He turned and hurried to the lobby door after Brock, as voices of recrimination and swearing broke out behind him.
“Is that wise, sir?” he said as he joined him, standing in the middle of the lobby. “I mean, if someone did do something to Jonny Turnbull for some reason, it means there’s someone seriously dangerous here, someone who’s willing to do whatever it takes to cover their tracks. And now you’ve turned them on each other?”
“We’re going to position officers in the corridors tonight,” Brock said without looking at him. “I'll make sure they’re safe. These people, though…” He shook his head. “None of them can be bothered to tell us anything that might be of use, and the only thing I have to leverage them with is the fact that they’re stuck in this hotel. So, I’m going to use it.”
Poole nodded. He never seemed to be able to predict the inspector’s next move. He was still trying to work him out, see what made him tick. He suspected he might well be trying to figure him out for the rest of the time that they worked together. There was something hard there, an edge to the man that was as formidable as his towering frame. Yet at other times he had an almost puppy-like quality.
“A bloody puppy,” Brock said, making Poole jump. He had zoned out for a moment and hadn’t heard what the inspector had said.
“A puppy, sir?” Poole said, the worrying thought that the inspector could read his mind bouncing around his head.
‘Yes, Poole, aren’t you listening? Laura’s gone and bought a bloody puppy.”
“Oh,” Poole said with relief. “Well, that’s nice.”
“Is it?” Brock said gruffly. “Come on, I need a sandwich form Sal’s and we need to talk to Ron again, find out what he’s been up to.”
He strode off toward the door and Poole followed in a state of confusion.
Chapter Thirteen
“And here you go!” Sal said, placing two enormous sandwiches in front of them. “Something special for my two favourite customers!” She beamed at them and placed her hands on her hips.
Poole reached down to lift one half of the sandwich and golden egg yolk dribbled from one side. He bit into it quickly and, eyes wide, nodded enthusiastically at Sal.
“He likes it!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Now let me get you some coffee.” She turned and vanished back behind the counter.
Brock was already tucking into his sandwich with the ferocity of a bear who had found the salmon hard to come by for a while.
The sandwich consisted of bacon, sausage, black pudding, egg and was finished with a thin layer of béarnaise sauce. It was heaven.
Sal returned with their two coffees and they nodded thanks rather than stop eating. When they’d finished, they leaned back, allowing their stomachs some room to breathe, and sipped at their coffee.
“So, are you the only person in the entire world who doesn’t like puppies?” Poole said, continuing the conversation that had fizzled out as they’d left the hotel in the search for food.
Brock took a deep breath and stared out of the window. “I love dogs,” Brock said. “I’ve been talking about getting one for ages.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
Brock’s grey eyes latched themselves onto Poole’s. “The problem is that we’ve talked about getting a dog for so long, why has Laura suddenly decided we should buy one now, just a couple of months after I came clean about my lazy swimmers?”
Poole flinched slightly. Brock’s openness around personal matters still caught him off guard, made him feel ill at ease—particularly when referring to his superior’s low sperm count.
He was still not comfortable talking about his own problems, about his father, but the inspector seemed to have no such worries. It struck Poole that Brock used his partners as a kind of sounding board, both for the police work they did and for his personal life.
“So, you think she’s maybe got the puppy because she thinks you won’t be able to have children?”
Brock grunted an agreement. “Compensating.”
“Maybe she just thinks it’s the right time?”
“Maybe,” Brock said. A sudden smile crept across his face. “Funny little thing, he is. Dark brown apart from his legs, which are white. Looks like he’s got socks on.”
Poole smiled, seeing the warmth in the inspector’s expression. He imagined him being a father for the first time and it struck him that he’d be a great one.
Unlike his own.
He looked out of the window as his thoughts drifted back to his meeting with his father which he realised, like a punch in the gut, was now tomorrow.
“Ready for tomorrow?” Brock said, watching him carefully.
“I’m not sure it’s something you can get ready for, sir,” Poole said, his gaze still scanning the street outside.
“And where are you meeting him?”
“The Market Wine Bar.”
“What time?”
Poole turned to him, a suspicious look in his eyes. “Sir?”
“Don’t you think it might be a good idea if you had someone there with you? I’m assuming your mother won’t want to go. I can be there.”
Poole felt a sudden overwhelming rush of emotion. It rose up through his chest like a wave of hot lava and threatened to burst across his face in the form of red-hot tears. This man, who he had only known a few months, was willing to be there as he confronted his father, was willing to be there for him in a way that that man had not been since he was fifteen.
He fought the feelings back by draining the last of his coffee hurriedly and sitting up in his chair.
“Thank you, sir. That’s very kind, but I think this is something I should probably do alone.”
He looked up at Brock’s grey eyes which seemed to be staring right through him to the back of his skull.
“Well, if you need me,” he said in a low voice.
“Thank you,” Poole said, feeling awkward now. He idly stirred the last dregs of his coffee with his spoon until Brock’s phone rang out with the song Gangnam Style. The inspector rolled his eyes as Poole laughed, knowing that the inspector’s wife Laura had again changed his ringtone. Brock was so useless with technology that he had no idea how to change it back to something more sensible.
