Detective Inspector Skelgill Boxset 4

by Bruce Beckham

  ‘We’ve got the old dragon staying – the wife’s ma – she’s only gone and broke her flippin’ foot – she’s stuck up the apples – barking out her orders on the dog – the flamin’ trouble’s had me in a right two-an’-eight.’

  DS Jones lets out a peal of laughter at DS Leyton’s contrived Cockney rant – and even Skelgill is obliged to grin. DS Jones waves her papers.

  ‘I suggest I start from fresh, then, Guv?’

  Skelgill picks up his copy of the report and casually flicks through it. Now he makes a face of trepidation.

  ‘Jones – happen I will have that tea.’

  ‘Sure, Guv – back in two ticks.’

  She rises and moves lightly to the door.

  ‘Jones.’

  She turns and regards him obligingly.

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Bacon buttie?’

  ‘Food for thought, Guv.’

  *

  ‘So –’ (Skelgill’s eyes flicker – there goes the ‘so’ again – now it’s DS Jones – though on reflection at least she is reprising). ‘The new developments concerning Will Liddell?’

  Skelgill, however, nods his approval. DS Jones regards him earnestly.

  ‘DS Findlay phoned looking for you, Guv – he said he tried your mobile first thing – and that he wouldn’t mind a chat when you’ve got a minute – but he gave me a summary.’

  She refers to Detective Sergeant Cameron Findlay – “Cammy” – Skelgill’s long-time ally in the Scottish force. Skelgill looks momentarily disconcerted – presumably that he was absent when the call came through on the police landline. He glances at the box on his desk and shoves it a little more to one side. ‘Aye – I must have had no signal.’

  DS Jones seems unperturbed; there is nothing new in Skelgill’s unaccountable movements. She sees that he is not looking at the notes but is watching her, waiting for her to begin.

  ‘The three females that have contacted the Scottish police – two are in their late twenties and were employees of companies in the Liddell Acorns group. The alleged incidents both occurred when they were working late and were called to his office suite. The time frame is within the last three years. The third person is a woman in her early forties – but the incident took place at a dinner party at Will Liddell’s house over ten years ago. It seems he used the excuse of showing her his art collection, to separate her from the others and lure her into a bedroom.’

  There is a small risk at this juncture that DI Smart’s flippant remarks might strike a chord – but it is far too serious a matter for that – and Skelgill and DS Leyton both regard DS Jones severely – and it is DS Leyton who utters an oath that sums up both their feelings.

  ‘Makes you want to ring his flippin’ neck, Guv.’

  Skelgill looks inclined to share this sentiment – perhaps even that it would be too good a fate for the man – but his ingrained recalcitrance brings out the devil’s advocate in the guise of official protocol.

  ‘Let’s not get too excited – it’s not going to be easy – one person’s word against another’s.’

  But DS Jones looks ready to disagree.

  ‘Guv – what I said to you – about Catriona Brodie?’

  Skelgill seems to become distracted.

  ‘Just remind me?’

  ‘That she wasn’t the first.’

  Skelgill regards her almost genially.

  ‘So you were right – well done.’

  DS Jones passes quickly over the rare compliment.

  ‘Guv.’ She taps her papers with the back of her fingers. ‘I believe these three are just the tip of the iceberg. I think it’s going to be one person’s word against many. There are successful precedents for gaining a conviction.’

  DS Leyton interjects.

  ‘I take it he’s denying it?’

  DS Jones nods, and her expression becomes introspective. She no doubt recalls what she now suspects was the introductory phase of Will Liddell’s method. The memory is raw. Her voice gains a note of controlled anger.

  ‘And he’ll be good at that.’

  DS Leyton picks up on her pent-up emotion. He looks appealingly to Skelgill and extends his meaty hands, oversized for a man of his limited height.

  ‘Surely this means we can nail him now, Guv – for the murder of his missus?’

  ‘Leyton – you sound like Smart.’

  But DS Leyton is not deterred by the slight.

  ‘Well – we keep saying, Guv – what with her outside bedroom door being locked – he was the only one that could easily have done it. He had the injuries on his arm. She had his skin under her nails. She was wearing no underwear.’ He rubs a palm absently on the back of his sturdy neck. ‘Now we know what we do about him – why would we be surprised if he strangled her?’

