Suddenly at Home

by Graham Ison

  ‘It’s the truth. Honestly, that’s what happened, Inspector.’ Jones’s voice was reaching an almost hysterically high pitch of desperation now as he realized that Detective Inspector Ebdon was not susceptible to what he believed to be his irresistible charm.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think is the truth, Dennis,’ continued Kate relentlessly. ‘I don’t think you’ve known Richard Cooper for as long as you say. You knew he had a lot of money, that would have been apparent from the apartment he lived in; and having formed a homosexual relationship with him, he then tired of you. But you knew he was a rich man, probably with a good job, and you started to blackmail him. When he said that he wouldn’t pay any more and threatened to go to the police, you lay in wait for him in his flat, to which you had a key, and you murdered him. What did you do with the gun, Dennis?’

  Dennis Jones blanched and his jaw dropped at the magnitude of the allegation. He gripped the edges of the table, and for a moment Kate thought he was about to faint or be sick. ‘I wasn’t in any sort of relationship with Dick, and I didn’t kill him. And I don’t have a gun. I hate guns.’ His throat was now so dry with the fear that he was about to be charged with murder that he was able only to croak his reply. ‘Could I have a glass of water, please?’ he asked, still slack-jawed and sweating.

  Dave leaned across to take a plastic bottle of water from a shelf and handed it to Jones. ‘What d’you do for a living, Dennis?’ he asked, almost conversationally.

  Jones took a swig of water. ‘I’m a project manager in an advertising agency.’

  ‘And how old are you?’

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘You deny being in a homosexual relationship with Cooper, so does that mean you have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Not at the moment; we split up. But what has any of this to do with Dick getting shot?’

  ‘You just heard my inspector say she doesn’t believe you, Dennis, and neither do I. That means that we’re going to do a lot of checking. So, write down your date and place of birth, your full address, telephone number, your ex-girlfriend’s name and address, and finally the address of this defunct swimming pool where you claim to have first met Richard Cooper.’ Dave pushed a pad across the table and tossed a ballpoint pen on top of it, almost contemptuously.

  ‘And if I refuse?’ Suddenly Dennis Jones developed some spirit, but he was not the first man to underestimate Kate Ebdon.

  ‘I shall arrest you on suspicion of murdering Richard Cooper and you’ll be locked up in this police station while we make our enquiries the hard way.’ That Kate spoke quietly and calmly made her statement sound even more menacing. ‘And that could take a long time.’ However, it was all bravado; there was not a vestige of evidence that Jones had murdered Cooper, but Kate was going to make certain of it one way or the other.

  With a shaking hand, Jones wrote down everything that Dave had demanded and handed the pad back to him.

  ‘Seems to be everything we need, ma’am,’ said Dave, having scanned the details, and pushed the pad across to Kate.

  ‘That’ll do for the time being, Dennis,’ said Kate. ‘You will be admitted to police bail to return here in one month or sooner if we send for you.’

  ‘Just now you said you might want me to make a written statement.’

  ‘I’ve decided we don’t need one at this stage. We’ve got all the details on tape. We’ll see you another day to take a statement.’ Kate’s decision to take a statement later was intended to see if Jones’s subsequent version would be the same as the one that had just been recorded. Or whether there would be inconsistencies that pointed to his culpability.

  ‘Before you go, Dennis,’ said Dave. ‘You said you were delayed by an accident on the M4. Where was this?’

  ‘Near West Drayton, I think it was.’

  ‘What were you doing there when you live in Petersham and were on your way to North Sheen?’ Dave looked suitably bemused, as though he was trying to work out an intriguing puzzle.

  Jones hesitated for a few long moments and then said, ‘I’d been to Heathrow Airport for a conference with an airline about an advertising campaign.’

  ‘Write down the name of the company you visited and the person you saw.’ Dave pushed the pad back towards Jones.

  After some considerable thought, Jones eventually scribbled a name and a company address.

  Once Dave had arranged bail and escorted Jones from the police station, he returned to the interview room.

  ‘What d’you reckon, guv?’

  ‘He didn’t do it, Dave,’ said Kate. ‘He hasn’t got the bottle.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dave thoughtfully, ‘but I agree he’s a wimp. What the hell does a project manager do in an advertising agency anyway?’

