‘Yes.’
‘So it could have been this one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you notice anything particular about where you were?’
‘Leo saw the boathouse and said we should look around, but Denny said we had to stick to the house. Me and Leo were to wait outside. Ken went in with Denny.’
‘For the purposes of the tape, can you identify Denny Tapps as the man who was arrested with you this afternoon? For the purposes of the tape, I’m showing the suspect a photograph of Denny Tapps.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Me and Leo went to the boathouse and it was unlocked. Leo said the kit was worth thousands, so we started loading it into the van.’
‘That must have taken some time.’
The man looked up to the ceiling, then covered his face with his hands.
‘We heard a shot.’
‘What type of shot?’
‘A gunshot.’
‘From where?’
‘Inside the house. Denny came out and said he needed help, and Leo went inside. They were in there ages and came out with something wrapped in sheets.’
‘And I’m guessing you knew it wasn’t a teddy bear?’
The man shook his head.
‘Yes or no, for the purposes of the tape.’
‘No, I didn’t think it was a teddy bear. Denny said he’d been told to take it away from the house; he said he was going to row it over to the other side of the lake.’
‘So we’ve established that whatever was in the sheets wasn’t a teddy bear. Is it likely that it was the body of George Murphy, who had just been fatally shot inside the house?’
The man nodded.
‘For the tape.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what?’
‘Denny took Ken with him and they were gone ages. We had plenty of time to load the dinghy on the trailer and get it hooked up to the van.’
‘Did you at any point challenge what you had seen or heard?’
The man hung his head. ‘No.’
‘From start to finish, how long were you at Allerdale House?’
‘Three hours maybe.’
‘Did anyone else go into the house?’
‘Leo went in for a piss.’
‘When Denny and Ken got back from rowing across the lake, did they have the sheets?’
The man thought about this. ‘Erm, they had a black bag. I guess they could have been in there.’ That would explain why nothing had been found at the scene.
‘What happened then?’
‘We drove back to London.’
‘What did Denny do with the black bag?’
The man thought again. ‘I fell asleep. It’s a long way up there, man. We stopped at a petrol station and I remember him stuffing the bag in a bin.’
‘Do you know which petrol station?’
‘No.’
‘Are you absolutely sure? Was it on a motorway?’
‘Nah, I can’t remember.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Matt as the train sped north.
Chapter 47
Kelly stood at her office window and stared out. She’d looked up Lord Allerdale’s voting history for the House of Lords and sure enough, he’d voted against any progressive homosexual legislation. Next she’d called Alexandros Skarparis in Cyprus to inform him that two intelligence officers were on standby to travel to his villa and escort him to Akrotiri military base, where he and his mother could board an RAF flight to Brize Norton.
‘It’s the only way,’ she said. ‘We can protect your mother.’
That sold him, and he told her the location of the villa. She wasted no time and informed her contact at Ayios Nikolaos intelligence wing, avoiding going through the MoD.
Matt would be arriving soon, and Eden House was the last place she wanted to be. He’d called from the train to give her an update. Christopher Slater had left the city for the weekend, and had been tailed to his pad in Surrey. Sebastian Montague-Roland was attending meetings in London until eleven this evening, but had agreed to speak over the phone to detectives at five o’clock. He’d been curt and warned them of harassment. Another army of lawyers had descended on the switchboard at Hendon and had informed the SIO that for Mr Montague-Roland to be interviewed – informally or otherwise – they’d need to charge him with a crime. They couldn’t. Yet.
Kelly was knackered and dejected, and wanted to take the afternoon off with Johnny. She wished she was in a position to accept his valiant offer to rough up Matt, but knew it was a chivalric gesture only.
Rob came excitedly into her office holding a printout. It was a welcome diversion.
‘I’ve got the scientific formulas back from George’s USB.’
‘And?’
‘It sets out a model for a cure for addiction.’
‘Isn’t that what they were working on in the Ravensword lab anyway? Addiction, mental illness and so on.’
Rob looked deflated. ‘It’s not the same at all.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘I’m sorry. Come on, tell me then.’ The apology was genuine. She realised she was wound up like a coil over Matt arriving, and she’d been short with her colleague.
Rob took a pen and a large piece of paper from a board, and began to explain to her how George was working on the theory that addiction wasn’t a disease or a condition, but a miswiring as a direct result of the toxins ingested, effectively turning the whole theory on its head.
‘Why does that matter?’
‘Because the whole world wants us to believe that it’s an affliction with no cure.’
‘Are you telling me that George actually found a cure?’
‘That’s what the scientist who translated this told me. She was very excited. However, after the initial euphoria died down, she told me that it would be bad news for the company. Then she became cagey.’
‘Why bad news? Surely something so genius is a cause for celebration?’
‘She said something about losing revenue from drugs used to treat addiction. I guess what she was trying to say is that it has the potential to impact global economies.’
‘Of course it would.’ That was just what Tilly Knight had told her. They needed to get Alexandros here as soon as they could, and she willed the operation two thousand miles away to go smoothly. She went to her computer and googled some figures about legally prescribed addictive drugs: antidepressants, barbiturates, benzodiazepines and methadone. In the US alone, methadone prescription and the treatment surrounding it was worth $43 million per year.
