by Ford,P. F.
‘I can’t believe that!’ she snapped.
‘I don’t think any of us believe it, Jane,’ said Slater. ‘But we can’t ignore the possibility. That’s why we need to find the evidence to prove it. There must have been records of all the kids who were put into the care of that orphanage. It’s got to be worth trying to find them. Can you get onto that, Jane? Start with the local council, county council. You know what to do.’
‘Why don’t I combine that with the search for information about Hatton House?’ suggested Jolly. ‘It seems they’re almost one and the same thing.’
‘Good idea,’ said Slater.
‘Are we ruling Rippon out as a suspect now?’ asked Norman.
‘I think we can push him back down the queue, but he’s still a suspect. What if he’s the one with the hard disk? Maybe he was hoping Florence would know the password.’
Slater saw the look on Norman’s face.
‘If he had a copy,’ argued Norman, ‘he wouldn’t need Florence to help him. The guy’s a professional. He must know someone who could access that information.’
‘Look. I agree it’s probably as unlikely as Winter telling lies, Norm, but he still has a motive. We can’t ignore him yet. Anyway, what did forensics come up with?’
‘Well,’ said Norman with a smile, ‘it seems our exchange of words might not have done too much harm. They’ve pulled out all the stops on this one. It looks like something was dragged from the log cabin to the canal. Their theory is she was killed outside the cabin and then dragged up to the canal and thrown in. It was dragging her body that created the trail.
‘They also found a footprint along this trail. It matches the one found at Mr Winter’s house, same shoe, same size. So we need to find out where Rippon was yesterday afternoon and evening. I think we also need to ask Danny Trent where he was. We didn’t prove he’s ever had a pair of those shoes, but after he admitted he was at Mr Winter’s house we have to assume he could have been at Florence’s too.’
‘This is a good start,’ said Slater. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘Oh, there’s more,’ said Norman. ‘In the cabin they found a back door key that they think will fit Mr Winter’s back door.’
‘If that’s the key we saw, I’m sure it’s his,’ said Jolly.
‘They also found a creased sheet of paper that had been roughly smoothed out,’ continued Norman. ‘Remember the torn piece of paper found in Mr Winter’s hand? When they put them together, they found they were a match, and now they can see what the numbers are. It’s a phone number.’
He held up a sheet of paper with a mobile phone number printed on it.
‘I’m sure I’ve seen that number before.’ Slater scrabbled through the papers on his desk. ‘Wait a minute. Yeah. Here it is. It’s Rippon’s number.’
‘There’s another question for him to answer, then,’ said Norman.
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s it for this case,’ said Norman. ‘But while I was down there, Becksy gave me something else that I think you might find interesting. Remember I had to go to Maunder’s house when he had this break-in? He assured everyone it was the Night Caller. He even called up the CC to tell him I was an idiot for not immediately agreeing with him.
‘Well, Becksy finally got some feedback from Winchester. It’s definitely not the real Night Caller who broke in there. Apparently it’s not the same calling card, but it’s not the usual copycat either. The fakers use the sort of card you can buy anywhere and print from a PC. The real guy uses expensive, fancy card and a very expensive printer you can’t buy just anywhere. Whoever broke in at Maunder’s used the right card, but then made the mistake of using the wrong ink, wrong font, and wrong size. They also used a PC to do the printing. They might have known about the fancy card but they didn’t know the other details.’
‘Is it common knowledge about the card?’ asked Slater.
‘It’s been reported in press releases that he leaves a card,’ said Norman, with a wicked grin. ‘But it’s never been revealed that he uses fancy card.’
‘So what do you think?’ asked Slater.
‘Well, I have to say I thought it was all a bit iffy from the start. I mean, they conveniently forgot to set the alarm. The jewellery box was left out in the open, and I’m supposed to believe they both slept while someone came into their bedroom and cleaned the thing out. In my humble opinion it stinks to high heaven, but because he is who he is I was told to back off and leave it.’