  Kate laughed. ‘I used to work in an ad agency, Dave, and the answer to your question is not a lot.’

  I was back in the incident room at Belgravia when Kate Ebdon and Dave Poole returned from Richmond police station.

  ‘What did you make of Jones, Kate?’

  ‘He’s a galah, guv, and he chucked a nervy when I suggested he’d topped Cooper.’

  Dave made a great show of pulling out his diary and thumbing through it as if it was a pocket dictionary. ‘The inspector wishes you to know, sir, that in her opinion Jones is a fool and that he came close to a nervous breakdown when she suggested he had murdered Cooper.’

  ‘Thank you, Dave,’ I said, ‘but I’ve now got a fairly good grasp of Strine, as Miss Ebdon sometimes calls it.’

  ‘I’ll speak to you later, Sergeant,’ said Kate, attempting a serious rebuke, but she couldn’t maintain a straight face and finished up convulsed with laughter.

  It was around seven o’clock that evening by the time the rest of the team returned to Belgravia police station and assembled in the incident room.

  While the legwork had been going on out at North Sheen, Colin Wilberforce had been organizing the administrative side of the enquiry, a task at which he excelled. When it comes to paperwork, he is an administrative genius. Dave Poole, who describes himself as an action man rather than a desk jockey, once sarcastically commented that if there was a degree in origami Wilberforce would have achieved first-class honours.

  The computer that would record the details of day-by-day actions and draw together the disparate elements of a murder investigation had been set up. That comprehensive system would record the sequence of events, contain an index and facilitate the cross-referencing of all the information. Consequently, whenever any of us asked for a particular name or piece of information, Wilberforce would be able to produce it instantly. In fact, he’d have the answer to any query within minutes. And he always seems to make it appear effortless.

  But to interfere in his empire is a very dangerous thing to do, and that goes for everyone from the commander downwards. And God help the cleaner or the night-duty incident-room manager if ever Wilberforce arrives in the morning to find that so much as a pencil is out of place on his desk.

  It is said that no one is indispensable, but that may not be so in Wilberforce’s case. However, he seems to have no desire for further promotion, which somewhat selfishly I am pleased about. His family and rugby football seem to be all he wants out of life, and for that he is to be envied.

  No matter what fables you may have heard about the ‘paperless society’ that the advent of computers was supposed to have brought about, such a concept has yet to filter through to the Metropolitan Police. Consequently, Wilberforce had prepared lever-arch files in which to keep all the written statements that would inevitably be taken before we finished our enquiries and, it is to be hoped, had Richard Cooper’s killer in custody awaiting trial.

  And even if it wasn’t the Crown Prosecution Service demanding more and more unnecessary paper, our beloved commander most certainly would. He adores paperwork – seeks it out, in fact – and the more of it that comes his way the more he enjoys it. Given his propensity for charging headlong into indecision, ‘paper tiger’ is an apt descripti
on of him. To secure a positive direction from the commander is virtually impossible.

  ‘Could you find out if there was an accident on the M4 somewhere near West Drayton at about midday today, Colin?’ asked Kate Ebdon.

  ‘Certainly, ma’am.’ Wilberforce regarded a computer as a tool, nothing more, and if a pen and paper was quicker he’d use it. He certainly wasn’t like the IT enthusiasts who believe the world begins and ends on a computer screen, and that if the answer isn’t there then there isn’t one. He seemed to have contacts in all the right places and would cut corners by speaking to one of them in order to get the information he needed. Tapping a number into his telephone console, he spoke to one such contact in the traffic control room responsible for overseeing the M4. ‘No accidents reported, ma’am,’ he said, when he’d finished his brief conversation, ‘but traffic was slow-moving due to what the Black Rats call SWOT.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, Colin?’ demanded Kate, whose bemused expression indicated that she’d hardly understood a word he’d said.

  ‘The Black Rats are what the CID calls the traffic units, ma’am, and SWOT is an acronym for “sheer weight of traffic”. Or to put it another way, they haven’t a clue why it happened.’ Wilberforce had a wry sense of humour and would occasionally avenge Kate’s frequent use of Australian argot by using the more obscure Metropolitan Police jargon or even cockney rhyming slang.

