Death at Beacon Cottage

by Betty Rowlands

  The big American listened in silence as Sukey explained her theory. ‘I suppose it’s feasible,’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘That window catch was jammed solid and I had it oiled a week or so ago when the weather turned hot. Just the same, even supposing you’re right about the way he dodged the outside sensors, entering the house would have triggered the alarm.’

  ‘Unless, of course, the intruder knew how to deactivate it,’ Radcliffe pointed out. ‘We found the master control box under your desk. How many people besides yourself know where it is – and how many of them know the code?’

  Patterson’s show of aggressiveness had been steadily evaporating and was now virtually spent. He slumped into a leather-upholstered executive chair that stood behind the heavy walnut desk and ran stubby fingers through his thinning hair. ‘My secretary – she should be here any minute – the Framptons of course—’

  ‘That would be your housekeeper and butler,’ Radcliffe interposed, checking a page in his notebook.

  ‘That’s right. Where are they, by the way? What have they got to say about all this?’

  ‘We’ve taken preliminary statements from them both. They discovered the theft when they opened up the house this morning and called us straight away, but so far they haven’t been able to give us any useful information as they heard nothing during the night. Unfortunately, Mrs Frampton has had some kind of seizure, probably due to shock. She’s been taken to hospital and her husband has gone with her. We shall, of course, be interviewing them again in due course.’

  Patterson grunted again. ‘That goddam security company swore their system was foolproof,’ he declared. He looked Castle full in the face from piercing blue eyes under thick, bushy brows. ‘You reckon it was an inside job? Someone tampering with the system? I’m having renovations done – have you checked on the workmen?’

  ‘I’m afraid we haven’t had time yet to carry out that kind of enquiry – but of course we shall explore every possibility,’ Castle added as a ‘what the hell have you been doing then?’ gleam appeared in Patterson’s penetrating eyes. ‘Indications at present, however, are that someone familiar with the layout of the house somehow found a means of bypassing or deactivating both the internal and external security systems and entered undetected through that window. I’d like you to tell me exactly who has been in the house recently – especially anyone who’s been in this room.’

  ‘How the hell am I expected to remember? What difference does it make? Folks who come to see me don’t normally come in through the window.’

  ‘Of course not, sir, but sometimes they leave fingerprints and it helps if we can eliminate people with a legitimate reason for being here,’ Radcliffe explained patiently.

  ‘Oh sure, sure.’ Patterson made a slightly helpless gesture. ‘I forgot about fingerprints.’ He raised his own hands and glanced from them to the detectives. ‘Guess you’ll want mine as well.’ For the first time, a faint grin appeared on his florid features.

  ‘In due course, sir. Meanwhile, if you could think of some names…’

  ‘Fiona – my secretary – will know. That sounds like her now,’ he added as a female voice floated up from the hallway, followed by the sound of light footsteps running up the wooden staircase and along the landing. A young woman with a pale face and short blond hair pulled up in the doorway and ran a pair of striking lead-grey eyes over the occupants of the room. Sukey had the impression that she was making a mental image of every unfamiliar face and would be able to describe any one of them in detail if asked to do so.

  She addressed Patterson without any greeting or preamble. ‘How much has been taken?’ she demanded.

  ‘See for yourself.’ Patterson handed over the list.

  She studied it briefly, frowning. ‘Knew what they were looking for, didn’t they?’

  ‘Too right,’ Patterson agreed. ‘These guys are from the police. They want photographs of the missing items.’

  ‘They’re in the safe.’ She pulled a set of keys from her handbag, but Patterson made an impatient gesture.

  ‘Later. Right now they want to know who’s been in this room lately.’

  ‘What do you mean by lately?’ The question was addressed to Castle, whom she seemed instinctively to recognise as the man in charge.

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t be precise,’ he replied. ‘Let’s talk about this week for a start, beginning with the most recent.’

  ‘I’ll check the diary.’ She turned to a second, smaller desk in one corner, pulling a face at the grey powder scattered over its surface. ‘I hope you’re going to clear up this mess,’ she said irritably.

  This time it was the SOCOs who were treated to the leaden stare, and Sukey made an apologetic gesture. ‘I’m afraid we have to leave things as they are for the moment,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to establish whether any unauthorised person was here by comparing fingerprints.’

  ‘Yes, I do know a little about how police enquiries work,’ Fiona snapped. She was stabbing at keys on a computer; after a moment a list appeared on the screen and Patterson moved over and stood beside her as she scrolled down the names.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘There were only two appointments this week. On Tuesday Stuart Lockyer came – he looks after my collection and advises me what to buy. We spent the morning going over a catalogue of a sale at Sotheby’s next month. On Monday I had a session with Miguel Rodriguez, my wine merchant. Look,’ – he swung round and faced the detectives – ‘these guys aren’t just business contacts, they’re my personal friends. I don’t want them hassled, or made to feel they’re under suspicion.’

  ‘I assure you, there will be no question of hassling,’ Castle assured him. ‘We always make it clear to anyone allowing us to take their prints for elimination purposes that they will be destroyed once we have finished with them – in their presence if they so wish.’

