by Ford, P. F.
‘Yes,’ said Slater. ‘He caught Maunder with his wife back then, so he’s definitely not going to be doing Maunder any favours. He could crucify the guy if he wanted to.’
‘Well, look, I’m going to have to tell the CC, before someone else does. I’ll try to persuade him you had good reason to be there and keep him off our backs for as long as I can. At least we’ve got the jewels to back that up. In the meantime, you need to find out who’s been blackmailing him, and why he topped himself.’
They had agreed it was going to be a long night. If necessary, they would go right through every little thing again. But first, Norman had insisted, they needed coffee.
‘I think that went quite well, all things considered,’ ventured Norman, as they walked away from Murray’s office and headed for the canteen.
‘You do?’ asked Slater. ‘I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel.’
‘For sure,’ said Norman. ‘But I think we got off quite lightly. I was expecting to be suspended.’
‘That’s probably coming later, when the CC gets his way,’ said Slater, gloomily.
‘Oh well,’ said Norman, chirpily. ‘Look on the bright side. It won’t be the first time, and I could do with a rest.’
They pushed their way through the canteen doors and headed for the coffee machine.
‘I’m thinking I spend far too much time stood in front of the Old Man’s desk, getting my arse kicked,’ complained Slater.
‘You and me both,’ agreed Norman. ‘But, would you rather be a “yes” man?’
He poured two huge coffees into styrofoam cups, pushed the lids into place and paid his dues, before handing one over to Slater and then leading the way back through the doors.
‘You know, I’ve never had a suspect do that to me before,’ he said. ‘And I hope it never happens again.’
‘It might not have happened at all, if I hadn’t been delayed,’ said Slater, guiltily. ‘If I’d let you know what Ferguson had said half an hour earlier, you could have stopped him.’
‘You can’t think like that,’ said Norman, firmly. ‘That’s like me saying it might not have happened if I hadn’t gone up there with a search warrant. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he even knew we were there, and he wasn’t warned we were coming, so my guess is he had planned to do it anyway. Whatever we did this morning woulda made no difference.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Slater sighed. ‘It’s just that it all seems a bit of a mess right now.’
‘The whole thing seems a mess right now, for sure,’ agreed Norman. ‘But I don’t think that’s our fault. We can only follow the clues where they appear to lead. The thing is I think we’re missing the one clue that really matters.’
‘We’re missing something, that’s for sure.’
‘It’s gotta be there somewhere,’ said Norman. ‘I just think we haven’t seen it yet, or we’ve seen it and not recognised it for what it is.’
‘Maybe we should come at it from a different direction. Ferguson told me that Maunder had been set up in a honey trap, and that if he ever said anything, he would have been implicated in the child abuse, even though he wasn’t involved. What if he was being blackmailed ever since? That would explain why he’s broke.’
‘But what about the big cash withdrawals when Winter and Florence were killed?’ asked Norman. ‘How does that work?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Slater. ‘I haven’t worked that one out yet. Unless they were bonus payments for the blackmailer to bump off Winter and Florence. But then why blow his brains out?’
Maybe the blackmailer was going to up the ante if he’d been paid to commit murder. But it would also make sense for the blackmailer to want them dead, wouldn’t it? He had a nice little earner going on there, and they could have spoilt it for him.’
‘The blackmailer’s the key to this,’ said Slater. ‘If only we can work out who it is.’
They were back in their office now. There was no sign of Jolly, but that was no surprise; she would have gone home ages ago. She had, however, left a note.
‘Wow. Jane’s been busy,’ Slater told Norman as he read it. ‘She’s been through nearly all those old records from Hatton House. There’s just a small pile left on her desk.’
‘If that’s all there is,’ said Norman, looking at the slim pile of papers on her desk, ‘why don’t I start there? At least then we know we’ve covered all the evidence we have at least once.’
He sat down at Jolly’s desk and began to work his way through the pile of old papers. Slater went to his desk and sorted everything into order. Then he started the long, boring process of reading his way through all the evidence they had collected. It really was going to be a long night.