‘And that’s not mentioning the illegal trade, which could grind to a halt with a drug like this,’ she whispered out loud. ‘It could be an effective political tool against South America.’
Rob cottoned on to her train of thought. ‘And Afghanistan.’
‘Alexandros told Tilly Knight that George wasn’t a coke addict; he was experimenting on himself.’
An update on HOLMES interrupted them: Miranda Cooper’s computer was found to be still in her office, and had been seized. It was currently being scoured by experts. Kelly raised her eyebrows to Rob, who turned towards a noise at the door.
‘A visitor, boss.’ DS Umshaw poked her head around Kelly’s door. Kelly set her face into as warm a welcome as she could muster. Matt was standing in the doorway, smiling.
Kelly introduced her colleagues and took him around the office, introducing him to other members of the team, who’d already had the pleasure of meeting him on screen. She could see him scowling a little as he took in the silence, the calm, as well as all the scribbles on the whiteboard.
‘I think I’ll hold a brief now to get up to speed. We’ve had some more developments.’
‘I know, we’ve been keeping up to date.’ Kelly spoke with irritation.
The team stopped what they were working on and looked at their colleague from the Met. He strode to the front of the room and began barking ou
t information. Kelly could see that they were struggling with his style, but they did their best to second-guess when he paused for effect or when he expected an answer. He spoke rhetorically a lot of the time.
‘The DNA on the plasma inside the shower unit is a billion-to-one match with George Murphy.’
He paused and looked around at the team.
‘Why aren’t you using iPads?’
Kelly spoke for them. ‘Our briefs are usually in real time, face to face, DCI Carter. We check the computer information regularly but use briefs as an opportunity to swap ideas and chew things over, as it were.’ She smiled. If her team questioned her use of his title rather than ‘guv’ or ‘boss’, they didn’t show it.
‘Right. Excellent. Have we pieced together who George might have had contact with up here?’ Kelly knew he’d been thrown off guard, but she was enjoying watching him struggle, even if no one else could see it.
‘DS Umshaw?’ Kelly said. Kate was shaken from her reverie and began to speak.
‘We have a pretty solid timeline of events leading up to the murder. He regularly went to the small shop in Portinscale, and on Sunday morning he was reportedly in very good spirits. He also shopped in Keswick; we have CCTV of him entering several clothes shops and a fishing tackle shop.’
‘Have we examined who else was in the premises at the same time?’ Matt asked.
‘Yes, sir. On one piece of footage he’s seen paying at the counter and two men are standing behind him. One of them is Leo Brown.’
‘What’s the date?’
‘Saturday the first.’
‘So they were sussing him out. It proves planning and premeditation. Good. Feed that to the interviews in Shoreditch.’
Kelly nodded. She followed his gaze and saw that he was studying her whiteboard.
‘I see your drawings replicate HOLMES well. Who’s the artist?’ he asked.
‘Me,’ Kelly said. ‘Every time HOLMES updates, I add a new picture. We like it.’
There was a slight shift in the atmosphere, and Kelly filled the chasm. ‘I’ll log on now and we can get back to work. My team has been working flat out and I’d like to allow them to go home soon so they can have some kind of weekend.’
Matt gawped at her, but thought better of complaining. They finished up the brief and he expressed his satisfaction that they were all singing from the same song sheet. Kelly stifled her annoyance that he’d ever doubted it.
‘Is Allerdale House far?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to see where it happened.’
Kelly breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief.
‘Can I have a volunteer to accompany DCI Carter to Allerdale House?’ She was aware that their Saturday had dragged on, and she was expecting most of them in tomorrow. Emma would be back then, but it was Kate’s turn to have some rest and recuperation; she’d also said Will could have a break.
‘I’ll go.’ It was Kate who spoke, and Kelly smiled to herself. Matt would have to be on his best behaviour. She caught his glare out of the corner of her eye, but she gave him no opportunity to speak privately to her before Kate had her bag ready to leave.
‘I’ll call tech to ask if they’ve found out what was on Miranda Cooper’s computer yet- if anything,’ Kelly said. She watched them leave, then made the phone call.
Miranda had been very clever indeed. Tooting, in his arrogance, hadn’t bothered looking around her office, and Matt had secured a warrant to have her computer taken away. Yesterday evening – the evening of her death – the professor had downloaded a file using an unusual icon. As Kelly stared at the image sent to her, she recognised it as the coat of arms of the Montague-Rolands.
Ted’s call jolted her; she thought it apt considering his love of heraldry. She asked him what he knew about the Montague-Rolands.
‘You still working on that case?’
‘I am. Why is it that all the gentry around here have secrets?’
‘It’s part of the job description. I met old Lord Allerdale once. He was a keen hunter back in the day. He owned most of the land behind Cat Bells. Did you find out what happens to it all now?’
‘Not yet. I get the impression that whatever Alan Montague-Roland wanted, it didn’t go down too well. Thank you for earlier, by the way. It meant a lot. I’d been dreading it. It’s hard to let go.’
