by Granger, Ann
Sprang himself was of middle age and middle height and generally ‘middle’ in all ways. Middling grey hair, middling complexion. Jess had eventually been allowed grudgingly into his lair. Here Sprang lurked keeping a watchful eye on the comings and goings at the block of flats created from a one-time Thames-side warehouse. He knew the residents to be wealthy, very private people and he made sure they got the privacy they required. They, in return, were no doubt generous with their Christmas and other tips.
‘I’ve had a copper here already,’ he said sourly, ‘from the Met. I suppose now you want to go in there.’
‘Sergeant Collins came to see the flat. I’ve spoken to him.’
‘Then you’ll know he took the key away. I’m responsible for those keys, you know. Has he given it to you?’
‘Yes, I’ve got it.’
‘Well, he’d got no business passing it on to someone else. He’d got no authority. I shouldn’t have let him have it, by rights, because he’d got no authority to get it off me. But he was threatening damage. Break in? Over my dead body you do, I told him. But there were two of them, coppers, so I had to hand it over. I reckon there’s a breach of civil liberties in there somewhere. Anyway, he went up and had a look. Why do you need to go up there again?’
‘That’s police business, Mr Sprang. We are enquiring into the circumstances of Burton’s death.’
‘Dodgy, are they? These circumstances?’ Sprang asked and a gleam entered his eyes, both magnified and distorted by the thick lenses.
There was an opened tabloid paper on a ledge beneath the rack of keys. If there was sensational news to be gleaned from Jess’s visit, he was inclined to be more helpful.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Jess told him. ‘We suspect foul play. Early days, yet, of course.’
‘Poor bloke,’ said Sprang, sounding quite cheerful now that he knew for sure he was among the first to know something about a story that would probably soon appear in his newspaper. He’d be able to pass the news on to all the residents as one by one they returned home. He’d have the satisfaction of being able to cause a stir, not to say ‘put the cat among the pigeons’. None of the other tenants would want to be drawn into a murder inquiry.
‘You want me to come up with you? No trouble.’ He rubbed his hands together with an unpleasant rasping noise.
‘That’s all right, Mr Sprang. I don’t suppose I’ll be very long.’
‘Only I am responsible for the flat, for all of them when the owners aren’t here.’ The magnified eyes came nearer to Jess’s face and she tried not to flinch. ‘I’ll need to know if you remove anything. Otherwise, someone might say it was down to me if anything went missing.’
‘I’ll give you a receipt, if I do remove anything.’ She edged away.
Sprang was clearly disappointed but made a last attempt. ‘I’ll take you up there, show you the way.’
Jess opened her mouth to say he needn’t bother but decided to let him win this one. She needed him on her side.
‘Thank you, Mr Sprang.’
There was a lift but as the flat was on the first floor, Jess opted for the staircase.
‘Did Mr Burton use the flat often?’ she asked Sprang who climbed the stairs ahead of her.
‘He came and went,’ said Sprang over his shoulder. ‘Say, a couple of times a month he’d be here. Sometimes he’d stay a week and go back to his other place at the weekend. Sometimes he’d come up for the weekend.’
‘Did he have many visitors?’
Sprang didn’t reply immediately to this. They had arrived before the flat’s entry door and he stood watching Jess manoeuvre the key in the lock and open it, before he answered.
‘Not often. Not many people called to see him. He occasionally . . .’ Sprang tailed off tantalisingly and peered past her into the flat. ‘Mind if I come in with you and just cast an eye around? I won’t touch anything.’
It was an exchange being offered. Sprang would gossip, but he had to be offered some inducement.
‘Take a quick look round, by all means,’ Jess said. ‘But it would be best if you didn’t touch anything. We may be fingerprinting the place later.’
Sprang darted through the door and looked around him eagerly but wasn’t rewarded with some extraordinary sight. No upturned furniture or ransacked drawers. Thank goodness, thought Jess, Collins didn’t turn everything upside down on his visit.