It was just before seven when his mobile phone began to ring.
‘It’s Jane. Are you still at work? Or have you been sacked?’
‘No, we’re still here, Jane,’ he said. ‘I think we came fairly close to being suspended, but we seem to have been spared for now. Anyway, shouldn’t you be bathing kids, or whatever it is you working mums do of an evening?’
‘That’s what husbands are for,’ she said. ‘In return I get the dubious pleasure of going to the supermarket on my way home from work. I’ve just got back, actually. But I bumped into someone while I was there, and we got talking. I think you need to hear what I found out.’
‘I’m all ears.’
Norman turned over to the next document just as Slater’s phone began to ring. He was getting a headache already and they had a long way to go yet. As soon as he heard Slater mention the name ‘Jane’, his attention began to waver as he tried to listen in to Slater’s end of the conversation. As a result, he almost missed what was on the document in front of him. What he saw didn’t make sense at first, and he had to read it through again.
‘Holy shit!’ he said, aloud. ‘This can’t be right.’
He studied the document for a minute or two before it dawned on him. Of course! There was a way it could be right.
He rushed over to his own desk, clutching the document he’d just read, and started tapping an address into his web browser. A website flashed up on the monitor. He clicked on the ‘About’ page link. As soon as the page came up, he started reading.
‘Ha!’ he said. ‘Now it makes sense. Now a whole lot of things might start to make sense.’
Slater was still listening on the phone. Norman hoped he wasn’t going to be long, because he was pretty sure he’d just found what they were looking for. It wasn’t that they’d missed it before. They just hadn’t got to it until now.
Chapter 36
‘Ah. Mr Hunter,’ said Bob Murray. ‘Thank you for coming in and giving us the chance to explain our side.’
He led Hunter from the reception area and out into a corridor.
‘I’ve saved us a room so we can talk undisturbed,’ he said.
‘I’m glad to see you’re taking this seriously enough to have a senior officer taking charge and not those two clowns who’ve caused this unfortunate incident,’ said Hunter, his usual good humoured smile missing this morning. ‘You realise I’m here on behalf of Lady Maunder, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Murray. ‘I’m very sorry she couldn’t be here. I think she may have found this rather illuminating.’
‘I can’t imagine you can come up with a good enough excuse for your behaviour,’ said Hunter. ‘I’ll listen anyway, but I must warn you I intend to make an official complaint. And Lady Maunder will be taking legal action.’
‘Yes,’ said Murray. ‘Of course, she will.’
He opened a door and ushered Hunter inside. Slater and Norman were standing behind a table waiting for them.
‘What are these two idiots doing here?’ snapped Hunter. ‘What’s going on?’
‘These two “idiots” would like to ask you a couple of questions,’ explained Murray with a beaming smile. ‘I’m sure a legal man, like yourself, would be interested in seeing justice served. Right and wro
ng. All that sort of stuff, you know?’
‘I’m not wasting my time talking to these people,’ raged Hunter. ‘They shouldn’t even be here. They’re a disgrace to the police force. I’m leaving.’
‘No, that won’t be possible. If you walk through that door, I’ll have you arrested and dragged back in here. I’m afraid these two “idiots” aren’t quite as stupid as you think. Oh, you’ve been clever, there’s no doubt about that, but these two have been even more clever. So, if they’re idiots, what does that make you, I wonder?’
‘This is outrageous. You can’t do this!’
‘I think you’ll find I can,’ said Murray. ‘Now, why don’t you sit down and let’s get this over with.’
Hunter didn’t look quite so smug now, and his tongue seemed to have deserted him. Reluctantly he sat down. Murray nodded to Slater and Norman and walked across to the door.
‘Oh, one more thing, before I leave,’ he said, turning back to Hunter. ‘I should advise you that, as we speak, there are teams of officers at your home, and your offices. They have search warrants, of course.’
Murray let himself out. He was going to enjoy watching this from the observation room.