  But Skelgill is squinting doubtingly.

  ‘I’ll be surprised when two and two make five.’

  The retort is somewhat unfair, but he leaves it hanging. He regards each of his subordinates in turn. DS Jones makes an effort to be positive.

  ‘From these new leads, Guv – maybe something will emerge – some connection with what happened at the castle?’ However, her tone is short on optimism. ‘If only she hadn’t been his wife –’

  She tails off – and there is silence – for Skelgill is nodding. Any imagined scenario of a coercive nature involving Will and Scarlett Liddell just does not seem to stack up. After half a minute it is DS Leyton that speaks, a cautious and yet faintly manic note having entered his voice.

  ‘What if she threatened to blow the gaff, Guv? What if she knew about him? His dodgy antics? For all we know he tried it on her one time – before they got hitched.’ But now DS Leyton, too, seems to have second thoughts – he brings his hand up to cup his chin. ‘Then again, would you marry a geezer who’d done that to you?’

  He looks inquiringly at DS Jones, as though she might be the oracle on such a matter. She does not respond – though she regards him reflectively for a moment before turning to Skelgill.

  ‘What if she were about to ‘blow the gaff’ on someone else?’

  Skelgill does not appear fazed by this suggestion.

  ‘Such as?’

  DS Jones turns over the first page of her notes, the addendum concerning the latest allegations. Beneath is the main body of the report. She raises it illustratively.

  ‘When you went to London – I decided to forget about Will Liddell and concentrate on the backgrounds of the others.’

  The two men look on, DS Leyton hopefully; Skelgill is more taciturn.

  ‘Can I start with Derek Duff?’ Her colleagues nod, rather blankly now. ‘Of the three – let’s call them husbands for the sake of simplicity – he was the first that I interviewed last week. On the face of it he’s a really nice guy – affable, laid back – yet despite that I came away feeling as if there was something not quite right.’

  She glances at Skelgill – who gives a small approving nod – after all, this statement chimes with his own unfathomable methodology. She continues.

  ‘Displayed around his office there were posters and samples of products that his company had worked on.’ She expounds for DS Leyton’s benefit. ‘He organises marketing campaigns – you know, like in a pub they give you a scratch-card – and you might win your next drink free, or a prize or something?’ DS Leyton nods comprehendingly. ‘So – I looked on his website – and at press releases – and marketing industry media reports. Altogether I found mentions of about twenty different brands – spirits, beer, cosmetics, confectionery, toiletries.’ Now she pauses to take a breath – the result is a heightening of the attention of her audience. ‘Every single one of them – no exceptions – was a brand owned by one of Will Liddell’s companies.’

  DS Leyton is looking puzzled.

  ‘So what are you saying, girl?’

  ‘That – in effect – he only has one client. The Liddell Acorns group. He might be running his own company – ostensibly he’s an independent businessman –
but he relies for all his income on Will Liddell.’

  DS Leyton gives his colleague an admiring look.

  ‘Struth – so you reckon Scarlett Liddell was about to say something that would put him in Queer Street?’

  Skelgill interjects.

  ‘Hold your horses, Leyton – let the lass finish.’

  However DS Jones looks rather strained. She lays her papers on her lap and holds up her hands in a brief gesture of retreat.

  ‘Well – that’s really all there is in relation to Derek Duff – maybe if I explain about the others?’

  Skelgill is nodding. DS Jones recovers her place in her notes – though again she begins to recite mainly from memory.

  ‘As you’ll recall, the next person I interviewed in Edinburgh was Mike Luker. You couldn’t really get more like chalk and cheese than him and Derek Duff. While Derek Duff – I think – is candid, by comparison Mike Luker is cagey to the point of making you feel he isn’t going to tell you anything – and certainly not about his business – especially if you don’t know the right questions to ask.’

  DS Leyton gives a self-deprecating harrumph.

  ‘Hah – that’d be me, girl.’

  DS Jones regards him magnanimously.

