Rules, Regs and Rotten Eggs (A Harriet Martens Thriller Book 7)

by HRF Keating

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll go the rounds now of Roughouse’s London friends. You’ve got the list I gave you?’

  ‘Told me to keep it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did. So, who lives nearest to where we are now?’

  Bolshy peered at the copy Harriet had made of what she had written down from Kailash Gokhale’s Zealots Register, tobacco-stained finger moving slowly from name to name. Then he looked up.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Marcus Fledge? He’s a suspect? Ain’t he the boss of — what’s it? — you see the stuff all over the place, heavy machinery. Pettifer’s. Read about him the other day. Paper said he’d been begged to buy up Birchester Rovers — worst club in the country, ask me — and he’d given them the correct bloody answer. Two fingers. Just that. You going to see him first?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I will see him. But not just yet.’

  ‘Don’t want to get your backside booted? That it?’

  Harriet let an exasperated sigh escape her lips.

  Yes, she thought, that probably is it, if I’m honest. Sir Marcus Fledge doesn’t sound like a man who’s going to pat me on the head and answer any sharp questions I may ask. Not that I won’t ask them, if necessary. And, if it comes to it, I’ll insist on getting more by way of answer than the two fingers he held up to poor old Birchester Rovers.

  ‘No, DS,’ she said. ‘I am not delaying seeing Sir Marcus Fledge because of whatever attitude he may have to those who come begging. What I am going to do is make sure that, when I do see him, I’ll know all there is to know about him. So, I asked: who’s nearest to us now?’

  Bolshy, subdued, went back to the list.

  ‘Feller called Cookbury. Lives bit north of here. St John’s Wood.’

  ‘All right. But, no. Better give him a buzz. May well be out, Sunday afternoon.’

  She waited, too impatient to think whether Martin Cookbury was really the best one to see, while Bolshy with infuriating leisureliness made his call.

  ‘Out, all right,’ he said at last. ‘But you’ll never guess where.’

  ‘I don’t intend to guess, DS. Where is he?’

  ‘Working, if what the wifey says is true. In conference. ’Course we may find, when it comes to it, what sort of work he’s doing. Nice Sunday afternoon activity.’

  ‘Just look at my list, DS, and tell me where his place of work is.’

  ‘Hey, see at the address you’ve got. Cookbury Parsons Iliff Underwood, all in one great streel.’

  ‘It’s an advertising firm. Martin Cookbury runs it.’

  ‘So what do they want to call themselves all that for?’

  ‘You may well ask. But it’s the fashion in the advertising world, has been for years. Makes a firm look as if they’ve got it all.’

  ‘Makes ’em look they’re chancing their arm, ask me.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right. But let’s just go there and see, Cookbury Parsons —’

  ‘OK, OK. I can remember a few names, can’t I? No need to give me all the tra-la-la.’

  Tra-la-la or no tra-la-la, their long, trafficky drive to the firm’s offices in Putney brought them no more than the simple discovery that Martin Cookbury could not have been the man who had come to the Masterton’s doors on the evening before the murder. He had been there at work, as he was now, Sunday or no Sunday. Half a dozen eager-beaver colleagues were ready to state that this was where he had been all Saturday evening from six till close on midnight, however cagey they were about whatever big campaign it was that they were planning.

  Nor was the next visit they made any more productive. The stockbroker, Reginald Brown, turned out to be at home, in bed with a cold.

  ‘Or that’s what they tell me,’ Bolshy said.

  ‘So where is his home?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? Easy. The Myrtles, Church Lane, Virginia Water The Myrtles, poncy bloody name like that, hard to forget. You really want to go off there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet said.

  But the stockbroker — very useful to the Cabal, Kailash Gokhale had commented — proved to have been every bit as much of a victim of the common cold as Bolshy had been told. Sneezes came resounding out of his bedroom as Harriet climbed the stairs at The Myrtles, followed by a wife twittering at every step ‘Dear, oh dear. Dear, oh dear.’

