by Jo Bannister
“I see,” said Deacon before she could cite any more examples. “And five days ago a woman came to you - looking for what?”
Brodie glanced down at the newspaper and quickly away again. “Looking for him.”
The woman in red tapped on her door and said, “Have I got this right - you find things?”
Brodie nodded. She’d been tidying up: she hid a feather duster behind her back.
“People? Could you find him?”
Brodie had traced missing persons often enough for the legal profession. But she wanted more information before she would do it for someone who came in off the street. “What can you tell me about him?”
The woman snorted. “I can tell you he’s a liar! The name I knew him by, the address where he claimed to live, were both invented. He’s a con-man, and he’s made off with fifteen thousand quid of mine. I don’t like being made a fool of, Mrs Farrell.”
“Surely it’s a police matter?”
The woman looked at her sidelong. “I suppose it is, strictly speaking. He got the money under false pretences: that’s theft or fraud or something. But …”
Brodie prided herself on her ability to read between the lines. “But you’d rather avoid a court case.”
The woman nodded. “I don’t need to see him in prison. I want my money back, and I’d like to give him a piece of my mind, but I can’t afford to make a big issue of it.” She glanced down at the gold ring on her left hand.
On the whole people were easier to find than first editions. Brodie reminded herself that she didn’t have to get involved in any unpleasantness: all the woman wanted was a name and address. “Twenty percent.”
“What?” As well as red, the woman wore rather a lot of make-up, and thought it made her look younger than her forty-odd years.
“That’s what I charge. If I succeed; if I don’t all it’ll cost you is two hundred pounds. For that I’ll start the search: if I don’t think I can get anywhere I’ll let you know and there won’t be anything more to pay. If I think I can find him I’ll continue at my own risk. If I succeed you’ll owe me three thousand pounds less the start-up fee.”
“Three thousand pounds is a lot of money,” the woman said doubtfully.
Brodie nodded. “Twelve thousand is a lot more. That’s what I may be able to save you.”
She thought about it but not for long. She took money out of her handbag, counted out two hundred pounds.
Brodie blinked. “A cheque would do.”
The woman shook her head crisply. “I don’t want my husband to know about this.” So it wasn’t just her money the man in the photograph had taken.
Brodie studied it. It was a terrible likeness. “Did you take this?”
The woman shook her head. “He had it in his wallet. He said it was for his mother but I asked him to give it me instead.” She didn’t blush: she looked up, defiantly.
“It’s not very clear,” said Brodie, sticking diplomatically to business. “Do you have any other pictures?”
The woman shook her head. “He hated cameras. Now, of course, I understand why. I think he had that grainy little thing specifically to fob me off with. He must have thought it would be no help to anyone wanting to trace him. Was he right?”
Brodie sucked on her teeth. “It certainly makes it harder. On the other hand, a photograph’s usually better at confirming someone’s identity than finding that person anyway. Tell me what you know about him.”
“I know his name isn’t Charles Merrick and he doesn’t have contacts in the bloodstock industry. Weatherby’s had never heard of him, nor had any of the big sales. I think now he wouldn’t know a Dubai Cup prospect from a dray-horse, but that was the story - that he was putting together a syndicate to buy an undervalued two-year-old.”
“You know something about horse-racing?”
The woman scowled. “Not enough, obviously. He was plausible, I’ll give him that. He’d done his homework. He seemed absolutely genuine. We spent two days together, planning the campaign. Then he went off to buy the colt, and I never heard from him again.”
“You called at his address?”
“A dog-food factory on the Brighton Road.”
“The money you gave him was cash too?”
“For the same reason.”
Brodie looked again at the photograph.
The one thing all con-men have in common is that they look respectable. They don’t wear kipper ties and pushed-back hats, they look decent and honest and trustworthy. Oh yes: and charming. Most people wouldn’t lend money to even a respectable stranger. To succeed, the con-man has to circumvent his target’s natural suspicions, charm his way under her guard.
The man who wasn’t Charles Merrick was a lot younger than the woman in red. She’d found his attentions flattering. And though he wasn’t particularly good-looking he had that soft-focus boyishness that some middle-aged women find hard to resist. Oh yes, he’d seen her coming, all right.
“Can you tell me anything that might help me find him?”
“Not much. If I’d known where to start I’d have gone after him myself.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Up on the cliffs. You’re supposed to be able to see the French coast: I’d taken my binoculars to give it a try. He asked to borrow them; from glasses he steered the conversation onto racing; you can guess the rest.”
“When was this?”
“Sunday morning. He was clever, I’ll give him that. He didn’t just throw the bait at me. He was rather diffident: I had to squeeze it out of him. At least, I thought that’s what was happening. When pressed he said he wondered if I might be interested in a sporting proposition.”
She chuckled, without much humour. “By then I’d have been interested in a collection of dirty postcards if it meant seeing him again. He told me about the horse. He said thirty thousand pounds - no, guineas, he said - was a steal, but he couldn’t find it all himself. We met again the next day, talked about it over lunch; and on Tuesday he took me to Newmarket to watch the thing on the gallops.”