‘Good morning Mr Hunter,’ said Slater, smiling pleasantly at him. ‘It’s very good of you to offer to help us with our enquiries. We just have a few things we think you might be able to help us with.’
Hunter looked like he was about to spout forth, but Norman cut him off.
‘When we spoke to you before about Mr Winter, you said you’d only met him a few weeks ago,’ he began. ‘Is that still the case?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Hunter, indignantly.
‘Then perhaps you could explain why your secretary, Mrs Bettsan, told PC Jolly that he had been a client for many years.’
‘She must be mistaken,’ said Hunter.
‘What about Mr Winter’s missing sister, who you said had contacted you out of the blue and was coming in to hear the will being read?’
‘I told you what happened about that,’ said Hunter, impatiently. ‘She was a fraud, an opportunist who chickened out at the last minute.’
‘Or maybe she never existed in the first place,’ suggested Norman. ‘Mrs Bettsan certainly can’t recall her.’
‘I didn’t tell Mrs Bettsan about her,’ argued Hunter. ‘There was no need.’
‘But didn’t you tell us it was Mrs Bettsan who had taken the original call?’
Norman was bluffing, but Hunter didn’t seem to realise.
‘Mrs Bettsan also finds it hard to understand how your alarm system could have failed,’ said Norman. ‘According to her it has a battery backup system and is supposed to be foolproof. It can only be disabled by someone who knows the code, and you change it every week. That seems to narrow it down quite a bit, don’t you think?’
Hunter remained tight-lipped.
‘The problem we had,’ said Slater, ‘is that we assumed all along that the person who murdered Mr Winter had let himself in with the spare back door key from under the mat. But then just yesterday it occurred to us there was another possibility. What if Mr Winter had known the killer? What if the killer had simply knocked on the door and Mr Winter had let him in?
‘He would have done that if he’d known that person for a long time and trusted him, wouldn’t he? But we didn’t have anyone who fit the bill. And then Mrs Bettsan got talking to PC Jolly, and suddenly we had a candidate.’
Slater stopped talking and there was a pause. Hunter sat silently.
‘How are we doing so far, Mr Hunter?’ asked Norman. ‘It’s funny. You seemed to have it all to say when you arrived, but now the cat seems to have got your tongue.’
‘I have the right to remain silent,’ said Hunter.
‘That’s right,’ said Slater. ‘And it’s okay, really. I don’t think you need to say much. We’re pretty sure we’ve got it more or less worked out without your help.’
‘You still might have got away with it all,’ continued Norman, watching Hunter closely for a reaction to his next statement. ‘But we found some old records from Hatton House.’
‘Well, well, well. You didn’t know they existed did you?’ Slater smiled as Hunter’s head jerked. ‘I guess it takes a special sort of idiot to keep digging until you find these things.’
‘It was mostly old records and stuff that wasn’t in the least bit relevant to our inquiry, but then right near the bottom of the pile, we struck gold,’ said Norman, who was enjoying himself hugely. ‘Here. Take a look at this.’
He slid a copy of the legal document he had found the previous evening in front of Hunter. Hunter looked down at the document.
‘Recognise that solicitor’s name and signature?’ asked Norman.
‘That’s nothing to do with me,’ said Hunter. ‘Look at the date. It says 1962. I was barely ten years old then.’
‘That’s right. It’s not you,’ said Norman. ‘But it has everything to do with you. It’s your father, isn’t it? Hunter and son, right? Only it’s not you and your son, is it? It’s your father and you. Your father was the solicitor for Hatton House.’
‘And what does this prove?’ asked Hunter.
‘It proves nothing,’ said Slater. ‘But it gave us a new line of enquiry. You see, up until this came to light, we were sure Sir Robert Maunder was the person we were after. We even had written evidence that accused him of being involved in child abuse at Hatton House back in the sixties.’
‘Yes, and because you accused him of that, he blew his own brains out,’ said Hunter, grimly. ‘And I’m going to make sure you pay for that.’
