Exit Stage Left (18 page)

I heard nothing for a few days, or maybe a week, and then my brother Bobby Miles arrived at the Keycross Court flat, not knowing that the Corinne Black he was expecting to meet was actually his sister. He told me that the man he worked for had promised to pay him £25,000 to murder me and make it look like suicide. Bobby said that the contract on me – that’s what he called it – had come from my husband, who had said that he wanted to stop me blackmailing him. Having found out that I was his sister, of course, Bobby didn’t do anything about it. He told me the man he worked for was called Colonel William Anderson.

I asked Bobby to get this Anderson to come and see me, which he did. I told Anderson that I wanted rid of my husband, who was threatening to expose me and have me murdered. Anderson was a businessman, and I told him that my husband was worth over fifteen million pounds and that I’d pay him half of that if my husband was killed. I also offered to sleep with him any time he wanted to. Of course, he accepted my offer as he said it was more than the amount he’d been offered to kill me. As I said, Anderson was a businessman.

It is common knowledge that Lancelot was later murdered, and I believe that Anderson himself was responsible. But I then discovered that Lancelot had left all his money to a woman called Sally Warner, who lived in Farnham and with whom he’d had a child some years ago. As I was now without means, I was unable to pay Anderson the £7.5 million I’d promised him for killing my husband. At first, Anderson was very annoyed about me being unable to pay and made threats, but then he relented, saying that sleeping with me would be enough to settle the debt. But then my brother was murdered.

If I am murdered, and even if it looks like suicide, I hope this will give you some idea of who was responsible and why.

All the above is true.

‘Well, that’s it,’ I said. ‘The letter is signed Debra Foley, and she’s written the name Corinne Black in brackets.’

‘At least it gives us a motive, guv’nor,’ said Dave, ‘but it doesn’t get us any nearer finding Anderson. He’s not a colonel, anyway; he’s a disgraced captain who got the chop from the army.’

‘That’s irrelevant,’ said Kate, ‘but are you going to let Henri Deshayes know, guv?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Not that it’ll help him find Anderson. It’s a pity that Debra didn’t enclose a photograph of the elusive Anderson.’

‘It might be useful if we were able to have sight of this list that was mentioned in the letter,’ said Dave.

‘I doubt that would help us to find Anderson,’ I said, ‘but, that apart, I somehow doubt that such a list actually existed. After all, I’m sure that Debra Foley would have been able to recall the important names without having first written them down.’

I telephoned Henri Deshayes and told him about the letter and promised that I’d email him a copy.

‘At least we now have a motive, ’Arry,’ said Henri. ‘For what difference that will make.’

I finished my call with Henri Deshayes and asked Dave to get our car on the front. ‘We’re going to visit Dudley Phillips, Dave.’

‘I’ve got a feeling that this day is never going to end, guv’nor,’ said Dave.

‘I know how you feel,’ I said, which afforded Dave no comfort whatsoever.

T
here was a sign on the door of a shop with blacked out windows that told us that Dudley Phillips carried out business there as a couturier.

I rang the bell, and moments later the door was opened by a middle-aged grey-haired woman in an overall. She had a pencil stuck in her hair.

‘Yes?’ The woman glared at us with the sort of hostile expression that I imagine she reserved for commercial travellers and other itinerant sales persons.

‘Is Mr Phillips here?’ I asked.

‘Who wants to know?’ She removed the pencil, scratched her scalp with it and replaced it in her hair.

‘The police,’ said Dave.

‘Oh!’ The woman’s expression softened, but only a little. ‘You’d better come in, then,’ she said. She led us through a showroom that was crowded with dresses on racks and opened a door on the far side. ‘The law’s here to see you, Dud.’

We followed her into a workshop. There were about seven or eight women sitting at sewing machines busily working, and the entire place was a hubbub of noise and activity.

‘It’s a bloody sweatshop,’ whispered Dave. ‘I bet the Border Agency would have fun here.’

‘I’m Phillips.’ The man who crossed the floor had a toothbrush moustache, was probably in his mid-fifties and was wearing old flannel trousers and a green cardigan over a shirt that had definitely seen better days. He wasn’t very tall, but was decidedly overweight. His plastic-framed spectacles had a piece of sticking plaster wrapped around the bridge, as though it had been broken at some time. He certainly didn’t look like the sort of companion that Foley, Darke, Townsend and Anderson would have selected as a poker partner. But poker, or gambling of any sort, for that matter, begets strange bed-fellows. ‘You from the local nick?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock from the Murder Investigation Team, and this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’

‘Oh, right. You’re here about Lancelot Foley getting topped, then. Come through to the office.’

