“Ach, man, you’re as bad as him. Ye think I’m going to walk into a young woman’s bedroom? Talk sense.”
“We’ll have to,” Joe told them. “I don’t think she’s there, and we have to be sure.”
The two men cast silent, frowning questions at him, and Joe told them of the missing car.
“Does she drive a Mini-Cooper?” he asked in conclusion.
“Yes.” Toby sucked in his breath. “If that bitch has hurt my father, I’ll—”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, eh?” Joe cut in. “I know it looks obvious but there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. She did leave the terrace early last night, didn’t she?”
“Not well, she said. Not well, my foot. She was getting ready to try do the old man in. Lucky he had that air horn with him.” Toby’s anger dissipated, and puzzlement crossed his face. “Hold on a minute. Where the hell did he get it from?”
“I gave it to him,” Joe said.
Although Alistair showed no emotion, Toby was instantly suspicious. “Now why—”
Joe cut him off. “The explanations will come later. For now, Toby, just trust me. Your father invited me here for a reason and I came prepared to ensure his safety.” Without waiting for Toby to press further, Joe threw his next question at Alistair. “The CCTV at the gate. Where’s the control centre?”
The manservant smirked. “Control centre? Where the hell d’you think y’are? NASA? You mean the DVD recorder. It’s in Doogie’s study.”
“Okay. Not much we can all do until the cops get here, so let’s get upstairs and see if Katya’s in her room. After that, we can take a look at it, and I need you two with me.”
“I’m not entering a young woman’s bedroom without her say so,” Alistair insisted.
Toby ignored him and concentrated on Joe. “Why should we be with you?”
“Her car isn’t there. She may not be there, but it could be that she is there and that someone – whoever attacked your father – also attacked her. With three of us there, we will know for certain that it isn’t one of us, and it can’t be two of us in collusion.”
“It’s a pity you didnae think of that before you sent me up there on my own,” Alistair complained.
“Yeah, well isn’t that what butlers are for? To carry the can. Lead on.”
Alistair did as he was bid and led the way followed by Joe and Toby, who took the opportunity to badger Joe.
“What the hell are you doing here, Murray? And what the hell are you playing at right now?”
“I’m following your father’s instructions,” Joe replied as they passed alongside the staircase then turned up the steps. “And a part of those instructions were that no one, no one at all, should know what I am and why I’m here.” He nodded at Alistair, “I was introduced as a friend, but he knows the truth… well, he knows part of it, but no one else does, and I’m not going to tell you. Not yet.”
They reached the landing and Alistair glared at Joe. “Stop talking outta yer head, man, and tell the boy why you’re here.”
Almost totally confused, Toby asked, “Is this to do with those killings at the Blackpool depot over Easter?”
“No. They only put your father onto me.” Irritated by the way Alistair had painted him into a corner, Joe heaved a sigh. “I’m acting as a private detective. Your father has been receiving death threats and they’re from someone in this house. He asked me here to see if I could point the finger.”
The younger Ballantyne was flabbergasted. “I… But… He never said anything.”
“He wouldn’t, would he?” Alistair observed. “You’re high on the list of yon fella’s suspects.” He aimed an accusing finger at Joe as ‘yon fella’ in question.
Toby ignored him. His voice managed to convey the correct amount of shock, indignation and disbelief all at once. “Why would I want to murder my father?”
“A good question, but one that we’ll leave for now,” Joe said. “Let’s have a look in here.”
Alistair knocked on Katya’s door. There was no answer and he stood back. “Which of ye is going in?”
Joe tutted, rapped on the door again, then turned the knob. “Not locked.” He pushed the door open and stepped into the room, ferreting around the near wall for the light switch. He found it, flooded the room with light, and looked around.
“It’s all right. You can come in. She’s not here.”
The room was tidy and spotlessly clean, but whatever personal effects Katya had, they had not gone with her.
