“Hello,” I said.
“Is that Nicholas Foxton?” came a man’s voice in reply.
“It is,” I said. “To whom am I talking?”
“Detective Chief Inspector Flight,” he said, “Gloucestershire Police.”
Not another detective chief inspector, I thought. What’s the collective noun for detective chief inspectors? It was a posse of police, so maybe it’s an evidence of detective chief inspectors.
“Where are you, Mr. Foxton?” asked this particular chief inspector.
“Somewhere safe,” I said.
“And where is that?” he asked again.
I ignored him. “Who was the man who tried to kill me?” I asked.
“Mr. Foxton,” he said, “I need you to come to a police station to be interviewed. Tonight.”
He was persistent, I’d give him that.
“Have you spoken to DCI Tomlinson from Merseyside Police?” I asked. “Or Superintendent Yering from the Metropolitan Police Armed Response Team?”
“No,” he said, “not personally.”
“Then I suggest you do,” I said.
“Mr. Foxton,” he said, “you are in danger of obstructing the police in the course of their duties. Now, please tell me where you are.”
“No,” I said. “Did you watch the television news on Tuesday? The dead man in my mother’s cottage is the same man as in the video. And I think he was foreign. He said some words I didn’t understand. Something like ‘Ibe se!’”
“Mr. Foxton.” Detective Chief Inspector Flight was getting quite worked up. “I must insist you tell me where you are.”
“And I must insist you speak to DCI Tomlinson or Superintendent Yering.”
I hung up.
That didn’t go too well, I thought. Too bad. But I was definitely not going to any police station to be interviewed tonight, or any other night if I could help it. People could get shot at police stations. Ask Lee Harvey Oswald.
I heard Jan leave the house at a quarter to seven in the morning to supervise the exercising of her horses on the gallops. She had asked if I wanted to accompany her up onto the Downs to watch, but I had declined, not because I didn’t want to but because I didn’t want anyone to recognize me and hence know where I was staying.
It may have been eight years since I was a regular in Lambourn, but there were plenty who had been here longer than that, even amongst Jan’s staff, and most would have known me by sight.
I realized it was highly unlikely that news of my whereabouts would then get back to hostile ears, but I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks if I didn’t have to.
I got up as quietly as I could but Claudia was already awake.
“Don’t go,” she said.
I snuggled down again next to her under the covers.
“When will this all end?” she asked.
“Soon,” I said. But I really had no idea when.
“I was so frightened last night,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I really thought he was going to kill you.”
I’d thought it too.
“But he didn’t,” I said. “So everything’s all right.” I was trying to sound encouraging even if I was not so sure inside.
“So why have we come here?” she asked. “Why can’t we go home now?”
“There’s just a few things I have to do before we can go home,” I said, sitting up on the side of the bed. “And I don’t want to take any chances if we don’t need to.”
“I think we should go to the police,” she said.
“I spoke to them last night after you went to bed. They agreed that it was better for us to stay here for a couple of days while they carry out their investigations.”
At least the first bit was true.
“So what is it that you have to do?” she asked.
“Well, first, I have to go to Oxford,” I said. “And I’m going to do that right now.” I stood up and started to dress.
“I’ll come with you,” Claudia said, throwing the duvet to one side and sitting up.
“No,” I said firmly. “You stay here with Jan and my mother. You need to recover fully from your operation. And I won’t be long. You’ll be quite safe here.”
I think she was secretly relieved as she lay down again and pulled the duvet back over her.
“Why are you going?” she asked.
“To see a young man at the university,” I said. “I want to ask him some questions about a factory, or, rather, about the lack of a factory.”
I stopped on the outskirts of Oxford and turned on my mobile phone to call Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson.
“DCI Flight of Gloucestershire Police is not happy with you,” he said. “Not happy at all.”
“Too bad,” I said.
“He’s applied for a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of manslaughter.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” I said.
“Maybe it is,” he agreed, “but he’s really pissed off. I do think it might be better if you go and see him.”
“Not if he’s going to arrest me.” I didn’t relish spending another day in a police cell. “Anyway,” I said, “I have things to do first.”
“Not investigating again, are you?” said the professional detective. “I’ve told you to leave that to the police.”
“But what are you going to investigate?” I said. “It is me, not you, that believes Colonel Jolyon Roberts was murdered, but there is no evidence for that belief. In fact, quite the reverse. The evidence indicates that he died of natural causes helped by a dose of stupidity. The police see no crime, so there is no investigation.”
“So what do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Speak to Flight,” I said. “Get him off my back. Tell him there’s no way I’ll see him if he’s going to arrest me.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “But I still think you ought to at least talk to him.”
“Get me his number,” I said. “Then I’ll call him.”
“How can I contact you?” he asked.
“Leave a message on this phone. I’ll pick it up.”