The office was a tip: a desk laden with paperwork, ledgers, and a bolt of cloth. There were more bolts of cloth leaning against the walls, and several fashion sketches were propped against the side of the desk. Another sketch stood on an easel.

‘We’re getting ready for a show,’ explained Phillips in a rich Cockney accent. ‘Take a pew.’ He cleared magazines and catalogues from a couple of straight-backed chairs, tossed them on the floor and flicked the seats with a dirty handkerchief. We decided to remain standing.

‘I don’t know anything about Foley getting topped, if that’s what you were going to ask,’ said Phillips. ‘Don’t surprise me it happened, though.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

Phillips perched on his desk, facing us. ‘He was a nasty bastard, full of piss and importance. And he cheated at cards.’

‘Why did you play with him, then?’ asked Dave.

‘Because I cheated an’ all, only I was better at it than he was. And I took him for a couple of centuries over the months. Anyhow, he could afford it. Bloody loaded he was.’

‘How did you come to meet him, then?’ I couldn’t imagine what, if anything, this East End Londoner had in common with Lancelot Foley, he of the airs and graces.

‘He brought one of his tarts down here about a year ago. Wanted her kitted out with clobber that’d be suitable for when he took her on holiday down the South of France. Money no object, he said, stupid bugger. I quoted him five grand, and of course he haggled, as I knew he would. So I let him beat me down to four grand, which is the figure I had in mind in the first place. Even that was about a five hundred per cent mark-up. Anyway, while this tart of his was picking out the right cloth for the schmutter, we got talking, and he said as how he couldn’t waste too much time on account of having a poker game spoiling that afternoon. I told him that I liked a hand of poker, and he invited me to join in. After that we met about once a week.’

‘So you know Hubert Darke, Gavin Townsend and William Anderson.’

‘Yeah, course I do. That was the regular little team. Sometimes there’d only be the four of us, on account of Foley being in some play. Other times Bill Anderson was away on business. Least that’s what was said, but I reckon he was a bloody villain.’

‘What makes you say that?’ asked Dave.

Phillips gave Dave a crooked smile. ‘Takes one to know one. All right, so I’ve had a run-in with the law a few times in me youth, but I’m as straight as a die now. But Anderson never let on where he was off to. Just disappeared for weeks on end and then come back as big as you like, usually with a suntan. Said something about being away on business, but never said exactly what this business was. Well, if you believe that load of old moody, you’ll believe anything.’ At this point the phone rang. Phillips picked up the receiver and dropped it back on the rest without answering. ‘Only be some tart wanting a job as a model,’ he said. ‘As if I hire models all ready.’

‘What about this argument that Foley had with Townsend?’ I asked.

Phillips scoffed. ‘Townsend accused Foley of cheating, daft bugger. I dunno why he never stayed shtum. He could’ve let it go and got it all back in a couple of hands. I’d’ve helped him if he’d asked. Like I said, I could have taken Foley over and over again, and he wouldn’t know what had happened.’

‘Was there a fight?’ asked Dave.

‘Nah. Mind you, that Townsend looks as though he could use his dukes. Professional yachtsman, I think he is. Some poofy job like that, any road.’

‘Where were you on the night that Foley was murdered?’ I asked. ‘That was the fourth–fifth of February, a Monday into Tuesday.’

‘Where I always am at night. Tucked up in bed with Miriam, of course. You can ask her, if you like. She’s the one what answered the door.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mr Phillips,’ I said. I’d rapidly come to the conclusion that Dudley Phillips was one of that rare breed, an honest villain.

A few days later I received a report from Counter Terrorist Command giving the results of the fingerprint examination of Wisteria Cottage at Romford. It was no surprise that one set tallied with those we had taken from Jim Finch, now awaiting trial for attempted murder. The set of Robert Miles’s prints taken from his body after his murder matched some that had been found at Wisteria Cottage and were also found at Debra Foley’s Keycross Court apartment. But we knew from her letter that her brother had visited her there. None of the others found in the Romford house matched any held in the national fingerprint collection.