Sprang masked his disappointment. ‘Like I was saying, he was a single bloke, as I understood it. He never mentioned any wife and there wasn’t any woman came regularly with him.’
‘But he did sometimes bring lady friends here?’
Sprang didn’t exactly leer, but a knowing expression crossed his face, made sinister by the light shining on the thick lenses. ‘Oh yes, from time to time. Real stunners some of ’em. They looked like models, if you know what I mean.’
‘Real models?’
‘Well,’ admitted Sprang, ‘they were probably tarts but not the usual sort. They all had class.’
‘Escort agency girls?’
Sprang hesitated and Jess went on, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never seen any of them around here?’
‘They’re respectable people living here, you know!’ Sprang hastened to defend the honour of his clients. He might be ready to dish the dirt on the deceased Lucas, but not on any living tenants.
‘You’re asking me about Mr Burton,’ the caretaker said now firmly, letting her know it. ‘I think he – he had like a circle of women friends. He didn’t bring the same one every time, but I did occasionally see one I’d seen before, if you know what I mean?’
I do, thought Jess. Burton had an address book registering the names of his lady friends, the ‘little black book’ of tradition. But we didn’t find it in his Cheltenham house. I wonder if it’s here?
‘Well, thank you, Mr Sprang,’ she said aloud. ‘I’ll just take a look round and call back in to see you on my way out.’
Sprang accepted his dismissal.
Now she was alone, Jess slipped on a pair of thin rubber gloves and began a methodical search. She quickly decided Burton had deliberately kept nothing sensitive at the London flat. He knew Sprang had a key and he was away for long periods.
There was certainly no address book. Carter was sure the murderer had made use of Burton’s keys to search the Cheltenham house before she and Carter had got there. Had that been what he’d been looking for? Armstrong had told her Burton was a ‘man of mystery’, a man with inside contacts that he didn’t divulge to his co-investors. In that case, Burton’s address book had probably held, in addition to the phone numbers of his girlfriends, the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of his shadowy contacts to be tapped for insider knowledge. It had probably been a system resembling the not unknown semi-official arrangement under which individual ‘grasses’ passed their information on to specific CID detectives.
Was it this ‘black book’ that the murderer had searched for in Cheltenham, and had he found it? And had he searched here, too, in this flat, just as careful to leave no trace of his presence?
Jess toiled up and down the staircase in a trawl of the other flats, but her efforts yielded nothing. Those residents who were at home professed ignorance.
‘Can’t say I knew the guy. I must have passed him occasionally in the entrance or shared the lift with him, I suppose. But if I did, I didn’t know his name. Most of us here work in the City and frankly, we don’t socialise with one another.’
So much for top-of-the-range living. Jess thought her little flat in Cheltenham far more preferable. At least she knew who lived downstairs.
Sprang jumped out of his den when she reappeared and waited eagerly, spectacle lenses glinting.
She had to disappoint him. ‘We’ll be coming back with a proper search team. In the meantime, the flat will have to remain sealed. Tell me, apart from women visitors, did other people, men, come to see him here?’
‘Hardly ever,’ said Sprang grumpily.
‘If I cou
ld ask you a slightly different question. Have you noticed any strangers around recently? Any visitors you didn’t recognise? How difficult would it be for someone to get past your office unobserved? What happens when you’re not on duty?’
‘There’s nobody gets past me!’ snapped Sprang. ‘I’m head caretaker but I got some help, yes. Mickey Fisher does the night shift usually. Nobody gets past him, neither. Then there’s the relief man, Jason Potts. He’s on the ball, as well. I won’t have anyone on my team that’s a slacker. And the company don’t like it, either.’
‘Company?’
‘Runs the security.’
Perhaps, thought Jess, Gary Collins might be prepared to do another favour, go round and have a word with the security company, seek out the two junior porters and have a word with them. He might track down some of the residents she’d missed and talk to them, too. Collins seemed an affable sort, but in fairness the Met had a full load of its own cases to solve and Collins might feel he’d spent enough time on Jess’s problems. Morton might like a day out in London.
