by Bill Kitson
‘So that’s who it is. I suppose given the connection, it had to be him. And in view of that, it does put another complexion on the problem. What do you suggest?’
‘I think it might be time to reactivate Ivan the Terrible.’
‘Phew! That’s a bit extreme. Are you certain? It would be very expensive – even if he’s available, which I can’t be sure about. Last I heard he was languishing in a gaol somewhere in central Africa.’
‘I’m sure even if Ivan himself isn’t free, he’ll have friends who would be happy to stand in for him if the price is right. And one thing we’re not short of is money.’
‘OK, I’ll get onto it right away.’
‘There’s one other thing. And it could be far more worrying even than the legal eagle. This is only a rumour at present, but I heard something that might mean we need to give Ivan further work. Something along the lines of the last job he did. It seems there are others who might be getting suspicious, and they’re people we can’t deal with the same way. If that’s the case, we either stall them until we’ve time to plan our exit strategy, or risk losing everything. From what I hear, they’re bringing in an investigator: a woman.’
‘We have no proof that when this woman begins work she will find out anything. Others haven’t, so why panic over this one?’
‘She has a very good reputation. That’s why they use her.’
‘I still don’t see why you’re so worried.’
‘I wouldn’t be, except for the discovery at the holiday cottage. Suddenly there are a lot of people interested in the identity of the remains that were found there.’
‘The police, you mean? I don’t think for a minute they’ll connect that to what happened three years ago. For one thing, there was nothing left to identify the body, and by now I reckon it’ll be no more than a collection of bones.’
‘I’m not as confident as you, then. They can identify people, even if they’ve been dead hundreds of years. Do you remember that article about Richard III? They were able to get a DNA sample from that skeleton found in Leicester and test it against a known descendant. And that skeleton is centuries old.’
‘You’ve been watching too much television. And anyway, even if they did identify who was buried in the cottage, there’s nothing to trace it back to us.’
‘I still don’t think we should take chances with this woman, which is why I suggest we get Ivan working again. We can’t afford her finding out anything before we’re ready to go. How is that progressing?’
‘Another two weeks, three at the most and then everything will be ready. Then I can press the button and we can leave.’
‘That settles it; we’ll have to use Ivan. The chance of an impromptu audit is like a ticking time bomb. We’re so close now we can’t afford to take the risk. If we take this one final precaution, we can proceed without fear of discovery until we’re out of harm’s way: a long way out of reach of the authorities.’
‘Good, I’m getting fed up with this country. I want sunshine, a beach and the luxury we’ve worked for.’
‘What about the woman?’
‘Talk to Ivan. See what he has to say. If needs be, get him to do what he did before. This time tell him to pick a place where she’ll never be found.’
‘We thought he had last time. It was pure bad luck that she was discovered. Where do you suggest?’
‘Another empty cottage would do. I suppose it doesn’t matter that much if they find the body as long as it’s after we’ve cleared out.’
‘What if they catch up with Ivan? What if he tells them who he’s working for? Or what if they follow the money trail?’
‘I’m rather counting on that happening. If they do that, it will implicate someone else. That will give us more time to take up our new life with our new identities. By the time they discover their mistake it will be far too late.’
‘OK, when I find Ivan, I’ll have a word and see if he can frighten the woman off. If not, I’ll tell him to go to the next level, but not to finalize things just yet. No point in doing it until absolutely necessary.’
‘Still a bit squeamish? I remember you felt that way before.’
‘Not squeamish, simply careful.’
It seemed as if Nash’s prayers were on their way to being answered. The first piece of positive news came in a phone call from the pathologist. ‘We’ve managed to extract a DNA sample from the skeleton found in the workshop. I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but the first two we extracted had been corrupted by the surrounding material. This is the only clean sample we’ve obtained thus far, and I’ll need at least one more to be absolutely certain we’ve got the DNA string one hundred per cent accurate. Hopefully, within the next few days we should be able to send one for analysis.’
