by Iain Cameron
‘What d’ya think I’ll get? My brief thinks about eighteen months, maybe less. Victimless crime, he says.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Insurance will pay up.’
Henderson shook his head. ‘The phones your supplier has been nicking are, in the main, owned by young people who are unlikely to be insured, and then there’s the hassle you’ve caused them. Some people put their lives on these devices: photos, contacts, music, texts. It takes time and considerable effort to put it all back. Who says it’s victimless?’
‘I suppose.’
‘I think eighteen months sounds a bit optimistic. The judge might be tempted to make an example, given the spate of violent motorcycle phone thefts in London.’
‘I was thinking that as well. I do read the papers, you know.’
‘Well, it was good talking to you, Brian; it’s such a shame it wasn’t in better surroundings.’
‘Aye, it could use a lick of paint, and maybe the addition of an en-suite toilet.’
‘I’ll mention it to the custody sergeant. Would you like me to contact Simon Radcliffe and tell him your current whereabouts?’
‘Could you? I didn’t want to waste my one and only phone call talking to the likes of him.’
Henderson turned to go.
‘Talking of Simon Radcliffe,’ Faulkner said. ‘If I tell you something about him that might help you with your murder case, would you put a good word in for me with that fat cop with the red snozzle who arrested me?’
**
Henderson and Vicky Neal were driving north on the A23. This being Saturday, the roads were twice as busy as they were during the week. He had a lot of sympathy for the driver of the ambulance roaring down the lane on the opposite side of the road. If they were heading to the Royal Sussex in the centre of town, they’d have to negotiate hordes of pedestrians trying to cross the road, and cars sitting bumper to bumper in order to get there.
Vicky Neal had been to see Lara Beech’s sister, Karen, the day before, and was recounting the key points of their meeting.
‘Were Lara and Karen close?’ he asked.
‘Very. They spoke every two or three days by phone, and at weekends on FaceTime, mainly so Lara wouldn’t lose contact with her two nieces.’
‘What did she think of John and Lara’s relationship?’
‘She said Lara had been unhappy for the last two years. John it seems, became insular when Kayleigh left home, and they didn’t have much to say to one another at meal times.’
‘Surprising for two obviously educated people, but it’s a familiar story. When they have kids, especially those who are a bit high maintenance–’
‘Show me a teenager who isn’t.’
‘–they spend so much time dealing with their problems, taxiing them to parties, talking to their teachers, that they often forget how to speak to one other.’
‘It’s what Karen thinks happened to Lara.’
‘So, when this neighbour we’re on our way to see, Oliver Lee, comes along and shows her a bit of attention...’
‘Yep, although Karen didn’t make it sound like a short-term fling to brighten up a dull life. She says the trip to Black Quarry Farm was John’s attempt at rekindling a spark, but Lara was intending to use the time, off-piste as it were, with no chance of being interrupted by anyone, to ask for a divorce.’
‘She was intending leaving John for Oliver Lee?’
‘Yep.’
‘This might be an old-fashioned view, but there must be a big difference in age. You told me Lee’s retired and I know Lara was forty-five. Did she like older men or was she using him as a crutch until she got her life sorted out?’
‘He took early retirement, apparently, so maybe he’s not so old.’
Twenty minutes later, they turned into Milton Mount and, a few minutes after that, were seated in Oliver Lee’s study, a dull room at the front of the house. It was decorated with striped wallpaper and furnished with a dark walnut desk and matching bookcase. The only nod to modernity was the Apple MacBook on the desk.
It wasn’t a large room, but the three of them managed to squeeze inside. Henderson suspected they were in there so he could keep the discussion away from his wife and daughter, who were sitting outside in the back garden, sunning themselves.
‘What do you do, Mr Lee?’ Henderson asked.
‘I used to be an insurance broker with a firm in London. I was eased out last Christmas, early retirement they called it, and I’m now enjoying the fruits of my labours.’
‘Does your wife work?’
‘Yes, and so does my daughter. It’s just me here most of the week.’
‘Don’t you get bored? You don’t look so old, and this appears to be a quiet area.’
Lee wasn’t a bad-looking guy. He had a full head of fair hair, flecked with grey, and his skin looked unlined. He was slim and wore close-fitting clothes, perhaps off-the-peg, but the quality indicated a stylish men’s shop or boutique.
‘I’m fifty-four. I’d intended retiring at fifty-five, so when I got kicked out, it caught me a bit on the hop, but sometimes these things are a blessing in disguise. As for living here, you’re right, there’s not much activity during the day except the occasional Amazon and Ocado deliveries, and I seem to be the go-to man if anyone is out when they come. I volunteer at a charity shop two days a week and I have my hobbies. I spend a fair bit of time on social media and, a few months ago I started a blog. Retired and Thriving, I call it.’
‘How did you get on with the Beeches?’
He paused for a moment, considering his response. ‘All right, I suppose. They were our next-door neighbours, after all, so it didn’t pay to fall out with them.’
‘Plenty do.’
‘I guess so, but this is a friendly area. We have quite a few social get-togethers and such.’
‘Is that how you got close to Lara?’
