by Paul Charles
“I was worried. I didn’t know what happened to you… your work… anything could have happened to you,” she eventually said, showing the thaw had definitely set in.
“I am sorry. It is unforgivable,” Kennedy said and meant it.
“I need you to ring Unlocked first thing in the morning and apologise. You have to pay for the missed session. They must not think that you are taking me for granted. They must not think we are anything but osteopath and patient.”
She relaxed a little more, but still she made no move to get out of her car. For one moment, Kennedy felt she was waiting for him to get out of the car so she could drive off. Eventually she said, “What does a girl have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?”
Two and a half hours later, Kennedy walked her back to her car. As he watched her drive off, he reflected how the purity of their love-making had definitely been tarnished by their earlier scene. He thought back to his earlier conversation with Nealey Dean about the uniqueness of relationships. He wondered if, in all relationships, we stop making love to a beautiful woman, or a woman stops making love to her ideal man, at the point when one partner starts to deal with all the baggage the other partner brings to the relationship. Sharenna Chada had been, as usual, giving, and equally not scared to take, but for the first time, Kennedy had noticed that she hadn’t got completely lost in their hunt for mutual pleasure. Something vital had changed. Kennedy, for his part, found it difficult to separate the owner of the perfect body, which had been entwined with his, with the person whose recent childish behaviour had shocked and continued to disturb him.
Perhaps that had been the sign ann rea had been looking for. Maybe she had been looking for the person she could be with where she wouldn’t be preoccupied with the baggage element of the relationship. Could that have been ann rea’s interpretation of love?
As he fell asleep, he began to wonder about how practical it would be to stop seeing Sharenna, romantically speaking, but to continue to see Miss Chada, professionally speaking.
Chapter Thirty-Five
All things being equal, Kennedy’s early morning Thursday meeting with his team was quite productive.
To kick off with, DS James Irvine had a copy of the preliminary report from the forensic accountant’s team, and that certainly made for very interesting reading.
It appeared Maggie Littlewood had received a very large payment from Patrick Mylan just over two years ago. The amount was £85,000, and there was no information in relation to what it was for. Neither was there an invoice from her to Patrick for a corresponding amount.
Rodney Stuart was barely keeping his head above water and had several borrowings from Mylan. The forensic team still had to ascertain whether or not Stuart had approval for these amounts or if he had simply helped himself - a practice which, if the red-top newspapers were anything to go by, happened a lot these days, particularly in the music business. The noticeable thing about these payments was that they always coincided with his monthly invoice.
As per Kennedy’s request, via Irvine, the FA team had gone through the Mylan/Dickens deal with a fine-tooth comb, and they were able to confirm that now Mylan was dead, all rights reverted (at the next accounting period) back to Tim Dickens.
Kennedy was digesting this information with DS Irvine when DC Dot King arrived back into the room.
“We’ve just had the report back from the examination of Mr Mylan’s clothes. There were no stains of any kind on his underwear,” she announced confidently.
“Which means?” Irvine asked, still distracted by the accounting report.
“Which means, Detective Sergeant Irvine, that our Mr Mylan did not reach sexual fulfilment in his final endeavours,” King replied, attracting everyone’s undivided attention.
“Which means?” Allaway seemed compelled to ask. Kennedy couldn’t be sure if the DS was distracted by the current thread of the conversation or if he was enjoying drawing King further down this murky road.
“Which most likely proved that he didn’t commit suicide,” King stated.
“I don’t think you can say that absolutely,” Kennedy maintained.
“But it does suggest he didn’t,” King said, “or that at the very least his death wasn’t an accident. The reason AEA people die is because they are so committed to sexual fulfilment they lose both control and consciousness.”
“It most likely wasn’t an accident,” Kennedy conceded, “and the news is that our accounting detectives have moved three suspects up to the top of our list.
“Maggie Littlewood, for some reason or other, received £85,000 from Mylan. Rodney Stuart’s company is in a bad way, and he appears to have borrowed heavily from Mylan. Our friends on the forensic accounting side have also confirmed the key man clause in Tom Dickens’ deal with Patrick Mylan. That is to say, no Patrick Mylan, no deal.”
“This case is turning out to be a little like DS Allaway’s fantasies,” King suggested devilishly: “nothing for ages, and then three come along at the same time.”
Kennedy, although amused by King’s comment, ignored it. “Let’s get stuck into two of our leads. DS Irvine, you take DS Allaway and go and visit Rodney Stuart, and DC King and I will pay Maggie Littlewood another wee visit.”
***
Like a coquettish girl, this year’s summer was playing hard to get; you would get brief glimpses and hints of her full glory, but the dark clouds seeking to hide her beauty were never too far away. Kennedy had been looking forward to dallying in Roger and Maggie Littlewood’s wonderful garden. If pushed, he might even have admitted it was the lure of some more tea and scones in the same garden that had biased his decision to interview Maggie Littlewood instead of the accountant, Rodney Stuart.
