by Iain Cameron
The only explanation he could think of was Schofield had either used his lawyer, or had called Hammond from a prison phone; he wasn’t convinced Hammond would have acted off his own bat. The only way to resolve it would be to ask Hammond himself, but as yet, he hadn’t surfaced. They were now in with a better chance of catching him, as Henderson had called the office and told them to apply for a warrant; he was now wanted for serious assault, and perhaps, dependent on his motive, attempted murder.
All thoughts of accusations, leaks, and charges were driven from his head as he drove down the road towards Kelly’s house. She lived in an old place, not far from a thinly-populated rural road. It would be considered remote by most people’s standards, especially at night, where in the surrounding forest the hooting of owls, screeching of foxes, and the rooting of other nocturnal animals could echo for hours. Lessening its remoteness, Kelly’s house was one of three, built in a semicircle, their neat, green front gardens in contrast to the kaleidoscope of greens, browns, and blacks of the forest and its haphazard display.
It was a four-bedroom place, now too big for a single woman living alone. Given the aggressive behaviour of her ex before, during, and after their divorce, it surprised him when he heard her former husband didn’t want the house, or even his share of it. He was, according to Kelly, ambivalent when it came to money and material possessions; one of those rare beasts, a banker circumspect at looking after other people’s money, but crap at taking care of his own.
The wind was bitter as he stepped from the car and stopped for a moment to chat with her neighbour cutting her front lawn. When Henderson walked into Kelly’s house, he was glad to find it warm. She wasn’t one of those starving authors who had to resort to burning chairs and chopping up the table to keep a meagre fire going.
They kissed and hugged, and with his foot he pushed the door closed. The chances of being overlooked were low to non-existent, but old habits and his memories of previous bruising encounters with the paparazzi died hard.
‘Your timing’s good, Angus, lunch is about ready.’
‘I’ll just go and tidy myself up.’
He walked into the downstairs toilet and after filling the basin with hot water, washed his hands and face. Despite visiting Clare in a post-operative ward which was sterile clean, hospitals had a way of leaving residues on the skin and odours in the nostrils. Some he could wash away, others he couldn’t.
‘How was your morning?’ he asked as he walked into the kitchen. Whatever Kelly was cooking, it smelled delicious. This was in part because she was a very good cook, but also because food tended to smell better when someone else was cooking it.
‘In a word, marking. My lot were involved in exams last week and I’ve a pile of scripts to go through.’
‘Don’t you have time to do it during the working day?’
‘I do most of the time, but the last week has been manic. I’d brought in a couple of guest lecturers to give them a change from my boring voice–’
‘Hassling, lecturing, counselling maybe; never boring.’
‘I think there’s a compliment lurking in there somewhere, but it’s not obvious. I also wanted them to have a different take on a module I’m teaching about the Criminal Justice System.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Yes, I thought so too. The upshot was, I spent a lot of time hand-holding, not the students, the visiting lecturers: briefing them about the course, taking them to lunch, organising taxis to take them back to the station. All in all, I didn’t get a minute. Hence, I had to bring this work home, but don’t you worry Angus,’ she said walking over and wrapping her arms around his neck, ‘there’ll be plenty of time for us.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
It had been a week since Trevor Robinson visited Miranda’s parents. Michael, her father, turned out to be a much nicer man than the leftie trade unionist Miranda had painted him to be. Her mother, on the other hand, had enough politics in her system to start a new political party. No matter the topic, she could turn it into a failure by the government, or, if they had done something, it was another example of their profligate use of public resources.
During the week, he had gone back to the Belgravia Casino in Hove. This time he went with two purposes in mind. One was to satisfy the gambling urge, gnawing away at his brain, which only calmed when he was holding a set of playing cards. He also wanted to see Hassan Khouri again. He’d achieved both aims. On the gambling front, he’d won, and he’d seen Hassan, who’d dressed up a casual drink as another interrogation about Martin and Alex’s deaths, and how he believed Raymond Schofield was the person responsible.
