Stealth

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Someone must have found out about that,’ Patrick said. ‘But surely it can’t have been Hamlyn in this case. Trent? They were friends. It was he Trent complained to about Miss Smythe and she ended up with the ASBO. But somehow I can’t see Trent being up to putting the screws on him. As Ingrid said, he’s pathetic, as well as presumably already having had his own reputation on the line. And all our late cop needed to have done was report him for trying to bribe a police officer, money worries or no. It doesn’t quite add up.’

  ‘OK, we’ll work on it from the point of view that Trent was aware of the money worries and merely gave the information to someone else,’ the commander said. ‘Who? Who’s in a position to put pressure on a fairly top cop?’

  ‘A fairly top mobster he once put inside on phoney evidence and who might have even been his snout when he was in a more junior, hands-on role?’ I hazarded.

  ‘The imagination of writers,’ Greenway whispered, getting up to shake my hand gently. ‘That is so neat, so splendidly possible, Ingrid, I feel like crying. I’ll work on it from here. You both look exhausted so please go and rest while I get on the computer and I’ll keep you right up to date.’

  I followed this advice but Patrick stayed put, although I gather he dozed off in that warm, quiet room, the only intrusion the soft sound of the commander tapping keys. The information Greenway was to gather would, predictably, be highly complex and extensive and, later that day, he wasted no time in sending everything he had found so far to his team at HQ to ensure that it would be waiting for them in their in-boxes on Monday morning. That would be just the start. Before he began, I also found out later, he arranged to have Miss Smythe’s house resealed and ordered that someone be on duty there at all times until it was searched.

  The next day Hereward Trent’s battered body was found dumped in reeds at a nature reserve at the northern end of Hackney Marshes recreation ground. After a vicious beating he had been killed with a single shot to the head. Forensic examination would soon reveal that he had been dead for several days.

  TWELVE

  ‘In Greenway’s opinion he paid the price for having cold feet,’ Patrick said, placing his mobile back on the table.

  We were at home having been given strict orders to return to Hinton Littlemoor for forty-eight hours, the commander having said, ‘No, don’t argue, see your family and recover a little more. Travel first class on the train and taxis everywhere else, on expenses. Your car’ll be fine right here at my place.’

  The news had come through during the rail journey and I had wondered if, had we been in the Range Rover, Patrick would have turned around and gone straight back. I admired the commander’s tactics in reducing our mobility at a time when neither of us was really fit enough to drive for long distances. With this latest news I now found myself utterly sickened by the case and the thought of returning to London to tackle it again was awful.

  Family members, of course, were horrified by the visible signs of our ‘accident’, Vicky, the second youngest, hiding from ‘Mummy’s and Daddy’s hurts’, and Patrick’s father, John, insisting on a laying on of hands in the church and offering up a healing prayer for us which, for reasons that I simply cannot explain, helped me enormously. Vicky soon recovered from the shock of our appearance having been given a ride around the garden on Patrick’s shoulders, her absolute favourite occupation in life right now.

  ‘I shall really have to go and buy that delightful child a horse,’ Patrick said ruefully as he dropped into a chair.

  ‘She can have little rides on Fudge soon,’ I said. ‘And you ought to have been given proper sick leave.’

  ‘We can have proper sick leave. It’s just that . . .’ He broke off, shrugged, then muttered, ‘Ouch.’

  ‘It’s perfectly understandable that you want to get on with the job so these wretched people are arrested as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, only they’re scum, not people. But what I really want, right now, is Hamlyn, preferably my hands around his throat,’ Patrick said thickly and quickly left the room, limping a little.

  It is never far from my mind that most men who have laid hands on me in the course of our working together have ended up extremely dead.

  ‘There are some forensic details that are interesting although, as we’re both aware, it’s too early for DNA and other test results to come through,’ Patrick said the next morning after another call from Greenway. ‘As we already know, Trent had been dead for around three days. His body shows signs of dehydration and there’s nothing in the stomach, which suggests that he was confined somewhere without food or water before he was killed.’

  ‘I’m worried about Sonya,’ I murmured. ‘I didn’t get the impression that she was willingly involved.’

  ‘You don’t have to come back with me tomorrow.’

  ‘Does it show that much?’

  ‘I have known you for rather a long time.’

  ‘If you mean “known” in the legal sense, meaning sexually I was fifteen.’

  ‘Please don’t remind me.’

  When I had told him my age – we were both quite strictly brought up – Patrick had attained a shade of paleness that up until then I had assumed to be humanly impossible. This was after most of a whole summer of passionate love-making on an unusually sunlit Dartmoor. Until then he had merely been the Head Boy at school in Plymouth, a figure as remote to me, being three years older, as though we lived in different countries. Then, our fathers being good friends, Patrick had been cajoled into coming round one evening to help me with my physics homework, with which I struggled, whereupon he had sat opposite me at the kitchen table, stared across with those fine grey eyes, and simmered. What had happened next was not physics but chemistry and, holding his gaze, I had known that here was the man I wanted for ever and ever.