“Hello?” he said, placing the receiver to his ear. His eyebrows rose as someone spoke on the other end of the line and he looked at Poole, a smile playing on his lips.
“OK, go on,” he said before pulling the handset away from his ear and gesturing wildly to Poole to put it on loudspeaker. Poole took the device and pressed the correct button, which resulted in the voice of Eli Patrick barking from the small speaker.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Brock replied with a wide smile. “I’m here. What was it you needed to tell us, Mr Patrick?”
There was a slight pause from the other end of the phone. The only sound was a barely audible sigh which hissed gently through the handset.
“I think you should speak to Isabella about her and Jarvis.”
“What do you mean?” Brock asked, glancing at Poole.
“I mean that a couple of nights before the launch they were shacked up together. I saw Isabella leaving his hotel room first thing in the morning and she was still in same clothes as the night before.”
“And why didn’t you share this information with us before, Mr Patrick?”
“Look, everyone knows that Jarvis was getting this big film role, and he had a lot of sway with the directors about his supporting cast. I wasn’t about to rock the boat with him. Look,” he said, his clipped, well-spoken voice diving lower. “Everyone pretty much hated the guy, but he could have been the key to any of us making it into films. He knew it too, enjoyed the fact that everyone was suddenly fawning over him.”
“And you think he used his influence to seduce Isabella?”
A braying laugh burst from the speaker. “Isabella wouldn’t need seducing; she’d do anything to advance her career.”
“W
ell thank you, Mr Patrick. Please come back to me if anything else comes to mind regarding Jarvis’ death.”
“Oh, right, yes,” the voice said as Brock gestured at Poole to hang up.
Poole pressed the button and looked up. “So, Isabella was having a fling with Jarvis? Funny she didn’t mention it, eh?”
“And it’s also funny that none of them decided to mention that Jarvis could well have been their meal ticket. The question is, who did Jarvis let down that made them angry enough to kill?”
“Who was that lovely young man on the phone?” Sal said, moving from behind her counter. “Lovely voice, he had. He sounded like a nice boy.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?” Poole asked.
“There are people who have voices like that who can be cruel people, arrogant.”
“You mean because he’s posh?” Poole said, smiling at her.
Sal smiled back. “Money doesn’t make people kind,” she said with a tilt of her head.
She turned and headed back behind the counter with their now empty coffee cups.
“I can see you don’t just come here for the sandwiches, but the personality insights too,” Poole said, watching her head back through the door behind the counter.
“Come on,” Brock said, laughing, “let’s go and see Ron. Then I want to get back and see if they’ve turned anything up at the hotel on Jonny Turnbull, and I think we’ll have a little chat with Isabella Lennon again.”
Brock stood and then paused, frowning.
“Best not to mention our little visit here to Laura, eh, Poole?” he said, avoiding Poole’s eyes.
“Of course, sir,” Poole answered dutifully, trying to hide a smile.
“I’m sorry, Sam, but my career is on the line here!” Ronald Smith wailed. “No, not just my career, my life!”
“So, you thought you’d help put yourself in prison by messing up my investigation, did you?”
“I was just asking a few questions!”
“You were hanging around a place you had no right to be and talking to suspects in a murder inquiry that you yourself are a suspect in!” Brock roared.
Ronald Smith visibly wilted under the onslaught. “Oh, it’s all such a mess!” he cried, rubbing his hands over his bald head.
He slid down in the cheap wooden chair he was sat in. When Brock had called Ronald to meet, he had apparently been having a late breakfast at a supermarket café—trying to fill his time now that he had no work to go to. Poole had felt a pang of sadness for the little bald man upon hearing this.
“What were you doing at the hotel earlier?” Brock asked, his voice level again.
‘I was just trying to find out what was going on! You wouldn’t tell me,” he said accusingly. “You just told me to stop calling that Todd Peel idiot who’s sat in my bloody office.”
Poole noticed a softening of Brock’s face. “And did you find anything out?” the inspector asked.
“No,” Ronald replied miserably. “Just that all the cast have done is sit there and drink since it all happened.”
“Look, just leave this to us, OK?” Brock said. ‘We’ll have you back behind your desk and being a pain in my arse before you know it.”
Ronald looked up at him and blinked. “Thank you, Sam.”
“Don’t mention it,” Brock said, standing up to leave. “But if I catch you messing about and asking questions again, I’ll put you in a cell just to keep from incriminating yourself.”
Ronald nodded and pushed at the leftover crumbs of his croissant.
Chapter Fourteen
Refuelled by the high calorie count of their sandwich, the pair arrived back at the hotel to find it a hive of activity. Various uniformed officers milled around the foyer, and Sheila Hopkins, the crime scene manager, stood giving instructions to a couple of her colleagues.
“Anything, Sheila?” Brock asked, striding across to her.
‘Nothing, Sam. Well, other than a million fingerprints from everyone who’s stayed here recently. They don’t clean as much as you’d expect for a place that charges as much as they do,” she said, smiling.