‘Thank you, Professor, now all we have to do is find a missing person who matches the dead woman’s description and….’
Nash’s voice tailed off.
‘Nash, are you there?’
‘Sorry, I just had a stray thought.’
Ramirez sighed. ‘Usually when you get stray thoughts like that, my mortuary cabinets start to fill up.’
‘Let me know when you have a viable sample and it’s ready for analysis, and thanks, Professor.’
Nash rang off and remained seated behind his desk, his eyes staring at the painting of York Minster, his mind occupied with the theory he was beginning to develop. It was almost twenty minutes before he walked into the outer office. ‘Viv, isn’t it today that the couple from the lettings agency are due back from holiday?’
‘Oh yes, do you want me to phone them?’
‘No, better to go round in person, and don’t leave without all the information you can get. They’re bound to be horrified by what went on at the cottage, but I’m more interested in the other victim in the workshop, so keep their minds concentrated on what we need to know.’
An hour later Pearce returned, frustration written across his face.
‘Problem?’ Nash asked.
‘Would you believe the office was closed? Closed, due to unforeseen circumstances, according to the notice in the window.’
‘Well, in that case, we’ll just have to wait until they reopen.’
Neil Ormondroyd had spent much of the week thinking of the women he’d loved – and lost. The pain of each was still raw, but now he had another worry. He wished he was more adept with computers. If he had been, he might have found out who was behind the crime he’d uncovered. He glanced down at the drawer where the decanter was secreted. No, that was becoming too much of a habit. Besides, he still had one more client to see, a client who would only speak to him and had insisted on a late appointment, and whisky-laden breath was not a good advertisement.
As if on cue, there was a knock on the outer door. He opened it, to greet the caller. Ormondroyd shook the man’s gloved hand, noting the Slavic cast of his features. As the client followed Ormondroyd up the stairs, he removed a coil of thin wire from his pocket. Once inside the office, the caller placed his briefcase on the floor as Ormondroyd went to sit behind his desk. ‘How can I help you?’
One quick stride took the caller behind the solicitor. He dropped the wire over Ormondroyd’s head and tightened it. The struggle was swift, brutal and one-sided. ‘Nothing for me. You do nothing for me. I do to you.’
Ormondroyd convulsed, kicked, choked and then went limp. His assailant allowed the body to slump over the desk, blood from the deep gash already seeping onto the blotter. The killer walked to the filing cabinet and began searching the drawers. He took out a bulky folder and stuffed it in his briefcase along with Ormondroyd’s laptop. At the door he turned and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Ormondroyd.’
Ormondroyd didn’t reply, but then Ivan hadn’t expected him to.
chapter eleven
Nash had just entered Helmsdale police station when Sergeant Binns stopped him. ‘Mike, hang on.’ The sergeant put the phone down.
‘Morning, Jack, what have you got for me?’
‘Tell control that Clara and I will go, she’s getting tired of paperwork. What’s the woman’s name?’
‘Mrs Lane.’
When they arrived, Nash looked at the exterior of the building. If a TV company wanted a setting for a small-town solicitor’s office, this would fit the bill perfectly. The walls were grey and green; limestone, clad with ancient ivy. The window of the general office was opaque. Etched into the smoky coloured glass was the name, Ormondroyd & Partners, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. Nash wondered who the partners were, or had been.
They were greeted by a uniformed officer who ushered them into a small vestibule. The general office was to one side; access was via a second half-glass door. Directly in front of them, a flight of stairs led to the first floor.
Nash and Mironova stepped inside the general office. The woman seated behind the desk was slightly the wrong side of forty, Nash guessed. She looked distraught.
‘Mrs Lane? I’m Detective Inspector Nash. You made the call, I believe.’
Mrs Lane sobbed and nodded. Nash asked gently, ‘Is it just you and Mr Ormondroyd here? Only, the sign on the window says, Ormondroyd & Partners.’
‘That sign was put there by old Mr Ormondroyd, Mr Neil’s father, but that was a long time ago. These days there isn’t enough work to justify another partner. Now, I don’t know what will happen.’ She began to cry again.
