed over his debit card. This one sailed through without issue. He had been paid about a week before, and the only large payments coming out of there were the mortgage on his apartment, and council tax.
The cashier passed back his card, chips, and receipt. This time, she didn’t crack her ‘come up to my room’ smile, instead it was a neutral expression, probably thinking, ‘what a loser’. He headed back to the blackjack table double-determined to show her what a great player he was.
Trevor walked out of the casino at midnight, chastened and cursing Lady Luck under his breath for deserting him in his hour of need. For reasons he couldn’t explain, a sharp dealer, loaded cards, or his cavalier approach, he was down nearly two hundred. Despite his best intentions, he had gone back to the cashier several times throughout the evening, convinced his luck would change.
He walked along New Church Road eastwards, in the direction of Brighton. He passed a bank and decided to stop and check his cards at the ATM. His credit card had no trouble being accepted here, but his balance was up to the limit. How the hell did that happen?
Thinking back, he recalled a Saturday some weeks bef
ore when he and a friend had spent the day drinking and placing bets at various bookmakers, before entering a casino in Shoreham in the evening. He had no idea how much money he went through, but he didn’t have a better explanation for his baffling level of expenditure.
His cavalier use of the credit card annoyed him, but when the debit card was inserted into the machine, the result rocked him. He had less than two hundred pounds to last him until the next payday.
He walked back towards his apartment angry, believing this wasn’t his doing, but thieves filching money from his bank account. Turning into his road, he resolved to call his bank first thing in the morning and give them a piece of his mind. Then, it slowly came back to him. An evening at a dog track in East London, courtesy of a client.
He’d drunk too much and, ever the big shot, had used his debit card to withdraw money for the night, and did it again when he needed more. He knew he’d spent more than he’d intended, but at this rate he would be living on bread and water for the rest of the month. He didn’t care much about food, but he couldn’t go a week without feeling the buzz of cards between his fingers, his concentration fully focused on the dealer’s hands.
He needed money desperately. His family couldn’t help, and even if they could, they wouldn’t. He didn’t have much in the way of savings. What was he to do?
THIRTEEN
‘Good morning, darling,’ Anita said mid-yawn when she appeared at the kitchen door.
‘Morning,’ Alex Vincent said, from his seat at the kitchen table, barely looking up from yesterday’s newspaper.
She walked over to the kitchen table where he was sitting and wrapped her arms around his neck. She stayed there for a few moments, before giving him a kiss on the cheek and breaking free. She started a series of stretching exercises, something she did every morning.
‘You were up early. Couldn’t you sleep?’ she asked, taking a break from stretching to fill the kettle from the water filter. He preferred coffee first thing in the morning, Anita tea.