‘No?’ Lee Kilroy’s jaw sagged. ‘What is it being used for? I have to know because I have to approve its use. I must ensure all the rentals are being used for lawful purposes.’
‘We don’t know what it is being used for,’ Brunnie informed Lee Kilroy, ‘but we can tell you that it is not being used for the storage of plumbing equipment or anything at all. There is nothing in it … nothing. Not only has it no contents, it seems to have been sanitized – scrubbed with bleach.’
‘How did you get in?’ Kilroy demanded. ‘Did Mr Danby give you a key? You … the police, would need a court order to force the doors open.’
Brunnie and Swannell remained momentarily silent. Then Brunnie said, ‘Yes, that’s true, but when we arrived there in pursuance of our inquiries we found the door was lying ajar.’
‘It had already been forced.’ Swannell confirmed the untruth. ‘Some local felon out on the theft found nothing in the building and went on his felonious little way.’
‘It’s often the way of it,’ Brunnie added. ‘So we opened the door and had a peek inside. It will have to be secured. There might be nothing to steal but a down-and-out, some skippering tramp will find it and turn it into his drum, then you’ll have to evict someone from their house.’
‘I see … well, I’ll get a new lock from the stores and nip over there and replace the old with the new.’ Kilroy sighed. ‘That’ll take the best part of two hours, what with the travelling involved.’
‘Not until tomorrow.’ Brunnie spoke slowly. ‘Do not do that until tomorrow.’
‘I don’t work on Sundays,’ Kilroy protested. ‘I need a day off each week.’
‘Lucky you,’ Brunnie growled. ‘We are not supposed to work on Sundays either but we often have to. It’s a question of needs must. But at the moment our forensic team are spraying the lock-up with Lumisol.’
‘Loomie what?’ Kilroy asked.
‘Lumisol. It’s a spray. If you spray it on a surface it will turn blue if blood has been spilled there, even if the surface appears clean … even if it has been washed,’ Swannell explained. ‘But the surface in the property at Nuffield Road in Leyton, that seems to have been bleached clean. Our forensic boys and girls will be lucky to get anything from it. Just going in there will make your eyes water and your throat itch.’
‘Nuff …’ Kilroy glanced down the ledger. ‘I know I should have computerized a long time ago … but Nuffield Road, you say?’
‘Yes, why?’ Brunnie became alert to a possibility. ‘Is there another address?’
‘Yes,’ Kilroy replied. ‘Yes, there is – it’s on Colville Road in Stratford. I am sorry, I just assumed you were interested in that address … It’s also rented by Mr Danby – again, he uses it for his plumbing business as he has done for fifteen years. Pays the same … hard cash each month as regular as clockwork. Never complains about the property so I never go there.’
‘And that’s the same David Danby?’ Swannell’s voice contained a note of urgency.
‘Yes. Same man,’ Kilroy replied quickly. ‘This is my register of rentees: Daltry, Danby then Davidson. I have no other tenant of that name and he gives the same home address in Raul Road, Peckham.’
‘He rents just two properties?’ Brunnie clarified.
‘Yes. Just the two,’ Kilroy confirmed. ‘Colville Road and Nuffield Road.’
‘We’ll need to have a look inside the property on Colville Road,’ Swannell told Kilroy. ‘Urgently. Do you have a key?’
‘Yes, yes, I can let you have a key.’ Kilroy’s voice faltered. ‘I’ll go and get it for you.’ He walked nervously away and then turned to face Swannell and Brunnie. ‘I couldn’t get into trouble over this, could I?’ he asked.
‘Possibly,’ Brunnie replied. ‘Landlords are liable to be prosecuted for any illegal activities or use of their property, especially if it can be shown that said landlord knew or had cause to suspect that the property was being used illegally.’
‘But I wouldn’t worry too much,’ Swannell added with warmth in his voice. ‘We didn’t know of Danby renting a second property – we only found the rent book for Nuffield Road, and we probably would not have found out about the Colville Road property if you hadn’t mentioned it. We’ll make that clear in our report and I am sure the Crown Prosecution Service will look kindly on you.’
‘I would appreciate that.’ Lee Kilroy forced a smile. ‘I’ll go and get the key. Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No,’ Brunnie replied abruptly. ‘Just let us have the key and a note of the address.’