‘Did he fake it?’ asked Slater. ‘Insurance fraud?’
‘Having seen how they all closed ranks, I think it would be fair to say they think he’s squeaky clean. I’m sure he probably knows someone who knows the facts about the Night Caller, and I’m sure if he asked they’d tell him. And, no doubt, once I suggest I need to investigate a bit more thoroughly we’ll see them all close ranks again. Isn’t that going to be fun?’
‘So don’t tell anyone,’ said Slater.
‘But I was ordered to tell the old man if I want to speak to the guy again.’
‘But no-one’s ordered me to stay away,’ said Slater. ‘We now have a reason for going up there and talking to him. We can use the break-in as an excuse for poking around into his background.’
‘And starting a shit storm heading our way.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘It’s never worried me before,’ said Norman, grinning. ‘And I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for changing my ways now.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Slater smiled back. ‘But we need to do our research thoroughly before we go up there.’
He leaned back in his chair and fished a coin from his pocket.
‘Heads or tails?’
‘What am I gonna win if I call it right?’
‘If you call it right, you get to stay here and start searching through this list of employees. If you call it wrong, you get to attend the PM.’
‘Wow, what a choice. You’re just too kind. Okay, I’ll go heads.’
Slater spun the coin in the air and slapped his hand over it as it landed on his desk. He tilted his hand just enough to see the coin for himself, but kept it hidden from Norman. His face broke into a broad grin.
‘I’m not buying that,’ said Norman, suspiciously. ‘Lemme see.’
Slater took his hand away to reveal the winning tails.
‘Crap,’ said Norman. ‘I hate watching a PM right on lunchtime. There must be somewhere else we should be. Are you sure you don’t want to come?’
‘I’d love to accompany you,’ said Slater, grinning, ‘but we need to get cracking on. Jane can’t handle all this research on her own. If you leave now you can have an early lunch before it starts.’
‘Watch it on a full stomach? You have to be kidding,’ said Norman, looking aghast. ‘But I will take you up on the “leave now” bit.’
Slater and Jolly were both engrossed in their computers, the room filled with a deafening silence apart from the clicking of keyboards. Norman had been gone a couple of hours when Slater suddenly cursed loudly.
‘Bugger!’ he said. ‘Norman was right when he said there was somewhere else we should be. One of us was supposed to be at John Hunter’s this morning to see the fake sister. I got so involved in Florence’s murder I forgot all about it.’
He looked at his watch, then snatched up the phone and dialled Hunter’s number.
‘Hi, Mr Hunter. It’s DS Slater. I’m afraid we’ve got so involved in another case I forgot I was supposed to be coming in this morning. Has she turned up yet?’
‘She’s not coming now,’ said Hunter.
‘But I thought she was rushing down to hear you read the will today. I thought she was insisting,’ said Slater, irritated and confused.
‘Yes, she was. But now it seems she’s decided against coming down.’
‘Did she say why? When is she intending to come down?’ asked Slater, transitioning from irritation to disbelief.
‘It seems she
no longer wishes to hear the will and no longer claims to be Mr Winter’s long-lost sister.’
‘What? Just like that?’
‘Perhaps she knew we were onto her,’ said Hunter
‘So she was a fake, just as we suspected,’ said Slater. ‘I’d like to know how she came to get involved in this in the first place.’
‘Sergeant, there are people out there who do nothing but look for ads just like the one I placed in a large number of newspapers. I suppose you only need to manage to fake it once and you get your hands on a sizable inheritance.’
‘If I wasn’t so busy right now, I’d be after her,’ said Slate, angrily.
‘I fear you’d probably be wasting your time,’ said Hunter, mildly. ‘The chances are she’ll have vanished into thin air already.’
Slater sighed heavily. He knew Hunter was probably right. It was so frustrating though.
‘Are you any nearer to finding the real sister?’ asked Hunter.
‘Err, yes,’ admitted Slater. ‘We think we have found her. We’ll know for sure when we get the DNA test results back. The problem is she’s dead.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Hunter. ‘What happened?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ said Slater, grimly.