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Can you find out if the dead man in my mother’s cottage was Bulgarian?”
I thought about also asking him to get the fraud squad to initiate an investigation into the Balscott factory project, but, as I knew from previous experience with a former client, fraud investigations involving foreign investments started with months and months of delving into paperwork before there was any prospect of an arrest. Add to that the complexities of the European Union grants system, and it would take years.
And I’d be dead and buried long before that.
I disconnected from DCI Tomlinson, but the phone rang again in my hand almost immediately.
“This is your voice mail,” said an impersonal female voice when I answered. “You have two new messages.”
One of them was from DCI Flight, and, as the other chief inspector had said, he didn’t sound very happy. I ignored it.
The other was from Patrick Lyall, who also wasn’t pleased with me, in particular because I had left a message on his mobile saying that I wouldn’t be coming into the office today.
“Nicholas,” Patrick’s voice said, “I am sorry that you have decided not to be in the office once again. I think we need to have a talk about your commitment to the firm. I will be writing to you today formally warning you as to your future conduct. Please, would you call me and tell me where to have the letter delivered.”
It sounded to me as if the company lawyer had been advising him again on employment law—written warnings and all that.
I ignored him too.
Did I, in fact, have any future in the firm? And did I really care?
Keble College was on the north side of the city near the Oxford
University Museum of Natural History. I parked in Museum Road and walked back to the college.
“Sorry, sir,” said a man in a smart blue jers
ey intercepting me in the entrance archway. “The college is closed to the public. Trinity has begun.”
“Trinity?” I asked.
“Trinity term,” he said. “The students are here.”
It hadn’t even crossed my mind they wouldn’t be.
“Exactly,” I said to him. “I’ve come to see one of the students.”
“Which one?” he asked politely but firmly. He was obviously used to repelling visitors who had no good cause to be there.
“Benjamin Roberts,” I said.
“And is Mr. Roberts expecting you?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s a surprise visit.”
He looked at his watch, and I looked at mine. It was just past ten o’clock.
“It might be a bit early for Mr. Roberts,” he said. “I heard he was partying rather late last evening. But I’ll try and call him. What name shall I say?”
“Smith,” I said. “John Smith.”
The college porter looked at me somewhat skeptically.
“I get that reaction all the time,” I said. “Unimaginative parents.”
He nodded, as if making up his mind, and then disappeared into the porters’ lodge.
I waited patiently under the arch.
Presently, the porter reappeared. “Mr. Roberts asks if you could come back later, round one o’clock.”
“Could you please call Mr. Roberts again and tell him I’m from the Balscott Lighting Factory and I need to see him now.”
Benjamin Roberts appeared in three minutes flat, with his long dark hair still unbrushed, bags under his eyes and with no socks inside his black leather shoes. He was tall, probably near six-feet-four or -five, and he towered over my just five-foot-eight.
“Mr. Smith?” he asked. I nodded. “Jarvis here tells me you’re from the Balscott factory.”
We were still standing in the entrance archway, with students passing us continually in both directions, and with Jarvis, the college porter, hovering nearby.
“Is there anywhere quiet we could go and talk?” I asked.
He turned to the porter. “Thank you, Jarvis, I’ll be taking Mr. Smith up to the Dining Hall for a while.”
“All visitors have to be signed in,” Jarvis said rather officiously.
Benjamin Roberts went into the lodge for a moment and then reappeared.
“Bloody rules,” he said. “They treat us like kids.”
We walked along a gravel path down the side of a building and then up some wide steps to the college dining hall, an impressively tall space with three lines of refectory tables and benches running along its full length.
Some catering staff at the far end of the hall were laying up for lunch but Benjamin and I sat down close to the door, across one of the tables from each other.
“Now,” he said, “what’s all this about?”
“Benjamin,” I said, starting.
“Ben,” he interrupted.
“Sorry, Ben,” I said, corrected. “I was a friend of your uncle Jolyon.”
He looked down at his hands on the table. “Such a shame,” he said. “Uncle Jolyon was fun. I’ll miss him.” He looked up again at me. “But what have you to do with the factory?”
“Your uncle Jolyon told me that you’d recently been to Bulgaria.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “A group of us from the university skiing club went to Borovets during the Easter vac. It was very good value and great snow. You should try it.”
Not with my neck, I thought.
“But your uncle also said you went to see the factory.”
“There isn’t any factory, is there?” he said.
“You tell me,” I said. “You’re the one that went to see it.”
He didn’t answer but sat looking at me across the table.
“Who are you, exactly?” he said. “Is Smith your real name?”
“No,” I admitted, “it is not.”
“So who are you?” he asked, standing up and with a degree of menace in his voice. “And what are you after?”
“I’m not after anything,” I said defensively, looking up at him. “Except to be left alone.”