Sprang drew himself up to full height and assumed the demeanour of a commander in chief.
‘If you lose that key, there will be trouble, I can tell you. I’m responsible for these flats, not you and not that sergeant from the Met.’
Chapter 14
Her plan to revisit the Foot to the Ground and seek out David Jones had been relegated to the back burner due to the weekend and her trip to London the previous day. But it immediately put itself into the foreground on Wednesday morning.
Jess had pressed the button on the keyring that operated the remote locking system and been rewarded by the car lights flashing an acknowledgment. Her plan was to go straight to see Ian Carter and let him know how she’d got on in London. But as she set off towards the building she heard herself hailed. Looking round, she saw a young man in motorcycle leathers hastening towards her, his helmet tucked under his arm in the way the decapitated ghost of Anne Boleyn was said to carry its head.
‘Inspector! Have you got a minute? I really need to talk to you. It’s urgent.’
Jones had come to her. He panted to a halt in front of her. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come inside?’ She indicated the building. He did look very agitated. Now what had happened?
Jones cast the concrete block of headquarters a hunted look and she wondered if the word ‘inside’ suggested imminent arrest in his mind.
‘We’d be more comfortable than out here,’ she added. ‘And I could probably rustle up some coffee.’
He still hovered uncertainly. ‘I haven’t come to make a statement. I just want to set the record straight. I can speak for myself, you know. I don’t need other people speaking for me!’ His voice grew louder, more stressed, and threatened to crack.
As she should have guessed it might be, this visit was prompted by the actions of Mr Fairbrother, the solicitor, and his phone call to Phil Morgan. David Jones had learned what had happened, probably from his mother, and was predictably frantic at the unfavourable light in which they’d unwittingly cast him.
‘Fair enough but we might as well sit down while you do.’ She kept her tone easy, hoping to calm him down. He was very flushed. His eyes glittered. When she’d spoken to him before, at the Foot to the Ground, his face had been almost deadpan. The flashes of animation had been no more than that, flickering across his countenance. Now every muscle seemed to twitch, as if he crackled with electricity, standing there. She half expected blue lights to play around the metal head under his arm.
She took the lead, setting off purposefully towards the building. The crunching of motorcycle boots on the gravel behind her told her he followed.
A little later Jones sat hunched in a chair, his hands clasped round a mug of coffee. The helmet lay forlornly on the floor beside him. If her invitation had been intended to relax him, it hadn’t worked. He still looked a bundle of nerves. No wonder, Jess thought sympathetically, his family worried about him and had got on to the solicitor.
‘Old Fairbrother phoned you, didn’t he? It was nothing to do with me.’ Jones’s first words confirmed her suspicions. His eyes gleamed with anger, but not directed at her.
‘Yes, he phoned us,’ Jess said noncommittally.
Jones twitched and the coffee in the mug splashed out.
‘Mind!’ Jess warned. ‘It’s not the best coffee in the world, but it is hot.’
Jones leaned forward and put the mug on the interview room’s scratched desk. ‘It was my mum; it was her idea. She’s pally with a woman called Foscott.’
‘Selina Foscott?’
‘Yes, you went to see her, apparently, and showed her that photo from the leaflet Jake had printed up, to advertise the restaurant. Mum panicked because she’s afraid of me having a relapse, going off my head again.’
‘You had a nervous breakdown, didn’t you? That’s hardly to be classed as going off your head,’ Jess objected.
‘I was ill!’ Jones said crisply. ‘You don’t know the sort of things I did when I was going through all that. I put my family and friends through it, too. I painted my bedroom black.’
‘What’s unusual about a bit of home decorating?’ returned Jess, trying not to look surprised. ‘It’s very handy. Black might be a depressing colour. I don’t know I’d have chosen it.’
‘No, no!’ he said irritably. ‘I painted all of it black, wall, ceiling, furniture. I dyed my bedlinen black.’ He paused reflectively. ‘Actually, that didn’t work very well. It all came out a funny colour.’
‘Were your parents embarrassed by your breakdown?’
