by Graham Ison
‘It wasn’t like that. We got talking and I told her that my wife and I didn’t get on —’
‘You mean your wife doesn’t understand you?’ asked Fox crushingly.
‘Exactly,’ said Barnes, not realising that Fox was being sarcastic. ‘Anyway, Dawn invited me to go round to her flat one evening. We listened to some music and, well, one thing led to another.’
‘And how much did she charge you?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ For once, Barnes’s reply was spirited. But unconvincing.
‘Are you saying that you didn’t give her any money? Incidentally, it’s no offence, even if you did.’
‘Well, no. I mean, yes, but —’
‘Which was it? Did you pay her or not?’
‘She explained that she was very short of money and I gave her something to tide her over.’
‘How much?’
Barnes looked down at his desk and scratched at a mark on its surface. ‘A hundred pounds,’ he said miserably.
‘Where were you on the fourteenth and fifteenth of October, Mr Barnes?’ Fox’s question was jarring and incisive.
‘Er, the …’ Barnes looked at a calendar and then turned to his diary, fumbling with the pages in his attempt to find the appropriate entry. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to look it up.’
‘Perhaps you would do so.’
‘Yes, I had a meeting of the steering committee of the —’
‘What on a Sunday?’
‘Oh, I must have been looking at the wrong day. Er, Sunday —’
‘D’you put the social events of a Sunday in your official diary?’ asked Fox.
‘Well, no, of course not.’
‘We don’t seem to be getting very far here, do we, Mr Barnes? Where were you on the evening of that day? Sunday the fourteenth of October.’
‘At home … I suppose.’ Barnes was an intelligent man and he knew what was going to come next.
‘Who with?’
‘My wife.’
‘I see.’
‘Oh God!’ Barnes ran a nervous hand across his forehead. ‘What a bloody mess.’
‘There is one other thing though,’ said Fox.
Barnes looked at Fox, a pathetic look on his face. ‘I’ll help you with anything I can,’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’
‘How many times, and when, did you visit this woman?’
‘Three altogether,’ answered Barnes promptly.
‘When?’
‘Twice in September and once at the beginning of October.’
‘And you paid her on each of those occasions?’
‘Yes.’ Barnes’s hands were gripped together on his blotter and his fingers intertwined nervously.
‘Why did you stop seeing her?’
‘I couldn’t afford it any more.’
‘Was it worth it?’
Barnes looked up, a bitter expression of contempt on his face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She was very special.’
‘Thank you, Mr Barnes. We will doubtless be seeing each other again.’
Barnes nodded miserably. He had little doubt of that.
*
Fox and Evans interviewed the solicitor, the man who owned garages and the television producer. At first, each denied any impropriety, but armed with Barnes’s admission, Fox was on stronger ground. Eventually, and very reluctantly, each admitted to having paid Dawn Mitchell for what the newspapers like to call sexual favours. And they all had an unbreakable alibi for the night of the girl’s murder.
‘I read in the newspaper the other day, Denzil,’ said Fox when he and Evans returned to Scotland Yard, ‘that something like eighty percent of all married men commit adultery.’
‘Really, sir?’
‘And probably more than that in the Criminal Investigation Department,’ added Fox phlegmatically.
‘Yes, sir.’ Evans wondered what Fox was driving at now. ‘Do you not find it odd, therefore, Denzil, that Barnes and the three others we interviewed, were very reluctant to admit having been over the side, despite my assurance that their replies would be treated in the utmost confidence?’ Evans decided against discussing the exact meaning of his detective chief superintendent’s assurances and confined himself to a monosyllabic reply. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
*
‘Mr Fox.’ Commander Willow was becoming increasingly apprehensive in his dealings with Fox. ‘I have here a statement made by John James Stedman in which he alleges that you stole money and other items from him during the course of a search of his premises —’
‘I expect you have,’ said Fox.
