by Granger, Ann
‘They’re in denial,’ said Jess crossly. ‘By choice, that is. They don’t want to know anything!’
Phil rubbed his chin against his clasped hands. ‘As for Westcott himself fooling around with his waitresses, I think he’d find it difficult to do it without his wife spotting something. They all work together under the one roof. The two girls lived there up in the attic where Milada still is. It makes her sad to see Eva’s empty bed but she isn’t scared of spooks. She’s the practical sort. The Westcotts live in an annexe at the far end of the building. You could argue it gave opportunity to Westcott if he fancied one of them; on the other hand, there must be very little privacy. We know Eva’s boyfriend with the silver car went to great lengths not to be seen at the pub.’
Morton gave a little snort. ‘I talked to both Westcotts in their annexe. It’s just a couple of tiny rooms. You couldn’t swing the proverbial cat. But, as Mrs Westcott pointed out to me, they’re hardly ever there, so it doesn’t matter if it’s small. They work all hours.’
‘It didn’t sound to you as if she was going out of her way to make it clear her husband wasn’t misbehaving because he didn’t have either the time or the opportunity?’
Morton opened his mouth to reply but at that second the telephone on his desk gave a shrill cry. He grabbed the receiver and put it to his ear.
‘What?’ He swivelled in his chair to face Jess and held up his thumb in a signal of triumph. ‘Right, thanks. Tell me again . . .’ He seized a pen with his free hand and scribbled on his notepad. ‘Cheers.’
He slammed down the receiver and actually allowed himself a grin. ‘Got him!’
‘Who? David Jones? Mark Harper?’
‘No, better than either of them. We’ve got Mr Silver Mercedes! Traffic finally got through checking all the film in the various speed cameras. Those that had film in them, that is. And there he is at twenty minutes past four on Friday last, burning rubber on the Cheltenham road. He had so much on his mind he mustn’t have realised the camera had flashed! They’ve traced the registration. It belongs to a Lucas Burton and here’s his address.’ He pushed the notepad towards Jess.
‘Right!’ said Jess excitedly. ‘Then let’s you and I pay a call on Mr Lucas Burton and see what he’s got to say for himself.’
The rain had begun to fall in a persistent drizzle. Jess and Phil Morton stood together damply on the doorstep of Burton’s Cheltenham house and waited. The trees lining the pavement edge were turning mellow shades of ochre and russet as autumn crept in. All the houses were well kept. Some might have been turned into flats but, if so, the tenants were doubtless jointly obliged to keep the buildings in good repair. There was no peeling stucco. The railings were freshly lacquered black. Some cars were parked alongside the kerb, theirs included, but there was a limit on the time and if the residents had vehicles of their own, they must garage them elsewhere. Burton’s silver Mercedes would be one such.
‘Nice place,’ observed Morton, staring up at the façade. ‘What with Harper at Lower Lanbury House and now this, I feel I’m rubbing shoulders with the super rich! He must be worth a bit, this Burton bloke. I wonder what he does for a living? He’s not a policeman, that’s for sure.’
‘Someone’s coming,’ warned Jess.
In answer to the summons of the doorbell, footsteps could be heard approaching on the other side of the lacquered front door. It opened on a chain and the central section of a face was revealed, peering through the gap. It was enough to identify the owner as female.
Jess held up her ID so that the suspicious eyes studying them through the crack could read it. ‘Inspector Campbell and DS Morton. We’d like to speak to Mr Burton.’
‘Not at home,’ said a voice promptly through the crack.
‘Can you say when he will be home?’
‘Didn’t leave a note,’ the voice informed them.
Jess frowned. Beside her Morton muttered, ‘Do you think he’s done a runner?’
‘Are you Mrs Burton?’ asked Jess, although she thought it unlikely.
A sardonic snort reached them. ‘No, I’m not. There isn’t one. He lives here on his own.’
Conversation through the gap wasn’t easy. ‘Perhaps,’ Jess suggested, ‘you could open the door properly and we could have a word with you?’
‘If you like,’ said the woman, ‘not that I can tell you anything about him. I only clean up after him.’