  ‘Make sure you do that.’ Patterson turned back to Fiona. ‘Who else called in this week?’

  They conferred briefly and came up with two more names, those of a representative from the security company and the foreman of the builders who had raised certain queries needing a decision. ‘That was on Monday, when Mr Rodriguez was here,’ Fiona commented. ‘He didn’t actually enter the room, though – just knocked and put his head round the door. The two of you went out to discuss the query on site.’

  Patterson nodded. ‘That’s right.’

  Radcliffe looked up from his notebook. ‘Just on a point of interest,’ he said in a deceptively casual voice, ‘was anybody left alone here for any reason?’

  ‘No, why should they be?’

  ‘You did call for a file while you were talking to the foreman and I brought it down to you,’ Fiona reminded him. ‘When Mr Rodriguez was here—’

  ‘You can cross Roddy off your lists of suspects right now,’ Patterson told Castle impatiently. ‘I told you, he’s a personal friend.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the detective soothingly.

  He turned to Fiona. ‘You’re certain there was no one else who might have had the opportunity to poke around?’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone… no, I’m sure there wasn’t.’

  ‘Right then, I think that’s all we need to trouble you with for the time being. We’ll keep in close touch, of course.’ He turned to the secretary. ‘Fiona, if you’d be kind enough to let us have those photographs…?’

  To Sukey’s amusement, the request was accompanied by a winning smile that transformed his normally severe features and produced an immediate thaw in the woman’s glacial expression as she hurried to comply.

  ‘And if you’d allow these ladies to take your fingerprints…’

  With the preliminaries over, the detectives withdrew and Patterson and his secretary went off to check how the works were progressing, leaving the SOCOs to complete their task in peace. Sukey’s brain was buzzing. It was the first time she had been present while Castle was interviewing witnesses and she had found it fascinating to observe him in action. Hi
s manner throughout had been impassive, almost detached, as if he was putting his questions out of a polite curiosity and saw no particular significance in any of the answers. Just the same, she could have sworn that the name Rodriguez had caused a momentary, albeit barely detectable, reaction. Recalling Castle’s earlier confident assertion that the police knew the identity of the thief, she made a mental note to tackle him on the subject when he came to her house for a meal that evening.

  She was still preoccupied with these thoughts as, having packed away their gear, she and Mandy prepared to leave on their next assignments. The two white vans were just moving off when a silver BMW approached at speed along the tree-lined avenue leading to the house. Sukey had a fleeting impression of a grim face and a neatly trimmed dark beard as it swept past and pulled up alongside a small red Peugeot, presumably belonging to Fiona. Out of curiosity, she watched in her rear-view mirror as the driver got out and spoke briefly to the policeman on duty before approaching the front door, which opened before his outstretched finger reached the bell-push. There was a brief glimpse of Fiona’s pale, expressionless face as the newcomer stepped inside.

  At the same time that DI Castle and DS Radcliffe were making their preliminary investigation into the raid at Bussell Manor, Miguel ‘Roddy’ Rodriguez emerged from the shower and went into the kitchen of his penthouse flat to pour himself a glass of orange juice. He had slept late, as he normally did after a job, and he was feeling particularly pleased with life. The day was bright and sunny, everything had gone according to plan and he had a dinner date with Pepita that evening.

  The telephone rang. Crowson was on the line. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded furiously.

  ‘Is there a problem? I thought we agreed no phone calls unless—’

  ‘Unless anything went wrong. Well, it might have been OK from your point of view, but we weren’t amused at being sent on a fool’s errand.’ Crowson’s voice dropped to a menacing growl. ‘You double-crossing Spanish bastard—’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘You know bloody well what I’m getting at. Most of the stuff you told us to lift was already gone – as if you didn’t know.’

  ‘I don’t believe it! I checked after opening the place up and it was all there—’

  ‘Sure it was – but not when you left. I suppose you’re planning to sell it privately and cut us out.’

  ‘You know me better than that. Someone else must have had the same idea and turned the place over after—’

  ‘After you very kindly opened up for him and left us to find the cupboard bare,’ Crowson snarled. ‘Don’t give me that shit, I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  ‘I swear to you—’

  ‘Save it. We want our cut and we want it fast, otherwise you’re in dead trouble. You’ve got till six o’clock.’

  ‘Look, we have to talk—’ Roddy began desperately, but the line had already gone dead.

  Four

  Later that morning, back at police headquarters in Gloucester, DI Castle stared out of his office window with his hands in his trouser pockets, frowning in concentration. Perched on the edge of the desk, DS Radcliffe watched the hawklike profile, trying to guess what was passing through the inspector’s mind, knowing from experience that something about the case was troubling him. Castle’s next words confirmed his suspicions.

  ‘You know, Andy,’ he said moodily, ‘I have a gut feeling that this slippery bastard is going to get away with it yet again.’

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘We know for a fact that Rodriguez had an opportunity to case the house because Patterson invited him there, entertained him to lunch, most likely gave him a conducted tour and showed off his collection before taking him up to the office to discuss the wine order. We know that he was left alone there for a short time, which would have given him a chance to suss out the security system – the main control box is readily accessible and we know he’s a bit of a wizard with electronics. But even supposing we find his prints in some, shall we say, unexpected places, it’s going to be almost impossible to prove that they got there as a result of any criminal intent. Without some more positive evidence, we won’t even have an excuse to bring him in for questioning.’