On the journey to Church Street in Hampstead, he was trying to figure out the best way to separate Maggie from her husband. She’d certainly seemed to be more informative on the previous occasion when she and Kennedy had been alone. As luck would have it, Roger was out. Unfortunately for Kennedy, the current rain shower, light thought it was, had put pain to his wish for tea and scones in the garden. Kennedy and King followed Maggie straight into her small kitchen, where she started to busy herself preparing some tea and cake. Sometimes, although not all of the times, Kennedy felt you could be more successful in your interviews if the subject was distracted with something like a manual task. It seemed to work better though with men, because they always appeared, to Kennedy at least, not to be as successful as the fairer sex in the multi-tasking stakes.
“Maggie, we’ve come back to talk to you about a payment Mr Mylan made to you a couple of years ago,” Kennedy started.
“Have you indeed,” Maggie replied, as she refilled and switched on the silver electric kettle. “Well then, it’s very lucky for me that Roger isn’t here.”
“Oh?” King said in surprise.
Although Maggie efficiently continued on her criss-cross journey in her kitchen, Kennedy noticed Mrs Littlewood didn’t prepare all the cups of tea in the same manner. She haphazardly added either the hot water or milk first or second. He wondered, hoped, if this was because she was preoccupied trying to come up with a reason for the £85,000 payment.
“Okay,” she began as the three of them sat down at the small kitchen table. “Roger and I have always kept our money separate. When we started up together, we just continued with our separate bank accounts. He has never known what I have, and I … well, I’ve always had a fair idea of his finances, but I’ve never had to go to him for a sub, and he’s never had to come to me for one.”
Maggie, growing uncomfortable, was trying to hide her discomfort by biting into her delicious carrot cake.
“Anyway, after he retired, I started to get worried that he didn’t have as much money as I though we might need,” she continued, nodding her head to the beat of her speech. “I mean, it’s so difficult, isn’t it? You can never know how much money you’re going to need. You haven’t a clue how long you’re going to live, and what a hundred
grand is worth today is obviously not going to be what it’s worth in ten years’ time. Anyway, I started to panic. A friend of my brother was a successful bookie.”
Maggie stopped talking and stared at King for a few seconds. “I saw that judgemental look in your eyes, young lady.”
“No,” King protested, “I didn’t mean anything.”
Maggie Littlewood puffed up her perfectly permed hair before continuing, “It’s okay, because you are right in your assumption,” she laughed nervously. “Barry, Barry Colburn, was his name. He was a good friend of the family, and he’d always had an eye for me. Nothing like that,” she directed at King. “He’s been happily married for donkey’s years as well. Anyway, every now and then he’d ring up for a chat - you know, a family update - but he’d always say at the end of his conversations, if you’ve a few bob to spare, put it on so and so at such and such race. Well, over the years I’d followed his advice, and I picked up a good bit of pin money. I think we all know where this is heading, don’t we? After Roger retired, I found myself putting a bit more money on Barry’s tips. I found myself ringing Barry up more frequently just so I’d pick up his tips. Have you ever backed the gee-gees?”
Both King and Kennedy shook their heads.
“It’s such a rush. It’s not dissimilar to gambling on the stock market, which is what we all do, but the rush is so much more intense. Eventually, for matters of convenience, I opened an account with Barry, and at first I was doing great. At one stage I was twenty-five grand up. However, once I started to lose money and dropped into the red, Barry stopped giving me tips. So I went looking for my own and… well, I don’t need to bore you with the all details. I’ll tell you this, though: never listen to the tipster on the early morning sports break on Radio Four. It could have been a lot more than eighty-five grand if Barry hadn’t closed my account at that stage and refused me further credit.”
“And Mr Mylan stepped in?” Kennedy asked, wanting to spare her further embarrassment.
“And Patrick, God bless him, stepped in. He had one demand though. He said he would only give me the money on condition I never paid it back. He wrote the cheque immediately, made no fuss whatsoever, and I’ll never forget what he said to me as he handed it over: ‘This is the only time having money is of any real use, so you can help your friends.’”
As Maggie Littlewood was giving DC King the bookie Barry Colburn’s details, she pleaded with them, head nodding away more furiously than normal, not to tell her husband.
There was still something that was troubling Kennedy.
“I don’t believe we’ll need to advise Roger about this, but I would strongly recommend you do,” he said as they moved to leave. Then, surprising himself, he asked, Colombo style, “Tell me this, Maggie, do you know a young lady by the name of Chloe Simmons?”
Maggie reacted like a woman who’d been swimming desperately to a life raft only to find when she reached it that the raft was nothing more than an illusion made by paper floating on the water.
“Yes, as it happens, I do. I went to school with her mother.”
***
King couldn’t wait to get back into the privacy of their pool car to discuss this development.
“How did you ever figure that one out?” she said the moment she could shut her door.
“I had a feeling,” was all Kennedy would say.
“I’m shocked that you don’t seem excited by the news?”
“How so?”
“Well, don’t you think Patrick could have paid her the £85,000 for setting him up with her friend’s daughter, Chloe?” King offered.
“And?” Kennedy encouraged.
“Well… well, maybe…” King struggled to put a shape to her thoughts. “Well, maybe she was trying to get more money from him… or maybe… yes, that’s it, maybe it was going to come out that she set her friend’s daughter up as her best friend’s mistress for eighty grand, so Maggie Littlewood either murdered Patrick or had someone do it for her to make it look like an accident.”
