Cobweb (7 page)

I made a note to check whether enquiries had been made there.

‘I've no idea. I suppose he could have done.'

‘Surely you must know if that was his habit.'

She was beginning to lose patience. ‘Well, I don't. Wives shouldn't expect to know absolutely every last detail of their husbands' routines.' Gazing on his wedding ring she added, ‘I'm sure your wife doesn't grill you about all your movements.'

‘No, I tell her what I've been up to,' was the swift response. ‘It's too far to walk home from the pub, though, isn't it? He'd have had to get another cab.'

An irrritable shrug was all that was forthcoming on this.

‘Your son reckons he went there to pick up men.'

A real fan of bombshells; I drew a five-pointed star on my notepad and a load of sparks.

‘I can't remember how many times I've told you people that my husband wasn't gay!' Honor Giddings raged. ‘Besides which, Theo has absolutely nothing to do with this.'

‘No, he just threatened to get even with his stepfather for having his allowance stopped. Is he so prone to making drunken threats that you get used to them and they're safely ignored?'

‘No, of course not.' She rose wearily to her feet and went over to stand by the window. ‘I'm sorry but I've had enough of your questions. When can I have Jason's body so I can arrange his funeral?'

‘That's not in my jurisdiction, but I don't think it will be just yet.'

There was a short, tense silence and then she turned abruptly to face us. ‘No, Theo isn't in the habit of making threats. He'd just had a little too much to drink that evening. But Jason and he had never really got on. I suppose some sons find it difficult when their mother remarries and Theo did – very much so. He's rather a possessive person.'

Patrick leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs, scrutinizing her closely. ‘It suggests there's a huge difficulty – hatred, something much more than just about money – when people make those kind of accusations. The park where your husband was found has a very bad reputation after dark. If he wasn't there for nefarious purposes – and arguably it wasn't yet quite dark then although a very overcast evening when he arrived at the pub – then he must have been killed somewhere else and taken there, where his body was mutilated. Again, that speaks of the deepest hatred.'

There was another silence broken by Patrick asking, ‘Is your son capable of that?'

‘No,' Honor Giddings replied in a low voice. ‘Not at all. But I have to tell you that he is reputed to have some very unpleasant friends.'

‘Criminals?'

‘I wouldn't go as far as to say that. All we had to go on was something a colleague of Jason's said about seeing Theo in a club with people he thought were undesirables. Jason told me he was going to have some checks done. There was the chance, you see, that someone might have tried to get at him through Theo. There are some terrible people about – not that I need to tell you that.'

‘Who was this person who told your husband about it?'

‘I don't know – Jason didn't say.'

‘Did the Special Branch officer who came to see you mention it?'

‘No. And I was too distraught to think of asking him.'

‘Do you know the name of the club?'

‘I think it's called Jo-Jo's. But I don't know where it is.'

‘Was your husband involved with anything controversial? Supporting hunting or animal testing, for example?'

‘Not that I'm aware of. He didn't have wildly strong views on anything, really.'

‘When he didn't come home at the time you expected him, what did you do?'

‘Just carried on as normal for a while. It wasn't unusual, you see; the trains are late all the time.'

‘And then?'

‘I made sure there were drinks and nibbles organized, as our friends were due to arrive, and drove to the station – in case he hadn't been able to find a cab. There was no sign of him.'

‘Was it usual for him not to take his car?'

‘Oh, yes, quite usual. He got sick of getting stuck in traffic jams. And it meant he could have a drink with colleagues before he set off for home.'

‘Then what did you do when you couldn't find him?'

Honor Giddings was getting really fed up with her inquisitor now. ‘Why came home, of course! There was nothing I could do but chat for a while with guests and then ask Hilary to serve the meal, as she was worried about it getting spoilt and everyone was hungry. I'd already tried to reach Jason several times on his mobile to no avail. By nine thirty I was getting really worried and rang the police. I felt a real fool as it wasn't as though he'd been missing for all that long. Then I heard nothing until the phone call the next day. I hadn't slept – I had a feeling something horrible had happened.'

