by Granger, Ann
‘It’s a possible explanation. There are others. Perhaps, as you suggest, he had lousy manners.’ Jess paused. ‘Did you ever try and find out who he was? Did you ever ask Eva?’
‘I asked her once and she bit my head off, said it was none of my business. She was quite right, of course. So I didn’t mention it again and left it to Milada. I thought, you know, girls chatting together. They shared a bedroom. She might tell Milada eventually, but Milada says she never did.’
Jones picked up his mug of cooling coffee. When he’d taken a few sips, he went on, ‘I wish now I’d asked Bronwen Westcott to talk to Eva about this bloke. Bronwen wishes she had, too. She’s on a big guilt trip now because she never tried to find out where Eva went in her free time. She says she was in loco parentis. I told her no, she wasn’t, because Eva wasn’t a child. But Bronwen says, Eva was all alone in this country and lived in their home. Not in their actual part of the pub, I mean, but under the same roof. So Bronwen and Jake now feel they were responsible for her, or should have been. Bronwen does, anyway.’
‘Jake Westcott less so?’
‘He’s got a bit of a conscience about it, now that Bronwen is bending his ear so much. Left to himself, I don’t suppose he’d see it that way. Jake’s a businessman. He doesn’t worry about his staff’s private lives, only if they do their jobs. From my point of view, that’s just fine. He’s the one person who doesn’t worry I’m going to flip again. I like Jake. He’s a decent bloke.’
There was a moment or two of silence. Jones finished his coffee but didn’t seem disposed to leave.
‘Something else?’ Jess prompted.
He flushed. ‘It makes me look like a – a snoop and a bit of a voyeur.’
‘David,’ Jess told him earnestly, ‘if people would only report the suspicious things they see, our lives as police officers would be much easier and a lot of crime could be prevented. All too often they don’t want to be involved, or they fear they’ll sound ridiculous or paranoid or, as you describe it, like snoopers. So they ignore the bruises on a woman’s face, the terrified look of a child when the mother’s new boyfriend comes into sight, children playing too near railway tracks. I know that sometimes a concerned member of the public does report something odd and the authorities take no action and later there’s a disaster. People are rightly angry when that happens. I’m sorry if that does occur from time to time. But it doesn’t mean people shouldn’t at least try.’
‘All right,’ David interrupted, ‘although it was nothing like that. Eva wasn’t scared. She didn’t have any bruises. I had no reason to suspect anything was really wrong or that she was in any danger. I just thought the guy she was going out with was the wrong type and he didn’t look after her.’
He shrugged. ‘After Eva and I had this little spat about her boyfriend when she told me to shut up, I brooded over it for a while, as you might say. I’m not saying she wasn’t right to tell me off, but it rankled. I’d only asked because I was concerned for her. I wasn’t jealous. Well, all right, I was a bit jealous but I respected her right to pick the company she wanted to keep. I thought she’d be sensible. I’d seen her give Harper and his cronies the cold shoulder. She wasn’t stupid.
‘At any rate, the next time she had a free day, I slipped away and got down to the corner of the road before her. It helped that Jake wasn’t around that morning, gone to see some supplier or other, so he wasn’t there to notice I’d bunked off. I hid behind the hedge, real Peeping Tom stuff. After a while Eva came down to the corner. She had her pink coat on. I could see it through gaps in the twigs. She hung about there for nearly ten minutes and I got crosser and crosser. I thought, for Pete’s sake, why didn’t she just go back to the pub? Why did she let him do this to her? Keeping her waiting like that . . . I was just about to jump out and tell her so, and never mind how angry she was with me, when suddenly I heard a car. It came at a fair old speed, so he must have been late. He screeched to a stop. There was a slam of a door as Eva leaped in and they were off. By the time I stood up and craned my neck over the hedge, they were disappearing. I just glimpsed them, or to be honest I saw Eva’s pink coat in the passenger seat, before he swept round the bend. I was ashamed afterwards. I was spying on her and it wasn’t nice. She came back quite late that night, too, Milada said. Milada wasn’t happy about it, either, you know. It disturbed her when she’d just dropped off to sleep.’
