The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

by Nick Louth

  ‘He was rich, detective constable, and he was Russian,’ Wolf answered. ‘Yes, the rich always have something to fear. These are not idle fears, as I think you know.’ He pointed to one of the nine images on the screen, which showed Kirsty Mockett, in Tyvek suit, crouching down on the balcony over an enormous pool of dried blood.

  ‘Death, Mr Hoskins, that is the reality.’

  * * *

  After they had carefully exited from the library and crossed the stone bridge, Wolf led the two detectives through a walled quadrangle towards the northern side of Westgrave Hall. They descended a set of stone steps to a substantial black metal door, with a fisheye lens camera. Wolf touched a fingerprint receptor, then pressed his eye to a small lens. The door clicked, and Wolf was able to push it open.

  ‘A lot of security you have,’ Hoskins observed.

  ‘Didn’t help, did it?’ Wolf said, ushering them into a long, low flagstoned corridor. Their footsteps rang as they made their way along the mediaeval passageway, following thick black cables and emergency lighting, which were the only concessions to the current century.

  ‘This is fourteenth-century bit of hall, which predates main building. There were places of worship here in pagan times,’ Wolf said. He tapped an old iron door. ‘This passageway leads to what you may call a dungeon. Oliver Cromwell’s men tortured Catholics here.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Gillard. The sarcasm was lost on Wolf, who gave him a peculiar stare.

  A little further on on the right, a modern steel door yielded to Wolf’s fingerprints, and opened out into a wood-panelled stairwell, sweeping upwards for three floors, thickly carpeted and lit by a magnificent golden chandelier high above. ‘Now we have entered the sixteenth century,’ Wolf said. He did not lead them up the stairs but across the stairwell, to another metal door. This required both iris sensor and fingerprints to open. Wolf showed them into a well-equipped, windowless but well-lit modern office with half a dozen workstations, a state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring system and an enormous paper shredder. A bearded young man sat at the far end of the room hunched over a laptop and exchanged brief greetings with Wolf.

  ‘This nervous centre of Westgrave Hall,’ Wolf announced.

  They took it all in. There was nearly as much kit there as Gillard had seen at British Transport Police’s London CCTV monitoring centre at Ebury Bridge, Victoria. Even for a stately home as big as this, it seemed completely over the top.

  ‘Your boss must have been a very worried man,’ Hoskins murmured.

  ‘Even the paranoid are allowed real enemies, as they say in my country.’

  ‘So is this where Volkov worked when he was here at Westgrave?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘No, no.’ Wolf found the notion amusing. ‘Had big office on the second floor with grand views. Still, all communication routed through here. Do you need to see big office?’

  Gillard looked at his watch. It was eleven a.m. and he still had witness interviews to conduct. ‘No, not right now. I’ve got to leave. Perhaps you can show Carl here how it all works.’

  Wolf sat Hoskins down in front of the CCTV monitors. The detective was familiar with the type of set-up, and soon found the master screen. It would take hours to check all the footage that had been recorded on the system from the time of the party through until six o’clock the following morning, but a quick run-through showed that what Wolf had said was correct.

  ‘We’ve got everything right through except the internal cameras at the library,’ Hoskins told Gillard. ‘There are four cameras, and they were turned off from four p.m. until we ordered them switched on again at two in the morning.’

  ‘Okay. Are there any external cameras around the library?’ Gillard asked Wolf.

  ‘Yes. Six, they give 360-degree coverage. I don’t think those were turned off.’ He checked on the master system. ‘Yes, they were on all evening.’

  ‘Good,’ said Gillard. ‘Carl, I want you to look through those from twelve hours before the attack to twelve hours afterwards. The killer must be on them somewhere.’ The confident prediction sounded hollow in Gillard’s own head. What if they’re not? He knew this was shaping up to be the most high-profile case of his career. Everything depended on him not missing anything, even the smallest piece of evidence. A crime scene this big, there were lots of ways to screw it up.