‘What I suggest is that you wait down here with the officer whilst DS Mironova and I have a look round.’
They headed upstairs. ‘Do you want us to suit up?’ Clara asked.
‘Not for the moment, we won’t go in the room; not until we have to.’
From the doorway, Nash had no doubt that Ormondroyd had been murdered. He pointed to the dead man’s neck. ‘Garrotted, by the look of things.’
Clara nodded agreement.
The killer’s weapon of choice had bitten deeply into the solicitor’s neck, stifling the dying breath, cutting everything in its path, almost severing the vertebrae. As the man had pitched forward, the heart, pumping resolutely to the last, had caused the blood to spew enthusiastically from the fresh outlets so recently opened up.
The blotter had been hard pushed to live up to its name, eventually giving up the unequal struggle to contain the escaping blood.
Later, after Clara had taken Mrs Lane home and Nash had handed the crime scene over to Ramirez and the forensic officers, he phoned Superintendent Fleming. ‘SOCO will be at least twenty-four hours here, so whilst they’re busy we can’t search the offices thoroughly. We should go and take a look round Ormondroyd’s house. I took his house keys off the ring, so we’ll be able to get in easily enough. I’ve asked Viv Pearce to join us. I think if we take a look round the man’s home, we might get some idea of the motive or even the identity of the killer from his lifestyle.’
‘What lifestyle?’ Clara asked when Nash had ended the call. ‘I chatted to his secretary, after I’d taken her statement, and according to her, Ormondroyd was pretty much a recluse. Mrs Lane said that as far as she was aware, he hadn’t been out for a meal or a drink; hadn’t visited the theatre or cinema for as long as she could remember.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t a social animal.’
Mironova shook her head. ‘No, Mrs Lane said he wasn’t always like that. She reckons she knew Ormondroyd better than anyone else; had watched him grow up and she admitted that he was obsessively secretive. But she did believe he had been involved with someone up to a couple of years back. She said he changed after that, became even more of a hermit, and even less communicative. I asked her if she knew who it was he’d been involved with, and why it ended, but she has no idea.’
‘That’s not exactly a lot of help. Did she say anything else that might have given us a clue?’
‘Not really. I did ask her one other question. It was the way she kept mentioning his secrecy that prompted it.’ Clara smiled. ‘It shocked her rigid. I suggested the person he might have been involved with could have been another man. When she got over the shock she admitted that it could have been a possibility, but she thought it was highly unlikely.’
‘The other explanation for the secrecy could be that he was seeing a married woman. In a small place like Bishopton, it wouldn’t take much for rumours of an affair like that to spread like wildfire. Anyway, let’s go look at his house and see if we can find any answers there.’
Pearce was waiting for them outside the semi-detached Victorian building. Everything looked as it should. Once inside, they did a brief tour of the premises and could find nothing untoward. Every room bore the hallmarks of a solitary man living a bachelor existence. ‘It’s just as Mrs Lane said,’ Clara commented. ‘Rather sad and pathetic really; a man without friends or family.’
They were standing in the large airy room to the rear of the ground floor, which had been furnished as a study. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves. A third wall, alongside the French window leading to the back garden, had a glass-fronted china cabinet, on top of which was a framed photograph of a good-looking young woman. Nash and Mironova examined the photo.
‘Her face looks vaguely familiar. I feel I ought to know her,’ Clara remarked. ‘Hang on.’ She pointed to the features. ‘Viv, take a look, who does she remind you of?’
Viv stared at the photo, but with no success. ‘Sorry, you’ve got me beaten. Who do you think it is?’
Mironova placed her hand over the lower half of the photo, covering the woman’s body. ‘Now, imagine the hair as short and try again.’
‘Yes, I see it now. She looks a bit like Dean Wilson.’
‘A bit? More than a bit. A lot, I’d say. I may be wrong, but at a guess, I’d say this was a photo of Linda Wilson.’
