Careless Love

by Robinson, Peter

  ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Would you be likely to know?’

  ‘There are all kinds of scholarships around. I can’t say I always pay as much attention as I should to departmental memos and the like, even if they sent me one. I can’t say it surprises me though. As I said, she was a bright student.’ He paused. ‘But I like to think she would have told me about something like that. If she’d been her old self she would have been excited, and I’m sure she would have told me.’

  ‘Could being free of money worries have affected her work?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. Made her feel she had to give more in return? Or the opposite – feel that she could kick back and relax a bit. Have fun. She’d have more money to go drinking or clubbing, shopping, do other things. Things that might distract her from her studies.’

  ‘I suppose it’s a possibility. But, as I said, I know nothing of this scholarship, or what she did in her own time. You’ll have to check with the bursar’s office about the money.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone Adrienne might have confided in?’

  ‘Neela, perhaps. Neela Mitchell. They were very close. Best friends.’

  It was one of the names Winsome had already picked up from the phone calls and emails. ‘Do you know her address?’

  ‘Yes. She was in the same tutorial group as Adrienne. I needed her details in case I had to get in touch.’ Stoller walked over to his filing cabinet and pulled out a folder. ‘Should I be giving you this information?’ he said. ‘I mean, isn’t there some sort of confidentiality rule?’

  ‘Professor Stoller,’ said Winsome, ‘a suspicious death usually trumps confidentiality, but if you insist, I can go and get a court order.’

  ‘No, no. I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to be difficult. I gave your colleague Adrienne’s address. I just don’t want to get into trouble.’

  ‘Believe me, you’d be in much more trouble if you didn’t tell me what I want to know. Besides, we have this Neela’s phone number and email address already. You’ll just be saving me a little time. If you wouldn’t mind, sir?’

  ‘You said “suspicious death”,’ Stoller said. ‘I thought she’d committed suicide? Are you saying now that you suspect foul play, that someone might have done this to her? Do you think Adrienne was murdered?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything of the kind, and I’d be very grateful if you wouldn’t go around repeating that to anyone else. Suspicious means there are unanswered questions, that’s all. We like to dot our i’s and cross our t’s, just like you academics.’

  Stoller gave her Neela Mitchell’s address. ‘I don’t know if she’s still there, though,’ he said. ‘She was very upset when she heard the news about Adrienne. She came to see me, and I recommended counselling. We have an excellent centre here on campus. She may even have gone home to her parents.’

  ‘I’ll take it from here, sir, don’t worry. Thanks for the address.’

  Stoller nodded, sat down again and rearranged the papers on his desk. At least he wasn’t playing the busy card, trying to get rid of her, Winsome noticed, the way a lot of professionals tend to do with the police. ‘Do you happen to know if Adrienne was on any prescription medication? Was she taking antidepressants, tranquillisers, sleeping pills, anything like that?’

  ‘Good Lord, I don’t think so. I doubt it. Not Adrienne.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘I never saw any signs.’

  ‘Would you have recognised them if you had?’

  ‘We’ve had seminars on the problem of drugs on campus, so I know a few of the things to watch out for. I saw none of them in Adrienne’s case. At worst, she was sometimes overtired in a morning, but I just assumed she’d been up working late. Otherwise she always seemed perfectly normal to me.’

  ‘Did she go clubbing, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Again, I wouldn’t know. At a guess, I’d say she did about as much and no less than most of the girls, which wasn’t excessive. Dances, pub nights, that sort of thing. Young people need to have fun as well as work, DS Jackman.’

  ‘I know that, sir. It wasn’t so long ago.’

  ‘I . . . I . . . didn’t mean . . . Which university, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  Winsome smiled. ‘Not at all. Birmingham. And I studied psychology and criminology. So you saw no signs of excessive clubbing, drug-taking or binge-drinking, just Adrienne being tired occasionally from a late night’s working?’

  ‘As far as I know. I mean, I assumed it was work, but she may have been out dancing late. Where’s the harm in that?’

  ‘There isn’t any, as far as I can see. Is there a doctor or a student clinic on campus?’