  ‘Did you have any luck locating this redundant swimming pool that Dave phoned in about, Colin?’ I asked. ‘The one where Dennis Jones claims to have met the victim.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ A slight frown settled on Wilberforce’s face, as though he found the term ‘luck’ distasteful. In his case, luck didn’t enter into such enquiries. ‘As the witness said, sir, it’s ceased to exist and the site’s being redeveloped. I’ve given all the details to Dave. Unfortunately, the building firm’s offices are closed on Saturdays and Sundays.’

  ‘We’ll pay them a visit on Monday morning, Dave.’ I turned to Detective Sergeant Tom Challis. ‘Tom, the concierge told me that there are CCTV cameras all over Cockcroft Lodge, and even in the lift in Cooper’s block. He’s looking the tapes out and he said he’d give us a bell when they were ready for collection.’

  ‘Yes, guv, they’ve been picked up and I’ve been going through them. But he only had the past two weeks.’

  ‘Yes, he told me that’s all that was kept, but it should be good enough. I’ll have a look at them sometime tomorrow.’ I gazed round the incident room for DS Flynn, the ex-Fraud Squad officer. ‘Charlie, where are you?’

  ‘I’m here, guv.’ Flynn waved an arm.

  ‘I want you to look into Richard Cooper’s finances, Charlie. He’s obviously got a lot of money to be able to live in a place like Cockcroft Lodge. Find out where it came from, and if he’s given any large sums away and if so to whom.’

  Flynn nodded and made a note in his pocketbook. ‘Are you thinking fraud, guv?’

  ‘No, Charlie. From what Miss Ebdon suggested, I’m thinking blackmail. But until we know a bit more about his lifestyle and what he did for a living and who his friends were, we’ve not got much to go on. And that reminds me.’ I glanced across at DC Appleby. ‘John, liaise with Sergeant Wilberforce and do a birth search on Richard Cooper at the General Register Office in Southport. And while you’re about it, see if he’s married.’

  ‘I’ve done that already, sir,’ put in Wilberforce, ‘but without a date of birth we’re not going to get very far. There are literally hundreds of Richard Coopers in the GRO indices.’

  ‘What’ve you got lined up for me, guv?’ asked Kate Ebdon.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, if you would, take your team back to Cockcroft Lodge and do a thorough search of Cooper’s apartment. Documents, laptop computers, a passport. In fact, anything that’ll tell us more about this guy. And canvass all three apartment blocks to see if anyone knew Cooper or what he did, or whether he had visitors.’

  ‘Yeah, I know the drill, guv,’ said Kate, a little sharply.

  ‘Sorry, Kate. Of course you do. I’ll meet you there.’ I assigned tasks to Kate in exactly the same way as I would to any one of my officers. On several occasions she and I had been away on enquiries and it was, I suppose, an attempt on my part to counter any suggestion that we enjoyed more than a working relationship. The rumour mill of the Metropolitan Police works overtime.

  On one occasion recently, Kate and I had spent a couple of days in Paris in connection with a murder enquiry. In the evening of our stay we’d enjoyed a pleasant dinner at the apartment of my old friend Henri Deshayes, a commandant in the Police Judiciaire, and his charming wife, Gabrielle. Henri had been more than generous with the wine and, tough Australian though she is, I belatedly discovered that Kate couldn’t handle it. She had almost collapsed as we returned to the hotel where we were staying, and I half carried her to her room.

  There is no denying that she is a very attractive woman, but an intimate relationship would undoubtedly endanger our professional one, and that would have made our working relationship very difficult. It has happened between police officers of differing ranks before, often with disastrous results. If not work-related, certainly domestically.

  FOUR

  On Saturday morning, Dave and I joined Kate and the rest of team at North Sheen.

  To my surprise, Linda Mitchell was there too, but she was no longer wearing the shapeless coveralls and cap in which she was usually seen. It was a sure sign that there was now no risk of scene contamination. Instead, she was attired in a flattering grey trouser suit and heels, and her long black hair was loose. With her youthful figure and quirky sense of humour, I’d always thought of her as an attractive ‘girl’ rather than a mature woman – especially when, as now, she was out of her working gear – but to my astonishment I’d recently learned that she was a grandmother.