Clothing had been left behind, as Joe discovered when he opened an old-fashioned, dark wood wardrobe, and found dresses, business suits, blouses hung in there. A check on the dresser revealed the drawers were still filled with her underwear.
At the bottom of the wardrobe, behind her shoes, Joe found a box file similar to those he had seen in Sir Douglas’s study. He took it out and read the label. Ballantynes – K.N. Joe guessed right away that ‘K.N.’ stood for Katya Nolan and that the files contained her research and/or her work so far on the family history. He flipped it open and was greeted by a stack of A4 sheets, the text neatly printed in double line spacing. He recognised it right away as a standard writer’s manuscript. Closing the box file, he tucked it under his arm.
“I need a look at this before the cops take it away. Come on. Let’s see this CCTV.”
Alistair led the way out of the room and back down the stairs, doubling back at the bottom. He paused and removed a key from a hook, and to Joe’s puzzlement unlocked the study door and led them in.
Nothing had changed from Joe’s earlier visit. Alistair moved to the rear of the larger workstation, and lowered the dropdown door of the display unit, revealing the CCTV set up inside. The monitor was blank and silent, and again Joe was puzzled. Alongside the monitor were a couple of recorders, one a hard disk setup if Joe was not mistaken, the second a DVD recorder.
“Can’t understand why it’s not switched on,” Alistair said, and pressed switches on the various elements.
The system came to life. The monitor, split into four equal squares, showed views of the front and rear of the house.
“There are other views,” Toby explained. “The front gate, for instance. But you have to select them from the menu.”
He picked up a remote control from the desk and aimed at the device Joe thought was a hard disk recorder. On pressing the correct key, the monitor all but blanked out, and a menu appeared. Joe read the selections on it.
Garages
Gates
House 1
House 2
House 3
House 4
Kitchen
Rear Yard
“Show me the gates,” Joe ordered and Toby did.
One corner of the main screen switched from its view of the rear of the house to the main gates, open for the ambulance and now waiting for the police. Using a fish-eye lens, the camera also looked a good way along the lane, but at this hour, there was nothing of any interest.
“All right,” Joe said. “You say you record everything?”
“Aye,” Alistair confirmed. “Twenty-four hours’ worth at a time, and if there’s anything we need to keep, we transfer it to DVD.”
“So let’s see some playback. Say three fifteen, when the old man was attacked. And I want to see the front of the house.”
Toby fiddled once more with the remote, and called up the recordings. Joe noticed a long band across the bottom of the screen. The greater part of it was coloured red, there was a small section in yellow, and the final quarter was green.
“The red is what has already been recorded,” Toby told him. “Yellow is the space reserved for the remainder of the recording, and the green is what’s left after the recording is complete. Dad understands it better than I do but all in all, the hard disk holds about three hundred hours of recording, and the machine uses about two hundred from the eight cameras every day.”
“Unless we save the recording, the machine resets
automatically at eight o’clock every morning,” Alistair added.
Joe was nonplussed. “And Douglas understands all this.”
“I told ye,” Alistair said. “He’s a born-again nerd.”
Joe invited them to find the particular recording. There was some delay while Toby started the playback, then paused it to insert the specific time they were seeking. To their surprise, the blank screen threw back the message No incoming signal.
“Try again,” Joe insisted. “But this time check it at about nine fifteen in the evening.”
Alistair and Toby exchanged suspicious glances, but Toby obeyed and there was another short delay while he put in the requested time.
This time the screen came alive, in four quarters, showing the same view of the car park as before, and as before, there was nothing happening, but Joe made mental note of the Mini-Cooper parked amongst the other cars.
“Nothing happening,” Toby said and aimed the remote at the machine.
“Leave it,” Joe barked, and Toby recoiled if he had been bitten. Joe smiled. “Just another couple of minutes.”
Three more minutes passed and then, without warning, the recording ended and the blank screen delivered the same message as before: No incoming signal.