  ‘Yes. A very good health centre. But they won’t tell you any-thing, of course. I know doctors are bound by confidentiality.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll tell me,’ Winsome said. ‘That sort of thing only happens on television.’

  ‘But patient confidentiality—’

  ‘Is all very well and good, sir. While the patient is alive. I’m afraid that all bets are off now.’

  Stoller hung his head. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Ever heard of a Colin Fairfax?’

  Stoller’s brow furrowed. ‘No. I can’t say as I have.’

  ‘He wasn’t a student?’

  ‘Certainly not in this department, or I’d remember.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Adrienne? Anyone else I should talk to?’

  ‘Neela would know far more about her other friends and her social life in general.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her. Thank you very much for your time, Professor. You’ve been most helpful.’

  ‘I have? It’s a pleasure. I . . . I mean . . . I’m only too glad to help. Poor Adrienne.’

  Winsome scribbled a few more notes in her book, but all it really amounted to was that Adrienne had seemed a bit more tired and distant than usual this year, but that her work hadn’t suffered seriously yet because of it. That and the mysterious scholarship. She hoped Neela Mitchell would have a bit more useful information to tell her. Or Colin Fairfax, when they tracked him down.

  For now, it was time to get back to the squad room and do a bit of work on the computer. The rest could wait until tomorrow morning.

  5

  ‘Laurence Edward Hadfield,’ said Gerry as she and Annie hurried down to the police garage to sign out a car. ‘The cleaning lady’s waiting for us there. Her name is Adele Balter. She’s fifty-three years old, been cleaning for him for going on ten years now. Here, I pulled a picture of Hadfield from LinkedIn.’ Gerry passed her a thin file folder and Annie paused to examine it. An Internet image of Hadfield sat next to her father’s interpretation of Peter Darby’s crime-scene photograph. ‘Doesn’t it look like the same person?’

  Annie agreed that it did.

  Gerry drove, heading east out of town on the main dale road, and Annie relaxed in the passenger seat. It was Friday morning, and she was planning to attend an ex-colleague’s surprise fortieth birthday party in Ripon that evening. It promised to be quite a blowout, but with any luck, she would have a couple of days to recover. Weekends were notoriously slow in investigations, and unless there was an urgency or some sort of time factor involved in the case, most detectives tended to do what everyone did and take the weekend off. Either that or catch up with the paperwork.

  ‘Hadfield’s sixty-six years old,’ Gerry went on, from memory. ‘A banker by profession. Runs a private investment bank in the City. Or ran. He’s semi-retired, or whatever you call it when people like him hand most of the work over to others. He’s had his little hideaway in North Yorkshire for twenty years. It’s called Rivendell. He spends most of his time up there these days, but he still keeps a flat in Mayfair. Got his OBE eight years ago. Reputed to be extremely wealthy. No number, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, you certainly don’t get poor running a private investment bank,’ Annie commented.

  ‘Might make a fe
w enemies as well,’ Gerry said.

  ‘Now, now. You know what the super said. Let’s not go seeing a murder where there’s no evidence of one. We don’t even know if he’s our man yet for certain.’

  ‘But it is all pretty dodgy, you must admit, guv. Reported missing around the same time we find an unidentified body of a male in his sixties dressed in an expensive business suit.’

  ‘Dodgy, yes. Murder, no. Not yet.’

  Soon they had left the last housing estate behind and passed an area of allotments, dotted with ramshackle garden sheds, where in summer men worked their little strips of earth with their sleeves rolled up, or sat having a smoke and a chat beside the vegetable patch. Today, the allotments were deserted and bleak even in the winter sunlight. Ahead of them stretched The Leas, where the valley bottom widened and flattened and the river meandered through meadows made unseasonably green by the recent rains. Beyond, on the opposite side of the dale, they could see Lyndgarth high on the valley side, beside the ruins of Devraulx Abbey.

