Body Line (25 page)

The agency, he thought. As soon as she was shot of Rogers, she had invested in the two things she cared about, Robin Frith and the agency. Well, one assumed she cared about them. Where the cash resides, there shall your heart be also. ‘The agency,’ he said aloud. ‘What does it cost to run? Does it make money? Presumably it must do, if they pay the Fraser girl a wage. And Nora Beale, unless she has money of her own. But does it make enough for Amanda to live on as well? Because otherwise, where does she get her income? Unless she has private money or lives off the stables, the agency is her living. I’d really like to have a look at the books of that little venture. It’s damnable that we can’t touch her.’

Swilley thought for a moment, and said, ‘What about the Fraser girl, boss? You said she was all cut up about Rogers and didn’t care much for Amanda. Maybe she would find out what you want to know. She’s in there, in the office. If she’s alone at some point . . .’

‘Norma, you’re a genius. Get on to that, will you? I want to know if the agency makes a profit, and if not, who pays for it. And if Amanda Sturgess draws a wage. And anything else about the financial side you can squeeze out of her. She might come across woman to woman if you sympathize with her loss. Make her feel she’s the real widow.’

‘Yeah, boss. I know. Have we got an address for her? Weekend’s the best time to make a start on her. That’s the loneliest time for someone like her.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Slider. He considered the psychology of that. ‘Take some Kleenex with you.’

‘Inspector Slider?’ said a cut-glass voice that felt like a very pointed fingernail being run down his spine. ‘This is Amanda Sturgess.’

‘Yes, I recognized your voice,’ Slider said, concealing a tremor of interest. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I – ah – wondered how your – investigation was coming along.’

‘We are making some progress,’ Slider said, and stopped to allow the silence to bloom. He wanted to know why she had phoned him. It wasn’t to enquire after his progress. Leave her enough silence and perhaps she would cough up something interesting.

She did not speak at once, but Slider was an expert at the game and could outsilent anyone. ‘Have you any – are you interested in anyone in particular?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t divulge any details,’ he said.

‘Oh, but surely – to me? He was my husband, after all. And I assure you I am discreet.’

‘I’m sorry. It would be unprofessional of me to reveal operational matters to anyone outside my team. You of all people must see that.’

‘Oh. Yes. Quite,’ she said, without questioning what the last sentence meant. ‘I just wondered . . .’ A long pause. Slider believed he could feel her working herself up for a revelation – but perhaps that was only what he hoped was happening. In the end she said, in a different, brisker voice, ‘I was wondering about the funeral. Whether you wanted me to make any arrangements.’

‘The body is not being released at the moment,’ he said. ‘When the time comes I shall of course bear your kind offer in mind.’ She didn’t respond, and after a moment he said, quite gently, ‘Is there anything you wanted to tell me? I can come and see you if you don’t want to talk on the phone.’

It
almost
worked. He was sure it
almost
worked. But then he heard her draw in a breath, and she said in the old, arrogant, sure tones, ‘I have nothing to tell you. I don’t know what you mean. I was merely enquiring about the funeral, and as it is, there is nothing more to say. Good day to you.’

And she was gone. Slider put down the phone. Had she been going to confess? Was she trying to find out if they were still following the sparkly lure of Frith? Was she protecting someone else? Or her own skin?

He shook his head at himself. You’re good at identifying the questions. How about finding some answers?

McLaren was back from a long session at Stanmore police station, and the news was mixed.

‘They bin watching Embry a long time, guv,’ he reported. ‘They’re pretty sure he’s up to something, but so far they’ve not got the evidence to move on him.’

‘Up to what sort of something?’ Slider asked.

‘His old game of ringing,’ McLaren admitted. ‘All right, that’s no use to us. But they’ve got word from their snouts that there’s something else going on. They think he could be dealing in stolen goods, or else smuggling – cigarettes is big in that part of the world. Things going in and out his yard in the boots of cars. It’s the perfect set-up for moving gear around – nobody goes to his yard on foot, do they? And nobody questions motors going in and out. Handy for the motorway, but out of the way enough—’

‘But they don’t have anything specific on him?’ Slider interrupted. ‘Presumably not, or they’d have moved by now.’