Tom Ainsclough sat down at his desk opposite Penny Yewdall’s desk. He glanced to his right, out across the River Thames at the solid buildings on the Surrey Bank which at that moment were gleaming in the mid-morning sun.
‘You …’ Penny Yewdall leaned back in her chair and wore a broad smile as she looked directly at Tom Ainsclough. ‘You,’ she said, ‘have the distinct look of the cat that got the cream.’
‘Have I?’ Tom Ainsclough turned to Penny Yewdall. ‘Really?’
‘Yes … really … you do,’ Yewdall replied. ‘There is a distinct smug “I-know-something-that-you-don’t-know” look about you.’ She inclined her head to her left. ‘Try as you might, you can’t hide it. Don’t go into acting, you wouldn’t be any good at it.’
‘Well,’ Ainsclough also leaned back in his chair and drummed his palms on his desk top, ‘that is probably because I am feeling a bit smug, because I do know something which you don’t know.’
‘Which is?’ Yewdall pressed.
‘Which is that the Police National Computer came back with a result on the fingerprints and the DNA we acquired from Elliot Woodhuyse, Esquire.’
‘Already!’ Yewdall gasped. ‘That was quick.’
‘Yes; I asked them to put a wriggle on and, good for them, they did so.’
‘And?’ Yewdall asked impatiently. ‘Let me taste the cream.’
‘And Mr Woodhuyse, who is in the world of finance, is also known as one Leonard “Len” McLaverty, who is also in the world of finance, but not in the city, more in the manner of money laundering … and big-time money laundering at that. I have just shown the printout to Harry Vicary and he is very much pleased.’
‘So the crafty geezer has been hiding in plain sight,’ Yewdall gasped.
‘Seems so,’ Ainsclough replied. ‘In fact, it is probably the best place to hide if you ask me. I mean, what bobby on the beat is going to suspect a man who lives in that house, in that address with a Porsche parked underneath his front window?’
‘Not many.’ Yewdall laid her ballpoint pen on the report she was writing. ‘Not many,’ she repeated, ‘I’ll grant you that. I certainly wouldn’t.’
‘He’s been keeping his head down, keeping off our radar,’ Ainsclough exhaled. ‘Quietly laundering money, and it seems he is living very well off the proceeds.’
‘So how does Harry want to handle this?’ Yewdall asked.
‘Softly, softly as always. Harry being Harry, he doesn’t want Woodhuyse to know that we know he is aka Leonard “Len” McLaverty. We’ll continue to let him believe that we know him only as Woodhuyse, the body of whose wife has just been found and he may or may not be implicated in her murder, and if he thinks that that is the be all and end all of our interest then he’s not going to go anywhere. If, on the other hand, he knows that we also know him as Leonard McLaverty, then he’ll vanish, go down a bolthole like a racing snake, using any of a few fake passports he will have acquired, and live off the money he doubtless has in numbered accounts in banks in Geneva.’
‘I see … that seems sensible.’ Yewdall nodded approvingly. ‘As Harry says, Elliot Woodhuyse won’t be going anywhere … but Leonard McLaverty will vanish in a puff of smoke.’
‘And we don’t want that, so Harry wants us to close down on McLaverty with stealth. Right now he wants us to close up the lead the odd job man gave us.’
‘Sean Rooney from Tralee,’ Penny Yewdall replied. ‘What was t
he car registration number? I have it written down …’ She consulted her notebook. ‘Here it is: 771 WJ.’
‘It’s still in use,’ Ainsclough told her. ‘According to the DVLA people in Swansea it’s registered to a lady called Hubbard, as in Old Mother Hubbard, who lives in Hertfordshire. We are to call on her, you and me, that is, our next little job.’ Ainsclough stood. ‘So to horse … let’s do this thing.’
Victor Swannell turned the key in the padlock of the small lock-up on Colville Road, Stratford. Colville Road had revealed itself to be a short road leading at ninety degrees from an arterial road into an area of what Swannell and Brunnie saw was of neatly kept late nineteenth-century terraced housing, very self-respecting upper-working class and lower-middle class, Swannell thought. They were the family homes of men in stable, skilled blue-collar jobs who stood shoulder to shoulder with salaried local authority workers. The lock-up in question was one of a row of similar sized properties which stood either side of a redundant electricity substation.