‘I’m not sure I like your tone, Inspector.’
‘Several witnesses have told us Lara was having an affair with a neighbour.’
‘And you thought of me? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘We don’t think it was you, Mr Lee, we know it was you.’
He stood. ‘I think you should go. This meeting is finished.’
‘Sit down, Mr Lee, and stop acting foolish. If you prefer, we can invite your wife to come in, and she can assess the truth or otherwise of your denials.’
Henderson was confident, in more ways than one. Lee wouldn’t walk out. To reach the door, he would need to climb over him, and then it would depend on Vicky Neal moving out of the way of the closed door her chair was blocking.
Lee resumed his seat and Henderson could see much of the stuffing had been knocked out of him. The detectives waited for him to speak.
‘You’re more right than you know,’ he said in a faraway voice. ‘We were sitting beside one another at a long table to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of John in number twenty-seven. We talked for hours, and at one stage she put her hand below the table and clasped mine.’
Henderson drank his coffee, watching the man over the Crawley Town mug.
‘She told me later it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. She’d been looking for an opportunity to show how she felt about me for ages.’
Lee went on to give them details of their affair, and how Lara was planning to leave John.
‘The trip to Black Quarry Farm was to tell John she wanted a divorce?’ Neal asked.
‘Yes. I couldn’t wait until they returned. Now she’ll never come back.’ He began to weep.
Five minutes later, the detectives walked out to the car. ‘I feel we’ve achieved something,’ Henderson said, ‘scored an item off the to-do list, but I don’t feel it’s moved the investigation forward one bit.’
‘You win some, you lose some.’
Henderson’s phone rang. He pulled it out and leaned against the car as Sally Graham came on the line.
‘Remember you asked us to check the list of
previous holidaymakers at Black Quarry Farm?’
‘I do. Have you found something?’
‘You bet we have, sir!’
SIXTEEN
‘I’ve conferred with my client and this is his final response to his wife’s offer, which he believes is more than generous. He agrees regarding Naomi keeping the car, the house in Purley, the shares in British Telecom…’
Charles Denier, the lawyer for Jude Garston, a property developer in the process of divorcing his wife, Naomi, droned on. With a sharp pencil Kayleigh tapped on the pad in front of her, but in her mind, she was ticking off the boxes. Denier, a hawk-like figure with a hooked nose and wayward dark hair that fell over his face, causing him to throw it back like a nervous tic, spoke in a monotonous South London drawl.
The four people involved in this divorce, Kayleigh and her client, Denier and his, were seated in the not unpleasant surroundings of the fifth-storey conference room in Astral Gardens in Redhill. Known locally as Ledbetter Tower, as the law firm occupied all but the first two floors, it was an all-glass and steel affair with fabulous views over the town and, on a clear day, the South Downs in the distance.
Naomi and Jude were not admiring the view, drinking the excellent coffee, or sampling the pastries sourced from an artisan bakery nearby. Jude was too intent on taking as much of Naomi’s money as he could, and she was doing her best to stop him.
Naomi’s father, Stefan, once owned several large bauxite mines in Africa and South America, and at the age of sixty, he sold the lot to an Australian mining conglomerate for over one hundred and seventy million pounds. Two years later, the beer, rich food, and his love of chocolate caught up with him, and he dropped dead from a heart attack.
A month after Stefan’s death, his solicitor read out an incontestable will, the old man’s attempt to ensure his legacy wasn’t frittered away in paying the fees of rapacious lawyers. No charitable donations for him; his fortune was shared out among his immediate family members and a plethora of distant relatives, but by far the biggest slice, eighty million, was left to the love of his life, his only child, Naomi.
When Denier had finished listing his client’s position, Kayleigh gave Naomi a few moments to collect her thoughts before whispering in her ear;
‘He’s given you everything you wanted, Naomi. Well done you.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she whispered back, ‘but I want to make him suffer, for all the pain his affair with that bitch has caused me.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t go there. I’ve told you before, revenge is a dish best served cold, not when you’re glaring at your soon-to-be ex-husband across a conference room table.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘You’re clever, so be inventive and think of other ways you can get back at him later. Remember your father’s words about not wasting good money on legal fees.’
‘You of all people should not be reminding me of this.’
‘Don’t you worry, Ledbetter’s are rich enough not to need another day in court. No, I only want what’s best for you, Naomi, and my advice to you is to settle.’
‘You think so?’
‘It’s your decision at the end of the day, and you’re the one who will have to live with it, not me, but yes, I advise you to accept his offer.’
Her client paused, considering. Kayleigh felt tense, she knew it could go either way. Within ten minutes of meeting most clients, she knew what it would take to make them settle, but Naomi had been a hard person to read. It wasn’t because she was volatile, but once an idea had got into her head, it often became very difficult to dislodge.
She looked into Kayleigh’s eyes, as if searching for inspiration. ‘Tell him I’ll settle,’ she said.
The relief on Denier’s face when she told him the news was palpable, making her think Naomi’s former husband was as bad as Kayleigh’s client had painted him. It wasn’t uncommon for warring couples to smear their partners with the thickest treacle they could find, leaving Kayleigh in shock when at last meeting the other party, the vision in her head the opposite of the person standing in front of her.