He was finding it difficult to hide his irritation, and so he made his excuses and ended the call, finally throwing the phone back into its cradle in disgust.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Jolly.
‘Apparently this missing sister who was so insistent on coming down has decided to drop out of the whole scene. Suddenly she’s not his sister,’ said Slater bitterly. ‘I was hoping we could find out who she was working for.’
‘Maybe she was just working on her own. Perhaps she spends all her time on fishing trips like this one.’
‘No,’ said Slater. ‘I’m sure there’s more to it than that. There’s something not right about this whole thing. I just can’t see what it is yet.’
The door burst open and Norman backed in, carefully balancing three mugs of tea on a small tray.
‘I come bearing gifts from afar,’ he announced, placing the tray carefully on Slater’s desk before adding, ‘Well, from the canteen, anyway.’
‘So how did the PM go?’ asked Slater.
‘It was grisly, gory, and generally uncomfortable,’ said Norman.
‘Did you learn anything new?’
‘I learnt I don’t like watching post-mortems, but I already knew that,’ said Norman. ‘But that’s not what you mean, right?’
Slater nodded patiently. No one enjoyed PMs so he was prepared to accept Norman’s need to joke about it.
‘There was no water in her lungs, so she didn’t drown. It looks like she was killed by a heavy blow to the back of her head and then dragged to the canal and thrown in. Time of death is a bit hazy because of the effects of the cold and being in the canal overnight, but they reckon between 4pm and 7pm the day before we found her, so she’d been in there about 24 hours when we found her.’
‘No real surprises there then,’ said Slater. ‘Did they say what they thought the murder weapon was?’
‘That old favourite, the blunt instrument,’ said Norman. ‘A baseball bat would fit the bill, but they couldn’t be sure. I’ve asked the guys to try searching the canal a bit further afield, but don’t hold your breath.’
‘Are they doing a DNA comparison to Winter?’ asked Slater.
‘Yeah,’ said Norman. ‘I always thought she might be too old, but she was much younger than she looked. I guess that’s what being in hiding and living rough does for you. According to the pathologist she was in her late sixties, so that would be about right. She has to be his sister.’
‘Talking of sisters,’ said Slater, ‘we forgot one of us was supposed to be at Hunter’s this morning.’
‘Crap!’ said Norman. ‘Did she turn up?’
‘Apparently she’s decided she’s not his sister, after all,’ said Slater, sighing. ‘She’s not coming now.’
‘Really? Why’s she suddenly got cold feet?’
‘Yeah. That’s what I’d like to know. It’s not right is it?’
‘Did she know we were going to be waiting for her?’ asked Norman.
‘Not unless Hunter told her, but it was his idea, so why would he do that? Anyway he says he didn’t.’
‘Oh well, if she got cold feet it’s one less problem to resolve,’ said Norman, optimistically.
‘Or it’s whole new problem altogether,’ replied Slater, ominously.
‘Is that what you think?’ asked Norman.
‘Something’s not right,’ said Slater. ‘I know it, but I just can’t put my finger on it.’
‘Stop thinking about it and it’ll come to you eventually,’ said Norman.
He turned to Jolly.
‘So how are we doing on these searches?’
‘Most of the people on this staff list would be in their eighties or even older,’ she said. ‘If they were still alive. It seems the mortality rate is pretty high. I haven’t found anyone who’s still alive yet. I haven’t even got started on the search for Hatton House records.’
‘What about you?’ Norman asked Slater. ‘Any luck with your list of possible abusers?’
‘I seem to have the same problem as Jane,’ he replied. ‘Everyone’s dead.’
‘All except the main man,’ said Norman. ‘Doesn’t that seem a little strange? Or is it just me?’
‘I didn’t know Jane was having the same issue. But it seems unlikely that everyone would be dead, doesn’t it?’
‘What about causes of death?’ asked Norman.