  * * *

  By late morning on Christmas Day, most of the remaining overnight guests had left the hall after passing across their contact details to police. A few important witnesses, increasingly impatient, were demanding to be interviewed immediately so they could go home to salvage what remained of the festivities. Most of them were waiting in the drawing room. Gillard had set up the adjoining Fitzroy Room for the interviews, where he had been shown to an eighteenth-century writing desk, at which Dr Samuel Johnson had once sat to pen part of his dictionary. One of the staff had covered the large desk with a foam rubber protector and a damask tablecloth. While Gillard set it up, Claire went out to the drawing room to select an interviewee. The cosy wood-panelled room resembled the lounge of some country hotel. A fire blazed in the huge hearth, and fresh coffee and sandwiches had been laid out on the low tables which separated the many leather padded wing chairs in which the guests were seated. Family liaison officer Gabby Underwood was there, talking to Anastasia, and behind them Wolf was talking loudly on the phone to someone in Russian, illustrating his conversation with emphatic hand movements.

  Dr Sophie Cawkwell was close by, Skyping her daughter on a laptop while the uniforms were upstairs searching her room. As Claire approached, she heard Sophie say: ‘Sorry, darling, Mummy’s got to go now. Yes, Mummy’s friend has gone to heaven. I am sad, yes. Very sad. Look darling, have a happy Christmas until I get there! Be good for Daddy, and I’ll see you later today. No dear, the police aren’t going to put me in prison. They just want to ask me some more questions about last night. Tell Daddy I’ll ring him later.’

  She terminated the call and immediately burst into tears. After a minute or two she rubbed her hand over her face, shuddered and stood up to face Claire. She was dressed in jeans, a mauve pullover and trainers. ‘I’d promised to be there for Christmas lunch, so Emily is disappointed of course. She’s only four. I’d really wanted to watch her opening her Christmas presents.’

  As a mother herself, Claire could understand the anguish of being separated from your child at such a time. She had done a little hurried research on the palaeontologist and TV presenter, which would have given plenty of scope for celebrity gossip if that’s what she was interested in. Dr Cawkwell was married at twenty-one, then widowed and wealthy at twenty-four. She had subsequently married a BBC producer, but the failure of the decade-long marriage had coincided with her rise to prominence and long overseas absences. The palaeontology series her independent production company had made, simply called Dig!, had now been sold in half a dozen nations, including Russia.

  ‘Now, where do you want me?’ Sophie asked.

  Claire escorted her through into the Fitzroy Room, and the thirty-yard walk to the desk. ‘We just want a little more detail on what you told us last night.’ She showed Sophie to the seat opposite Gillard and explained that they would try not to take too much of her time. ‘We know you must be very upset, it’s just that we have to find out as much as we can while all witnesses are still present.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘It’s been such a shock. I can’t get my head around it.’

  ‘We just want to go back to what you actually saw,’ Gillard said. ‘According to your initial statement you were on the bridge talking to Lord Fein and his wife Natasha.’

  ‘Yes. I’d gone out for a cigarette break. I’d been describing Lebyodoushka—’

  ‘That’s the name of the fossil, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, it means female swan. The baby is Molodoy, which just means kid. I’ve been describing how they were found to Maxim and Yelena, pointing out various features like the baby teeth on Molodoy, and the faint suggestion of fish vertebrae
inside the stomach of the mother. I mean it really is an extraordinary find, enough for National Geographic to commission a documentary from me. Then Sasha turned to me and said there was something he wanted to show the two of them. I assumed it was business, or maybe something to do with the divorce settlement he’d been working on, so I said I would step outside.’

  ‘And how long was that before the shooting began?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘I don’t know, a few minutes.’

  ‘How many cigarettes did you smoke during that time?’

  ‘Two. God! I’m supposed to be giving up. I just had a few quick puffs on each, honestly. Still, I guess it must’ve been a little bit more than ten minutes.’