  He had thawed rapidly and over the next few weeks we walked the dogs, rode our bikes and I discovered that his greatest attraction was his ability to make me laugh. He is a born mimic. And then one day we laughed ourselves helpless, hugging one another under the hot Devon sun and I felt the way his wiry body moved under the thin material of his shirt. As children one minute then and as close as two people can be the next, a little later gazing breathlessly at one another, speechless with amazement at the sheer gorgeousness of what we had just experienced. In short, we were made for one another. Thinking back it still amazes me that I did not become pregnant.

  I would go back to London with him.

  There was no reason to enter Miss Smythe’s house through the back this time, and Greenway, who had not visited the murder victim’s home previously and germ warfare would not have kept away, wielded the front door keys with aplomb. I was already having horrible sinking feelings about it, the writer’s imagination presenting me with the hostile stares and mutterings of these SOCA personnel who had been summoned for duty on a Sunday should we find absolutely nothing.

  Jane Grant had been extremely surprised when asked to attend the search but had arrived on time and now stood with us in the spacious hallway. I had half expected her to have gone the way of all the others, that is, disappeared, but here she was, outwardly composed but with a nervous smile. Initially it was thought risky to ask her along in an effort to find out if she was complicit in what had gone on as she would then be able to report to her ‘friend’ Hamlyn that Patrick and I were still in the land of the living. Then the decision had been made that it was imperative to establish, now, how involved she was with his activities for her own sake if nothing else.

  Greenway led the way into the sitting room and suggested we seated ourselves for a few minutes while his team got themselves organized. He had already jokingly assured Mrs Grant that there was nothing alarming in the battered state of two of his staff – who were still on fairly powerful painkillers – which was down to a traffic accident. She had promptly flashed us a very alarmed glance, gone on to offer her sympathy, and then concentrated on what the commander was saying to her.

  Patrick ha
d stretched back in his armchair, winced, forgetting for a moment, and then assumed his usual, almost catlike passiveness of the one not doing the interviewing – yet. This tends to make people forget all about him until the moment he chooses but I did notice Jane Grant’s gaze drifting towards him now and again as she began to relate her findings when she went through her aunt’s papers. Nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary, that is.

  ‘This isn’t mere nosiness on my part, you must understand,’ Greenway emphasized, pushing the door closed to muffle the clumping of feet up the stairs. ‘We’re just wondering if there were any letters that might have been started and not finished, or sealed ready for posting and still among her documents.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Are you quite sure? This is very important.’

  ‘No, there was nothing like that. Just her birth certificate, a copy of her will and other family papers, a few old postcards, family photographs and nostalgic bits and pieces from her teaching years, the things one would expect to find.’

  ‘Have you finally established whether you’re a beneficiary in your aunt’s will?’

  ‘Yes, I have. Other than a couple of modest bequests to the local church and a children’s hospice round the corner she’s left everything to me. I’ve contacted her solicitor to make sure that everything’s correct and he assured me that it is.’

  ‘Are you aware that your aunt had written around a dozen letters to the Serious Organised Crime Agency with her suspicions about the people living next door?’

  Mrs Grant sat up poker-straight. ‘As many as that! Oh, my goodness! I knew she’d sent off at least one because she was writing it when I came to see her one day. I’m afraid I told her she was wasting police time and she got a bit short with me so I didn’t mention it again.’

  ‘For reasons that we’ll explain in a minute or so we want to search the attic rooms here. Scenes of crime personnel did not do so for reasons best known to themselves but mostly, I understand, because it was fairly obvious from the completely undisturbed layer of dust up there that the murderer had not penetrated that far. We think he may have been put off, panicked perhaps because someone rang the doorbell and he’d left the back door open. I’m curious: your aunt appears to have been a very house-proud lady but she didn’t seem to have bothered with the loft. Was there any reason for that, do you know?’

  ‘She kept saying that she was going to have a big turnout,’ said Jane Grant. ‘But never did. I think the knowledge of what was involved made the job just too much for her to contemplate. A lot of her parent’s things are up there and if the truth were known she couldn’t bear to get rid of, or even disturb them.’

  ‘A little under a week ago the Trents were in this house, looking for something. Have you any idea what that might be?’

  ‘The Trents! No, of course not. But what—’

  Greenway interrupted with: ‘They said you’d given them a set of keys, which included the new ones for the back door, so they could check that all was well here. Something about a possible leak in the loft?’

  ‘But I didn’t . . . haven’t.’

  ‘They said you had – while talking to my assistant here.’ He indicated me.

  ‘That’s not true. I wouldn’t expect the Trents to keep an eye on the place, I hardly know them. Besides, there aren’t any leaks in the loft that I know of.’

  ‘So you gave the keys to someone else?’

  ‘Just . . . a friend.’

  ‘Was that the same friend who visited you a little later the same morning Mr Gillard interviewed you the first time?’

  ‘Why am I being grilled like this?’ she suddenly demanded to know. ‘And why the hell were you watching me?’

  ‘Please answer the question.’

  He chin came up. ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Why did you give them to him?’

  She shot to her feet. ‘This is intolerable. I refuse to answer any more of these stupid questions.’