“He introduced you to the trainer?”
The woman shook her head. “No, we watched from the road. He said he didn’t want to push the price up by showing an interest. Now, of course, I realise he didn’t know the trainer - he just spotted a likely looking prospect on the gallops and pointed me at it.
“I fell for it like a fool. Fifteen thousand quid? - I’d have mortgaged my soul if he’d asked me to.
“He set off with the money yesterday morning, promised to call me within a couple of hours. He didn’t. When I tried to call him there was no answer. I made some calls but nobody knew him. This morning when he still hadn’t phoned I went to what was supposed to be his home address. Right enough, they knew about racehorses - they were canning slow ones. So I went to the police station.” She fell silent.
It didn’t take a leap of intuition. “But you didn’t go inside.”
“I sat in my car for an hour; then I came here. I realised if they found him it would eventually become public knowledge and my husband would find out. I remembered seeing this place. I thought, if I hired you I’d have more control of the situation. I might get my money back without it costing me my marriage.”
Brodie said, “If you decide to go ahead, I’ll do what you want me to do and stop when you want me to stop; and whether or not I find him, no one’ll ever hear about it from me.”
“That’s what I need.”
Brodie nodded. “Did he tell you anything about his background? Where he went to school, where his family come from? People he’d worked for, places he knew?”
“Nothing! I see now how evasive he was being. But he said the deal had to be put together quickly and quietly or somebody’d get in ahead of us, and I believed him.”
“Of course you did,” said Brodie kindly. “That’s how he makes his living - by making lies sound like the truth. He’ll have taken a lot of intelligent people for a ride before he tried it with you. But m
aybe this time he picked the wrong person.”
“I do hope so,” said the woman fervently. “What do you think - is there a chance?”
“There’s always a chance,” Brodie said firmly. “Give me a day or two to look into it and I’ll be able to say how good a chance.”
“Quicker is better. I’d like that money back in my account before my husband misses it.”
It might have been impossible. There were people who came to Brodie with quests so plainly futile she wouldn’t take their money. But there was something in the photograph that just might help. She didn’t want to draw attention to it: too much honesty could cost her three thousand pounds. She’d get the magnifying glass out after the client had left.
She lifted a pen. “I’ll need your name and address.”
The woman’s eyes flared. “Is that necessary? I’ll be paying cash.”
“I’m sorry, it is necessary. But don’t worry, I really will treat the matter with absolute confidence.”
“Oh, very well. Mrs” - she emphasised the word just slightly - “Selma Doyle, 57 River Drive, Dimmock.”
“You won’t want me calling you,” said Brodie. “Call me here tomorrow afternoon. I should be able to tell you then if I can help.”
“I take it you could,” said Jack Deacon.
“Oh yes,” said Brodie Farrell bitterly. “Helpful is my middle name.”
“How? With just a bad photograph?”
“I was right,” said Brodie, “there was something else in the picture. When I put it under a magnifying glass I could see what it was.”
It was a telescope. Quite a big telescope: as tall as the man, with an aperture as broad as his fist.
Brodie faxed a copy of the photograph to the Astronomical Association in London. Though it was a bad picture to start with and would be worse by the time they saw it, they might still be able to identify the subject.
And so they did. “Your photograph shows a 100-millimetre skeleton reflector of Newtonian design, apparently home-made. Suggests the owner is a serious amateur. This is about the largest telescope that would be conveniently portable: anything bigger would be on a permanent mounting.”
So the man she sought, the man who wasn’t Charles Merrick, was serious about astronomy. He would be known in places where star-gazers met.
The “Yearbook of Astronomy” alerted her to three forthcoming meetings within a thirty mile radius of Dimmock. Brodie took the grainy picture along to the first, a lecture in Eastbourne that evening.
There she learned his name. Daniel Hood wasn’t present but people who recognised him were. Or rather, people who recognised the telescope. Faces seemed to be just so much wallpaper to them, but a 100-mm skeleton Newtonian reflector, well, you don’t see one of those every day.
“Where would I find him?” she asked.
They weren’t sure. They only ever saw him at gatherings like this. They supposed he had a home and a job somewhere, but those were things that took place in the daylight and astronomers mostly come out at night.
Armed now with a name, she trawled the membership lists of astronomical societies across southern England until she found him. And where she found him was only quarter of a mile from where she was sitting: a flat converted from a netting loft on Dimmock’s shingle shore.
She was less than honest with the club secretary. She claimed they were cousins, she’d promised to look him up when she moved to the area only she’d lost his address. “What does he look like? I’d hate to fling myself at the wrong Daniel Hood.”
The secretary thought for a moment. “Mid twenties, small, fair. Terrible eyesight, which is a major problem to an astronomer. You need your glasses to find what you want to observe, then you take them off to use the eyepiece. But the finderscope isn’t lined up, so you put them back on to adjust it. Then you take them off to look through the telescope again. And it’s dark, you see, so if you put them down you have to remember where …”
“Oh yes,” said Brodie with certainty, “that’s cousin Dan.” The bottle-bottom glasses had been clear even on that photograph.
