by David Beard
‘I said I needed it, not Rollisade. I explained to him that I had been sacked and I urgently needed to get my new business up and running. I told him I knew of other companies that had used his expertise and I pretended I had found him through their recommendations.’
‘So, you explained that Crossworth had discarded you to the scrap heap and…’
‘Exactly! I set up a meeting with him late on that Friday evening at his place. What a mess that was. Now, he may have smelt a rat. Maybe he was worried that the hacking was to stop or perhaps, on the positive side, he thought there was a great deal more to come. I don’t know. Anyway, I conjured up a false scenario for him and he accepted the offer.’
Emily nodded. ‘You took the keys and planted them. Can you tell us exactly where you left them?’
‘When he wasn’t looking I dropped them on the floor and kicked them under his sofa.’ This answer confirmed that Whitecroft was telling the truth. ‘I don’t know the rest because Henry is no longer around to explain it all to me.’
‘We understand why you ordered the hire car and you returned it on the Monday.’
‘What a palaver that was. I didn’t know where he had left it. I rang Manik and he was complaining that someone had parked a car in Henry’s parking place on the Sunday and he was going to call the police. I put him right and then he found the keys on Henry’s desk. I had to travel up by train to fetch it, then return to Taunton and then the train back to Exeter.’
‘Bristol?’ Smalacombe was surprised. ‘How could he do that when he was being shot on Dartmoor? When did he have the time to drive to Bristol? Why?’
‘I know no more than you, Chief Inspector.’
Emily wanted to clear up another point. ‘Crossworth sent you a text late on Friday evening. There’s another side to this…’
‘…I now know who instigated it,’ Whitecroft interrupted.
‘Do you know?’ Smalacombe intervened, as he didn’t want Whitecroft to know they had discovered what this other side was and he was worried Emily would spill it. He looked across to her and shook his head. He hoped she understood and then realised, of course she would.
‘No. That was the last contact I had with Henry. It was never enlarged upon. Clearly, he had worked out that something else was hammering him but what his plans were to resolve it I will never know.’
‘Mr Whitecroft, thank you for your cooperation. This has been a great help to us. We will have to look into your implementation of Crossworth’s devious tactics. You have been involved in a conspiracy, which we will have to investigate further, but, you have been open with us and at this stage your input is not a major concern in our enquiries. However, I must warn you not to embark on a moonlight flit.’
As usual the two officers began a debriefing of the interview. It had solved a number of queries but as always it had presented others.
Emily was particularly wary of their first conclusions. ‘It doesn’t add up, Dexter.’
‘I’m sure Whitecroft has told us all he knows and that does add up. Crossworth was out to clobber Sable.’
‘And Sable was out to clobber Crossworth and Crossworth was out to clobber Lynley.’
‘And Lynley was out to clobber Crossworth. Nasty! I can’t get my head around all of that.’
‘Maybe,’ Emily was not suffering the same confusion and she carried on with her analysis. ‘But compromising Sable with the hacking is nonsense. Crossworth would have known that once we were involved we would be able to find sufficient evidence. He didn’t need to do that. He wouldn’t have framed him unless he was sure. Remember, if he targeted the wrong man the hacking would continue. There is still more to this than we have resolved.’
‘You reckon Sable was being framed for something more?’
‘I am sure of it. The hacking was a catalyst; no more.’
‘Get Sable in this afternoon. If we can confirm who he was working for, that may help.’
*
Smalacombe knew he had to handle Sable carefully and he explained to him that the information he required would only affect his present position in a positive manner.
‘Mr Sable, we have no desire for you to compromise yourself and we fully understand it if you refuse to answer our questions but we need some confirmation from you in order to solve the murders. Olivia Counter has told us that her sister had made great strides to re acquaint herself with you and you responded. We understand that at the time of her murder you were once again on good terms with her.’
This all seemed very positive to Sable and he was happy to respond. ‘That is correct. We had made amends.’
‘What we can’t understand is why it was all under cover stuff? She only contacted you through the Wilde’s communications or via her sister.’
‘Ian is married to my sister. It was convenient that way.’
‘I don’t think so. There is more to it isn’t there? It was Heather who was the brains behind the hacking of Crossworth’s firm.’
Sable realised he was trapped. If he confirmed this, then he was also admitting his guilt. ‘No comment.’
‘Were you also engaged in searching the A Gate Services files for evidence of corruption?’
‘No comment.’
‘Well, at least we can be sure that you didn’t murder her. That will be all.’
‘That was a waste of time, Dexter.’
‘No it wasn’t. No comment tells me everything I want to know.’
CHAPTER 15
Smalacombe was in a good mood this Tuesday morning as his first job was to confront Conrad Rollisade and charge him with embezzlement. He was aware that this was an unsavoury part of his character but Rollisade had given him a hard time and it was with satisfaction that he had discovered why.
The Addleson brothers arrived on time and had brought no representatives with them. They were identically dressed in dark suits that had seen better days, their shirts had not been carefully pressed and both wore trainers that totally contravened the image they were supposed to portray. Neither had not seen a barber for a few months.
Emily whispered to Smalacombe, ‘I’ve got double vision.’ She then addressed the pair, ‘Are you twins?’