“I don’t believe so,” Kennedy replied as he studied the road before them.
“Really,” King said, disappointed. “Why on earth not?”
“Well, for starters, she gave us Barry Colburn’s full details, and it will be easy enough to check out her gambling story, if that’s where the £85,000 Mylan gave her went.”
“But you still think she fits into this some way, don’t you?” King asked.
“Well, did you notice some of the photos on her dressing table and desk? She looked liked she was a very sensual, beautiful forty-year-old.”
“But surely all of Mylan’s girls had to be younger than him?”
“Yes, mostly I’d agree, but then someone would have had to teach Mylan the art in the first place.”
“Maggie Littlewood?” King hissed in disbelief. Kennedy was convinced that if they hadn’t been stopped at a red traffic light on Chalk Farm road, DC Dot King would most likely have crashed the car at that point.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Back in Camden Town Mews, Detective Sergeants Irvine and Allaway were trying to gain access to Rodney Stuart’s office.
Irvine could hear voices (well, at least one voice) from inside. He was convinced it wasn’t a radio, so he continued banging loudly on the silvered oak door. Rodney Stuart opened it a few minutes later, still wearing his telephone headset and still rabbiting away to someone about how it’s always important to hold your nerve, particularly when all around you are losing theirs. He blinked dismissively at the two member of Camden Town police force and shooed them in with an “oh, if you really must” glare.
As Stuart, looking decidedly more unhealthily (if that were possible) than he had been on the last visit, chatted away ten to the dozen on the phone, Irvine made a song and dance about removing several files from his tattered, but much-loved, briefcase and elaborately laying the contents all over Stuart’s already crowded desk.
Stuart - who was pacing up and down his office, his hands-free facility allowing him to appear like Marcel Marceau on speed - suddenly stopped dead in his tracks as he noticed the contents of some of the pages now covering his desk.
“What the fu…” he started. “No, not you, sorry. Let me ring you right back,” he snapped as he disconnected the phone. “How the eff, you, sea, Kay did you get my bank statements?”
“I thought they just might get your attention, Mr Stuart; they make interesting reading, don’t they?”
“They don’t mean anything. I invoice him regularly.”
“And you ripped him off frequently,” Irvine continued seamlessly. “You weren’t even subtle enough to tie your payments into your invoices.”
“You know nothing,” Stuart shouted, lifting one of the bank statements. He seemed to be trying to figure out if it were an original or a photocopy. “I was always paying out on Paddy’s behalf.”
“Yes, we noticed that as well,” Irvine claimed, “but we still figure there’s nearly two hundred thousand pounds of Mr Mylan’s money has gone into your account that has not been properly accounted for. Our forensic accountants were shocked, not at the amounts you were taking, but by how careless you were about trying to cover your tracks.”
“You haven’t a clue, have you?” Stuart whined. “This goes on all the time between an accountant and a client. It’s called doing business together, and every few months we do an update with each other and settle up.”
“That’s certainly one explanation,” Irvine said, lifting one of the statements again, “but according to our figures, you owe Mr Mylan at least two hundred grand, yet our boys worked out you’re still nearly half a million in the hole, so can you explain to me how those sums were ever going to be resolved? Because, Rodney old chap, you’re right; I certainly haven’t a clue how you could possibly reconcile that.”
Stuart said nothing. He continued studying the statements. It was as if he were waiting for some divine intervention from them. Some message would surely be sent from on
high to help him.
“Rodney, the way we see it,” Irvine began in a gentler, kinder, and less sarcastic voice, “Mr Mylan caught you with your hand so seriously in the till you were in danger of losing your fingertips. He threatened to expose you. You murdered him. Made it look like a bizarre accident, or suicide, but did you seriously think we weren’t going to discover this nugget of information?”
“Look, Dickens’ next royalty statements are due on the 30th of September. All of this would have worked out in the mix when that one came in.”
“You’re seriously trying to tell us you were going to make two hundred big ones from his next record and publishing royalty cheques.”
“That’s chicken feed compared to what’s in the pipeline. There’s a good few million to come in. I was on 5 per cent,” Stuart claimed.
“I thought you were paid by the hour?” Allaway said, looking up from his notebook for the first time in ages.
“I used to be, but Paddy realised he was depending on me so much to monitor this for him and to protect him in this deal that he cut me in for a piece,” Stuart said through a “so there” smirk.
“And no doubt you have the paperwork to back that claim up?” Irvine asked in disbelief.
“That wasn’t Paddy’s style. No lawyers, we discussed and agreed, deal done. We shook hands concluding the deal the way gentlemen used to.”
“Did Mr Mylan have a will?” Irvine asked, thinking it might provide back-up for Stuart’s claim.
“No. I tried to get him to do one, but he refused point blank.”
“Was anyone else aware of the deal you claim to have done with Mr Mylan?” Irvine asked.
“I don’t know. I certainly didn’t tell anyone.”
“Was Mr Mylan aware you were helping yourself?” Irvine snapped.