Watts wouldn’t normally be so flashy as to eat here but they did a particularly nice herb omelette and endless refills of great coffee, and now he was going to be in London all day he could take time for a leisurely breakfast.
‘He’s dead,’ Tingley said.
‘Murdered?’
‘Not sure. It could go either way. No immediate sign of death except a lot of blood. Probably haemorrhaged but it needs the post-mortem to figure out why.’
‘Are you in the investigation?’
‘Inevitably.’
‘Fuck.’
‘I know. But maybe not so bad. I’m not going to tell anybody I was doing something for the Brighton police.’
‘But it won’t take long to connect the dots. And this family are wealthy.’
‘You’ll have solved stuff at your end by then.’
‘You think?’
‘I think that I’ve got maybe a two-hour swim back to my starting point and I’ve got my snorkelling gear. So I’d best get going.’
‘Jimmy?’
But Jimmy Tingley was gone.
‘What have you got, Sylvia?’ Gilchrist said from the police station in Lewes.
‘This gentleman is definitely weird in his movements but they are his movements. He could not have committed these crimes.’
‘I was guessing that, since he was in prison when Rasa Lewis was murdered last night.’
‘I heard, ma’am, I’m sorry,’ Wade said. ‘Where now?’
‘Have we heard from Cynthia Stokes, the rape councillor?’
‘She phoned yesterday – I left you a message.’
‘Busy times. You spoke to her?’
‘She left a number.’
Gilchrist sat in her car and dialled Stokes.
‘Cyn, hope I’m not disturbing any mother-and-child stuff but I’ve only just got your message.’
‘I’m at work already. I spoke to Christine Bromley’s doctor.’
‘Was he willing to talk?’
‘Very much so. I’ve known him for years. He’s the family doctor for the entire Bromley family. Christine had visited him but not to talk about a rape. He didn’t know if it was just very violent consensual sex. She wouldn’t say. But she had injuries consistent with forceful sex.’
‘Forceful sex. So if it was rape, why wouldn’t she take it further?’
‘Well, answering that kind of question is your area of expertise, Sarah. From my experience, a common reason is because the victim is close to the person who raped her.’
Gilchrist thanked her and rang off, thinking about Cynthia’s remark. Her phone immediately rang.
‘Confusing news,’ Bob Watts said.
‘It’s proving to be that sort of day.’
‘I’m sorry to tell you that Bernard Bromley is dead.’
Gilchrist’s heart fell. ‘Tingley?’
‘Actually, no. He arrived too late.’
‘How did Bromley die?’
‘Tingley isn’t sure whether it was accident, self-inflicted or he is a murder victim. It’s going to need the autopsy.’
‘Another one.’
‘Bit of a stretch to think whoever is killing people here has that kind of reach.’
‘Bob, you know better than that. If this is all about money, and a lot of it is swilling around, then getting to somebody on the other side of the world isn’t going to be difficult.’
‘You mean the Bromley money? Killing Christine so she doesn’t give it away makes sense. Killing Bernard doesn’t.’
‘So you’re inclined to think his death is unrelated?’
‘If it’s self-inflicted then it’s related to something, but perhaps not what you expect.’
‘But is Tingley’s unofficial presence going to come back and bite me?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Tingley is a ghost. He’s gone off the grid. If ever anybody makes any kind of link it will be way after you’ve solved this.’
‘I’m touched by your faith in me.’
‘Don’t be, it’s based on experience with you.’
She wanted to smile into the phone but she said: ‘Rasa Lewis was murdered last night.’
Watts sighed. ‘Somebody is on a rampage. Have you found a link between Rasa Lewis and the Bromley fortune?’
‘Nothing immediately stands out.’
‘Suspects? That mad blogger?’
‘Not him. In detention at the time.’
‘Derek Neill?’
‘He’s in the mix, for sure.’
‘The paunchy guy in the spa?’
‘We have so little to work on with him.’