‘We are indeed,’ Jamie answered, ‘and I am the superior by sixteen minutes.’
Johnny smiled, ‘And I am the superior intellectually.’ The smile turned to a grin as he looked to his brother.
‘What are your roles at A Gate Services?’
‘Dogsbodies! We are officially the managers of out of centre works. That means we deal with problems away from the Bristol office but only in the UK and with stuff that nobody else wants to do. We were always directly answerable to Henry and it is never nine to five. Manik gives the orders now. We could be called to do all manner of things short of mowing the lawn,’ Jamie gave a thorough answer.
Johnny interrupted with some indignation, ‘I have mowed the lawn.’
‘Well you can manage that, as you have explained, you are the intellectual. I don’t want to give the wrong impression,’ Jamie took over again, ‘we do have a great deal of responsibilities. It is usually our lot to move people on…’
‘Sack them.’
‘We don’t use phrases like that these days.’
‘What do you know of the murders?’
This time it was Johnny who answered. ‘We know nothing. I flew out at six thirty on the Monday morning with my family for our holiday in Majorca.’
‘My wife and I flew off at nine to the Maldives,’ Jamie interrupted. ‘I knew nothing at all until Manik texted me on the Thursday. All it said was, “Henry is dead.” No more. I assumed he had had a heart attack or something. It wasn’t until we spoke to Manik yesterday that we found out the truth.’
‘When did you last see Mr Crossworth?’
Jamie looked to his brother, ‘Shall I take over?’ Johnny nodded. ‘We saw him on the day he died. It was a very strange day I must say. What took place was very complicated and weird and if I get it wrong I am sure
Johnny will correct me.’
This was all intriguing and the two officers looked to one another with raised eyebrows and tight lips.
‘You must understand we were at Henry’s beck and call. We don’t mind, we are well rewarded.’
‘Hence the Maldives.’
Jamie ignored Smalacombe’s facetious remark. ‘He expected us to work over that weekend and contrary to what I have just said it was bloody annoying and inconvenient as we needed to prepare for our hols. He warned us on the Friday that we might be needed on the Sunday and to prepare ourselves. He said he wanted some time alone and he would ring us around Sunday dinner time.’
‘It was all a bit garbled but he was having a tough time,’ Johnny added.
‘You knew things were awry?’
‘Manik and Henry kept us up to date. We knew there were problems.’
‘You had people to see on the Sunday?’
‘No. He rang us, twice. The first time was around midday and he told us to get to the village car park at Widecombe and wait. He said he would ring again later. He did, at around mid afternoon and told us to meet him in the middle of nowhere on Dartmoor. We don’t know the place that well and he gave us a map reference for our sat nav.’
‘Was it just above Widecombe village?’
‘Yes. We were told to park at the top of a hill just at the point where the road comes out to the open moor.’
‘I know where it is,’ Emily advised. It was where she had parked on her lone exploration a few mornings before.
‘He was already there when we arrived and with a strange car. We didn’t understand.’
‘He didn’t tell you his keys had been stolen.’
‘What keys? Trouble was it couldn’t have been a new car for him as it wasn’t posh enough.’
Johnny came in again. ‘He did tell me it was a hire car and he did mention his keys but he mumbled they had been mislaid or something, I didn’t pick it up at the time. I don’t even know now.’
‘OK, well we don’t need to go into that. So what happened when you arrived?’
‘This was very odd. He told us he was going for a walk. Well, OK but what the hell did he want from us?’ Jamie looked to his brother.
Johnny intervened again. ‘We knew there were major problems at work and he had been under huge pressure that last week or so.’
‘With the computers?’
‘Yea. What a mess. We thought Henry was under so much stress he just wanted a quiet afternoon away from everything. It seemed reasonable…’
‘But other things certainly weren’t,’ Jamie interrupted his brother and took over again. ‘He was wearing a greatcoat and on a glorious summer afternoon? We couldn’t work that out.’
‘He was walking sort of clumsy as well, like he had hurt his back,’ Johnny butted in once more.
‘That’s right, it was strange. He gave me the keys to the car and told us to drive down with both cars to the village; have a meal or whatever and wait for him to contact us.’
‘You took both cars away.’
‘Yea, don’t ask me why we had to because I have no idea. I told you it was a bloody strange afternoon. Anyway, we spent time in the cafes, in the pub, had a walk around and he never rang us.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘We got bloody angry; by then it was seven o’clock. Johnny had to be up at four the following morning to get to Bristol airport. We waited a while longer and then the light was fading. We rang him but there was no answer. That was unusual as well. We waited a bit more and then it was really getting dark.’
Jamie continued, ‘We thought we had better go up and see if he was around. It was too dark to pull in where we were previously so we drove up to a car park at the very top. He wasn’t around; well we could see bugger all by this time.’
‘You were in a fix?’
‘Look, Henry could be bloody unreliable with this sort of thing; it wasn’t unusual for him to change his mind without telling us. We did try to ring him again but same thing; no answer. What else could we do?’ Jamie explained.
‘You were in the wilds of Dartmoor, after dark. Weren’t you concerned for his safety?’