Joe came under Alistair’s suspicious eyes. Toby was less sanguine. He stopped the recording and glared. “What the hell is going on here? How did you know it would stop then?”
“I didn’t,” Joe said with implacable calm. “But it didn’t take a lot of working out. Who’s missing?”
“Katya.”
“And what time did Katya leave us last night?”
Toby turned his eye up to the ceiling, straining to remember. “I think it was about half past ten.”
“That was when she bid us goodnight on the terrace,” Joe reminded them. “She wasn’t feeling well. Remember? But she’d already left once. She excused herself to visit the toilet at about nine fifteen. I guessed, rightly so as it happens, that she didn’t go anywhere near the toilet. She came here and stopped the video recordings.” He aimed his next question at Alistair. “When I was in here earlier with Sir Douglas, he used his own key to unlock the door. Is that spare always kept on the hook outside?”
The butler nodded. “Aye. Doogie prefers it like that. The only things of any real value in here are locked up in the safe. That aside, there’s nothing, and he could be outside on the terrace, yet need someone to come in here for something.”
Toby seethed. “And Katya would know that. She’s been working here long enough.”
Joe was listening with half an ear. He was thinking of the box file under his arm.
“And that’s another problem, Toby,” he said. “Turning off the CCTV system smacks of a planned operation, and the timing fits too closely for it not to be her.” He held up the box file and showed them the stack of neatly printed A4 sheets inside. “And yet, she’s disappeared and not bothered to take her work with her.”
Chapter Eight
By the time a further hour had gone, a team of police officers, most of them SOCOs, had descended on the house and begun work.
They were led by a uniformed sergeant named Nick Hollis who, after listening to Joe’s explanation of the missing woman, began taking statements from family members. Joe, eager to be away to the hospital to check on the old man’s progress, tried several times to get the sergeant to debrief to him, but he was given short shrift each time.
Toby had clamoured to be seen first, and the moment he had finished speaking to Hollis, he hurried from the house, jumped into his Aston Martin Lagonda, and left for the hospital.
With everyone gathered in the drawing room, some nodding back off to sleep, Joe took himself out onto the terrace, where the sun had just risen, casting elongated shadows across the dew-covered grass, and in the pleasant warmth of the growing daylight, he opened up Katya’s box file.
As he had noticed in her room, the upper documents consisted of sheet after sheet of the prepared manuscript. Lifting them out, he found research documents under them: photocopies of register office and parish registry entries backtracking the Ballantyne family to early 1900s. Beneath these, he found a plain brown A4 envelope stuffed with more documents, less neatly folded this time. And beneath that, he found yet another, much smaller envelope, which, when he checked it, contained a receipt from the Maitland Hotel in Manchester.
His curiosity at a peak, he took out both envelopes, placed everything else back in the file, opened the large brown and poured the contents onto the table.
His heart pounded when he studied the first sheet. It was a DNA report, exactly like the one Sir Douglas had shown him the previous day. The subject’s name, Rodney Asquith was printed across the top, and above the two columns detailing the alleles were Rodney’s name and Sir Douglas’s. But there was a marked difference between the two documents. The one Sir Douglas showed him confirmed that the old man was, indeed, Rodney’s father. This report said exactly the opposite.
Based on the DNA analysis, the alleged father, Douglas Ballantyne, is unlikely to be the biological father of the child, Rodney Asquith, because they do not share sufficient genetic markers. Of the genetic identity systems tested, 9 of 15 do not match.
The report then went on to detail the unmatched markers and concluded with a probability factor of 0%.
Putting the report to one side, Joe searched the other documents, further copies of birth certificates, copies of the solicitor’s correspondence, but his interest was taken with the final few sheets, a report from Katya, presumably intended for Sir Douglas.
I investigated the address given for solicitor Annabelle Immerman, and discovered that it was an empty office, and furthermore, no one at any of the nearby businesses had ever heard of Ms Immerman. A further call to Descant Laboratories indicated that they have no record of any dealings with Annabelle Immerman. I can only conclude that Mr Asquith and the unknown woman have colluded on this matter in an attempt to deceive Sir Douglas Ballantyne.