‘Look, I’m a regular there and I can’t place him,’ Watts said. ‘But then we just might never have coincided. You’ve checked the day-pass people, I’m guessing.’
‘We’ve got a list of a dozen people over a three-day period sure. But they don’t give their addresses.’
‘They probably pay by credit card so you can track them.’
‘We’re doing that with most but some paid by cash.’
‘How many?’
‘Three. Who just signed in, each one with indecipherable names.’
‘And no CCTV.’
‘That’s right. All wiped.’
‘The cameras on the road won’t have been wiped.’
‘I know that but he might have come over the Downs from Rottingdean,’ Gilchrist said. ‘No cameras there.’
‘He might. In which case you’re stuffed. But the football club has some pretty impressive technology around its stadium and I bet there will be some overspill onto other bits of that area. And the road both ways – from Lewes and Brighton – has advanced vehicle registration number recognition technology in place.’
‘But we haven’t pursued that avenue as we don’t know what car we’re looking for.’
‘Sure you do, within a certain margin of error yet to be determined. Remember when you were a member of that gym?’
‘Sure, I had to give them my vehicle registration so they knew I wasn’t some student ligging a free parking space in its car park.’
‘Same still applies.’
‘Still leaves a long, old list cross-referencing every car going down that very busy road with every car that pulled into the gym car park?’
‘You let the computers do all the heavy lifting. There’s a speed camera with the right technology just before the turn-off to the university and the gym, in the Brighton to Lewes direction. Focus on that one for now and see if God is smiling at you.’
‘God rarely smiles at me at the moment,’ Gilchrist said, then cursed herself for being so mawkish.
‘Well, a lot of people who care about you are smiling at you – all the time,’ Watts said, hanging up the phone. Gilchrist stared at her own phone and swallowed. She walked to the window and looked down on the slow slop of the sea and the people on the promenade drifting along in their different ways. She looked back at Sylvia Wade, hunched over her computer.
She wondered when Bellamy Heap would get back, recognizing how much she depended on him. She wondered about Kate and Bellamy and how Kate’s obsession with her swim might be affecting their new relationship. But mostly she wondered how the hell she was ever going to solve this case she didn’t really understand.
She was saved from further introspection, as always, by the bell of her phone ringing. Her landline.
‘A Mrs Jones on the line,’ the operator said apologetically. ‘About her son Darrel?’
‘Put her through,’ Heap said.
‘When is he going to get his reward money?’ Mrs Jones said, the moment she was put through.
‘Well, the investigation is ongoing, Mrs Jones. A lot of “i”s to dot and “t”s to cross first.’
‘And a lot of fucking groceries to buy too. He’s given you what you want now give him what he’s earned.’
‘Well, he hasn’t fully earned it yet, Mrs Jones.’ Gilchrist had a thought. ‘Is he around now?’
‘In his bed sleeping off whatever he got up
to last night.’
‘How do you two feel about a trip to Woodvale Cemetery this morning? I’ll send a car to pick you up in half an hour?’
‘Don’t want no rozzer’s car turning up here, thank you very much. This is a respectable address.’
‘So you’ll make your own way there? I’ll meet you outside the cemetery office. You know, the entrance is just off the Lewes Road – the Sainsbury’s is over on the other side of that big road junction?’
‘What – you think I wasn’t born here?’
‘Half an hour, then.’
It felt odd having Sylvia Wade drive her, but Gilchrist didn’t feel Bellamy should be part of this, given Darrel Jones’s attack on Kate.
Darrel was the same ferrety little creep he’d been the last time she’d seen him and his mother was the same mess. Wade got them in the back seat of the police car and they drove slowly up towards the chapels in the centre of the cemetery.
‘Darrel, I think you said you’d seen those two men on more than one occasion in the cemetery. I wondered if you could show me exactly where?’
‘Wherever they could get a snog,’ he said, sniggering.
‘It would be helpful to our inquiry – and you’d be helping yourself with regard to that reward money – if you could be more specific. I mean do you have a regular hangout when you’re here. Where were they in relation to that?’