  The stricken man answered all Harriet’s questions circumstantially, though in fact there was only one that called for an unequivocal response. Where were you yesterday from about six onwards? Answer: ‘Here (sneeze) in bed (sneeze). Where else could (sneeze) I be, bloody (sneeze) cold like this?’ A reply borne out by a waste-bin half filled with sodden tissues, and the remains of a hot toddy on the bedside table.

  Back in London, Bolshy picked as next easiest to get to ‘some silly bugger called Drummond, Tigger Drummond, God’s sake.’

  ‘It’s actually Valentine Drummond. Use that mobile of yours to give him a call.’

  Yes, she thought, while Bolshy was busy thumbing at his mobile’s buttons, Tigger Drummond, the third man in the party who whisked Roughouse away from St Ozzie’s. Him, Matthew Jessop and the surgeon, Jackson Edgeworth. Ask Tigger, when we’re there, about that ‘kidnap’ as well? All right, I may do that. See how it goes.

  After a minute Bolshy began shoving the mobile back into the gaping pocket of his seamy black-and-white dogstooth jacket.

  ‘Not in, answer-phone says,’ he announced eventually, delighted to report a set-back.

  Harriet reacted sharply.

  ‘Then we’ll go there, wherever it is. Go there, and see what we can find out.’

  ‘All right, all right. No need to bite my head off. I was only telling you what you wanted to know.’

  Drummond’s flat, they found, was in a tall, distinctly antiquated building in Great George Street, on the corner of traffic-encircled Parliament Square. Toiling up its many bare-carpeted stairs to the very top — no lift to be found — Harriet rang the bell of the eyrie-like flat. The door was opened almost at once by a youngish woman with a bush of wild black hair above a deeply tanned face, a voluminous flowered apron doing little to hide feminine lushness below. Presumably, a foreign help.

  With an incomprehensible muttered word and a nod of her head, she indicated that her employer was at home.

  At home, yes, Harriet thought, but hiding behind that message on his answer-phone? Like a school kid concealing himself behind some flimsy curtain from a searching teacher. But to be found, if you came looking.

  Tigger, tall, well-built, dressed in weekend yellow-striped rugby shirt and khaki shorts, with looks as boyish as when he had been at the Zeal School, gave Harriet a prompt reply to the one question she wanted answered.

  ‘Last night? Where I was? Where else but at that big party of Lady Margaret Tredannick’s, down on the coast in Kent. You may have read about it in the Sundays. Gossip people there by the dozen.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t know anything about it, I’m afraid,’ Harriet answered, carefully polite.

  ‘Well, if you don’t, you don’t. But the fact of the matter is Margaret’s a very old friend, and this was a huge coming-of-age party for her Toby. If I’d missed it, she’d never have forgiven me.’

  All right, Harriet thought, I’ve asked my question, got his answer. Casually enough given, but I see Tigger, however successful as a toy manufacturer, as totally casual in all everyday circumstances. Amoral, perhaps the right word for someone who seems not to take any note of the conventions. At a guess, that lush young woman who let us in probably spends the nights in his bed.

  So, go on to ask about that first-light dash up to St Ozzie’s? No, don’t think I will, after all. I’d get nothing but some off-hand half-explanation, and I had more than enough of those when I asked Matthew Jessop about that private ambulance.

  All right, I suppose for the time being I’ll accept Tigger’s word, however carelessly provided. But if, when I’ve talked to the others on my list, I find I’ve got a full set of incontrovertible alibis, I’ll
get the Kent police to make inquiries about the guests at that big party and then, if they draw blank, come back to my feckless friend. What he said is quite likely the truth, but as an alibi it’s by no means hundred per cent.

  Right, who on my list is the next nearest? Have to ask Bolshy, when I’ve got all the way down to street level again.

  But only one flight down the interminable stairs — no doubt bouncy Tigger takes them in his stride — she saw thump-thumping ahead of her the curvaceous foreign help, basket in hand evidently on her way to the nearest Sunday-open food shop. At once it occurred to her that, if the woman knew as much as she might about Drummond’s everyday life, it might be worth finding out how well she did actually speak English. There could, if Tigger eventually bounces into the picture, be things she would know that I would want to know.

  She ran on down until she was at the same level.

  ‘Good afternoon again,’ she said, with one of her broadest smiles.