‘In view of the fact that he has made these serious allegations, you are entitled to a copy of his statement, and I now serve that statement upon you.’ Willow laid a typewritten copy of Stedman’s statement on Fox’s desk and glanced at Sergeant Clarke. ‘Make a note of the time and date of service, Sergeant,’ he said.
Fox picked up the two or three sheets of paper and started to read them, a smile slowly spreading over his face as he did so. Then he laid them down on the desk again. ‘You are joking, I hope, guv’nor,’ he said.
‘I don’t find the contents of that statement at all amusing, Mr Fox,’ said Willow. ‘And if I were in your shoes, I should find it even less so.’
‘Are you seriously telling me that Stedman made this statement?’
‘Of course. I hope you’re not suggesting otherwise.’
‘If you ever have the temerity to take this load of garbage to court,’ said Fox cheerfully, ‘I can tell you that my counsel will make mincemeat of it.’ He extended a forefinger towards the top sheet of Stedman’s statement. ‘According to this, Stedman, who can hardly string two words of English together when he speaks, let alone when he writes, if he can write, says, and I quote, “On Wednesday, the tenth of August last year, at about six a.m., at 27 Winsome Terrace, Buckhurst Hill, in the County of Essex, Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Fox of the Flying Squad, executed a search warrant on my premises during the course of which —”’ He broke off and laughed. ‘Are you saying, Mr Willow, that these are the words used by Stedman? Because I can tell you that he’ll not be in the witness box for thirty seconds before ushers start running about the court in a vain attempt to stop the jury from collapsing in helpless laughter.’
Willow looked extremely uncomfortable and shot a malevolent glance at the discomfited Sergeant Clarke. ‘Well not exactly, of course, but Stedman’s persistent use of the criminal vernacular was such that if Sergeant Clarke hadn’t put what he said into plain English, the jury would never have been able to understand it.’
Fox leaned back in his chair with a smile on his face. ‘Mr Willow,’ he said, ‘one of the things I learned on the junior CID course is that if, for example, an Indian who can only understand Urdu makes a statement, it’s no earthly good getting him to sign the English translation because he won’t know what he’s signing. Therefore, it’ll get slung out by the judge.’
‘I don’t see what that has to do with —’
‘And the moment counsel starts to ask Stedman what he meant by some of these big words that your clerk-sergeant —’
‘Sergeant Clarke,’ said Willow, unaware that Fox was being facetious.
‘The moment that Stedman’s asked what some of these words mean, you’ll find that the statement might just as well have been written in Urdu. If you take my meaning.’
Willow thrust his papers into his briefcase and stood up. ‘I shall be seeing you again, Mr Fox,’ he said and swept out of the office followed by the hapless Sergeant Clarke who knew, deep down, that he was about to get the blame for this latest fiasco in the saga of Stedman’s complaint against Fox.
*
‘I understand that you and your husband knew Dawn Mitchell, Mrs Barnes,’ said Fox.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Patricia Barnes, a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing the minimum of make-up, regarded Fox with a quizzical air.
‘I don’t know if you are awar
e but she was in fact Lady Dawn Sims, the daughter of the Earl Sims, and was murdered on the night of the fourteenth of October last.’
‘So I believe.’ Mrs Barnes did not seem at all surprised at this news and Fox assumed that either Mrs Barnes’s husband had come clean or that Tessa Hayden had been on the phone.
‘I am making enquiries of everyone who knew her, to discover where they were on the night of her death.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs Barnes, who was an avid follower of detective stories on television. ‘Well now, let me see.’ She walked across to a bureau and opened a drawer. ‘My diary,’ she said by way of explanation, and after a moment or two, ‘I was at home that night.’
‘And your husband?’
Mrs Barnes shut the small book with a snap. ‘He was out that evening,’ she said.
‘Have you any idea where he was?’
‘No, no idea at all,’ said Mrs Barnes. ‘I suggest that you ask him yourself.’
‘And that,’ said Fox, when he and Evans were back in the car, ‘just goes to prove that hunches aren’t always right.’