‘They want
us
to give
them
anything we get,’ McLaren said. ‘They’re assembling a dossier. They liked the number plate thing but want hard evidence on it. And,’ he added with an attempt at brightness, ‘they weren’t surprised when I suggested he might be shifting guns as well. He’s got some right tasty friends, and they said that would fit in with their profile of him.’

Slider sighed. ‘Has Fathom come up with anything?’

‘No. Firearms department don’t know him. But then they wouldn’t, if he was any good. But Stanmore’s gonna open a new line of enquiry. If he’s into firearms, they can get extra men on the case. It’ll go multi.’

‘Stop trying to soften my heart.’

‘One thing,’ McLaren offered, as if as a consolation prize, ‘when I showed them the picture of our suspect, Mick Lonergan – he’s the DS – said he was sure he’d seen him somewhere before, but he couldn’t place him.’

‘Hallelujah,’ Slider said.

‘He looked through his files, his most recent cases, but he couldn’t work out why he knows him, but he’s definitely ringing a bell,’ McLaren went on doggedly. ‘So he’s taken copies and he’s gonna put it round his snouts. We could still get a tickle, guv. He definitely sparked something – I could see in his face.’

‘All right,’ Slider said. ‘We’ll just have to hope. For now, though, it looks as though Embry’s a dead end. Keep in touch with Stanmore over it.’

‘Yeah, guv, will do. They’re really going for him – say he’s a blot on the landscape.’

‘Well, they can put more into it than we could,’ Slider said. But where do we look next, he wondered. Leads were all running out.

‘Guv,’ said Mackay from his desk as Slider passed through the CID room on his way back from the loo. ‘I’ve been wondering – do you think Stanmore could be Stansted?’

‘Too hilly,’ Atherton answered for him across the room. ‘You’d never find enough flat land for a runway.’

‘Have manners,’ Connolly rebuked him. ‘Let the man speak, willya?’

Mackay ploughed on patiently. ‘The Aude female said Rogers said he worked in a hospital in Stansted. I’m wondering if she misheard, or misremembered.’

‘Not the sharpest tool in the box, I understand,’ Atherton said. ‘Could be the next Mrs McLaren?’

‘Well, if she’d never heard of Stanmore – but everyone knows Stansted,’ Mackay offered. ‘Because of the airport.’

‘It’s a thought,’ Slider said. ‘Have you any other reason for supposing it?’

‘Well, guv, I keep looking as hospitals, in between other stuff, because it got me that there was no hospital in Stansted. I kept widening the search, and when I got to Stanmore I thought about the names sounding similar. And there are two hospitals there. There’s the Royal National Orthopaedic—’

‘Except that Rogers wasn’t an orthodpod,’ Atherton said.

‘We don’t know what he was,’ Hollis said, drifting up. ‘If he was a drugs rep he could have been visiting any hospital.’

‘But Rogers told Aude he was a consultant
at
a hospital.’

‘Sure God, he was trying to get the ride offa your woman,’ Connolly said with a bit of a gust. ‘He’ll tell her what’ll go down best. Consultant’s going to get him into her pants quicker than rep.’

‘But then why pick on Stanmore?’ Atherton said. ‘If he was going to lie he could have made it any hospital. Why not one she might have heard of, Bart’s or Thomas’s or Hammersmith Hospital?’

‘The point
is
,’ Mackay said loudly, trying to get the attention back, ‘like I said there are two hospitals in Stanmore, the Royal National Orthopaedic, and the Cloisterwood Hospital. That’s a private one. And it’s having a fund-raising Gala Day next month, with a garden party in the afternoon and a dinner and dance in the evening.’

Slider was there. ‘Aude said Rogers was going to take her to a big promotional party at his hospital.’

‘Yeah, guv.’

‘Well done. You could be on to something.’

Connolly was already clattering full speed at her own computer, calling up the hospital’s site. ‘Cloisterwood Private Hospital. It does cosmetic procedures—’

‘Plastic surgery to you and me,’ Hollis said.

‘Rogers
was
a plastic surgeon,’ Fathom said excitedly, trying to look over Connolly’s shoulder.

‘Until the GMC said he couldn’t touch patients any more,’ Atherton reminded him.

Connolly went on reading. ‘And it does gender reassignment.’

‘You what?’ said Fathom.

‘Saving Ryan’s Privates,’ Atherton clarified.