The surgeon was pleased, no, better than pleased, ecstatic, when he heard about Schofield’s arrest, but his joy was tainted when he realised it was for the murder of Allan Blake. When were the police going to realise, he was also the killer of Martin Turner and Alex Vincent, he asked. On and on he ranted about Schofield’s guilt, showing little sensitivity for the person he was speaking to. Vincent had been a close colleague of Robinson, and yet Khouri was talking about the dead lawyer as if he was nothing more than a blunt instrument to bash Schofield with. It only succeeded in reinforcing his suspicions about the man.
Robinson laced up his running shoes and headed outside. After labouring up to the top of Lansdowne Place, he turned the corner and, out of sight of any nosey neighbours in his street, he stopped. With hands on his knees, he bent over, panting hard. The tracksuit, orange top, running shoes and all the rest he’d bought one January a couple of years back, when he decided he needed to get into better shape if he was to make a decent fist of online dating.
The fitness kick had lasted no more than a fortnight, culminating in an errant dog running across his path and forcing him into a hedge, where he’d twisted an ankle. Upon recovering, several weeks later, what remained of the running ‘bug’ had evaporated like steam on a bathroom mirror after opening a window. He realised he hated running, and the only reason he didn’t see the dog, was because he was concentrating on repeating a motivational mantra heard on a podcast, developed to help listeners succeed in doing anything they didn’t like.
To the average runner, the two-point-five kilometres from his apartment to Khouri’s house in Mallory Road was a breeze, a warm-up before they embarked on something more challenging. To him, now walking, it was a slog. Most of the journey seemed to be uphill, and this was borne out by the views he saw as he walked along Shirley Drive, out to the Palace Pier and the tall buildings lining the seafront.
He stopped and pulled out his phone. He set it to block the caller ID, then called 999. When put through to the police, he said, ‘I live in a flat opposite Cavendish Body Sculptures in West Hove. I’ve just seen a dark figure running around the back of the building and a few moments later, I heard breaking glass. I think there’s a burglary in progress.’
He declined to give his name, and when the operator said she would send a car round to check, he terminated the call. When the patrol car arrived, they would indeed find a smashed window around the back; the one he’d broken the previous night. They would also find the name and number of the building’s keyholder on an In The Event of Fire notice visible on the front door.
He continued walking. He could now see the benefit of venturing out early on a Saturday or Sunday morning. He enjoyed the fresh air on his face and being awake before almost everybody else. If he didn’t have something else to do, he would pick up a newspaper and breakfast rolls before they sold out, but not running. It was better to walk and not feeling hot, out of breath, and have a line of sweat trickling down his face.
Khouri lived in a newly built modern house. A number of these houses had sprung up in Hove in recent years, replacing the dilapidated homes of elderly residents who had lived in the same area for many decades. Houses in this area were much sought after, and a vacated property or a building plot didn’t stay in its undeveloped state for very long.
He stood a distance down the road with a view of Khouri’
s house. In many ways, it resembled the man himself. It was clean and tidy, the patio garden, recently swept and not sullied by so much as an errant leaf or a discarded piece of paper. Glass dominated the structure, more prominent than the white-painted brick, and every pane looked spotless.
He waited. In time, the door of the integral garage opened and the Porsche 911 belonging to Khouri raced out. The surgeon didn’t wait for it to close, and Trevor would also bet he didn’t have time to set the house’s alarm system. He jogged across the road and, after glancing around for non-existent traffic, in effect making sure he wasn’t being watched, he ducked under the open garage door before it automatically closed, trying to look like Khouri’s jogging companion returning home.
The one thing he couldn’t be sure about, and it was a realistic possibility, was if anyone had been staying with Khouri the previous night. He was a well-known ladies man and, if Robinson believed everything Schofield had written about him, he was not averse to using some of his charms on his own clients. By all accounts Schofield’s ex-wife, Rebecca, was a stunning woman in her day, and her continued visits to Khouri’s clinic, ostensibly to prolong her beauty, but also to receive some of the celebrated surgeon’s other treatments.