A police constable appeared at the French windows, and called to him. “Mr Murray? The sergeant will take your statement now, sir.”
“Right with you,” Joe replied.
Joe hurriedly stuffed the documents and the smaller envelope back in the A4 brown, and leaving it out, closed the box file. As he moved back into the house, he passed the envelope to Sheila, and muttered, “Here, look after that, will you?”
He crossed the room, placed the box file on the desk, and sat before Sergeant Hollis.
“Now, it’s Mr Murray, is it?”
“Yes, but before we go any further—”
“And what relation are you to the victim, Mr Murray?”
“None. I’m a friend. Look—”
“You’re just here for the birthday party, then, sir?”
“For God’s sake, will you shut up a minute and listen to me. It occurs to me that there are things here which don’t add up.” Joe had raised his voice so loud that everyone in the room tuned in.
“Mr Murray, when Detective Inspector Driscoll gets here, he will expect me to have statements from everyone so he can begin his investigations. That’s my concern at the moment. And any theories you amateurs may have can be passed to him.”
Joe refused to back down. “Listen to me. I was first into the old man’s room. I went straight to the window. I saw no sign of Katya’s car rushing out of the gate. And I know it was dark, but with the summer night light I would have spotted her if she was legging it up the drive.”
“What’s your point, Mr Murray?”
“We checked Katya’s room, and we know she isn’t there, but her clothing is. What’s more, she left this behind.” Joe patted the box file. “It’s her work. She didn’t leave the grounds as far as I could judge, and there are other rooms upstairs, and there are outbuildings which I don’t think have been checked yet.”
Hollis considered this. “So what you’re saying is, despite the fact that I put out an all-ports warning on her, based on y
our say-so, for all we know she could still be upstairs.”
“Or somewhere in the house and grounds, yes. It’s possible. I don’t think so, but we should check.”
“So why didn’t you mention this earlier when you told me she was missing?”
“Because I hadn’t thought of it,” Joe explained. “It’s only because I’ve been sat round here with my thumb up my bum that it occurred to me.”
Hollis clucked and ordered a constable to check the house top to bottom. “Someone told me you fancy yourself as a Sherlock.”
“Was it the same person who told you, you might make a good copper one day?” before Hollis could react, Joe pressed on. “My niece is a detective sergeant with Sanford CID. She knows me, she knows what I’m capable of, and she wouldn’t take kindly to you describing me as a Sherlock.”
“Right, well, let’s get your statement down, eh?”
With half his mind on the puzzle, Joe gave his statement, and at five thirty, he was finally free to leave. After securing directions to Burnley General from one of the SOCOs, and collecting the brown envelope from Sheila, he climbed into his car and hurried out of The Sorting House turning right for the village of Sabden.
So early in the day, the narrow and twisting roads were free from traffic, and less than twenty minutes later, with the envelope safely locked in the boot of his car, he joined Toby in the waiting area of A & E.
The younger Ballantyne looked tired and drawn, his forehead ceased with worry.
“Any news?” Joe asked.
“He’s still in theatre. They’re taking it steady because of his age. The surgeon did say they don’t know and they probably won’t know for another twenty-four hours. He’s lost a lot of blood and for a man in his mid-seventies, that can be critical.”
“I don’t know him well, but what I’ve seen is a tough and determined old trooper. I’m sure he’ll pull through.” Joe tried to sound optimistic, but he feared it came out more patronising.
“Why are you here, Murray?”
The decline from ‘Joe’, which he had been during the previous day, to ‘Murray’, as Toby addressed him now, was not lost on Joe, but he charitably allowed it without comment. “I told you. Your father asked for my help. When it came down to it, I was as much use as a chocolate teapot. That makes it personal. I wanna see the attacker brought to book.”
A Killing in the Family Page 9