It might have been thought that this very personal conversation would make the young man more agitated. But as they spoke, Jess noticed a lessening of tension on his part. It was easier for him to talk about his recent illness than to pretend it was all in the past and had no relevance to here and now.
He’s treating me like a psychiatrist, she thought wryly. Pity I haven’t a sofa he can lie on.
‘Yes, they were embarrassed. It sounds a harsh thing to say about them but it’s true. I don’t mean they weren’t supportive. They did everything they could but it’s not an easy thing to deal with – having someone sit round all day, weeping and generally talking wildly and doing odd things.’ He looked Jess squarely in the eye. ‘I am all right now.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
He shrugged. ‘They’re afraid, Mum and Dad both, but Mum particularly, that I’ll do it all again. You can’t blame her entirely. Mrs Foscott had wound her up. She’s the most bloody tactless woman in the universe, did you know that?’
‘You mean Selina Foscott?’
‘Of course I mean Selina. I don’t mean my mother! Dad’s away at the moment. He went off first to some international conference in Strasbourg. Since he’s been back, he’s been in London, staying at his club. He’s got a tricky trial coming up. So Mum took it on herself, after Selina showed her that picture and filled her ears with an image of doom, to ring up Fairbrother and get him to call you. I think he did try and dissuade her but she was in a flap, so in the end he did. Of course when my dad heard about it he hit the roof. I thought the telephone would combust. She was just trying to protect my nerves. But Dad said it made them look as if they were trying to prevent me being questioned. In other words, as if I had something to hide regarding Eva’s death. I don’t. Dad was all for writing to you himself. But I said I had to handle it myself and anything they did would just add to the – the unfortunate impression made by Fairbrother’s call. So Dad said, fine, just call on him if I got into a fix. So here I am.’
‘I expect your mother’s upset now – because she did the wrong thing.’ Jess smiled.
‘Yes.’ Jones gave a wry smile in return. ‘If this goes on much longer and you don’t find Eva’s killer, I think Mum’s going to end up breaking down. There, I shouldn’t have said that. But if you love someone, you worry about them, don’t you?’
Jess thought of Simon in the fly-blown c
onditions of the refugee camp. ‘Yes, you do.’
‘I used to worry about Eva,’ Jones said soberly. ‘Because I was pretty keen on her, but I expect you sussed that out.’
‘I thought you probably were. It’s normal. She was a very pretty girl.’
‘Yes, she was. She was beautiful. The photo didn’t do her justice – and when you saw her dead, well, I expect she wasn’t very pretty then, was she? As a medic, even a failed one, I’ve seen death.’
‘No,’ Jess said quietly. ‘She wasn’t very pretty then.’
‘It takes away all personality,’ Jones said, his gaze losing its concentration. He was going down memory lane. ‘It leaves the human body just a husk. I think there must be a spirit – or something like a spirit – because something definitely leaves the body on death.’
Jess leaned forward and said softly, ‘David . . .’
He blinked, jerked and his eyes refocused. ‘Yes, well. Eva was very attractive and she was a nice person too, and I did fall for her. But she had a boyfriend.’
‘Go on,’ invited Jess, because he’d stopped again.
‘Did Milada say anything to you about it?’ Jones stared at her.
‘She thought a man picked up Eva regularly on her free days, at the end of the lane. He never came to the Foot to the Ground, she said.’
‘No, he didn’t!’ Jones burst out vehemently. ‘And that’s dodgy, don’t you think? In all weathers she went down to the junction to wait for him. He never brought her back, even if it was pouring with rain. She always walked up to the pub from the main road where he dropped her.’
‘Do you have any ideas why that was?’
‘He didn’t want to be seen,’ Jones said simply. ‘Milada and I talked about it once. Eva had come home very late, early hours of one morning. Milada told me that she’d had to go down and unbolt the door, after Eva called her on her mobile and woke her up. Eva had walked to the pub from the junction, down an unlit road, at three a.m. What kind of a guy lets his date do that? Milada thinks he’s married.’