The officers opened the door of the lock-up and were met with a wall of musty air, although the door hinges were liberally lubricated and the door opened silently and without protest, thus indicating to the officers that the rentee called frequently but never left the door open, as if opening the door a little, sliding between it and the frame and then closing the door rapidly behind him once he was within the interior, never giving the inside of the building a chance to ‘breathe’. Swannell and Brunnie stepped back from the mustiness and fully opened the door, thus permitting the egress of stale air and the ingress of fresh, breathable air and sunlight. The daylight which flooded into the dark interior of the building revealed many wooden boxes; each was a dull grey colour and they were placed in a neat row on the concrete floor of the building. Each box was secured with a heavy padlock. Victor Swannell entered the building, knelt down and lifted the lock of one of the boxes. ‘We’re not going to get in any of those boxes,’ he said. ‘Not without a key or a jemmy.’
‘I’ve got just what we need in the car.’ Brunnie, who had followed Swannell into the lock-up, replied. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Moments later the two officers stood quietly side by side looking at the contents of the wooden crate. Eventually the silence was broken by Brunnie, who said softly, ‘You know, you could equip an entire army with that lot.’
‘A slight exaggeration,’ Swannell sighed, ‘but I know what you mean. So what do you think we’re looking at? Terrorism or gun crime?’
‘Gun crime.’ Brunnie pondered the contents. ‘That is, if all the boxes contain similar weapons. Look, you have shotguns, single and double barrel, mostly sawn-offs … you have hand guns, revolvers and automatics … you have blades … this is all too puny for terrorists, they want your Uzis and Glocks, they want high-powered rifles like the ones used by snipers … No, what we have here is a gunsmith’s stock-in-trade. The shotguns could be any age; the design of a shotgun hasn’t changed since Victorian times. The handguns, they’re later … World War Two vintage, I’d say.’
‘They have probably been used in armed robberies in London since … since …’ Swannell’s voice faltered.
‘Since we don’t know when.’ Brunnie finished the sentence for him. ‘One gunsmith retires and sells his stock to a new kid on the block, who adds to it when they belong to him … He also eventually retires and sells the guns on to a new up-and-coming gunsmith and it’ll be the same deal. The felons rent the guns. If the job goes smoothly and no one is injured, the guns are returned and the felons get half their money back. If the turn goes sour and someone is killed or injured, the felons lose all their money and get rid of the guns anyway they can, usually by throwing them into the river. That’s been the rule of the game practically since firearms were invented, as you know.’
‘Neat,’ Swannell whispered. ‘So the gunsmith keeps only those weapons which cannot be linked to any crime which went pear-shaped. Very clever. Very cautious. And he keeps his head down … never on the radar … never takes part in any of the turns. Just a man in the shadows.’
‘Yes.’ Brunnie’s voice also fell to a whisper. ‘We’d better phone this in.’ He reached into his pocket for his mobile phone. ‘We’d better get those crates and their contents safely into our custody.’
‘I suppose it was all quite erotic.’ The woman smiled at Penny Yewdall and Tom Ainsclough. ‘Both of us young, well, youthful, anyway … at least youthful if not young … but slender, both doing our yoga workout whilst naked in her front room with the curtains shut, of course. Her husband was always out addressing his course of business.’
‘Sounds pleasingly erotic to me,’ Penny Yewdall offered. ‘I am sure men would find the spectacle agreeably pleasing.’
‘Well, whatever, that’s what we used to do. Twice a week on average … then we’d sip tonic water with a lemon slice and have a good long girly natter … still naked, just the two of us putting the world to rights, then I’d claw my kit on and jump into my old 771 WJ and drive home. The car was a beat-up old Skoda, which was eventually scrapped, but I kept the number plate and I transferred it to the next car … and the next … and then to the one after that, and now it’s on a Mercedes-Benz.’
‘Yes.’ Tom Ainsclough read the room. He found it to be age and social status appropriate, being exactly the home of an accountant and his wife: a detached, very solid, mid-Victorian building. ‘We noticed it in the road.’