  ‘Yes. Afternoon good.’

  Well, not exactly perfect communication. But something.

  ‘Where are you from? Have you been here in England long?’

  At once an evasive look in her eyes.

  Of course, illegal immigrant. Should have taken that into account, asked something less direct.

  ‘Well, never mind how long you’ve been here. It means nothing to me. Nothing at all.’

  And it was plain she had found the right reassuring words. Head lifted in relief.

  ‘But, tell me, what’s your name? Your first name? It’s good to know.’

  ‘Is Maria.’

  ‘So have you been working for Mr Drummond for long, Maria?’

  ‘Two-three year.’

  ‘And he’s a good employer?’

  ‘Employer, what is?’

  Right, that tells me something.

  ‘I mean, is he good to work for? Kind? Helpful?’

  ‘He was bringing from my home where all-all was bad. Now is not bad, but he is knowing about me.’

  The cautious and convoluted reply told Harriet a little more. Plainly, Tigger had got hold of his Maria in some wretched country in Europe or from somewhere even in remote Turkey, and had seen that, if he smuggled her into Britain, she would be in his debt, a useful servant to do the cleaning, go marketing, cook his breakfast before he set off happily for his toy-making factory, and be bed-fodder as well.

  ‘So where is your home, Maria?’ she asked with a pretence of idle curiosity.

  ‘Is Transabistan.’

  Transabistan. Right, I know about Transabistan. It came in Marching Through Georgia, and Matthew Jessop had those striking blown-up photographs of the place, made when he went there to film for the book.

  For once those often quoted words from Lewis Carroll, curiouser and curiouser, seem appropriate. Two members of the secretive Cabal, marching through that little dictator-ruled country. And two of them in the three who snatched Roughouse from St Ozzie’s.

  Right, now what? Better pick up on the ambiguous answer Maria gave to my Is he good to work for?

  ‘So you don’t always find Mr Drummond kind and helpful?’

  ‘He not have me in his bed no more. He put me in little room with so many luggages.’

  So, yes, I was right. A useful servant and a night-time plaything, but now discarded.

  She produced for rejected Maria an understanding smile of sorts, and turned to go on down the stairs. Down and down.

  But then a thought checked her.

  All right, Maria is afraid Tigger could, at any time he likes, give her away as an illegal immigrant. So she must stick there, relegated to the box-room, to clean and cook as long as he wants. But can I go one better, use Maria as a spy in his camp?

  Can I actually plant a toy on the toy-maker? Equip Maria with my own little toy-like mobile? Be able to contact her on it whenever I like? Keep an eye, or an ear, on at least one of the Cabal members, if perhaps a party-goer not altogether likely as the man who suffocated sleeping Robert Roughouse?

  No. Come on. Is someone like slap-happy bouncy Tigger the sort to have so determinedly forced his way into the Masterton and ruthlessly put an end to Robert Roughouse’s life? Isn’t it much more likely, a whole lot more likely, that last night Tigger was cheerfully dancing away down in remote Kent? Surely I don’t need to hand over my last physical tie with dead Graham because of him?

  But … But, yes, John, however affected he still is by Graham’s death himself, plainly thinks that I shouldn’t keep on cherishing the toy as I do. And he’s probably right. I mustn’t become like one of those mothers of a killed-in-action soldier who make a shrine of the room they once had, every old schoolbook, every stuck-together model aeroplane, never touched, never moved.

  She turned decisively round and marched back up to where Maria was still standing watching her.

  ‘Maria, listen. Pay attention. I am a police officer.’ Warrant card flicked open. ‘And you, you are here in England illegally. You know what illegally means?’

  ‘Please no …’

  The desperate note of appeal was answer enough, even apart from the look of appalled dismay in the deep-brown eyes.

  ‘All right, now listen again. It might — what shall I say? — it might suit me not to report you. If you will do what I ask.’

  ‘Yes, please?’

  Abject willingness.

  ‘Maria, I may need to know things about Mr Drummond. That’s why I came to see him. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes-yes.’