Ten minutes later, after saying goodbye to a smiling Jude and his solicitor, and conducting a short conference with her client, Kayleigh returned to her office to complete the paperwork. She spent the next hour working her way through Naomi’s divorce papers and a few other items before leaving a series of folders in her out-tray, legal forms and petitions to be completed by one of the paralegals.
At lunchtime, and with nothing in her diary until three, she would often sit at her desk and munch her way through a rice and three-bean salad, one she’d prepared in the morning, eschewing the decent staff restaurant two floors above. She wasn’t a sociable person and couldn’t do with all the small talk which often settled on school fees, cars, or golf.
A previous boyfriend, the only serious one she’d ever had, used to tease her for shunning parties and social events, and yet in court she would come alive and dazzle clients with her performance. Kayleigh believed lawyers like herself were no different from actors. In the office, she pushed paper and attended meetings, and like everyone else, feigned interest and often found it hard to feel motivated. Court was the place where the real work was done All around were her audience; she knew her lines and understood how best to express them for maximum impact.
She ignored the Tupperware box in the drawer of her desk, picked up her car keys, and walked along the corridor to the lifts. When one arrived, she took it down to the basement car park. She got into her car and drove south towards Crawley. She wasn’t going home; there was something else she needed to do which she could no longer put off.
She turned on the radio. It was tuned to Radio 4, but already feeling melancholy, she had no wish to hear how a couple’s dream holiday had been ruined by salmonella, why people who didn’t put the right things into their recycle bins, or whether shop-bought guarantees were worth the money, she changed it to Radio 3. She had tuned in part-way through a long symphony, giving her an opportunity to while away the journey playing Name That Tune.
As she drove past Gatwick Airport, she guessed Mahler. By the time she drove into the road where her parents’ house was located, the announcer confirmed it: Mahler’s Symphony Number Two, ‘Resurrection.’ She had the CD at home, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
Her cheer at hearing a familiar and well-loved piece of music faded as she got out of the car and stood in the driveway looking at the house where her parents used to live. It took her a moment to realise why it didn’t look any different. Having experienced such a catastrophic event, she expected the walls of the house to be peppered with bullet holes, the windows to be smashed, and the garden to resemble a building site. The murder hadn’t happened here and she doubted she would be standing in this position if it had.
She took a deep breath and walked towards the front door. She turned the key and headed inside, the familiar smells of wood and furniture polish assailing her nostrils as she strode down the hall to silence the alarm.
She keyed in the code and made her way back to the front door. She closed it and picked up a pile of letters lying there. Some had already been placed on the hall table by the detectives who had paid a visit shortly after the slaying. What they had expected to find, she didn’t know, but judging by the abject progress of the investigation, it wasn’t much.
She put the letters in her bag. Job one done. The next task she had set herself was to review all the furniture and equipment in the house, and think how it could be best disposed of. She knew, more or less, the house contents, as she had lived there until four years ago, and visited her parents at least once a week since.
What she wanted to do now was clear the house, have it redecorated, then sell it. She didn’t feel in any way sentimental about doing so, even though she had spent over ten years living there. It was her parents’ house and now, a month after the killing and a week after the funeral, she couldn’t leave it or liv
e in it, and allow the place to take on the atmosphere of a mausoleum.
She walked into the kitchen. The holiday company where her mother had worked employed over three hundred people, many of them young, who would talk to her about job issues, contract disputes, and their fears for the future. In addition, she also had to deal with mental health problems, crew members assaulted by passengers, and a pilot accused of murdering his wife.
Despite this, she had somehow managed to maintain a normal home life, especially at weekends when she loved to cook and bake. This was her domain and it bore her presence everywhere, from the reminders on the chalkboard hanging from the wall, to her quirky choices of coffee on the Nespresso capsule stand. Kayleigh decided she would sell most of the equipment, like the Kitchen Maid and Krup coffee machine on eBay, not because she needed the money, but she would derive satisfaction from knowing someone else would have the use of it.
Her father’s study still bore the scent of the after-shave that he wore every day, working or not. They all called this place his study, but he only came here to read the newspaper or surf the web on his iMac. Due to Galen’s obsession with security, the company discouraged home working, as this would involve the copying and removal of sensitive material from the building.
As a child, she had been taken in by all his secret squirrel stories, and for many years believed he was a spy, as daring and ruthless as James Bond. When she found out the truth, she wasn’t disappointed and now in her own line of work she often came across people who over-egged the role they performed.
She left the lounge and climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. Opening the double-wardrobe in the main bedroom, she sifted through coats and dresses, looking for anything that would perhaps suit her, but the rest, including her father’s good suits, would be donated to a charity shop. She wiped a tear away with disdain. The time for tears was past.
She walked downstairs, realising the task she had set herself would be more difficult than she’d first imagined. It wasn’t a simple case of inviting a house clearer or a charity shop to come and take the lot. Each item, from the toaster to the television, the computer to Daddy’s study chair, was imbued with a catalogue of memories.