“So why are you here? If you want to be left alone, why don’t you just go away?”
“I would, but someone is trying to kill me,” I said, this time without looking up at his face. It was hurting my neck. “Now, will you please sit down.”
He slowly lowered his huge frame back down onto the bench. “Who is trying to kill you?” he asked in a tone that indicated disbelief. “And why?”
“I don’t know who,” I said. “Not yet. But I think I may know why. Your uncle approached me because he was worried that the family’s investment in the Bulgarian factory project was a scam. He had been shown photographs of the factory buildings, but you had then told him that they didn’t actually exist. So he asked me to look into it, to check that, in his words, it wasn’t ‘a rotten egg of an investment.’ ”
He smiled at the use of the words. They were clearly familiar to him.
“And,” I went on, “I think that it is indeed a rotten egg of an investment. Your family money was the key to everything because the private finance for the factory triggered the public funding for all the houses. Someone has been defrauding the European Union of a hundred million euros by obtaining grants towards the cost of building a lightbulb factory and hundreds of homes that don’t actually exist and never will. And that same someone is trying to kill me before I can prove it, and before I find out who they are.”
I paused, and Ben Roberts sat staring at me in silence.
“And,” I said, going on, “I believe your uncle may have been murdered for the same reason.”
16
Uncle Jolyon wasn’t murdered, he died of a heart attack,” Ben Roberts said unequivocally. “At least he had a heart attack and then he drowned.”
Ben looked down again at the table in front of him. Jolyon Roberts had died only four days previously. It was still very recent—very raw.
“Did you know he was drunk when he drowned?” I asked.
“He couldn’t have been,” Ben said, looking up at me.
“The autopsy showed he was,” I said.
“But that’s impossible.”
“Because he didn’t drink?”
“Never,” he said. “He might have a tiny sip of champagne occasionally, you know, at a wedding for a toast, that sort of thing, but otherwise he never touched alcohol.”
“Did he ever drink whisky?” I asked. “Late at night maybe?”
“Not that I was aware of,” Ben said. “And I very much doubt it. I tried to get him to have a beer at my twenty-first birthday party, but I had no chance. He said that he didn’t like booze so it was no hardship not to have it.”
“Was he teetotal because of his heart condition?” I asked.
“Heart condition?” Ben said. “Whatever gave you the impression Uncle J had a heart condition? His heart was as strong as an ox. Or at least we all thought it was until last Monday.”
Perhaps Ben hadn’t known about his uncle’s heart condition, I thought. After all, it’s not the sort of thing people usually advertise about themselves.
“Tell me about your trip to Bulgaria,” I said. “When you went to see the factory.”
“There’s absolutely nothing there,” he said. “Nothing at all. And the locals know nothing about it. They’ve never even heard of any plans to build a factory, let alone the houses.”
“Are you sure you were in the right place?” I asked.
He glanced at me with a look that could only be described as one of contempt.
“Of course I’m sure,” he said. “I took all the details with me so that I would be able find it. My family are so proud of what the Trust does to help those less fortunate than ourselves. That’s why I was so keen for the skiing club to go to Bulgaria in the first place, and especially to Borovets. It was close enough so I could spend a day going to see the factory if I wanted.”
�
�Did anyone know you were going to the factory?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t absolutely sure that I would. It depended on the snow and the weather. To be honest, I’d much rather ski than visit factories, but on one day the cloud was right down on the slopes so I went, but the factory wasn’t there.”
“Where was it meant to be?” I asked.
“Close to a village called Gorni, south of Sofia. But when I saw the site, it was nothing more than a toxic waste dump left over from the mass industrialization of the country during the Soviet era.”
“So what have you done about it?” I asked. “Your family has invested a lot of money in the project.”
“Yeah, and lost it all too.” He sounded resigned to the loss.
“Aren’t you even going to try to get it back?”
“I don’t expect so,” Ben said. “My father is worried that the family name will be discredited. What he means is that we will be shown up to have been bloody fools—and fools that were easily separated from their money. He is furious about it, but mostly because he was talked into it by Uncle Jolyon and some financial adviser chap.”
“Gregory Black?” I asked.
“He’s the one,” he said.
“So your father says to forget it? Forget five million pounds just like that?”
“It’s only money,” he said almost flippantly. “And money is fairly easy to replace. It’s not like one’s family reputation. It can take many generations to repair damage to one’s family’s standing, and sometimes it can never be restored.”
It sounded to me that he was quoting his father.
“But it’s not possible to replace your uncle Jolyon,” I said.
“That’s surely all the more reason to forget about the whole thing. If the stress of this factory business gave Uncle J his heart attack, then we should unquestionably let sleeping dogs lie. Otherwise, our foolishness will be shown to have cost the family far more than mere money.”
“But I believe your uncle was murdered,” I said. “Don’t you want justice?”
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