A scant twenty-four hours had passed. When Mrs Doyle phoned immediately after lunch Brodie was able to pass on the good news; and on receipt of the fee the name and address of the man who cheated her. And she thought that was the end of it.
“Then this morning,” Brodie said, and both her voice and the hand she pointed shook, “I saw that.”
Her first desperate thought was that it was a coincidence. But even then she didn’t believe it. She grabbed the phonebook; the Doyle family weren’t listed so she hurried out to her car. But the River Drive houses ended at number 56.
“Then I knew,” she whispered. “I don’t know how much of what she told me was true - maybe none of it. But she wanted him for something, and she used me to find him. I never suspected! I swear to you, I never guessed she meant to do anything like - like …” She hadn’t the words. She folded in her chair, defeated.
The telephone rang. Detective Inspector Deacon answered it. The other party did most of the talking; Deacon said “Yes” and “I see” a couple of times, and once he said, “Right.” Then he put the phone down and turned his attention once more to Brodie Farrell.
“Well now,” he said, and waited for her eyes to come up before going on. “Is there anything else you can tell me? About this Mrs Doyle, for instance.”
“I met her twice, for perhaps thirty minutes in total. I have a good picture of her in my mind. If I could work with the E-fit people … ?”
“Yes, I’ll organise that once you and me are finished. I’ll also want a statement from you. But let’s be sure, first, that we’ve covered everything you’ll want to put in it.”
She knew what he was suggesting: that she’d been less than frank. “Inspector, if I knew any more - about Selma Doyle, about any of it - I would tell you. I’ve nothing to hide. I’m ashamed of my stupidity, appalled by what I’ve been a party to, but I never guessed how the information I gathered would be used. I don’t think I’ve committed an offence, although right now that isn’t much comfort. What happened to Daniel Hood would have been impossible without my help. I don’t know if he did what the woman calling herself Selma Doyle said he’d done; I’m not sure it matters. Nothing he did could have justified what was done to him. I’m here to help find the people responsible.”
“People?”
“The only one I had any dealings with was Mrs Doyle,” said Brodie. “But Inspector, surely to God you don’t think that a middle-aged woman who’d lost her money and her dignity to a toyboy would hit back like this? Torture him, shoot him and dump him in a skip?”
“Hell hath no fury …” murmured Deacon.
“Perhaps not, but she was a plump forty-year-old woman, not Arnold Schwartzenegger. She couldn’t have lifted a man’s body into a skip. She must have had help.”
“Yours, for starters.”
Tears started to Brodie Farrell’s eyes. She wanted to throw the words back in his face, but they were true. She dipped her head. “I didn’t know what I was helping her to do.”
“You really thought she was just going to give him a piece of her mind? And that, as a result of that, he’d return her money?”
“I suppose so. I didn’t give it that much thought. I did what I was paid for, it was up to her how she used the information.” She heard how that sounded and flushed. “I never expected her to use it like that!”
Deacon wasn’t sure what to make of her story. There were things he didn’t understand, things he’d want clarified. But he didn’t have the sense that he was talking to a cold-blooded killer, and if she wasn’t that then perhaps her account was true.
He stood abruptly. “Mrs Farrell, will you come with me, please.”
She looked up, took a deep breath. “If you’re going to charge me I’ll want to call my solicitor.” Her eyes were full of misgivings, but still the threat of prosecution didn’t seem to disturb her as much as knowing what she’d contribute
d to.
“I’m not charging you; not yet. I want you to come to the hospital with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
Chapter 3
She had no idea what to expect. But she was familiar enough with Dimmock General Hospital to know that the mortuary was in the basement. Detective Inspector Deacon parked at an unmarked rear entrance and led her upstairs. At least she was to be spared the ultimate humiliation of seeing what her unthinking cleverness had led to. All the way over here she’d been afraid he wanted to show her the body.
He knew where he was going, twisted and turned without hesitation until a shut door blocked their way. A policeman sitting in the corridor rose to his feet. “Sir?”
“I’m letting Mrs Farrell in on our little secret,” said Deacon heavily. One hand pushed the door open while the other, firm in the small of her back, pressed Brodie inside.
Inside were all the trappings of intensive care but only one bed and one nurse who looked up at the sound of the door. She recognised Deacon and nodded a greeting.
“Any change?” he asked.
“Not a lot.”
“That’s good? Bad?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Inspector, I can’t tell you anything more than the doctors already have.”
The bed was occupied but Brodie could see almost nothing of the patient. High-tech medical equipment clustered around his head like old women gossiping about what had put him there. Tubes ran up his nose, down his throat and into his veins, and his eyelids were taped shut. On a dark screen a blue line described a series of peaks and valleys. A monitor ticked off every heartbeat with audible relief.