‘Well no, to be frank it never occurred to us. It wasn’t the first time Henry had left us in the lurch because he had changed his mind.’
Johnny added to this, ‘We were furious. How the hell were we going to get back for our flights? We weren’t thinking of his welfare by this time, but our own. Typical bloody Henry – selfish bastard.’
‘Whoa, Johnny. Look, he did wind us up but we know what side our bread is buttered. It was just something we had to put up with. As I told you at the beginning, we were the dogsbodies. As a last resort Johnny texted him.’
The team had now analysed Crossworth’s mobile and were aware of this. Emily pointed out, ‘Your text read, “Do you still need us?” Am I right?’
Johnny was tapping his mobile hurriedly and handed it over to Smalacombe. He couldn’t read texts without his glasses so he passed it over to Emily.
‘Yea, there it is and we got a reply. It said, “No”,’ Johnny pointed out.
‘That was a bit monosyllabic wasn’t it?’
‘Well, maybe but that was classic Henry.’ Johnny observed. ‘At least it was a reply and if we had any concerns for his welfare then that relieved us of it.’
‘I have just checked the time of that reply, Johnny,’ Emily said, ‘and it was more than an hour after his death.’
‘How the bloody hell was I to know that?’
Smalacombe replied, ‘We’re not making any accusations; it is something we need to check out. All my sergeant is saying is that Henry could not have sent that text himself. Let’s move on. What next? You went home?’
‘We didn’t know what to do with the bloody hire car,’ Johnny came in again. ‘We had run out of time. Did he need the bloody thing? Was he still on the moors? Text told us nothing like that. Check my mobile sergeant and you will see another text from me about that.’
‘I have. It says “What about the car?”.’
‘That’s right and the reply?’
‘“Do what you want.” So, that was it?’ Emily concluded.
‘Yea,’ Jamie sighed, ‘we couldn’t leave it unlocked and with the keys in it. We couldn’t stay any longer. We concluded that he must have met someone and he didn’t need the car. He had told us he didn’t need us anymore. After all, he also told us earlier to drive the car away and he would have had no idea where we had taken it. The only thing we could do was to drop it back at the office on our way home. That’s what we did. I left the keys on Henry’s desk.’
‘I slept for most of the flight and for the rest of the day when we got there,’ Jamie mused. ‘My wife was not impressed and it was a bad start to what I hoped would be a magic holiday.’
‘I bet, and then you had Mr Tagore’s text.’
‘I know. It was not as relaxing as it should have been.’
‘But surely, with such a peculiar time on the Sunday, Mr Tagore’s text must have registered something with you?’
‘Not really. Had we received it on the Monday or even the Tuesday that would have been different. We had no reason to assume anything other than natural causes.’
‘Well, thank you for all of this. Is there anymore you can think of that might help?’
‘If there is we will let you know.’
Shortly after the interview Emily went to the secure store room and inspected Crossworth’s mysterious coat. It had some bearing on the crime and within a few minutes she had assessed what it was.
She returned to the office, spoke with Smalacombe and he went with her back to the store.
‘Dexter, the front is one hell of a mess, as you know but there are some remains that require an explanation.’
‘And you think you know what it is?’
‘I do indeed.’ She carefully laid the coat out and open wide. On one side at chest level was a strip of material that ended in a frayed mess
where it caught the blast. A little further down was another identical piece that had met the same fate. ‘What are these?’
‘There’s all sort of attributes to posh coats like this.’
‘No, look again.’ She pointed to where the strips were connected to the coat.
Smalacombe took a close look. ‘This is good stuff, Emily; I could have stitched them on better than that.’
‘Not part of the coat, Dexter but add-ons and done pretty roughly as well. This wasn’t done by a seamstress.’
‘Crossworth may have been good at making money but he couldn’t bloody sew.’
‘That’s it but what are they for?’
‘Some sort of harness…’ they looked at one another and spoke unison, ‘to carry a shotgun.’
Smalacombe stood back with his hands on his hips and continued looking at the remains of the coat. Emily spent the time watching him and waiting for a comment. ‘Brilliant, Emily. You have been right all along. I can piece this together now but, and it is a big but, we still don’t know who killed Crossworth. It was all planned so meticulously.’
‘Dexter, this mad cap plan of Crossworth’s is a true sign of megalomania and I am not sure meticulous is the right assessment.’
‘Is there a cure for megala whatsit?’
‘Well, of course not. It would cost a fortune, which is precisely what the problem is.’
‘Not on the NHS then? I have never heard of people complaining they can’t get treatment for it.’
‘I’m going down a blind alley here; I can’t answer that. But it still went wrong, Dexter. There are so many sides to this. I reckon he stalked Lynley in the hire car so that she wouldn’t recognise it. When she arrived at two crosses he parked further down and phoned the Addlesons.’
‘And, we now know who killed Heather Lynley; Henry Crossworth did.’
‘But who killed Crossworth? I have another idea,’ Emily was now on a roll.
‘Oh, for goodness sake.’ He looked across to her and they both giggled. ‘It is time to address the team with all of this and then work out how we approach the next stage.’
‘No, the final stage: we told the super it would be done by the middle of the week.’