  ‘So I asked a contact in the Met’s corporate fraud office – we were on the same graduate intake – to run a few checks on Mike Luker’s firm. It’s called Luker Investments. He’d mentioned to me that he started doing some work for Will Liddell about five years ago. Up to that point it looks like he was more or less flying solo. But since then turnover has doubled each year – and now he’s got quite a little operation going. Not to mention a healthy profit. As with Derek Duff’s firm – it looks like the bulk of the increase in revenue has come from working as a consultant for Liddell Acorns. There are numerous press releases that refer to Luker Investments handling ‘M&A’ – that’s merger and acquisition – projects for them. So far so good – except when my contact requested a credit rating it came back as just one notch above junk.’ She glances at her notes. ‘They call it being highly geared – inadequate share capital and loans supported by other loans. It takes just one investment to go bad – or the firm’s underlying funding to dry up – and the whole lot could come down like a house of cards. And Liddell Acorns is listed as a major preferential bondholder for Luker Investments.’

  The detectives fall silent. The penny – or perhaps, rather, the pound – is beginning to drop. DS Jones takes a sip from her glass of water.

  ‘Finally, on the face of it, you might think Kevin Makepeace is most dependent of all upon Will Liddell – he’s his employer, after all. However, I searched his job title and there are hundreds of good positions advertised at his level – admittedly mostly in the South-East, fewer in Scotland. As a Marketing Manager with extensive blue-chip experience he’s a saleable commodity. I don’t think he’d have much to worry about, as far as making a good living is concerned.’

  ‘So what?’

  Skelgill’s intonation suggests he detects some contrary sentiment underlying her assessment. It seems to him that she errs towards Kevin Makepeace.

  ‘I don’t know, Guv – I suppose he was quite standoffish about Scarlett Liddell. I mean – I can see how Mike Luker could justifiably claim that he distanced himself from her – he was a company outsider, dealing with confidential tax and investment issues for Will Liddell – but Kevin Makepeace worked for the Liddell Acorns group for the entire duration of Scarlett Liddell’s employment. He surely had passing contact with her when she was based in London – and certainly he approved her promotion to his department in Edinburgh. From what we know, she wasn’t easily overlooked.’ DS Jones glances from one colleague to another in turn. ‘And my impression of Kevin Makepeace is that he isn’t the sort of guy that would ignore her.’

  Skelgill nods pensively – her earlier description of the man’s narcissistic traits has remained with him. Were Kevin Makepeace and Scarlett Liddell something of the proverbial ‘birds of a feather’?

  ‘When was he divorced from Felicity Belvedere?’

  DS Jones narrows her eyes – but Skelgill knows she is too diligent to have overlooked this fact.

  ‘Their decree nisi was registered about three-and-a-half years ago. That would have been before Scarlett Liddell moved to work for him in Edinburgh.’

  Now DS Leyton glances at Skelgill – as if to check whether he is about to comment – when it appears he is not, the sergeant makes his own contribution for DS Jones’s benefit.

  ‘The girl we spoke to – that Scarlett Liddell worked alongside in London – she had her marked down as flashy, flirty – liked the look of herself. And her previous boss – he let slip that she was quite a handful – Guvnor and I even wondered if she were messing him around – leading him on, know what I mean? Like the London crowd weren’t too sorry to get her out of their hair. But what’s to say she didn’t carry on being a troublemaker once she moved to Edinburgh? She might have got some juicy dope on Makepeace. We know she’d been drinking on the Saturday afternoon when they got back to Greenmire Castle – maybe she got a bit loose-tongued – put the wind up him – next thing he’s throttling her.’

  DS Jones is looking uncertainly at Skelgill. Though she is partly responsible for her fellow sergeant’s pursuit of a rather sensational line of thought, she is reminded of the facts that constrain their suspicions.

  ‘Guv, I was re-reading the pathology report. If she were strangled by another party, against her will – then the medical consensus is that there would have been far more signs of a struggle.’ She glances tentatively at each of her colleagues. ‘It comes back to the suggestion that she was voluntarily engaged in whatever took place – such as the romantic encounter that went wrong.’

  Despite his sergeant’s use of the euphemism Skelgill looks discomfited. He rises and turns to gaze rather aimlessly at the map on his wall. It seems unlikely it will provide subliminal inspiration; not when the critical locus – Greenmire Castle – is a microscopic rectangle infilled with beige ink – and not when events that came to pass therein have their formative roots anchored well off the map, in the capital cities of London and Edinburgh.