‘I know. Look, Kelly, I was calling for a reason. I’ve been thinking. I wanted to ask you if I should go ahead and arrange for you to meet your half-sisters.’
Kelly was floored. It was certainly a distraction, but perhaps not quite the kind she was after.
‘Wow. Do they know?’
‘Not yet. But I think that if you were to meet, you would all be rather fond of one another.’
‘What about Mary?’ She wasn’t sure what his ex-wife would think about it.
‘The girls are adults.’
‘Right. Well, yes. If they agree. Why not?’
He rang off happy and Kelly stared at the phone for a few minutes before another call came in and claimed her attention.
Chapter 48
Philip Tooting loosened his tie and poured a glass of wine, taking it on to his terrace overlooking the Thames. The view took in Tower Bridge, and that alone doubled the price tag compared to properties further down the river, out of sight of the prestigious landmark. His wife had no idea that he owned it. Not that she cared; she had plenty of places to go should she desire it. The only reason they weren’t divorced was because of the cost. Separation would be ludicrous and financially disastrous; why pay solicitors when they could lead their lives independently, still benefiting from their wealth?
A call came through to his private work phone and he saw that it was his secretary, so he answered. She informed him that Miranda Cooper’s computer had been taken away by the police. Ravensword worked round the clock – weekends meant nothing – but Philip had never set foot in the place on a Saturday as long as he’d been there. His secretary worked one weekend out of every four, though, and she’d witnessed the police coming and going.
A sensation began to form in his abdomen, one that he hadn’t felt for a very long time. He asked her to go to the computer in his office and check when it was last logged on to. She was the only person who was allowed to touch it.
‘What’s the password this week, sir?’ she asked.
He blushed, though she couldn’t see it. ‘Peasants.’ He recalled crying the word out loud to Miranda as he came inside her, unable to keep the magnificent sense of power and domination from his voice. He changed his password from time to time, but he kept going back to that one; it held a resonance for him that he found hard to explain. He’d come from nothing and made himself what he was today, unlike ninety-nine per cent of the population, who sponged off everyone else.
‘Right, sir… You last logged on at six fifteen yesterday evening. Wait a minute, nobody was here then.’
‘I know I wasn’t.’
‘Oh.’
‘What time did you leave?’ he asked.
‘Six o’clock, sir.’
‘Bitch.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘Nothing.’ He hung up.
Suddenly the view of the ancient waterway wasn’t so appealing. He went inside and closed the door, gulping his wine as he went. Miranda was nothing if not technically competent. It had to have been her, but why? Revenge, of course.
He placed a call to his firm of solicitors and instructed them to release the original terms of Alan Montague-Roland’s will to the police.
As he paced up and down, Christopher’s words popped into his head. He racked his brains, trying to recall what he’d stored on his hard drive. In a word: everything. If Miranda had done what he thought she had, he was screwed.
He logged on to a personal iPad and searched BA flights to Buenos Aires. He had business dealings there, but more importantly, he owned a pad in Mar del Plata. Extradition from South America was unlikely. He placed the glass on the side and rubbed his eyes; he couldn’t belie
ve he was thinking like this.
There was a flight at 9.50 p.m. from Heathrow, but it was delayed by half an hour; he could still make it. The screen showed that there were several spare seats in business class. He purchased a return ticket – it was quicker – and went to his bedroom to pack. Everything he needed was in the flat. As he opened his suitcase, he ran through calculations in his head about what sums he had in which country, and how easily they were accessed. He thought about Miranda rooting around in his office, smiling to herself when she guessed his password correctly. It was she who’d encrypted all his files and created the bulletproof system, which was why he’d used his work computer to store it all on.
In his haste, he knocked a bowl off the bedside cabinet and it smashed on the polished tiled floor. He stepped on a shard of glass as he fastened his bag, and swore. Blood soaked through his sock. He stripped it off and hopped to the bathroom. The cut wasn’t deep, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. He found a bandage in a cabinet and wrapped it tightly around his foot. But now he had blood on his shirt, so he went back to the bedroom to change. His phone buzzed and he ignored it. There’d be no pleasant exchanges now.
He wondered idly if the detective in Cumbria was at this moment reading the information stashed away over years of careful calculation and risk, her hand over her pretty mouth, wondering who to arrest first. Maybe she didn’t work weekends; perhaps Miranda had her own passwords and the files hadn’t been accessed.
He stopped. Miranda had had no idea she was going to die. She could easily have stored the information on a USB stick, taking it with her to bribe him with later: that was more her style. He’d made her angry, but he’d seen in her eyes that she still lusted for him. He’d grown bored with her before and she’d changed his mind, parading in front of him in various revealing outfits, but until yesterday, he’d never gone so far as to sack her.
He caught his reflection in the mirror and smiled. His teeth were perfectly straight and white, thanks to expensive dental work; his skin was tanned from golfing holidays and business trips to exotic resorts; his laughter lines pointed upwards, and his jaw was strong. He smiled again. He took his time checking his bag, then called a limousine company to take him to the airport.
Bold Lies Page 24