The door was pushed to, a chain rattled, and the door reopened to reveal a stout individual in a blue button-through overall worn over baggy jeans. Her feet were shod in bright pink plastic clogs. She was in her mid-fifties, had dyed auburn hair trimmed into a youthful and unsuitable spiky cut, and sported large gold hoop earrings.
‘Do you want to come in?’ she enquired.
Jess hid her relief. Yes, they did want to come in and take a look round. But they had no warrant and in the absence of Burton himself would not have been able to gain entry without invitation.
The woman’s next words explained her apparent hospitality. ‘Only if I stand here gossiping with you in an open doorway, the rain will come in and spoil the parquet.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Jess. She and Morton hastened inside and the door was promptly shut.
‘I have to polish it!’ said the woman resentfully.
‘We understand. Your name is . . . ?’
‘Sandra Pardy. Mrs Sandra Pardy. I’ve cleaned for Mr Burton for the past five years.’
‘Nice house to work in,’ observed Morton, waving a hand to indicate the hallway in which they stood.
‘It’s got too many stairs,’ said Mrs Pardy. ‘And the ceilings are too high. I don’t like getting up ladders. You have to get up a ladder if you want to get the cobwebs down from up there on those cornices. I’ve told Mr Burton, I don’t like climbing up high. I get vertigo.’
‘Yeah . . .’ murmured Morton, looking at Mrs Pardy as though he recognised a fellow expert in the art of complaining. ‘I bet you do.’
‘My knees are not what they were,’ continued Mrs Pardy. ‘And damp weather like today doesn’t do them any good at all. What was it you wanted to ask me?’
‘You say that your employer, Mr Burton, didn’t leave a note? Does that mean, you think he’s gone away? Does he usually leave a note?’
‘He leaves notes all over the place,’ said Mrs Pardy. ‘Do you want to come into the kitchen? Only I was just going to make my cup of tea.’
They followed her down the hallway, wondering at its blue and pale yellow decor and crisp white cornices, until they found themselves in a large, very well-appointed kitchen. Every surface gleamed. The place looked like one of those mock-up kitchen unit displays in furniture stores. Was this, wondered Jess, because Mrs Pardy was a very good cleaner? Or was it because very little cooking went on here?
‘Do you cook for Mr Burton?’ she asked, as she and Morton settled themselves at a pine table, unscarred and clear of any clutter except for a folded copy of a tabloid paper.
‘No, no one does. He don’t.’ Mrs Pardy clicked on the electric kettle. ‘I’d offer you a biscuit, but my chocolate digestives have disappeared. I reckon he ate them. He don’t usually eat a biscuit. But I know I had a fresh packet up there.’ She pointed at a cupboard above their heads. ‘Unopened. I was saving it. It’s gone but I found the wrapper in the waste-paper bin in his study. Monday morning, that was. I didn’t see him. He’d gone out early. Didn’t leave none of his notes.’
‘Where does he eat, then?’ asked Morton.
‘Goes out somewhere, or has someone bring it round, home delivery. I generally find all the little silver cartons in the trash. Sometimes I come in and the kitchen fair stinks of curry. He likes Indian food and Chinese. Sometimes he gets in a pizza. But mostly, he goes out. He’s got plenty of money. He can afford to.’
Jess reflected ruefully that Burton’s eating pattern much mirrored her own. She didn’t cook, either, not to speak of. Her kitchen bin was generally filled with aluminium trays and pizz
a boxes, her cupboards with cook-in sauces. But unlike Burton, she couldn’t afford to eat out much.
‘You come in every day?’ asked Morton, frowning. ‘What do you—’
Jess managed to kick his ankle beneath the table. It wouldn’t do to antagonise Mrs Pardy by suggesting her job was a sinecure.
‘I come in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,’ the cleaner was saying, as she poured the tea into mugs. ‘Do you take sugar? I don’t work weekends.’
‘Blimey . . .’ murmured Morton with a touch of envy.
‘When did you last see Mr Burton?’
The cleaner came to join them at the table and presented them with a mug of tea each. She sat down heavily and pushed her newspaper to one side. ‘A week, it must be. Yes, last Friday it was. I came in early as I usually do, nine o’clock. He was just finishing his breakfast. He’d had cornflakes and some coffee. I did ask if he wanted toast. I do sometimes make him a bit of toast, although cooking’s not really part of my job.’