‘But this could be very important!’ Jess’s excitement broke through her voice. ‘A breakthrough! You saw him, David, and you’re the only person who did!’
‘I didn’t see him, only the car. It was only a glimpse. It was a silvery colour. I didn’t get the licence plate, not even part of it, I’m afraid,’ Jones apologised.
‘Silver?’ Jess nearly bounced out of her chair. ‘Was it a big car? Did you see enough to name the make?’
‘I think it may have been a Citroën Saxo. A friend of mine had one. It looked very similar. About that size, anyway.’
‘It couldn’t possibly have been a Mercedes?’
He shook his head firmly. ‘Definitely not a Merc. A much smaller car, like a Saxo, and not the right shape for a Merc.’
Damn. Two steps forward, one step back. ‘Listen, David,’ Jess said earnestly. ‘I don’t need you to make a statement about your mother’s fears for you. But I do need you to make a statement about this car and how you came to see it. It could be a vital piece of evidence. I can’t stress too much you are the only person who ever got that close to Eva’s man friend, even if you didn’t see him. Don’t worry about the hiding behind the hedge and all the rest of it. Believe me, we hear weirder tales than that! Just put it all in a statement and sign it, would you? Because that’s evidence we may need to use.’
‘All right,’ Jones said. ‘I don’t mind doing that. Even the lurking behind the hedge bit. You must think I’m self-obsessed. Or obsessed with Eva. But Eva’s dead and, as you say, I did see the car. I suppose I should have told you about it at once, when you came to the pub. But I was ashamed of my behaviour. I’ll make a statement.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. And I’m glad I’ve told you now.’
‘So am I,’ Jess informed him.
Jones looked momentarily relieved. He fiddled with the empty coffee mug still in his hands. ‘Your brother,’ he said unexpectedly, ‘the one working out in the refugee camps, I suppose you don’t hear from him often?’
She had made a mistake. She ought to have thought more carefully before telling a witness anything personal about herself. Especially one she’d never met before and who had shared the workplace with the victim. It made a link between them. It was dangerous, the sort of thing she, as a professional, had been warned about and against which she should have an automatic safeguard in place. Sometimes it helped enquiries to be friendly. But an officer never gave hostages and she had given one to Jones in telling him of her brother.
To be fair, so far he’d showed no sign of using this to manipulate her. But all that could just be about to change.
‘Not often,’ she said, sipping at the cold remains of her own coffee and keeping her tone neutral.
Jones frowned. ‘How do your parents feel about that? Are they still alive, your parents?’
Getting nearer the bone. ‘They’re fine with it.’
Not true. Her father was stoical about it but that didn’t mean he didn’t care or worry. Her mother worried all the time. She, Simon’s twin, worried.
‘Why do you ask?’ She put a question in her turn, seeking to redress the balance of the conversation. She sat behind the desk here. She was the investigator, the interrogator if need be. That young man there was the witness and a potential suspect. But even as she thought this, another thought tacked itself on unwished. He must be in his middle or even late twenties but he hardly looks out of his teens.
Jones had been ill and sometimes illness made an unexpected change to physical appearance, not just the expected loss of weight or of hair condition, but an actual a
geing or conversely, in Jones’s case, a stripping away of the years. He was only a few years younger than she was but she had to remind herself of the fact. He’s not a boy. He’s a man.
But Julia Jones didn’t think of her son as a man. Her panicked call to the family solicitor had shown that.
Jones was watching her face and she had the uneasy feeling he could read her mind. I mustn’t underestimate him! she reminded herself. As a doctor in training he was taught to read symptoms, to work out what the patient was hiding or was unaware of. Every little telltale thing: the twitch of a muscle, the texture of skin, the fidgeting hands, all told a story. There were parallels with her own training. Watching the witness and watching the patient were akin. She had been studying David Jones since they met in the car park. But he had been studying her, too. Her unease grew.
‘I’m an only child,’ he said now, his manner suddenly so much more relaxed that it struck Jess as a sudden change of room temperature might have done.
‘You think that makes your mother more inclined to worry about you?’