‘Natural. In their sleep mostly,’ said Jolly.
‘Me too,’ said Slater. ‘Two of mine had cancer. Neither was terminal, yet they both died.’
‘Now that looks like a whole inquiry in itself,’ said Norman.
‘I don’t think we can get side-tracked on that now,’ said Slater. ‘We don’t have the resources.’
‘Nah. You’re right. But it’s something we should maybe flag up at a later date.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Slater, ‘I thought we should check out our favourite journalist, but when I called the Station Hotel they told me he’d gone back to London for a few days. So I called his London office and they confirmed he’s been up there for the past three days. But he’s due back this afternoon. I thought we could call in on our way home.’
‘What about his young accomplice?’ asked Norman.
‘He’s got a good alibi, too. He’s out of the country,’ said Slater. ‘I already checked. It seems he was advised to take a holiday for a week or two until all this has died down.’
‘So that’s two suspects we can cross off the list then,’ said Norman. ‘There’s only one left really. I do like a short list!’
‘Rippon could always have come back down without anyone knowing,’ said Slater.
‘You really think so?’ Norman sounded surprised.
‘No, not really,’ admitted Slater. ‘We should still speak to him, but I agree Maunder looks the favourite right now.’
‘So why don’t we go over there tomorrow morning and rattle his cage?’ suggested Norman.
It was five-thirty when they found Geoff Rippon sat at his usual corner table in the Railway Hotel, furiously tapping away at his laptop. If he saw them come in, he didn’t acknowledge the fact.
‘Evening, Geoff,’ said Slater, as he and Norman carried their pints over and settled into the chairs across the table from Rippon. He looked up, grimaced at each of them, and then returned to his laptop.
Slater and Norman sat and waited as he hammered away furiously, enjoying the first pint they’d had together for a long while. Eventually, Rippon looked up again and glared at them.
‘What?’ he snapped.
‘Cheers,’ said Norman, raising his glass to Rippon. ‘It’s good to see you, too.’
‘Don’t expect me to be pleased to see you,’ said Rippon. ‘We had a deal. You we
re going to share information.’
‘I don’t think it was quite like that,’ said Slater, mildly.
‘You didn’t tell me you were going to let the star of my story get killed, did you?’
‘How d’you know about that?’
‘I read the bloody newspaper,’ said Rippon, angrily. ‘You should try it, perhaps then you might find out what’s going on.’
‘How d’you know she was a star player in your story?’ asked Norman.
‘You already know how I know,’ he replied. ‘It was me that told you she was old Mr Winter’s sister, wasn’t it?’
‘So where were you yesterday?’ asked Slater.
‘What? Am I a suspect?’ asked Rippon, sounding aghast. ‘Do I need an alibi?’
‘I just asked where you were, that’s all,’ said Slater.
‘If you must know, I was at my office up in London. I’ve been up there for a couple of days. You can check with my secretary.’
‘I will,’ said Slater.
‘She’ll tell you where, what times and who with.’
‘To be honest, Geoff,’ said Norman, ‘you’re not exactly our number one suspect, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t ask. You do have a motive, and we did find that fancy trainer print of yours again.’
‘Only in your eyes do I have a motive,’ said Rippon. ‘Like I said before, you don’t kill the golden goose. And they sell millions of those trainers.’
‘I don’t think Florence would have been your golden goose,’ said Norman. ‘She didn’t live in the real world. I don’t think she would have been any more use to you, as a witness, than she would have been to us. But she didn’t deserve to die, and we were hoping you might want to help us find out who killed her.’
‘What makes you think I can help?’
‘Two reasons,’ said Norman. ‘One, the journalist in you sees a big story. We know you’ve been investigating, just like we have. Maybe you know something we don’t. Two, we know that inside that tough exterior there’s a decent human being. We think that decent human being would want to see her killer caught.’
‘Nice speech,’ sneered Rippon. ‘But we’ve already done this and I told you what I knew, and then I got nothing out of it. Why should I think it’ll be different this time?’