  ‘Well connected, by all accounts,’ Gerry went on. ‘Politicians, financiers, managing directors, that crowd. Even a rock star and a footballer or two. Liked mixing with celebrities, apparently. Generous with his charitable donations. Oxfam, Save the Children, War Child and so on. Or at least he was until the scandals hit.’

  ‘Any form?’

  ‘None. Brought up in front of the Financial Conduct Authority once. Suspicion of insider trading, I believe. Never got beyond a preliminary investigation. No charges. That’s it.’

  Annie turned left at Fortford, by the Roman fort unearthed on the hill beside the village green, which still had its ancient stocks planted firmly at its centre. They had found a body there not so long ago, she remembered, and far worse had happened at St Mary’s, about half a mile out of the village, the previous winter. As they passed the church, Annie shuddered at the memory of the scene of the mass murder, bodies dead and wounded lying about the ancient country churchyard. Today it looked like any other innocent country church on a sunny day, except for the heaps of flowers by the lychgate. There were always flowers beside the lychgate now.

  ‘What about his family background?’

  Gerry flipped a page in her folder. ‘Parents deceased. Twin sisters, three years younger than him. Wife died three years ago after a long struggle with cancer.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Two. Son Ronald, age thirty-eight, following in father’s footsteps. Also works in the City. Lives in Hampstead with wife Olivia and two boys Rufus and Roderick, aged eight and ten.’

  ‘Poor sods,’ said Annie.

  ‘I know. I felt terrible when I lost my grandfather, even though we weren’t all that close.’

  ‘I mean their names. All the R’s. Wonder Olivia didn’t have to change hers to Regan or something.’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes. Well, with names like that they’d probably fit right in at Eton.’

  ‘Eton? Really.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Annie turned and flashed her a grin. ‘You said two children. Who’s the other?’

  ‘Daughter named Poppy.’

  ‘Good Lord.’

  ‘She’s the black sheep of the family,’ Gerry went on. ‘No banking for her. Went through a variety of jobs, played in a garage band for a while, tried acting but didn’t make the grade. There’s rumours of a couple of soft porn shoots. Hooked up with a bad-boy rocker, Nate Maddock – Mad Dog, they called him. Usual exploits. Drugs. Wrecked hotel rooms. Assault. Weapons charges.’

  ‘Weapons?’

  ‘Liked his guns, apparently, did Mad Dog.’

  ‘Liked?’

  ‘He’s dead. Two years back.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Drug overdose?’

  ‘How on earth did you guess that?’

  Annie looked over at Gerry and saw that she was grinning. ‘So what’s she up to these days, our Poppy?’

  ‘Nothing much. Gets an allowance from Daddy, makes the society pages occasionally, usually for getting photographed in some nightclub or other without her knickers. I get the impression she’s a sort of walking wardrobe malfunction. Got a supermodel for a girlfriend now. The latest accessory. All the rage. Nobody you’ll have heard of.’

  ‘Sounds like a barrel of laughs. I take it both offspring live in London?’

  ‘That’s right. I’ve already put a call through to the locals to get in touch with Ronald, see if he knows anything of his father’s whereabouts.’

  ‘And Poppy?’

  ‘Erm . . . well, according to Adele Balter, Poppy’s here already.’

  Annie’s eyes widened. ‘Is she, indeed? Well, how interesting.’

  ‘I can’t say Adele sounded too thrilled about it.’

  Annie drove on through the deep channel of the pass to the next dale south, taking an unfenced road to the south-west, not far from where she lived in Harkside. She then wound through some woods to the edge of the reservoir, easternmost in a chain of three, where Laurence Edward Hadfield’s house stood high on the northern bank. It was an ideal location, she thought, pulling up on the tarmac drive beside the house, which was hidden from the road by the woods, and faced south over the water to the rolling Pennine hills beyond. It was also far enough away from where his body was found that the officers making door-to-door enquiries hadn’t reached the area yet.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ she said, parking behind a shabby green Hyundai, in front of which a red sports car was parked diagonally. ‘Looks like Poppy got here before the char.’