  ‘Are you frightened of him?’ Patrick asked.

  He had spoken very softly but nevertheless she jumped out of her skin on hearing the different voice. ‘No!’

  ‘I think you are. Please sit down.’

  Slowly, she reseated herself.

  ‘Answer the question,’ Patrick said. ‘Why did you give him the keys?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong about it. He’s a writer and in the middle of a novel set here in Richmond. He wondered if he could have a look round in here to get the atmosphere of a local Victorian house. There was no reason for me to refuse. It’s not often one gets the chance to talk to a famous author.’

  ‘He just knocked on your door out of the blue and asked?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’d previously called round to give me the Trents’ and his condolences. His name’s Clement Hamlyn and he’s a friend of theirs.’

  ‘We know his name. Did you ask yourself how he knew where you lived?’

  ‘I did wonder at the time but thought that Auntie could have told the Trents before everything became so difficult.’

  ‘He had probably followed you home one day. Mrs Grant, it’s important to tell you at this stage that your aunt was right about these people. They’re dangerous criminals – Clement Hamlyn has a criminal record.’

  She just stared at him. Then, probably the last thing anyone was expecting, her eyes filled with tears and overflowed down her cheeks.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Patrick whispered.

  She fumbled in her bag for a tissue and wept silently for a few moments. Then, with a supreme effort, she pulled herself together and said in a choked voice, ‘I feel such a fool. I suppose he turned my head a bit. Perhaps he wouldn’t have taken me out to dinner at a West End restaurant after all.’

  ‘No, I don’t think he would.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m finding this very hard to believe.’

  ‘An arrest warrant is out for him in connection with attempted murder.’

  ‘Who, Auntie?’

  ‘He is a suspect but in this case no, me. And my associate over there.’

  Gazing at one and then the other of us, she shuddered.

  ‘Did he say anything that, now, in hindsight, would lead you to wonder if he was trying to find out how much your aunt had told you about her suspicions?’

  ‘He knew the tree house had fallen down. Hereward had told him, he said. Did I know what had caused it? I told him what I thought, that it must have been rotten.’

  ‘It had been sabotaged by someone sawing almost right through the timbers.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Jane Grant gasped. ‘Oh, poor Auntie.’

  ‘Did he question you further? Surely he must have commented on the fact that your aunt had got into trouble with the police for snooping around in the garden next door on occasions when the gates had been left open.’

  ‘He said it had all been very unfortunate and how sad it was that she’d been getting confused in her old age. I didn’t disagree with him. Yes, I’ve just remembered, he then jokingly said he hoped I hadn’t believed any of “the nonsense”, as he put it, and I told him I hadn’t.’

  ‘Has he contacted you recently?’

  ‘Yes, yesterday.’

  I think the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  ‘D’you mind telling me what he wanted?’ Patrick went on to say in casual fashion.

  ‘He said there had been a small fire at his house and he had nowhere to live until some work had been done. He asked if he could stay with me for a few days.’ Bravely, just a tremor to her voice she added: ‘He said we . . . we could go out for dinner and to a show.’

  ‘What was your reply?’

  ‘I said I was sorry but my cousin was coming for a week and there were only two bedrooms. I suggested he could book into a hotel and we could still go out. He said he’d think about it but I haven’t heard back yet.’

  Patrick looked at Greenway and some kind of telepathy must have passed between them because the commander imperc
eptibly nodded.

  ‘I’d like you to phone him, now, and tell him you’ve changed your mind as your cousin can’t come after all.’

  She began to protest.

  ‘Listen,’ Patrick interposed with a smile. From his manner I knew he was certain she was innocent – or as certain as anyone could be at this stage. ‘You won’t be at home. When you leave here someone’ll accompany you and you can pack a bag and be taken to a safe house until Hamlyn’s been arrested. Your cousin can go with you.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t true. I didn’t want him staying in my house. Dinner’s one thing but . . .’

  ‘You are frightened of him.’

  ‘He’s always all smiles but for some reason I felt uneasy the last time we met. And – I know this sounds horrible of me – his breath smells terrible.’

  ‘Will you do it?’

  ‘Now you’ve told me this I shall be all jittery and not know what to say,’ Jane Grant said desperately.

  ‘I’ll tell you what to say.’

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed after a long pause, during which she had stared unseeing into space.

  They went into a smaller room which would provide the same kind of snug-sounding resonance as her own home and where there was no danger of anyone else present sneezing or knocking anything over. Greenway called for silence upstairs. Patrick told me later that she had carried off the call very well but she had obviously had another little weep afterwards as she was drying her eyes when she back into the sitting room and he had his arm around her. Why should I mind? A little comfort was due to her from somewhere in this whole black world in which she now felt she was living.

  Hamlyn had said he would arrive at her cottage at around nine that evening and she had told him that she would leave the front door unlocked.

  ‘Well?’ Greenway said a little later after restarting the muted thumps and sounds of furniture being shifted upstairs. Jane Grant had departed in an area car with a woman PC and her reassuringly beefy male colleague. ‘Is she OK or just a good actress?’