‘I understand you couldn't get hold of your son until early on the following Monday.'

‘That's right, he'd been up north. God knows why. I was furious with him for not being around when I needed a bit of support for once.'

‘Would he have been any use?' Patrick asked baldly.

‘No, probably not,' she answered through her teeth. ‘Is that all you need to know? It's not just you I've had to put up with since this happened, but the whole damned world. I've had the media camped on the doorstep, not to mention my sister Fiona being a thorough nuisance.'

‘She's no help either then?' Patrick said with the ghost of a smile.

Fists clenched, the resentment boiling out, Honor Giddings said, ‘That first morning she was here not half an hour after I'd phoned her husband Quentin with the news. Floods of hysterical tears, but only to get her picture in the papers and hoover up the attention and sympathy. And here was I, having to give it to
her
. We've never really got on, even as children. She was lazy and greedy – still is; and now it's beginning to tell. I've told her several times to lose weight or she'll be ripe for cardiovascular hypertension or atherosclerosis, not to mention thrombosis. For God's sake, the woman's already prone to breathlessness and has varicose veins. She didn't speak to me for a whole year once when I told her that she reminded me of a woman I'd done a PM on who'd been lying dead in her flat for over a week. She'd died of a burst atheromatous aneurysm of the abdominal aorta. Perhaps I shouldn't have emphasized how I'd had to cut through layers of rancid fat before I discovered the massive internal bleeding.'

Really quite impressed with this outpouring I said, ‘Returning to your husband again, there was a newspaper article a couple of years ago, at the time of your wedding, suggesting that your husband was actually bisexual and had married for professional respectability purposes before entering politics. Is there any truth in the allegation?'

‘All kinds of filth are printed in the gutter press,' Honor Giddings said heavily. ‘Are you just brought along to ask that kind of question?'

‘Answer it,' Patrick requested softly. ‘And for the record, no, she isn't.'

The woman paced back and forth before the window a few times, chewing her lip. Then she said, ‘I understood from Jason that when he was in his early twenties he did have an … infatuation … for another man. They were barely out of their teens and both had girlfriends. It was just a growing-up thing and happens all the time. That was all! Now please go away and leave me alone!'

‘It didn't happen to me,' Patrick said sadly. We were on our way back to Maggie's. ‘I obviously dipped out there.'

‘I always had crushes on much older men when I was a teenager,' I admitted.

‘We're freaks.' Patrick chuckled and then blew a raspberry in my direction.

‘She loathes her sister – really boiled over.'

‘In quite poisonous fashion too.'

‘I think she suspects du Norde might have had something to do with her husband's death but didn't really want to say so. And to be fair, Giddings doesn't seem to have been the complete waste of space that du Norde tried to make out. I mean, if he belonged to the local Round Table he must have been interested in the community in which he lived.'

‘And this old cynic says that might have been just a pose.' Patrick patted the briefcase that was on the seat between us, heavy with copies of the case files. ‘I'll go through this lot again, but I can't remember anything about Giddings requesting his stepson be kept an eye on with regard to whom he was knocking around with. I shall have to ask the man from Special Branch.'

The unusual diffidence in his tone made me say, ‘You are using your army rank.'

‘Not from choice. And this isn't the army. Everyone knows I'm a rookie. It's not in my interest to throw my weight about and the only way I'll get their respect is to earn it. So I'll ask him nicely. What might get up his nose is the business of being allowed to carry a firearm.'

‘Your old friend a Smith and Wesson?'

‘No, I've gone for a Glock 17, lighter and better able to knock an armed man off his feet. Also virtually impossible to jam.'

‘So I won't need to buy hefty handbags in future for when you don't want to actually have it on you.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' he said with a grin, waving at a motorist who had given him a two-finger salute for daring to overtake after flashing him out of dawdling in the fast lane. ‘A few hundred clips of ammo should keep your muscles in trim.'