  Perhaps mansion would be a better word than house to describe the place, Annie thought. Laurence Edward Hadfield had to be a wealthy man indeed. Instead of the usual Victorian gothic pile or Elizabethan extravaganza, this was an art deco construction with a large rounded front covering all three floors. Some of the windows resembled large portholes. Built of reinforced concrete, most likely, the whole place was clad in white stucco and looked a bit like an iced cake. It had two wings, one extending from each side, also round-edged, and a separate, more functional double garage. The house was far too large for one person and could have doubled as an apartment building, Annie thought, housing a whole village of Syrian refugees.

  They got out. Annie sniffed the air. It was fresh and cold. She could hear the reservoir, stirred by the wind, lapping against the bank below. Diamonds danced on the water’s surface. She heard the click of a door opening round the corner. ‘Right,’ she said to Gerry. ‘Gird your loins and let’s go and see how the other half live.’

  ‘Thanks for coming, Ray,’ Banks said after they had given their orders in the Black Bull in Lyndgarth. ‘And thanks for your efforts with Peter on the sketch.’ It was Friday lunchtime, and the pub was almost full, mostly with off-season tourists, who had parked their cars all over the village green. Banks was happy to have his familiar Porsche back, though it was looking distinctly old these days. Still, he’d never be able to afford a new one, so he would hang on to it until it fell apart.

  ‘You didn’t have to offer to buy me lunch to get me to meet you,’ Ray said.

  Banks smiled. ‘My pleasure.’ He raised his pint. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  They both sipped some Black Sheep bitter, then Banks smacked his lips and said, ‘Thanks for dinner the other night, Ray. It was great. Zelda’s a fine cook.’

  Ray’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know I made most of that meal?’

  Banks laughed. ‘I complimented you often enough about your cooking when you were staying with me. This time, you can pass on my compliments to Zelda.’

  ‘It’ll go to her head.’

  ‘Better than it going to yours.’

  Ray grunted. ‘So what is it you want to see me about? You want to argue Cipollina over Garcia or Kaukonen?’

  ‘No contest,’ Banks said. ‘Jerry wins hands down every time. But thanks for the Quicksilver. I enjoyed that. And the Donovan and Bridget St John. Haven’t listened to them in ages.’

  ‘I got the impress
ion that my wayward daughter wasn’t too impressed by the music. Or the evening.’

  ‘Annie’s musical tastes run the gamut of A to B. That’s Abba to Beyoncé. I’ve given up on her as far as that’s concerned. She puts her hands over her ears if you play Dylan. As for the other stuff, give her time, Ray.’

  ‘Of course. But what is it? Doesn’t she want me to be happy? Surely she can’t be feeling it’s disrespectful to her mother after all these years?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that, no. As I said, just give her time.’

  ‘Zelda was upset, you know, after you’d gone. She wants Annie to like her.’

  ‘So was Annie,’ said Banks. ‘With her it usually comes out as anger. Though I think she was more angry with herself than anyone else. Except me, maybe. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Their lunches arrived, two giant Yorkshire puddings filled with roast beef, vegetables and onion gravy. Perhaps not the healthiest meal around, but one of the tastiest, especially with a good pint to wash it down. The sounds of conversation and laughter rose and fell around them. Beyond the window, on the edge of the green, a group of ramblers with sticks and all the right Gore-Tex winter gear stood listening to someone giving them instructions.

  ‘So, what is it?’ Ray asked, after a bite of Yorkshire pudding and a swig of beer.

  ‘What we suggested to Zelda the other night, about trying to locate Phil Keane, or whatever his name is now.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I’d like you to tell her to stop, not to do it.’

  ‘You think she’ll listen to me?’

  ‘Make her listen, Ray. The man’s poison. He tried to kill me. Nearly succeeded. He’d have killed Annie, too.’

  ‘I know that. But you obviously don’t know Zelda. Once she gets her teeth into something she never lets go.’

  ‘I can understand that when it comes to the work she’s doing against the traffickers. But this isn’t her fight. And it’s too dangerous. Tell her to hand what information she has over to us, and we’ll pursue it through the proper channels.’