Phil Morton’s face was a picture.
‘He said, no, he was going out to lunch. Then he did go out, about ten o’clock. That’s the last I’ve seen of him. People keep ringing up, wanting to speak to him, just like you are. I tell them what I’ve told you. I don’t know where he’s gone. I did ring his other place, in case he’d gone there, just to ask him what I was to tell people. But there was no answer. Well, there was a machine answering but that was no good. I’ve never got along with those machines so I didn’t leave a message. After all, it wasn’t up to me to get in touch with him, was it? It’s up to him to get in touch with me, that’s how I see it.’
‘Other place?’ asked Morton quickly, taking out his notebook.
Mrs Pardy eyed the notebook. ‘Do you want the address? It’s a flat in London somewhere. He uses it when he goes up on business.’ She reached for a capacious handbag perched on the windowsill by her chair and rummaged in its depths. ‘Here—’ she said as she handed it to Morton. ‘The telephone number’s on there as well. He gave it to me ages ago when he was away for a whole fortnight, so I could forward his letters and ring him if anyone called here. Can’t remember as anyone did. I may have sent on a couple of letters. It was about a year ago.’
Morton took the slip of paper and raised his brows, before putting it in his pocket.
‘Are you sure Mr Burton hasn’t been back to this house during this week, perhaps while you weren’t here?’ asked Jess.
Mrs Pardy shook her auburn spikes and the hoop earrings swung. ‘Bed not slept in. Bathroom not wet. Towels not moved. No food trays in the rubbish. Post not picked up where it fell through the letter box.’
The cleaner leaned towards them with a grim expression. ‘If he don’t get in touch, or turn up, I’m downing tools. I’m not slaving away here looking after the place if I’m not going to get my money at the end of the week. It’s the only reason I came in today. I thought he might turn up because on a Friday he pays me.’
‘Did he pay you last Friday?’
‘Oh yes, because he was here, like I told you. He pays me Friday morning because usually he goes out after that and I go home at three o’clock. He paid me Friday last and then he went out. But this week it looks as if I’ve worked the three days for nothing!’
She sat back and folded her arms.
Jess and Morton exchanged glances. Lucas Burton had last been seen properly a whole week ago, on the morning of the day that had seen the discovery of the body. He had paid his cleaner her usual weekly wages and left the house. Everything had seemed normal. What had happened later to change all that? Evidence suggested he had been, for a reason not yet known, at Cricket Farm and left in a panic. Penny Gower had spotted him hiding in his Mercedes car halfway down the hill between the farm and the stables. Selina Foscott had narrowly missed a collision with his Mercedes and the car had been picked up on the speed camera, all on the Friday afternoon. These were the last recorded sightings of the man. Since then only a discarded chocolate biscuit wrapper indicated Burton had ever returned to his house. Normally a regular leaver of notes for the cleaner, he hadn’t left one.
Phil Morton drained his mug and asked the logical next question.
‘Where does he garage his car?
‘What about this flat in London, though?’ asked Morton as they walked the short distance to Burton’s rented garage. ‘If he hasn’t done a runner, he might be there.’
‘Let me have me that phone number.’
Morton passed the slip of paper given them by the cleaner and Jess took out her mobile and rang the London number.
‘No luck.’ She dropped the phone back in her bag. ‘We’ll get on to the Met and ask them to send a man round and check the flat out. We’ll concentrate on this garage and hope it tells us something. If the car’s gone, we know he’s driven off somewhere. If it’s there, where is he?’
The garage was in a row of windowless lock-ups and secured by a steel up-and-over door. Morton rattled at the catch.
‘Locked. If it was a house, we could find a way in, or break in, but this? We’d need to pick this lock.’
‘Lucas Burton has now been reported missing by his cleaner,’ Jess said firmly. ‘We believe he was at Cricket Farm only a few hours before a body was discovered there. We have good reason to believe he is in a distressed state of mind. Get a locksmith.’
‘There you go,’ said the locksmith, a little later. ‘You should be able to open it now.’