He opened the door between the garage and the kitchen and heaved a sigh of relief: the silent air wasn’t spoiled with the cheep-cheep of an alarm system, before it could take a deep gulp and bellow its concern to all and sundry in the neighbourhood. In addition, only one place was set at the breakfast table, a part-eaten slice of toast with some strange brown spread on top, beside it a half-full mug of coffee.
In common with what he’d seen outside, the inside of the house had all the warmth and feel of a building site show home. The kitchen looked stunning, all black marble and matching appliances, but the shiny equipment didn’t look much used, and the minimalist furniture in the lounge didn’t look like it had ever been sat upon. The pictures on the wall were strange, not bad in what they depicted, but they failed to evoke any emotion, as if purchased from a set designer warehouse.
One by one, he searched each room. In truth, he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but if Khouri was engaged in a vendetta against Schofield, he imagined it would leave some evidence. It could be in the form of a scrapbook or a folder of newspaper cuttings, anything to confirm his suspicions: that Khouri’s hatred of Schofield was deeper and more venomous than he’d conveyed to Robinson.
He climbed the stairs. Unlike staircases in older houses, where carpeted steps would hide all manner of squeaks and creaks, these were open and unadorned. The only sound he made was the dull tap of his trainers while the whole staircase swayed gently under his weight.
He checked the first three bedrooms, his heart was in his mouth as he pushed open each of the doors. He was half-expecting to see a sleeping woman, or one with her knees up and a questioning look on her face, not expecting her lover to return so soon.
He entered the main bedroom, occupying one end of the house, and gasped at its size and opulence. Through huge sheets of floor-to-ceiling glass, there were stunning views over the back garden, the rooftops of his neighbours, and the sea in the distance. At the opposite end of the room, no spectacular views but a sumptuous en-suite bathroom. He hesitated, not sure if the acres of glass would make it easy for someone to see him from outside, but he needn’t have worried. The house wasn’t overlooked at the rear, and large trees masked his presence at the front.
He opened a door at the end of a long line of fitted wardrobes. It was similar in colour and shape to the others, but around the handle there were more marks, suggesting it had been used more often. It led to a small anteroom, perhaps a dressing room, and what he saw inside made him gasp. Moments later, he heard the sound of a car approaching.
With his heart racing, he ran to a window and looked out. It wasn’t Khouri returning, or the police investigating, but a neighbour, back from the shops with morning rolls and a newspaper. He returned to the ‘den’, pulled out his phone and photographed its contents, paying particular attention to a section on the rear wall.
He put his phone away and headed for the stairs. Reaching the bottom, he heard the unmistakable sound, even to a non-car nut, of a high-performance engine as it decelerated. Robinson stood in the hallway and listened, waiting for the garage door to open. He felt trapped. He had all the evidence he needed to snare this monster, but he couldn’t think of a way of getting out of the house.
He then spotted the key sitting in the front door lock. He waited until he heard Khouri open the driver’s door of the Porsche, before turning the key and pulling open the front door. He closed it quietly behind him, took a deep breath, and started running the opposite way he’d come, as it wouldn’t be a good idea to run past the open garage. To neighbours, perhaps more vigilant than in other areas as people around here had more to steal, he hoped he looked like Khouri’s house guest heading out for a run.
He kept the illusion going for as long as he could, despite his lungs, legs and brain screaming for him to stop. He ran along Mallory Road and turned left onto Woodruff Avenue. By the time he reached the halfway mark along Shirley Drive, he stopped and remembered why he hated running. His breath was coming in short gasps, and his legs felt like jelly, as if they couldn’t support his body. The shoes were chafing his toes, and his chest ached, making him fearful he was about to have a heart attack.