‘There’s that,’ he agreed. He spoke now almost as if he was talking of someone else, not himself. This had suddenly turned into a case conference. She and he were put on a par, colleagues discussing a difficult diagnosis. ‘But really I think it’s because if parents only have one nestling, that one chick has to fly high, when it fledges. All their hopes are bound up in one human being. That child has to do well, or they, as parents, have failed.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that!’ Jess said crisply. Who sat in the chair opposite now? A nervous witness or Dr Freud?
‘Yes, well, take it from me,’ Jones said wryly. He stooped to pick up the helmet. ‘I have to get back to the pub. I’ve got work to do and I’m sure you have, too.’
‘I still need you to make a statement about seeing the car,’ she reminded him. ‘I’ll take you along to see DC Stubbs and you can make it to him. It won’t take long.’
‘OK,’ he said, amenable now. All the tension had gone out of him like air out of a tyre. The session on the psychiatrist’s couch had been successful.
I wonder if I’m in the wrong job? thought Jess.
‘We can’t dismiss that young man as a suspect,’ Carter said, when he’d listened to Jess’s account of her interview with David Jones. ‘He has a history of instability and, whatever he claims, he was obsessed by the girl. He says he hid behind the hedge to see who picked up Eva because he was worried about her. But that’s a familiar stalker’s excuse. “I didn’t mean any harm to her or anyone else; I was acting in her best interests” – you’ve heard it before, so have I.’
‘Ye-es,’ agreed Jess doubtfully. ‘Yet somehow, I can’t see him harming Eva.’
‘He may not have intended to. We’ll keep him in view, anyway. How did you get along in London?’
Jess summarised her adventures. ‘I don’t know if Burton only invested in the property market. Things aren’t looking so bright in that at the moment, are they? Or according to the newspapers I read.’
‘If he invested at the right time, and he and his associates probably did, they won’t have to worry too much, I shouldn’t think,’ Carter observed. ‘But he certainly will have had other interests, have diversified. He was obviously a seriously wealthy man. We’ll track his other deals down, though it may take time. He may have stepped on someone’s toes.’
‘Armstrong thought Burton had worked his way up in the world from humble beginnings. It could be someone from his past,’ Jess pointed out. ‘We still need to trace his next of kin. They will be able to tell us more about the man, where he came from, how he made his first serious money, that sort of thing. No one has come forward but he must have had someone, some family member.’
‘Some people don’t.’ Carter hunched his shoulders. ‘Immediate relatives have died and they’ve never been in touch with more distant ones. They’re loners. Burton did, however, have a local solicitor. He got in touch with me yesterday while you were in London. He’d been trying to contact his client and finally went to the house. No luck there and so he tracked down the cleaner. She told him Burton was dead and the police were involved. He’s anxious to talk to us, that is, to you. He says you’ve already met him.’
‘I have?’ asked Jess, startled.
‘It seems you went to see his wife. His name is Foscott, Reginald Foscott. I’ve got his business card here, if you don’t want to tackle him at home.’ Carter picked up a tiny rectangle of white card and held it out to her.
‘Who’d have believed it?’ Jess wondered aloud, as she took it. ‘Reggie Foscott!’
‘Thought you’d be surprised,’ said Carter, his expression enigmatic.
‘Ah, Inspector Campbell, I believe we have met,’ said Foscott, rising from behind his desk to stretch out a long lean hand.
Jess shook it. It crumpled in her grip, as if it were boneless, an impression Foscott himself gave on closer inspection. Before, in their brief encounter at his house, she’d only received an impression of a tall, thin, pale figure. Looking at Reggie now, Jess was irresistibly put in mind of Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’.
Foscott invited her courteously to ‘please be seated’. Jess sat and found herself on one of those chairs with a misnamed back ‘rest’ that lodged across the sitter’s spine at the most awkward and painful spot. She was forced to sit upright, well away from it. A Victorian teacher of deportment would have approved. Why was it, she wondered, that the Foscotts, whether at home or at work, were incapable of providing visitors with a comfortable seat?