Morton stepped forward and swung the door up. The interior of the garage was revealed and they savoured a moment of triumph as the large silver Mercedes came into view. But almost at once a powerful, sickly-sweet odour swept out and enveloped them.
‘Faugh!’ gasped the locksmith, stepping back. He gave way to a fit of coughing.
They had found Lucas Burton. But he wouldn’t be talking to them, or to anyone else, ever again.
Chapter 12
‘Here we are again,’ said Tom Palmer, squeezing past the Mercedes to look down at the huddled form in the far corner of the garage. ‘My, my, someone bashed his head in. You don’t need me to tell you that. Very nasty.’ He raised a hand to scratch his mop of black curls and stared at the body with concern on his face.
‘We do need your report, Tom, as soon as possible,’ Jess requested. ‘Can you do the PM soon?’
‘Well, tomorrow morning will be the earliest.’
‘That means me, I suppose,’ said Phil Morton lugubriously. ‘Morgue duty again.’
‘The SOCO team is in there now,’ Jess reported much later that day to Ian Carter. ‘At least a garage is a fairly small area. They’ll be going over the car too, of course. There is some blood around the position of the dead man’s head but no obvious disturbance. Burton seems to have been one of those people who keep their garages fanatically clean. There’s no dust on the floor or on any of the tools on the rack. The team leader thinks the chances of a good fingerprint or footprint are slight. The car had recently been cleaned. So far we haven’t turned up a murder weapon.
‘Burton seems to have been working there and, from the articles around him, he had been busy polishing out a scratch on the wing mirror. Possibly he did the damage at Cricket Farm where we found the scraping of paint. The lab will be able to tell us if it’s the sort used by Mercedes. It looks as if he liked tinkering with the car. There is one empty hook on the rack where a tool could have been removed. There’s no tool left lying about in the garage that could easily have hung there, so possibly one is missing and it’s the murder weapon. A spanner, perhaps? Tom Palmer thinks it could be something like that. If so, if the murderer grabbed it and struck Burton when he turned his back, then the murderer had the presence of mind to take the weapon with him. By now it could be anywhere. In a river or lake? In the middle of bushes out of town in the countryside?
‘The cleaner’s testimony suggests, and Dr Palmer’s initial judgement is, that he was killed either very late on Friday, the day the body was discovered, or more likely the fo
llowing day, Saturday. She didn’t see him on Monday when she was at the house at nine in the morning and has had no communication from him since. It seems reasonable to assume he scraped the car at the farm. When he realised it, his first action was to make good the damage. He was interrupted while working on it by the arrival of his killer. But did he expect the call? How did the killer know where the garage was? It’s not attached to the house. It’s about three streets away. He turned his back on the killer. So we can also assume it was someone he knew.’
Carter had listened to this summary in silence and now nodded. ‘Has the body been officially identified?’
‘Mrs Pardy the cleaner has identified it as her employer. I felt bad about asking her to look at him, but as it turned out, I needn’t have worried. She didn’t turn a hair. “Oh, that’s him, all right,” she said. Then, if you please, she asked if she should get in touch with his solicitors about getting her week’s wages from the estate.’
‘Do we know who his solicitors are?’
Jess shook her head. ‘Mrs Pardy asks we let her know as soon as we find out. That woman is the most self-centred person I’ve ever met! She had a cushy job with Burton and he was just about the ideal employer. You’d think she’d express some decent regret at his death. But not a word – just, what about her money?’
‘He could be the ideal employer and still not inspire any affection or liking,’ Carter said quietly.
There was an odd hiatus in their conversation. Jess went on hurriedly, ‘I was just about to go over to his house and take a good look round it. Try and find out whom he did business with, and who his solicitor might be. Mrs Pardy has given me her keys. Oh, no keys of any kind have been found on the body. So another assumption is that the murderer has both house keys and car keys. He must have the key to the up-and-over door of the garage, because he locked it behind him when he left. There was also no mobile phone or BlackBerry in Burton’s jacket. The killer made off with those, too. He was a very thorough murderer. Eva Zelená’s killer was also efficient at removing all personal items like phone, purse or jewellery.’