He vowed when he reached home he would put all the gear he was wearing in the bin. If his flat had been equipped with an open fire he would light it and take pleasure at adding each item to the flames, so that if he ever felt the notion to take up running again, the idea would be strangled at birth.
There were numerous routes he could take to go home, just as well, as he didn’t want to go back the way he had come. He was walking along Wilbury Gardens when he heard a car behind him slow down. He looked ahead, but couldn’t see any obstructions or traffic lights. He turned and was shocked to see the blue Porsche 911 belonging to Hassan Khouri.
It stopped in front of him and the passenger door swung open.
‘Get in, Trevor.’
‘No. Why should I?’
He was about to run off when he saw the gun aimed at his midriff.
‘I said, get in.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Henderson drove into work listening to a politics debate on Radio 4’s Today programme. He often wondered if this surfeit of political debate which dominated the discussions most mornings reflected the interests of the common man, or was something more commercial at work? The news desks of radio, television, and newspapers were all located in London, close to the House of Commons and most of the main offices of state. Wasn’t it simply too cheap and easy to send a radio car a few streets away and talk to a government minister, than to cover a more interesting story in far-flung Barnsley or Hull?
After visiting Clare Mitchell in hospital on Saturday morning, he had spent the rest of the weekend with Kelly Jackson. They’d enjoyed long meals and lengthy walks, punctuated with quieter times as she marked student exam papers and he watched football on television. It was the perfect antidote to a murder investigation, leaving his mind clearer and brimming with optimism, and his body full of energy.
Before heading to his office, he walked over to the staff restaurant for coffee and something to eat for later on. Coming out after a few minutes, carrying his purchases, he saw his boss, Steve Houghton. With nowhere to hide this time, Henderson walked over in his direction.
‘Morning Angus.’
‘Morning Steve.’
‘I’m getting a lot of heat about the arrest of Raymond Schofield. I’m sure you’re aware he’s a pillar of the community.’
‘I remember you telling me, but you’ve seen the evidence.’
‘I know, I know, but it doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it. Plus, he’s beaten the charge before, who’s to say he won’t beat it again? If he does, he will make us look foolish and, with some justification, probably sue us for harassm
ent.’
Henderson shook his head. ‘He won’t beat it this time. Not a chance of it. The CPS are happy with the evidence.’
‘What about our dead lawyers? Does any of it land on Schofield?’
‘It may or may not. We’re still trying to track down his man, Pete Hammond. We know he entered the offices of Jonas Baines to steal documents, what we don’t know is if he did it during the day or night.’
‘Well, keep me posted,’ Houghton said, his face stern.
Henderson walked back to his office in thoughtful mood. Houghton was the boss and he had to respect his opinion, but it seemed to him the Chief Inspector was more concerned with the public edifice created around Schofield than any dirty dealings he had enacted to get there. The ‘jewel in the crown’ of his empire, according to the financial press, was the health clubs, but this was built in part with the business he bought from Allan Blake’s widow, after murdering its owner, following his refusal to sell.
He took a seat in his office and opened the top of his coffee cup. One sip in and Walters appeared.
‘Morning gov. How are you? Had a good weekend?’
Henderson gave her a potted account of his weekend, starting with his visit to see Clare Mitchell, which he had already phoned the DS about, and then his trip to Kelly’s bolthole in East Hoathly.
‘I had a date with a new man on Saturday night, and we went out for a pub meal on Sunday afternoon. Near you in East Hoathly, as a matter of fact.’
‘Have you come into my office just to be sociable, or was there something else?’
‘Oh yeah. I came to tell you we’ve tracked down Pete Hammond.’
‘Where is he?’
‘At a house in Northgate, Crawley.’
‘Good. I would normally say collar a couple of detectives and instruct them to pick him up, but after the conversation I had with Clare Mitchell on Saturday, I think we might need to be a bit more cautious. Call Crawley, ask them for a car with at least two officers, and we’ll take a couple from here. We’ll head out in about half an hour. That should give you enough time to get it organised.’