‘No, sir,’ said Evans with a grin.
THIRTEEN
‘IT DID CROSS MY MIND that you might have been trying to avoid me,’ said Fox as a surprised Hope-Smith opened the door.
Following Fox’s advice, Denzil Evans had contacted both the Post Office and British Telecom and round that Jason Hope-Smith had moved only half a mile or so from his old address and was now living in a flat over a shop not far from World’s End in the Fulham Road.
‘Er, no, not at all,’ said Hope-Smith.
‘May we come in, or shall we conduct this conversation in the street?’
Hope-Smith opened the door wide. ‘I’m still in a bit of a muddle,’ he said, leading the way up the narrow stairway and into a cluttered front-room. ‘What seems to be the problem?’
‘You must have known that I would wish to talk to you again,’ said Fox, ‘but you didn’t let me know where you’d gone.’ The fact that Hope-Smith was under no obligation to keep the police advised of his whereabouts was not a consideration as far as Fox was concerned.
‘I’m sorry, it never occurred to me. As a matter of fact, I thought I’d answered all your questions.’
‘Not quite.’ Fox sat down, uninvited, in an armchair.
‘Care for a drink?’ asked Hope-Smith.
Fox shook his head. ‘No thanks.’
‘Well then, what can I do for you?’ Hope-Smith sat, cross-legged, on the floor in front of a fireplace in which stood an electric fire.
‘This dinner party you went to, the one that the Crawleys invited you to. With Dawn Mitchell.’
‘Yes.’
‘You said, on a previous occasion, that you knew the Haydens, Freddie and Tessa.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And how did you come to meet them?’
‘Same way as I met Dawn. At the Crawleys’. I think it was a Christmas, about two or three years ago. I was in London and my current girlfriend and I were invited by Jimmy and Connie —’
‘The Crawleys?’
‘Yes. They invited her really. Apparently my girlfriend had been at school with their daughter — something like that — and I got dragged into their Christmas party. Quite a thrash, I can tell you.’ Hope-Smith grinned. ‘Well, more of an orgy really. Anyway, they took pity on me afer that and whenever I was in London, they’d invite me to dinner or a party or whatever.’
‘I see. You told me before that Freddie Hayden was flirting with Dawn.’
‘That’s right. And with every other woman there.’
‘Did the party stay at the dinner table all evening?’
‘No, of course not.’ Hope-Smith looked slightly puzzled by the question. ‘We adjourned to the sitting-room for coffee and brandy,’ he said. ‘I suppose we must have left at about half-past midnight or thereabouts.’
‘D’you recall Dawn asking Freddie Hayden if he had any openings for a model in any of his business enterprises?’
Hope-Smith looked thoughtful for a moment or two before shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t say that I do, but then it was a large room and we were all circulating. I do remember that Dawn was talking to him at one time, but they were at the other side of the room.’
‘Now, Mr Hope-Smith,’ said Fox, ‘you said that you were at home, alone, on the night of Dawn Mitchell’s murder, and you seemed to recall that you had spent the evening reading a book.’
‘Yes, I believe so. If that’s what I said …’
Fox glanced at Gilroy who thumbed through his pocket book. ‘Yes, sir, that’s exactly what Mr Hope-Smith said.’
‘Well, in that case,’ said Hope-Smith, ‘that’s what I did.’
‘You will appreciate,’ said Fox, taking another gamble, ‘that in cases of this nature, we conduct a thorough fingerprint examination of the deceased’s premises.’
‘Yes, I imagine you do.’ Hope-Smith looked up, wondering why Fox was telling him this.
‘And you said that you had never visited Dawn’s flat. In fact, you claimed not to have seen her again after the dinner party,’ said Fox. Hope-Smith remained silent. ‘But I’m quite sure you won’t mind allowing us to take your fingerprints for elimination purposes, will you?’
‘But why?’