‘What evidence would we need to ask for a second PM on Derek Harmsworth?'

‘Something pretty substantial.'

‘I'd like to find out where that club Jo-Jo's is.'

‘I was just thinking the same.'

‘If you keep driving at this speed you'll get points on
your
licence.'

‘You don't look a day older,' Maggie said, not having clapped eyes on Patrick for about five years.

‘It's the whisky,' he told her. ‘I'm pickled in it.'

‘Would you like a dram now?'

He made a play of looking out of the nearest window. ‘Sun's over the yard-arm. Why not?'

‘The price is not grilling me about any of your bloody suspects I might have heard of,' she informed him grimly.

He threw himself into one of the large squashy armchairs and gave her an unsettling grin. ‘I have only one question along those lines and it can wait.'

‘If you absolutely must I'd rather you asked it now, if you don't mind. Then I can relax.'

‘OK. Do you know any of Theodore du Norde's friends or acquaintances?'

‘Not him again! I didn't know he had any friends,' she retorted.

Patrick just sat there gazing at her like an owl.

‘I understand he has associates,' she continued after a pause. ‘A sort of network of creeps who fix things for him.'

‘What sort of things?'

‘You said one question. God knows. This is all from the grapevine so it might just be gossip. I believe it, though – from what I've been told, whatever he wants du Norde gets.'

D
I John Gray had been unmarried, living on his own in a ground-floor flat situated in a quiet suburb of Woodhill. He had been very ambitious and good at his job and everyone at the nick had assumed that he would be promoted and would take over when Derek Harmsworth retired. Working long hours and expecting his staff to do the same, he had earned a reputation as a bit of a slave-driver but nevertheless had been popular, not passing the buck if things went wrong and often taking his team out for a drink, sometimes to the Green Man but usually to a nearer, ‘unimproved' and much more down-to-earth establishment called the Railway, where the beer was reckoned to be better. Besides being involved with his local Masonic lodge, Gray had been a member of Woodhill Gilbert and Sullivan Operatic Society, not as a performer but on the production side, mostly lighting. A practically life-long vegetarian, he had just acquired an allotment, which had resulted in a little good-natured ribbing from his colleagues.

I gathered all this information the following morning from the files and from Patrick, who had attached notes he had made from what Erin Melrose had already told him. He had added that she was still deeply upset by her boss's death. Interestingly, Patrick had elaborated on something he had mentioned to me already, on a Post-it note to be removed and destroyed, for my eyes only: that he not only knew she very much resented being ordered not to involve herself with either Gray's or Harmsworth's deaths now that SOCA and Special Branch were on the scene, but in his opinion might do a little investigating privately.

There having been no further discussion as to what I should next turn my attention to – other than an arrangement that I would meet Patrick for lunch in the Green Man – I had decided to devote the next morning to this studying of all the case files, which Patrick wanted back when we met at midday. He did not have the time, he had said – nor patience, it must be admitted – to copy them all off for me. I set to, just after he left Maggie's – she soon also went out – gleaning everything remotely useful from my own particular angle, again making notes.

It was a bright, sunny day, I saw, when my gaze strayed to the window a couple of times. To hell with it, the flat was cold and airless, the windows all locked with no keys in sight: I would go to Woodhill early and find somewhere to work in the open air.

I found myself wondering whether Gray had left behind any written evidence connected with investigations he had been conducting, officially or otherwise, into Harmsworth's so-called accident. Nothing was mentioned in the files. Not having got as far as the one on Gray's murder, I postponed going out for a little while longer and turned to it now.

What I read posed questions immediately. No one had so far mentioned the fact that the DI's flat had been ransacked. He had been found knifed, his throat cut, eviscerated, in the living room on a Sunday morning by the woman who lived in the flat directly above him. She had been returning from buying a newspaper when she'd noticed his front door was wide open and there were bloodstains on the step. Tentatively investigating, she had subsequently had to be treated for severe shock.