‘Linda Wilson? Isn’t she the woman who—’
‘Disappeared along with several millions at the time that Bishopton Investments went bust. If the likeness is correct, she must be Dean Wilson’s sister.’
‘I haven’t met him, so I bow to your knowledge,’ Nash said. ‘What intrigues me is why this photo has pride of place in Ormondroyd’s private sanctum. Unless Linda was the woman he was involved with. That would tie in with what Mrs Lane told you, Clara. If Linda Wilson let Ormondroyd down the same way as she did the investors, he would have gone into his shell. Maybe he’s been carrying a torch for her all this time.’
‘Do you think her disappearance could be connected to Ormondroyd’s murder?’ Clara wondered.
‘I can’t begin to see how. Anyway, let’s have a good look round in here and see what else we can find.’
They made a start, with Pearce concentrating on the two-drawer filing cabinet whilst Clara read Ormondroyd’s diaries. Nash went through the contents of the desk drawers one by one. They had been at work for almost half an hour when Nash located another photo. He stared at it for several moments before muttering, ‘Hell’s bells!’
Clara looked up and saw the stunned expression on Nash’s face. ‘What is it? What have you found?’
Nash didn’t reply, so she peered over his shoulder. ‘Good Lord! That’s obscene.’
‘Did you meet Naomi Macaulay?’
Clara shook her head.
Nash continued. ‘The girl in this photo looks very much like Naomi. However, the hair colour is totally wrong. This girl’s a blonde, a natural blonde at that, and Naomi’s hair is bright red. Unless Naomi’s hair is dyed.’
Pearce hadn’t seen the photo. ‘How do you know the girl in the photo doesn’t have dyed hair?’
Nash turned the photo so Viv could see it. ‘Oh, I didn’t realize it was that sort of photo. I can see now.’
‘If this isn’t Naomi, who do you think it is?’ Clara asked Nash. Failing to get a response, she glanc
ed at him. He was staring at the photo, his mind obviously elsewhere.
‘Mike,’ she prompted, ‘if you could tear yourself away from ogling the nude for a moment.’
‘Sorry.’ He grinned. ‘Did you speak?’
‘I asked who you thought the girl was. Do you think Ormondroyd was into child pornography? Might that have been the motive for his murder?’
Nash didn’t answer her directly. ‘I’d like to know when this photo was taken.’ His voice was quiet, pensive. ‘Think about this. Naomi Macaulay is, what, eighteen or nineteen years old. We know Ormondroyd was thirty-three. What does that suggest?’
Mironova and Pearce exchanged glances, and it was clear they had no idea what Nash was driving at. ‘Think about hair colouring,’ he prompted them. ‘Here we have a highly suggestive nude photo of a young girl with blonde hair, who I think looks a lot like Naomi Macaulay, although Naomi has red hair. When this photo was taken, I reckon this girl’ – he tapped the photo – ‘would be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Now think about Ormondroyd, and apart from a few flecks of grey, his hair is as red as Naomi’s. Red hair isn’t that common, and in a small place like Bishopton there can’t be many people with the same colouring unless they’re related.’
‘You think Ormondroyd is Naomi’s father? But he wouldn’t have been old enough,’ Pearce objected.
‘Not legally, perhaps,’ Nash agreed. ‘But physically, he would have been quite capable of fathering a child, even if he wasn’t over the age of consent. If I’m right, that leaves one unanswered question. Is this Naomi’s mother? If she had an affair with Ormondroyd, then perhaps we should be talking to Mr Macaulay about the solicitor’s murder.’
Clara was examining the photo. The pose was overtly sexual, and from the way the young girl was looking at the camera, Clara had little doubt that the object of her desire was the photographer. ‘If your theory’s right then this photo would have been taken before digital photography was widely available. So I wonder if Ormondroyd was interested in photography. I doubt you’d have got anyone to develop these. I can’t see a young lad marching into the chemist’s shop in Bishopton high street and leaving that roll of film, can you?’