  Gillard leaned forward. ‘Dr Cawkwell, whatever they were talking about could well have been very important. You said in your initial statement that they all seem to be getting along fine.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It was the first time that I’d met Yelena, and she was utterly charming, I have to say. I thought there might be hostility, you know, towards me, but—’

  Claire interrupted. ‘But she was now with Maxim Talin.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s massive emotional baggage on all sides. I got the impression that during the worst times Sasha could only be happy when he knew that Yelena was suffering, and vice versa. It’s as if the divorce case wasn’t just about money but about winning, doing the other side down. Schadenfreude, the German word, best describes it. Delight in the misfortune of another. During the first few months when I was dating him he seemed to want to show me off to the paparazzi.’

  Gillard smiled to himself. He could well imagine why a man, even a wealthy one, would want to parade a woman such as Sophie Cawkwell.

  ‘Whereas I wanted to keep it quiet,’ Sophie continued. ‘You don’t want to wear your heart on your sleeve. I mean I have friends on Facebook, and the moment they’ve met a new man my God it’s all there, all the details, pictures of the food from the restaurant. It’s all so bloody premature and public. Then after weeks of gushing about the guy it all goes quiet. And suddenly there’s a meme, capital red letters on a black background: All Men Are Bastards, or something similar. You can see why it happens amongst eighteen-year-olds, but these women are in their forties, for God’s sake.’ She sniffed and shook her head. A tear was sneaking out, and she wiped it away angrily.

  ‘Anyway, I thought Sasha was putting too much pressure on us as a couple in the early days. I thought the reason he was doing it so publicly was quite simply to enrage Yelena.’

  The detective chief inspector decided to draw her back to the events of the previous night. He asked her to describe what happened when she had heard the first shot. Her account was clear and precise, and coincided pretty much exactly with that given by PC Zoe Butterfield.

  ‘Sasha had bought me this beautiful dress, an iridescent blue,’ Sophie said. ‘Cost a fortune, and I had to rip it when it got trapped in the door. Poor Sasha.’ She sniffed heavily, and Claire passed her a tissue.

  ‘Were you aware of anyone else who had been in and out of the library earlier that day?’ Claire asked.

  Sophie shook her head. ‘I was there with Anastasia around lunchtime, we were planning how to photograph the fossil for best effect. Apart from that, I have no idea. I spent the afternoon getting ready. The early part of the party was so busy. I mean there were so many guests to greet, Sasha wanted me by his side, and then the snow carriage, the dancing and the skaters and finally the Beyoncé set, which was fantastic. I didn’t have a moment to go into the library.’

  ‘So why were you in there later on?’ she continued.

  ‘Sasha asked me to give a little bit of a tour, to explain to Maxim and Yelena all about the fossil. I was a bit reluctant. I’d had a few drinks, I just wanted a chance to relax, but it was easy enough in the end. Just ten minutes.’

  ‘What do you know about the relationship between Maxim Talin and Alexander Volkov?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘I know it goes back a long way. They were at the same university together. I think it’s fair to say they hadn’t always been friends.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Claire asked. ‘Apart from the link with Yelena.’

  ‘There’s always been a rivalry. I don’t know all the details, but Sasha made a lot of money through Yelena’s connections in Kazakhstan. He benefited a lot initially from political favours, because Yelena is the daughter of the finance minister. Talin’s decision to leave Russia put him on the wrong side of the Kremlin. I mean that happened to Sasha too, but it was a lot earlier in Talin’s case.’

  ‘After all that, do you have any ideas about who was behind the killing?’ Gillard asked.

  She blew a long sigh. ‘I’ve thought about it almost every waking moment since. It doesn’t make sense. The conspiracy theorists will always say the Kremlin, and God knows there are enough precedents for that, but from what I understand Sasha had made his peace with the powers that be, at considerable cost. They had no reason to kill him now.’

  ‘What kind of person was Sasha?’ Claire asked. They had agreed in advance to allow Sophie to vent her feelings towards the end of the interview.

  ‘He was the most wonderful man I have ever met. So passionate, so loving. He wasn’t one of these hard-nosed businessmen, always thinking about the money. He had some luck, and I suppose you could say he married well, at least financially, first time. But he wasn’t Machiavellian. He worked hard and played hard, and he would have made a great father.’ She stopped and her fingers strayed to her midriff. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.’