  ‘How many times have we jumped on the same roundabout that brings us back to Will Liddell.’

  He intones this as a statement. His team know he refers to the ‘Murder Mystery’ evening – and the realisation that, with hindsight, they have been left with an incomplete set of clues. The participants, the emergency services – and even the initial police reaction – were all conditioned by the belief that they were in the midst of a drama – an attempted suicide in which the victim may still have been alive. Called to the scene the following day, Skelgill found the stage abandoned, the actors’ lines forgotten – their memories impaired by alcohol and inattention.

  When Skelgill turns around he sees his sergeants are valiantly racking their brains for ideas. DS Jones is scanning line by line through her report, and DS Leyton has his notebook open and is awkwardly thumbing over pages of his trademark small neat print, a style that belies his hulking demeanour. It is he that speaks.

  ‘There’s only a short window, Guv – between her death and when she was last seen alive – barely ninety minutes. If we could nail that down.’ He squints at the page and jabs a thick finger in frustration. ‘I mean, she was alive and kicking, in the drawing room until – what? – 5.21pm.’

  Skelgill regards him broodingly.

  ‘Remind me where you got 5.21 from.’

  DS Leyton makes a pained face.

  ‘That Montagu-Browne cove, Guv – remember I said he’s a bit of queer one? I was trying to write, “at about 5.20pm the ladies left the drawing room” and he got quite uppity – like it stressed him that I was rounding – I could see he even watched me write it down. I reckon he’s got that thing the missus wishes I were more like – what do they call it, sounds like CID?’

  Still standing, Skelgill gazes at DS Leyton, but he seems not to see him. Then
he leans over his desk and takes hold of the sides of the cardboard box with both hands, and stares at it as though it is some alien object that has materialised during their meeting without his noticing. Now he mutters under his breath.

  ‘I’m not a good instructor.’

  His subordinates exchange looks of familiar resignation; there can be little new in their boss’s repertoire of erratic behaviour. But Skelgill breaks out of his trance – and he appears surprised that his colleagues are still present. Then he picks up the carton and purposefully tucks it under one arm.

  ‘Skates on.’

  The others begin to rise dutifully. DS Leyton speaks on their behalf.

  ‘Where to, Guv?’

  Skelgill flashes him a glance that suggests the answer ought to be obvious.

  ‘To do what we should have done a week ago, Leyton – to ask the butler.’

  Skelgill disappears through the door as his colleagues hasten to follow.

  ‘What’s in the box, Guv?’

  ‘What?’ Now Skelgill shrugs and answers somewhat absently without looking back. ‘At Greenmire Castle – they’re starting up fishing classes – some for local kids’ charities – this is a load of spare tackle. A donation.’

  It is with no little bewilderment on their faces that the two sergeants, on Skelgill’s coattails, slip past DI Smart – who loiters in reception with his usual air of casual nonchalance. Yet there is something in their bearing, their determined gait that disrupts the disparaging sneer that creases his weasely features. A fly on the wall might speculate that the Chief’s ploy has worked – Skelgill is energised.

  19. WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

  Monday, 11.30am

  ‘Y-yes – they called me M-Memory Man at school.’

  Skelgill casts what might be interpreted as a reproachful glance at DS Leyton. Accordingly his sergeant’s head retracts tortoise-like into his broad shoulders. But on reflection he was not to know about Thomas Montagu-Browne’s aptitude for detailed recall – the remarkable skill that often accompanies other less socially desirable traits possessed by people with his so-called ‘disability’. Even Skelgill did not realise in the first instance – when the man faithfully replicated his instructions to fly cast, and to tie intricate knots. Perhaps subconsciously he put it down to him being more comfortable in the role of novice, when in fact he did have some experience under his belt; it was an arrangement that pandered to Skelgill’s ego. Now, the three detectives (two with pens and notebooks poised, not leaving matters to memory) sit with Thomas Montagu-Browne in the library of Greenmire Castle; it is a second chance to break the deadlock. Skelgill is conducting the interview – and he has assumed the same presumptive yet informal manner that served him well during his impulsive stint as angling instructor.