His mother cuffed him and hissed something to him. It seemed to do the trick.
‘They were hanging out over there,’ Darrel said. ‘Above where all those kid’s graves are.’
Sylvia Wade went over and started looking for the grave of Lesley White. Gilchrist stood a few yards away from Darrel and his mother. She looked up the hill to where Kate had once taken her to see the unmarked grave of the Brighton Trunk Murder victim. The woman had never been identified so the crime had never been solved.
Wade came back.
‘All done?’ Gilchrist said.
Wade nodded.
‘OK then,’ Gilchrist called to Darrel. ‘Anything else useful to tell us?’
‘When do I get my money?’
Gilchrist put on a fake smile.
‘Well now, someone is keeping it for you. Remember that day when those two men interrupted all their kissing and cuddling to come over to stop you and your gang assaulting and stealing from a woman just about here? Well, she has your money.’
‘What’s she talking about, Darrel?’ his mother said, not sure who to glare at first.
‘How the fuck should I know? Bitch is fucking barmy.’
His mother cuffed him. ‘What have I told you? Don’t say the F-word.’ She squared up to Gilchrist. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘It’s about your son being a lying, vicious little creep,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Those men were never kissing and cuddling. They came to the help of a woman your son and his feral friends were viciously attacking. They scared off the cowardly little creeps and now your stupid son thinks he can get his own back.’ Gilchrist pointed vaguely up into the trees. ‘Except we have it all on CCTV.’ Darrel looked up and around. ‘That’s right, Darrel. You wouldn’t expect to find security cameras in a graveyard, would you? Well, it’s because of people like you.’ She looked at Mrs Jones. ‘We’ll be in touch with charges in due course.’
‘He’s underage,’ Mrs Jones said sharply.
‘We’ll be back with underage charges.’ Gilchrist indicated the open door into the back of the police car. ‘Do you want to hop in or would you rather walk?’
‘Cyn, it’s Sarah Gilchrist again. The Bromley family doctor. I wonder if you might ask him about Bernard Bromley.’
‘I feel very uncomfortable about this. I’m feeling a bit used.’
‘Only for the common good.’
‘You say. What is it you want to know?’
‘State of mind, physical problems etc. He’s dead in Thailand and there’s some confusion about whether it was an accident, natural causes, he killed himself or was murdered. The locals over there don’t seem to care either way so long as they can ship the body out of the country.’
‘So can’t it wait for a post-mortem over here?’
‘With all that we’ve got going on it would be nice to get a bit of a move on. Please, Cyn.’
Stokes sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Stokes phoned back twenty minutes later.
‘OK, the doc was happy to talk. In fact he was eager.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it.’
‘Bernard has been on some happy-clappy pill for years to stop him getting depressed. Sometimes it takes him the other way and he needs calming down. Pretty healthy generally although has needed to visit the STD clinic at the hospital a couple of times following his trips to Thailand.’
‘Nice.’
‘But here was the thing the doctor was dying to share. It has obviously been preying on his mind for ages but he couldn’t tell anyone.’
Gilchrist tried not to show her excitement. ‘Go on.’
‘Bernard suffers from Peyronie’s disease.’
Gilchrist had no idea what that was.
‘You’re going to translate, I hope,’ she said.
‘Peyronie’s disease is a knot of scar tissue on the ligament in the penis that causes it to bend or rather prevents it becoming fully erect as the blood can’t flow all the way along the penis. It can be excruciatingly painful for the man when he does get an erection.’
‘Ouch,’ Gilchrist said, but she was still at a loss.
Stokes obviously sensed Gilchrist’s bafflement. ‘He first went to the doctor about it around a year ago. Shortly after his sister had been about her genital and anal injuries.’
‘How do you get this Peyronie thing?’ Gilchrist said, letting out her breath slowly.
‘By accident when the penis is erect. The man thrusts into or against something that doesn’t give so the penis violently bends – fractures if you will.’