  ‘Linda and I are still going through the apartment, guv,’ said Kate, ‘but that’s the correspondence we’ve found so far.’ She pointed at the dining table. ‘I haven’t been through it thoroughly yet, but what I have seen looks pretty innocuous and seems to come from women.’

  ‘Jones claimed that Cooper said he was coming home for a change of clothing and to collect some papers connected with his job. Have you come across any work papers, Kate?’

  ‘No, none at all. However, the contents of the bedroom will probably interest you more.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. He has a wardrobe full of Savile Row suits.’

  ‘No, there are two or three off-the-peg lounge suits, but they were purchased in England, except for one that has a label in it that shows it came from a firm called Verbeke in somewhere called Ieper. Wherever that is.’

  ‘It’s better known as Ypres and it’s in Belgium, ma’am,’ said Dave, delighted at being able to tell the Australian DI something that he thought she should have known. ‘A lot of your countrymen died there during the First World War.’

  ‘What’s he doing with a Belgian suit, I wonder?’ I asked of no one in particular.

  ‘He might’ve visited there,’ volunteered Dave. ‘A lot of people go to see the battlefields and the cemeteries. I took Madeleine a couple of years ago.’ Madeleine was Dave’s wife, a principal ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet. She was petite and a foot shorter than her hefty husband. There was a rumour that she occasionally attacked Dave physically, but having met her I dismissed that story as canteen scuttlebutt, even though ballet dancers are pretty powerful physically. It seemed that Dave and Madeleine were as happily married as Colin and Sonia Wilberforce.

  ‘But more interesting than a Belgian suit,’ continued Kate, outwardly unimpressed by Dave’s brief history lesson, ‘were the handcuffs and restraints that we found stashed away in a locked cupboard. There was also some women’s clothing there, some of it quite kinky. And before you ask if Cooper was a cross-dresser, I doubt if it would have fitted him.’

  ‘Any identifying marks on it that might give us a name?’ I asked.

&nb
sp; ‘None, Mr Brock, but—’ began Linda.

  ‘How long have we known each other, Linda?’

  ‘Quite a few years now,’ said Linda, clearly mystified that I had posed such a question at that precise moment.

  ‘In that case, I think it’s time you called me Harry, don’t you? After all you’re quite senior yourself now you’ve been appointed a crime-scene manager.’

  ‘OK, Harry. I was about to say that I’ve saved the best bit until last. When I examined the built-in wardrobe in the bedroom, I found there was a wooden panel at the back, behind which was a safe.’

  ‘I suppose it might be a standard installation,’ suggested Dave. ‘These apartments are obviously expensive and the residents are bound to have valuables.’

  ‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘Have you been able to have it opened yet, Linda?’ The finding of a safe interested me. If Cooper had had it installed after he’d moved in, rather than it having come with the package, so to speak, it meant that he wished to hide something that was either valuable or embarrassing. Although anything of real value would probably have been lodged in a safety deposit, though these days that’s not as smart as you might think.

  ‘No,’ said Linda, ‘I’m awaiting the arrival of a locksmith, but by the look of it – and I’ve seen a few safes over the years – this one is going to take some time to open.’

  ‘Did you find a passport anywhere, Kate?’

  ‘No, guv. What’s more we didn’t find a mobile phone.’

  ‘That’s strange, I thought everyone had a mobile these days. And judging by the luxury apartment in which he lived, I was certain that Cooper must have a passport. I’m sure he didn’t buy that Belgian suit on the Internet.’

  ‘There might be a passport in the safe, when we eventually get it open.’

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘I’m going across the hall to speak to Mrs Maxwell again. She might be able to tell us something about this mystery man.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Brock. Do come in.’ Lydia Maxwell was wearing a cotton maxi summer dress, the halter neck of which left her suntanned shoulders bare. ‘I was catching up on the housework, but it’s so damned hot that I gave up and changed into this.’ She waved a hand vaguely down her body. ‘But your arrival is a good excuse to make a cup of tea. Do sit down.’ She moved across to the kitchen area and put on the kettle.