  ‘Hmm, I see what you mean. What about the ladder? Sukey found one with mud and sand clinging to it, which seems to support her theory about how Rodriguez got in. It’s aluminium, she might have picked up some fingerprints. Then there’s the shoeprint…’

  ‘The shoeprint would only be useful if we could prove it matched a pair of trainers Rodriguez is known to have been wearing. As for the ladder, he’s far too clever to have carried out that sort of operation without wearing gloves.’

  ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  There was a knock at the door and Sukey entered, carrying a large envelope which she handed to Castle. He almost snatched it from her, extracted some sheets of paper covered with reproductions of fingerprints and spread them out on his desk. ‘Any joy?’ he asked.

  ‘There are one or two still to be identified,’ she told him, ‘but I found several that match the ones you gave me.’ She picked up one of the sheets, indicating the various points where the prints tallied. ‘They came mostly from the desk and on one of the chairs, but there’s a nice thumbprint on the window-catch. There are also several on the photocopier and from their position, I’d say whoever it was used the machine.’ She put stress on the words ‘Whoever it was’ and gave him a searching look, but he made no response. Over her shoulder she shot an enquiring glance in Radcliffe’s direction, but he merely shrugged and shook his head.

  Castle, apparently absorbed in his contemplation of the prints, nodded in evident satisfaction. ‘The photocopier, eh?’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘I wonder what the blighter was doing with that.’

  Radcliffe put down a sheet of prints he had been studying and said, ‘I think you’re holding out on us, Guv.’

  The detective smiled. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I am, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. Those prints I gave you for comparison, Sukey, belong to Rodriguez. Only they were obtained in a somewhat, shall we say, irregular manner and for that reason they’d be inadmissible as evidence. I can’t tell you any more at this stage,’ he added, forestalling the questions that she was bursting to ask. She recalled their earlier conversation, when Castle had revealed that he knew a robbery was planned for the previous night and that he knew the perpetrator’s identity. You’re going to get a real grilling this evening, my lad, she said to herself. There’s something very interesting and unusual about this case.

  ‘So what else did you find?’ Castle asked.

  ‘He definitely got in through the window.’ From the envelope she took out several plastic bags containing samples. ‘We found traces of sand on the sill and the carpet that appear to match the sand where we found the shoeprint. We think he was wearing black cotton trousers – these are some fibres we found on the sill – and there were also a few grains of sand on the mat by the front door. The samples will need to go to the lab for confirmation, of course.’

  ‘So presumably he went out through the front with his loot,’ Radcliffe speculated.

  ‘That would make sense,’ Castle agreed. ‘It would have been awkward to use the ladder with a sackful of goodies, besides the risk of damaging them. I wonder why he bothered to put the ladder away.’

  ‘To make it look like an inside job?’ Sukey suggested.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Castle thoughtfully. ‘Or maybe he was just teasing us. Who knows? Anyway, thanks, Sukey – you and Mandy did a great job.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Is there anything else you want me to do?’

  ‘Not for the moment.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see if George Barnes has got anything else.’ If Radcliffe had not been there, she would have added, ‘See you later,’ but although both she and Castle were aware that the sergeant, an old friend, knew of their relationship, they made a po
int of never referring to it in his presence.

  ‘Right.’ Castle sounded abstracted, as though he had already forgotten her existence. He turned to Radcliffe, ‘Have a word with Rodriguez, Andy, ask him for his cooperation and so on. Be as diplomatic as you can, offer to send someone round to take his prints, invite him to call in at his convenience, whichever he prefers. We want them officially on record – if we can’t nail him for this job, maybe there’ll be others.’

  ‘You’re really convinced he did this, aren’t you?

  Castle’s eyes were as hard as marbles. ‘Absolutely,’ he said.

  Later that morning, Roddy received a second telephone call. Before he could speak, a man said, ‘Mr Rodriguez?’

  ‘Yes, who is that?’

  ‘Good morning, sir.’ The voice, bearing a trace of the local accent, was courteous, almost friendly, giving no hint of the shock waves the next words would send over the wire. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Radcliffe of Gloucester CID.’

  ‘Good morning, Sergeant.’ Roddy could feel as well as hear the tremor in his own voice. Trying desperately to sound relaxed, he added, ‘What can I do for you?’

  It was such a simple, artless request. Some valuable antiques had been stolen from a house belonging to a Mr Patterson – ‘I believe he is a client of your company, sir, and that you visited him recently?’ – and it would help the police with their enquiries if they could eliminate everyone who had recently entered on legitimate business. His cooperation would be greatly appreciated, someone would call on him at home or if he happened to be in the vicinity of the main police station, whichever was the more convenient for him…

  The last thing Roddy wanted was to have police calling on him at home. He could hardly refuse to cooperate without arousing suspicion, so going to the nick would seem to be the lesser of two evils. ‘I can call in this morning,’ he heard himself saying. He hung up, cutting short the man’s thanks.