‘Ouch,’ Gilchrist repeated quietly. ‘The kind of thing that might happen during a violent rape, then?’
‘Exactly that kind of thing,’ Stokes said.
Bellamy Heap walked into the office as Gilchrist was contemplating what to do about the information she’d just been given that might mean Bernard had raped his half-sister. That would provide a plausible explanation why she would not help the police with their investigation. But did it make Bernard Bromley her murderer? And why would he murder Philip Coates? Perhaps, Christine had confided in Coates? Had she confided in Derek Neill too?
And how did all that tie in with Roland Gulliver?
Supposing Bernard Bromley had gone on this murderous rampage, he was in Thailand at the time of Rasa Lewis’s death. And how to explain his own death? Remorseful suicide or vengeful friend of the three dead people who had figured out Bromley’s guilt?
‘Bellamy, I’m going bananas here. The more information we’re given, the more muddled this case gets.’
‘Well, I have information which might make it worse or better, depending on your point of view,’ Heap said. ‘From Bilson.’
Gilchrist tilted her head.
‘He couldn’t get through to you and I guess he was bursting to tell somebody so he called me.’
‘Quite properly. With what news?’
‘A breakthrough on the DNA on the wine glass.’
‘A match!’
‘Not a match from the existing database but from somebody who only added to it a couple of days ago.’
‘Whose DNA?’
‘The DNA of April Medavoy.’
Sylvia Wade was a cautious driver so it took twenty minutes or so to get to April Medavoy’s Victorian terrace house in Salthaven. It felt odd for Gilchrist to be sitting in the back of the car with Heap but they used the time to catch up.
‘Mrs Medavoy, Mass Murderer?’ Gilchrist said. ‘I can’t see it, can you, Bellamy?’
‘The idea of her getting hold of ketamine from somewhere is enough to punch a hole in that, I
agree,’ Heap said. ‘So perhaps we’re back to regarding these crimes as unconnected.’
‘Or two connected and two not. I’m guessing Bilson is not going to find any ketamine in Rasa Lewis. Unless we slipped it to her. You didn’t did you, Bellamy?’
‘Not that I recall, ma’am.’
‘And I didn’t. Has Derek Neill been informed, by the way?’
‘He has.’
‘If I may, ma’am,’ Sylvia Wade said from the driving seat.
‘You may,’ Gilchrist said.
‘I emailed the photo of the inscription to you both.’
Heap read from his iPad: ‘“So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.”’
‘Is it from the Bible, Big Brain?’ Gilchrist said to Heap. He frowned, considering she supposed, but before he could respond, Wade chimed in.
‘It’s the last line of The Great Gatsby, ma’am.’
Wade saw Gilchrist and Heap both staring at her in the rear-view mirror. She flushed. ‘I’m in a pub quiz team. It comes up a lot.’
‘You’d better be looking to your laurels, Bellamy. Looks like you’ve got competition in the office.’
‘Ma’am,’ Heap said as Wade flushed some more.
‘It’s quite beautiful, actually,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Read it again, Bellamy.’
When Heap had done so, Wade said: ‘I checked with the cemetery office who commissioned it. According to their records it was paid for in cash. By Derek Neill. But it wasn’t him – I showed them his photo.’
‘Our paunchy man again?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Quite possibly, ma’am.’
‘Well done, DC Wade,’ Heap said.
‘Very well done, Sylvia,’ Gilchrist added, noting that now Wade was blushing almost as much as Heap usually did.
SEVENTEEN
April Medavoy didn’t seem surprised to see them. In fact she seemed resigned. She ushered them into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
‘You haven’t been honest with us, Mrs Medavoy,’ Heap said.
‘April, please,’ she said weakly. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Neither, thank you,’ Gilchrist said as Heap and Wade both shook their heads.
‘I’ll have a coffee if you don’t mind,’ Mrs Medavoy said. ‘I need the energy.’
Swimming with the Dead Page 18