  Gillard and Claire shared a glance. That brief and almost unnoticeable caress told them Sophie was pregnant, or at least thought she might be.

  ‘How did you meet?’ Claire asked.

  ‘It was in 2015, when I was filming in Mongolia, which as you know is the site of many famous fossils. This particular excavation happened to be on the edge of one of the copper mines that his company owned, and he came down to see my team and me. He seemed utterly charming and was kind enough to provide us with a helicopter when we needed to move to an adjacent site. I kept in contact with him and things gradually developed. It was just a few weeks ago when he asked me to marry him…’ Her face distorted and sobs convulsed her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted out.

  Gabby had her arm around Sophie’s shoulders and passed her a tissue.

  Chapter Nine

  While Dr Sophie Cawkwell was being interviewed downstairs, three male uniformed constables unlocked the grand state room which she had occupied upstairs. They saw a magnificent four-poster canopy bed, an enormous ornate gilt mirror, mullioned windows that looked south over the main drive, and a beautifully painted rococo ceiling. The place was untidy. The bed was spread with clothing, a selection of women’s shoes was scattered on the floor, and a pink wheeled suitcase was lying open on a blanket box, a second nearby, closed. A table by the window held an array of gifts, many still partly in their wrapping paper. Sergeant Babbage had informed them that Ms Cawkwell had left the room exactly as it was and had been moved by Westgrave Hall staff into an adjacent bedroom to get a few hours’ sleep.

  ‘Right lads,’ said the oldest and most experienced, PC Jim Murray. ‘Remember anything you break you’ve bought, and most of the stuff in here will cost you your entire lifetime’s salary and pension.’ He quickly videoed the room from the door. His two young charges, PCs Chris Livermore and Richard Perrin, moved into the room and made straight for the ornate writing desk.

  ‘Do you watch Dig!? You know, her programme about fossils?’ Perrin asked Livermore. ‘Quite a fit bit of totty, for forty,’ he said.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Livermore as he removed the drawers from the desk. ‘Ah, I’ve got a purse here. Jim, what are we doing with these?’

  ‘Stick it on me square,’ Jim said, as he unfolded the white plastic sheet. He ferreted in his pocket and brought out a numbered plastic marker. The three officers worked methodically through the room. When Murra
y’s attention was distracted, Perrin snatched a pair of skimpy lace knickers from the open suitcase. He nudged Livermore, then waved them at him, grinning, and raised his eyebrows as he mimed pocketing them. Livermore just rolled his eyes.

  Murray peered at the gifts on the table. ‘Okay lads, leave this to me. Wow,’ he said as he raised a necklace on his latex-gloved finger. ‘Look at these jewels. Emeralds, I think.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Perrin, making his way over. The gems were each the size of a pea. ‘My missus would love these.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Jim, photographing the jewellery in situ. ‘It’s not for the likes of us. Ratners was good enough for my old lady when we married thirty years ago.’

  The two younger coppers exchanged a weary glance at the mention of the now defunct down-market jewellers.

  * * *

  The arrival of a coachload of uniformed policeman accelerated the pace of the search. They were given the same strict instructions as the original group, and very soon an array of electronic items were being carried in plastic bags to Vikram Singh’s evidence van. Periodically, Gillard would go up to see whether any particular room had yielded something of interest. The most common findings were various objects that had been left behind by overnight guests at the party: toiletries, clothing, jewellery and electronics. It was mid-afternoon and Gillard was just coming back from overseeing the search of the room occupied by Lord Fein when research intelligence officer Rob Townsend buttonholed him in the corridor.

  ‘I think you should see this, sir,’ he said, holding his mobile up to the detective chief inspector’s face. ‘It’s from Oleg Volkov’s Instagram page.’ Gillard glanced at the image of the son of the murdered oligarch. He was outdoors, wearing aviator shades, tight maroon leather trousers and a white leather waistcoat over his otherwise unclothed and very hirsute chest. His muscled arms were crossed, and in each hand was a pistol, one large and black, the other small and gold.