‘Because you said, first off, that you were out of the country at the time of Dawn Mitchell’s murder, but later, when we proved that you were in London, you were unable to state, with any degree of certainty, where you had been — apart from saying that you were at home, reading.’
There was a long pause before Hope-Smith spoke again. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I did see her again, several times.’
‘At her flat?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you have sexual intercourse with her?’
Hope-Smith stared at Fox angrily, as though he was about to object to the question. Then he shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I did.’
‘So why did you lie when you were first spoken to about it?’
‘Because I didn’t want to get involved, I suppose, and I knew that I hadn’t got an alibi for the night she was killed.’
‘Did you murder her?’ Fox looked directly at Hope-Smith.
‘Christ no!’ Hope-Smith looked horrified at the question. ‘Why on earth should you think —’
‘Mr Hope-Smith, I am investigating a murder and I do not appreciate being obstructed in those enquiries. In fact, I take a rather poor view of people who do so obstruct me. Now then, you saw Dawn Mitchell several times after the dinner party. You went to her flat several times. And you had sexual intercourse with her several times. Right so far?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you pay her for going to bed with you?’ Fox stared directly at Hope-Smith until he looked away.
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
Hope-Smith shrugged his shoulders. ‘It wasn’t the way you think,’ he said.
‘And how do I think?’
‘You’re talking as though Dawn was a prostitute.’
‘And wasn’t she?’ Fox was determined to discomfit the man.
‘No, certainly not. She was short of money and I gave her a few pounds from time to time. I felt sorry for her.’
Fox nodded amiably. ‘Oh, I see. And what d’you mean by a few pounds, Mr Hope-Smith?’
‘A couple of hundred, here and there,’ said Hope-Smith miserably.
‘Tax-free, of course,’ murmured Fox before going on. ‘And whose idea was that? Did you take pity on her, or did she suggest that you help with the laundry bills?’
Hope-Smith stood up, his arms rigidly at his sides and his fists rhythmically clenching and unclenching. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking all these questions, but Dawn and I had a good thing going. It was a terrible shock when I heard that she had been killed. But I didn’t kill her.’
‘What are you doing for a living now?’ asked Fox.
‘I said what are you doing for a living now?’
‘Er, nothing, at the moment.’
‘I see. Why did you leave your job in Kuwait then?’
‘I was made redundant.’
‘Really?’ Fox stood up. ‘How interesting.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Gilroy as they returned to Fox’s car, ‘what d’you think?’
‘Weak as piss,’ said Fox.
‘Yes, but is it down to him?’
Fox shrugged. ‘Might be,’ he said. ‘But we’ll see, Jack. We’ll see.’
*
‘We’ve had the surveillance back on for a week now, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Henry Findlater, ‘and we’ve come up with something interesting.’
‘Oh, how rewarding,’ said Fox. ‘Are you going to share this wondrous news with me, or is it a secret?’
Findlater grinned. ‘Harry Dawes has acquired himself another slaughter, sir. In Croydon.’
‘In Croydon? I said the man had no taste.’ Fox walked across to the mirror in his office and adjusted his tie. ‘Keep an eye on it, Henry,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘D’you mean put an observation on the slaughter, sir?’ Findlater sounded shocked.
‘Of course.’ Fox walked across to his wardrobe and put on his overcoat. ‘Best way of finding out what the bastards are up to, don’t you think?’
‘But where will I get the men for that, sir?’ Findlater looked desperate.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage, Henry. Somehow.’
*
‘Oh, Thomas, it’s you.’ Lady Jane Sims was dressed in jeans and an old rugby shirt, and her hair was loose and untidy. Her face was pale and she wore no make-up. And she had been crying. ‘Come in.’ She turned from the door and walked back into her sitting-room, leaving Fox to close the front door.
The man who struggled to get out of the armchair was about twenty-eight years of age. He wore an immaculate suit and Fox immediately warmed to him as being a man who knew how to pick a good tailor.