‘Yes, I dare say it looks sort of smug but it’s not as expensive as it looks. My husband looks after the accounts of a garage proprietor – that is a repair garage, not a petrol filling station – and the proprietor, with his contacts in the motor trade, found it for me. It’s a high-mileage model so few people wanted it, but the proprietor said he knew the car and there’s nothing wrong with it. He said it was in better condition than many similar models with much lower mileage, so he acquired it quite inexpensively and passed it on to my husband, who gave it to me. It’s the smallest Mercedes saloon which can be had, it’s a “lady’s Merc”, as my husband says. My husband’s Mercedes is a huge six-litre beast of a thing. He’s quite a short man and I think he looks perfectly stupid when he’s behind the wheel because the size of the car makes him look even smaller than he is … but will he be told?’
The woman, Sylvia Hubbard, was tall and very slender and sinewy, Ainsclough thought, with a clear, fresh complexion. Now in her late thirties, she enjoyed the figure of a woman fifteen years her junior, clearly courtesy of devoting her life to the pursuit and practice of yoga, and also having enjoyed the financial assistance of being married to a wealthy man. Neither Ainsclough nor Yewdall could picture Sylvia Hubbard scrubbing floors or washing dishes in a café. Her home on Park Road in Tring, Hertfordshire, was, on the outside, lavishly painted in a sensitive pastel shade of light blue, as her neighbours’ houses were, and her front rooms looked out across acres of the lush green pasturage to a stand of trees in the middle distance. Within the living room the carpet was of a deep pile in dark blue and fitted wall to wall. The furniture was old and dark and solid. Oil paintings in heavy ornate frames hung on the walls. The Doberman, once calmed, lay in the corner of the room and never took its eyes off Yewdall and Ainsclough, but rather stared at the officers with a look of deep suspicion. ‘That’s Toby,’ Sylvia Hubbard had said once the barking dog had been gently silenced. ‘He’s very handy to have around when Reginald, my husband, is at work.’ To which Penny Yewdall had replied only with a smile but had thought, I just bet he is.
‘So, Victoria.’ Sylvia Hubbard slid from the chair in which she had seated herself and, once on the floor, assumed the lotus position. She wore a long flowing cotton skirt and blouse which allowed her to move silently and freely. ‘I had hoped it wasn’t her body that had been found when I read the newspaper reports, but I know she had been reported as a missing person and so often that means a tragedy, or so I have noticed. I understand that most people who are reported missing turn up alive and well soon after b
eing reported, but if a person stays missing and the press and the TV people get hold of the story, then such missing persons tend not to turn up safe and well – rather their bodies get found or they remain missing forever.’ Sylvia Hubbard put the tips of her thumbs and middle fingers together and rested her hands on her knees. ‘So what can I tell you?’
‘Well … really, we’d like to hear anything which you think is relevant.’ Penny Yewdall stroked her hair back so it was hooked over her right ear. ‘We’d particularly like to know about the quality of her marriage, and also whatever you can tell us about her husband, Mr Elliot Woodhuyse.’
‘All right,’ Sylvia Hubbard began. ‘Well, I don’t think that I can tell you much about her husband. He was never in the house when I visited – we made sure of that. I did meet him fleetingly once or twice when I called in to say a quick “hello” to Victoria, but during our two-hour-long sessions, one hour of yoga and one hour of chat, he was never there. But he always seemed to me to be a bit of a shadowy figure. He was not at all interested in two young women cavorting naked in his living room. In fact, we had more to worry about from his gardener and handyman, Sean Rooney, or Sean Looney, as we called him. What a regular little voyeur he was. I mean, if there was the slightest chink in the curtains he’d find it and exploit it … really glue his eyes to the glass until we saw him and fully closed the curtains. He was a real little mole of a man who seemed to burrow his way to the surface if there was something interesting to watch. But you ask about her husband – he was in the financial world but exactly what, I never knew … Yes, the financial world, so Victoria once told me, but as I say, exactly what he did, I never knew, and quite frankly I don’t think Victoria was all that clear about what he did either. She was in banking herself, briefly, but she moved in different, more modest circles than her husband did.’ Sylvia Hubbard interlinked her fingers and stretched her arms out in front of her, then slowly moved them above her head. ‘I did get the impression that Elliot didn’t like people asking too many questions about what he did. He seemed to keep his working life and his home life set well apart from each other and didn’t mix the two. I did hear that he kept strange hours, but then people who work in the Square Mile have to keep odd hours. I mean, if you want to talk to someone in San Francisco you have to work late to allow for the time difference, or you have to get up at the crack of dawn if you want to talk to someone in Hong Kong.’
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