‘Sex change. Wouldn’t you like to go for that, Jez?’ Connolly said with a sweet smile. ‘They turn your lad inside out and stuff it up inside—’

Fathom went pale. ‘Shut up! That’s nothing to joke about!’

She went on reading from the screen. ‘And they do transplants. Kidney, corneal.’ She looked up. ‘Is that a bit of a strange combination, would you think? Plastic, sex-swap and transplants? As in, “Hello, I’m Doctor Death, the eye, nose and bladder man.”’

‘It’s a private hospital,’ Slider said, ‘and they’re all things that people are willing to pay big money for.’

‘Especially foreigners from countries where the culture is less laissez-faire,’ said Atherton. ‘Imagine being an Iranian wanting a sex-swap-op.’

‘You’d hop on a plane and bop along to the sex-swap-op-shop,’ Connolly said, still clattering.

‘Or countries where the very rich have scads of money, but the medical facilities aren’t so advanced,’ Atherton concluded. ‘Plenty of those.’

‘Here’s the staff,’ Connolly went on. ‘“Our illustrious consultants.” Smiling pictures – Janey Mackeroni, aren’t they the sinister crew? I wouldn’t let them take out a splinter. And . . . no David Rogers,’ she concluded, having scrolled to the end.

‘But there is – go back,’ Slider ordered. ‘There is one name we know. There, look. Director of Surgery, Sir Bernard Webber.’

‘Rogers’s pal,’ said Hollis.

‘And benefactor,’ said Atherton. ‘Which perhaps explained why the Cloisterwood leapt to mind when he was spinning a line to Ceecee St Clair.’

‘Maybe he did work there,’ said Hollis, ‘just not as a consultant. They don’t list all the staff. Maybe he was working in a lab or the mortuary.’

‘Or parking cars,’ Fathom offered.

Connolly rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, they’d pay him highly for that, you gom!’

‘He could have been their PR man,’ Atherton said. ‘Didn’t someone say he took rich foreigners to that club? Showing them the hospitality. Maybe he was reeling in the customers. That would pay well.’

‘That would fit in better with the Rogers we know about,’ Slider said. ‘Being charming, wearing nice suits, wining and dining and beguiling the punters.’ He looked around at his crew, who had all picked up amazingly in the last five minutes. ‘All roads lead to Stanmore. Our murderer went there after the shooting. The number plates came from there.’

‘Not quite all roads,’ Atherton said. ‘What about Suffolk?’

‘What about it?’ Mackay objected. ‘We’ve only got that bint’s word for it he went there. And it was probably just a leisure thing anyway.’

‘One red herring at a time,’ Slider said. ‘We have to find out if Rogers did have a connection with Cloisterwood first.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Find out if Sir Bernard Webber is there today, and tell him I want to come over and see him. And –’ to Connolly – ‘see what else there is about him on the Internet. Let me have a few facts under my belt before I go.’

‘Here, sir,’ Connolly said, placing a printed sheet in front of him. ‘All I’ve been able to get so far. Age fifty-six. On his second wife. Two kids from first marriage grown up and gone away. Lives in a gin palace in Letchmore Heath.’

‘How do you know it’s a gin palace?’

‘I looked it up on Goggle-at-my-house – aka Google Earth. Called The Boydens. Gak! I hate people who call their houses
The
something. Massive modern place. Private cinema, indoor swimming pool, tennis courts. Ugly as a dog’s arse. Sure it looks like a golf hotel in Antrim.’

‘You’ve a cutting tongue on you, Detective Constable. Go on.’

‘He’s consulting rooms in Harley Street, present position Director of Surgery, Cloisterwood Hospital, as we know. Hobbies, golf – there’s a surprise. Fishing – and another. And flying – has his own light aircraft at Elstree Aerodrome. Other positions, Deputy Director of Standards, General Medical Council; Member of the Health Service Advisory Group; Member of the Pharmaceutical Oversight Board. Jayzus, you’d think they’d want to get rid of pharmaceutical oversights, not have a board for them! Quite the political player, too. He’s been Special Adviser to the Department of Health – that musta been a bit of a jolly: did an eighteen-month fact-finding tour of China, the Middle East, the Sub-Continent – what’s that when it’s at home?’