“There was nothing from his room?” Brock snapped, not in the mood for jokes after hearing Sheila and her team had come up with nothing.
“No,” she said, straight-faced now. “The only fingerprints relating to anyone involved in the case in the room were Jonny Turnbull’s. Even the can of shaving foam used to write the message only had his on.”
Brock frowned. “So, it was obviously his shaving foam, but someone else could have worn gloves to write the message. And there were no signs of a struggle?”
“No, nothing unusual at all.”
Brock breathed heavily out of his wide nose, putting Poole in mind of a snorting dragon.
“I’ll see if uniform have pulled anything from the CCTV in the area,” he said, moving toward a small group near the reception desk that contained the familiar faces of Constables Davies and Sanders.
Brock nodded and continued to talk to Sheila as Poole headed off, hoping to find good news.
“Oh, sir!” Davies said as Poole came up alongside him. “Sorry, we didn’t know you were back.” The young officer glanced nervously at Sanita next to him. Davies had a head that seemed to have stretched from front to back, making his face protrude somewhat. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he talked.
“We checked the footage from the hotel's cameras. They’ve only got two working at the moment, one over the front door and one over the entrance to the carpark. There’s another one in the carpark itself, but something went wrong with it last week and they haven’t got it fixed yet. From the two we’ve looked at, it doesn’t look like he left the hotel,” Sanita said, her tone professional and impersonal, which somehow disheartened Poole as much as the news that there was still no clue as to Jonny Turnbull’s whereabouts did.
“We’ve only whizzed through it so far, but Jones is going through it more thoroughly now. There are cameras in here as well,” she continued, pointing to the two opposite corners of the large room. “But so far we haven’t seen any sign of Turnbull.”
Poole nodded, thinking hard. ‘Then he must be still in the building somewhere. We’re going to have to do a room to room search. Can you find the manager and tell him that the inspector and I want to talk to him?”
“Yes, sir,” Davies said, turning to go and immediately bumping into a crime scene operative who dropped a series of folders that scattered across the floor.
“Thank you, Constable,” he said to Sanita, who replied with a short nod, a smile and a ‘sir’.
He hovered for a moment without really knowing why. For some reason, the meeting with his father was looming in his mind and he felt himself wanting to tell Sanita about it, to share his fear with her.
He turned sharply away and headed toward Brock, his long thin legs eating up the ground.
The manager of the hotel was a small, ferrety-looking man in a dark blue and expensive suit. Poole recognised him as Michael Johnson, brother of Terry Johnson who ran the theatre next door, who they had met briefly when they had arrived to talk to the cast of Foul Murder yesterday.
“Officers, I really must object to the disruption that is being caused in my hotel this morning,” he said as he and Poole arrived at the inspector together. “The cast of this television show are not our only guests.”
“This is a murder investigation,” Brock replied. “And I’ll keep up with any disruption I deem necessary until it is solved.”
“Jonny Turnbull is missing, and we have reason to believe he may have been harmed,” Poole interjected before the hotel manager could argue further. “And after checking the footage from your entrances we believe he is still in the building, so we’re going to need to do a room by room search of the entire place.”
Poole glanced slightly nervously at Brock. He was springing this news on him and making the decision to conduct a search all at the same time, but the inspector merely raised his eyebrows and nodded in appreciation.
>
“People expect a certain level of service here at the Sinton Hotel. Just think what this is going to do to our reputation?” the man said pleadingly.
“I’m sure your guests will understand once it is explained to them that a serious crime may have been committed on the premises.” There was a glint in Brock’s stormy grey eyes which seemed to make the small manager buckle.
“Of course. If you could be as discreet as possible then I’m sure my staff would be able to assist you in carrying out the search in an efficient manner.”
“Excellent,” Brock said with a smile.
Isabella Lennon sat on a small red sofa, her thin, bare legs crossed in front of her.
“So?” she said questioningly, her mouth caught between a pout and a sneer.
They had taken Isabella to her hotel room to question her on the late night stay she had had in Jarvis Alvarado’s room.
“Well,” Brock continued, “we can’t help but wonder why you didn’t tell us you were in a relationship with the deceased before.”
“Because I wasn’t.” She shrugged. She saw their blank expressions, rolled her eyes and huffed in a way that would have graced any amateur dramatics performance. “If you’re asking whether I slept with Jarvis then the answer is yes, but I wasn’t in any kind of relationship with him.” She laughed, a high and hard noise like breaking glass. “Maybe it’s a police thing? Are you all prudes or something? No sex before marriage and all that?”
“And when exactly did this begin between yourself and Jarvis?”
“Just since we’ve been here. This place is the dullest little town I’ve ever been in. We were all bored out of our minds.”
Poole noted the deliberate malice as she said this and felt the inspector tense slightly next to him at this attack on his town.
“And you were with Mr Alvarado the night before his murder?”
“Yes,” she answered, sighing again.
A Staged Death (A Brock & Poole Mystery Book 2) Page 7