  From her handbag Harriet, forcing herself not to think what it was she was doing, extracted the bright toy-like mobile, and fixed it to call nobody but herself while able either to chirp its presence aloud or, a switch flicked, simply to give a quiet rattle in a pocket.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes-yes. Ev’body know. Mobile, mobile.’

  ‘If I teach you how to —’

  ‘Know. Know. Ev’body know.’

  All right, I’ll do it. Hand it over. Some risk involved if Tigger ever gets to see it, but surely not much, now there are no more bed times.

  Laboriously she explained the little machine’s use, and the importance of keeping it hidden. Then she impressed on Maria that, if she thought it necessary, she could use it to call, day or night.

  And that was all. With reason, or not, an ally installed.

  *

  Down at the car, Harriet got Bolshy to find where they could get hold of the one remaining man on her list — since Matthew Jessop, no doubt, was away filming — the surgeon, Jackson Edgeworth.

  ‘You know where he is, Old Slice — ’em-up?’ Bolshy said eventually, stuffing his mobile back into the pocket of his appalling jacket.

  Harriet, still fighting away thoughts of what she had just done, fell for it.

  ‘I’ve not the least idea.’

  ‘Bloody golf course,’ Bolshy brought out. ‘Along with half the consultants in the book.’

  ‘When I want your views on the medical profession, DS, I’ll ask for them.’

  ‘OK, OK. Thought you’d like a joke, bloody terrible day we’re having. But, if you must know, old Edgeworth’s busy earning himself yet more dosh. Private nursing home, out Hampstead way.’

  ‘Then get me there, if you please,’ Harriet said.

  So it was in sullen silence that Bolshy drove back across London to Hampstead. Drawn up in the road outside the nursing home, they saw just coming out a tall well-dressed man and heard a female voice from inside eagerly calling ‘Goodnight, Mr Edgeworth.’ Bolshy, at once ran to intercept, striding straight over the nursing home’s low surrounding garden wall.

  ‘Not exactly the best of times for me,’ Jackson Edgeworth said, when Harriet having walked the long way round by the double driveway, had told him who she was and that she wanted to speak to him about anything he might know concerning Robert Roughouse’s recent activities, the excuse she had in the course of the day grown all too used to produc
ing.

  ‘I don’t suppose you realise, Superintendent,’ he replied, ‘what a strain an emergency gynaecological operation puts upon a surgeon, even on one who is well-accustomed to performing it. If you’ve ever sat a major exam, the procedure is in that class of arduousness. You mustn’t expect me to be entirely coherent at this moment.’

  Sob stuff, Harriet found herself thinking. Whatever procedure he’s just undertaken can hardly have been that hazardous if it took place in the nursing home here. And what about that nasty little put-down of if you’ve ever sat a major exam, as if it was totally unlikely that any police officer, even a senior one, would have done so.

  But why is he being so immediately hostile? And at the same time — the too handsome bugger — so quick to seek womanly sympathy?

  Can this possibly be my man? He’s the right type. A surgeon, and a successful one, used to taking instant decisions, knife in hand. And, yes, damn him, hasn’t he been, right from the first moment, busy creating a swirl of fog about what he was actually doing at the time that up in Birrshire a man was asking Tonelle those stupid questions?

  Is this why I’ve taken an immediate dislike to him, the arbitrator of life and death? Wait, no. No, mustn’t let an upsurge of prejudice affect me. If he’s going to lie to me, as I think he may be preparing to do, I must weigh altogether disinterestedly what he says, and how he looks when he says it. Or I’ll get it wrong.

  So put my real question to him straightaway, point-blank? Why not? Catch him, possibly, wrong-footed?

  ‘Mr Edgeworth, where exactly were you last night from, say, six or seven o’clock onwards?’

  No look of surprise. And there should have been. Because I wasn’t asking about what I’d told him I’d come here to find out.

  ‘Seven o’clock? Last night? Let me see. Well, I suppose I would have just arrived at the Royal Society of Medicine about that time. I often dine there after a hard day in the theatre. I was alone, of course. But I dare say one of the waiters in the dining room will remember me.’

  Harriet took out her notebook and pretended to jot this down.

  A witness’s behaviour, believing one’s eye is off them, more than once has enabled me to jump on a falsehood.