‘I appreciate your coming to see me,’ intoned Foscott. ‘A great pity we did not realise, when you called to see my wife, that your enquiries would include my client – late client, I should perhaps say – Lucas Burton. Although . . .’ A strange expression crossed his bony features and Jess saw with a start that he was smiling. ‘A solicitor’s client is none the less his client because he is dead, hm?’
Reggie Foscott had cracked a joke. Oh, dear. Reggie humorous was more disconcerting that Reggie serious, Jess decided. However, it quickly became apparent that this attempt at graveyard humour was strictly temporary. He probably trotted out that joke every time he met the executors of wills in an attempt to put them at their ease.
To confirm this, he resumed his lugubrious expression and said briskly, ‘Now, to business!’
Jess decided it was time to take charge. ‘Thank you, too, for making time to see me, Mr Foscott, and for contacting the police in the first place. We have been having some difficulty in tracing a next of kin for Mr Burton. We’re hoping you can help us there.’
Foscott steepled his long fingers. ‘Ah . . . quite so. Alas, no, I can’t help you there, at least not at the moment. In fact, I was rather hoping you might have some information about that for me.’
Jess found she was gaping at him and hastily pulled herself together. ‘Mr Burton was a businessman with several profitable interests. We are assuming there is a will?’
‘There was a will,’ corrected Foscott. ‘Now there isn’t and that, you see, is the problem and why I am very anxious to contact any relatives. Or, indeed, anyone else who may feel they have a claim on the estate. Otherwise it will go to the Crown. It is, as you say, a considerable one. There are two valuable residential properties alone, collectable antiques and furniture, personal property, all to be taken into account before calculation of monies in bank accounts and investments et cetera. It will take some time to disentangle everything, find out where it all is and come to an agreement with the taxman. Some of it is likely to have been invested offshore.’
‘No will?’ Jess frowned. ‘But there was previously a will, you say. What happened to it?’
‘It was destroyed by me on my client’s instructions. There was a good reason for that. Let me explain. Mr Burton was one of those very rich men with no one to leave his money to. He was unmarried, that is to say divorced, and had no children. He was not in touch with any relatives. He said he didn’t ha
ve any; although, in my experience, there is nearly always someone. It may be a person the testator has never met or of whose existence he may be quite unaware, a distant cousin in Australia, for example. But nonetheless there is generally someone.’
Yes, Carter was wrong. People might believe themselves without family, but a hunt through the family tree might discover a shoal of unsuspected relatives. That might turn out to be Foscott’s problem.
The strange expression crossed his face again. ‘Sometimes we find the missing heir is the family black sheep, whose name was struck from the records and never spoken aloud again. Families, Inspector Campbell, can always be relied upon to spring a surprise. Death, funerals, above all wills, they all bring the secrets to the surface.’
His foray into levity was over again. Foscott’s features settled back into their normal sedate gloom and it really did seem to suit him much better. Jollity, Reggie, doesn’t become you! thought Jess.
‘Mr Burton explained to me that his marriage had been a youthful one and had lasted only eighteen months. He and his young bride had parted amicably and, over the years, been in touch sporadically. She had remarried and divorced again. Her name was Janice Grey. Grey was the name of her second husband and she’d retained it. I think he took her out to dinner now and again when he was in London. In a curious, rather touching sort of way, he seemed to feel some responsibility for her. So he named her as the sole beneficiary of his will. As I recall, his exact words were: “Janice might as well have it.”’
Foscott sounded disapproving of his client’s cavalier manner of disposing of a considerable estate.
‘I suggested to him that he might name some residual beneficiary, should it become necessary. That is to say some charity, for example, or other institution that might benefit if Ms Grey predeceased him. Mr Burton expressed himself – ah – forcefully on the subject of charities. In short, he didn’t wish to make such a clause. Ms Grey, he said, was three years younger than he was. I gather she was only sixteen at the time of the marriage and he, therefore, nineteen. Little wonder it didn’t last long! “Janice,” he said, “is fit and healthy. Tough as old boots.” Not very gallant, perhaps, but an encouraging thought if one is naming a beneficiary.