‘We didn’t accuse him of that, actually,’ said Norman. ‘But we can talk about that later. Right now we’re-’
There was a loud knock on the door. Slater got up, went over to the door and opened it just wide enough to stick his head through. There was a short, mumbled conversation and then he closed the door and came back to the table. He was smiling with satisfaction. As he sat down, he slid a note across the table to Norman, who read it carefully. Then he looked up at Hunter with a big, beaming smile.
‘It looks like the idiots are on a roll,’ he said, grinning. ‘Guess what we found, already?’
‘Is this going to take much longer?’ Hunter sighed, tapping his fingertips on the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Norman. ‘Are we delaying you? Do you have somewhere else you’d like to be?’
‘I would imagine anywhere would be preferable to sitting here listening to you spout this rubbish.’
‘I agree DS Norman can be a little tiresome.’ Slater smiled, seemingly overflowing with bonhomie. ‘Especially when he knows he’s cracked a case. But then, he’s an idiot, right? So what can you expect? So why don’t I take over for a little while? A change is as good as a rest, isn’t that what they say?’
Hunter glared at Slater.
‘You’re going to pay for this,’ he hissed. ‘You won’t even be back directing traffic. You’ll be issuing parking tickets!’
‘Yes. You’re probably right,’ said Slater, looking down at the notes in front of him. ‘Now what was I just going to say?’
Norman leaned over and pointed to a line halfway down the page.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, smiling up at Norman. ‘That’s right. Thank you.’
He turned back to Hunter.
‘You never told us what you thought we might have found,’ he said. ‘D’you wanna hazard a guess?’
Hunter heaved a heavy sigh.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Play your infantile game if you must.’
‘We found a mobile phone,’ said Slater.
‘Congratulations,’ sneered Hunter, sarcastically. ‘No, really, well done. I must have half a dozen mobile phones, so it really wasn’t that difficult, was it?’
‘Ah. But the one we found is special, isn’t it?’
Hunter’s sneer slowly disappeared.
‘Do you know what a burner phone is, Mr Hunter?’ asked Norman.
Hunter said nothing.
‘No? Then let me explain. ‘It’s an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone. It’s used by criminals to make a call, say for example to threaten someone, and then it gets thrown away. That way it’s untraceable.’
Hunter was beginning to look a little sick.
‘I don’t have any pay-as-you-go phones,’ he said, uncertainly. ‘It must belong to my secretary.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Slater. ‘Sure it does. Do you think it’ll have her fingerprints on it, or yours?’
Hunter’s face said it all.
‘You see, the thing is, this particular pay-as-you-go phone has been used to call Sir Robert Maunder. Maybe you didn’t realise his mobile phone was on a contract, or maybe you forgot we could request his mobile phone bills. Whatever. The thing is we have his mobile phone bills, so we know exactly how often you called him using that very burner phone we found. We know how long the calls lasted and what times they were made.’
Hunter stared down at the table in front of him.
‘We’ve also got his bank statements,’ said Slater. ‘And they’ve revealed an amazing coincidence. You see, every time you call him, he goes to the bank the very next day and draws out some money. It must have been like using the hole in the wall for you. Need some cash? Just lean on the old guy and out comes the money, right?’
‘This is rubbish,’ said Hunter. ‘You can’t prove any of this. I was his solicitor. Why would I start blackmailing him?’
‘Oh, you didn’t start it. We believe we can prove your father did that. You just carried it on as part of the family business.’
‘This is preposterous,’ snapped Hunter. ‘My father was a respected solicitor. Why would he blackmail one of his own clients? Don’t forget we’re talking about a man who was chief constable and was given a knighthood.’
‘Ah, but he wasn’t a chief constable, back then, was he?’ said Norman, keen to get involved again. ‘Back then he was a DS, just like me. But he had a weakness. He couldn’t keep away from the ladies. He had an affair with Gordon Ferguson’s wife. Gordon caught them at it and murdered her. DS Maunder was implicated, but he didn’t want anyone to find out.’