However, there was one significant revelation: one of the prints found at Wisteria Cottage matched those that Linda Mitchell, the senior forensic practitioner, told me had been found on Lancelot Foley’s walking stick, abandoned in the roadworks excavation alongside his body. We didn’t know who they belonged to, other than to say that they weren’t Miles’s or Finch’s. But my guess was that they belonged to the elusive Colonel Anderson.

I passed a copy of the report, together with facsimiles of the actual prints, to Henri Deshayes in Paris.

Two hours later Henri called me back to say that one of the sets from Romford matched a set found in the room used by Anderson and Debra Foley at the Santa Barbara Hotel in the rue de Castiglione. But they weren’t those of Debra Foley. Slowly, ever so slowly, the net was closing.

Despite having told Lee Jarvis, our resident computer expert, that we didn’t need him any more, we called him back, as he was faster than Dave at interrogating Robert Miles’s laptop, and he now came up with another piece of interesting information. It seemed that on widely spaced occasions Robert Miles had been paid substantial sums of money by Colonel William Anderson, presumably for mercenary operations or contract killings. The payments had been made from Anderson’s bank in Newcastle, and Miles had saved the account details on his laptop. I presumed that having his account as far away as Newcastle was another ploy on Anderson’s part to spread details of his activities as widely as possible. But he hadn’t counted on Miles doing a bit of self-preservation of his own.

I emailed this latest information to Henri Deshayes, just in case it might come in useful.

Minutes after receiving my email, Henri called me. ‘These bank details could be very useful, ’Arry. I’m sure that Anderson will have to draw cash at some time. I’ve had one of my officers alert banks in the capital, and I’ve put half the Paris police force on standby in case he makes a withdrawal. If he does a withdrawal in Paris, I think we might just catch him.’

‘I wish you luck, Henri.’ I had grave doubts about the feasibility of that plan, having tried it myself in the past without any success. By the time that police arrived at the ATM, the suspect had long gone.

‘I have also circulated to the press and television stations the computer generated likeness of Anderson prepared by the hotel staff,’ said Henri, ‘but whether it will do any good remains to be seen.’

I had no great faith in E-fit likenesses of a suspect. In my experience they created a vast number of telephone calls from helpful members of the public who’d seen the wanted individual everywhere between Land’s End and John O’Groats. Each one had to be followed up, and usually all that they achieved was to waste police time when we could have been searching for a suspect using conventional methods. All we could really do now was to sit and wait.

And wait we did.

B
y the end of June, some four months after the killings, we were no further forward with our investigation into the murders of Lancelot Foley and Robert Miles. In the intervening period they had given way to other murders that had occurred and been solved, and the substantial paperwork that accompanies such enquiries had been consigned to the archives.

The coroner’s inquest into those two deaths had been reopened on the eleventh of March, and the jury had concluded that both men had been murdered by ‘person or persons unknown’. It was not a satisfactory outcome, but in the case of those two particular murders, it was the only verdict possible. However, the cases were still open; Scotland Yard never closes a murder enquiry until there is a conviction or the suspected murderer is dead.

A few days after Gail Sutton had left for Los Angeles, I’d received an email from her saying that she’d arrived safely and was having a great time. Another email had followed a month later, in which she said that her contract had been extended and she had put her Kingston town house on the market. So that, I concluded, was that.

In Paris, Commandant Henri Deshayes, in his shirtsleeves, sat in his office at the quai des Orfèvres dealing with the sort of administrative matters that are the lot of detectives worldwide. Although the murder of Debra Foley had faded from his mind, it was still the most important case remaining on the list of unsolved crimes. When it had occurred, back in February, the press had criticized the police and demanded action. Their strident headlines had screamed that it was nothing short of a national scandal that an English actress on holiday in Paris should have been brutally murdered. And they’d predicted that it would have a dire effect on the tourist trade.

But it had had no effect whatsoever, and other more vital events had occurred to occupy the time and the computers of the capital’s newspaper reporters.

While Henri Deshayes was stuck in his office, in the tree-lined avenue des Champs-Elysées the sun was shining, the cafes were busy and harassed waiters struggled to keep up with the demands of their international clientele.

At one of these cafes, within sight of the Arc de Triomphe, a middle-aged man was sitting at an outside table enjoying his mid-morning pastis and reading that day’s edition of
Le Figaro
. Occasionally, he would glance up to admire some of the pretty young women who were strolling casually along the crowded pavements. Little groups of tourists stopped to read the menus displayed in frames outside, wondering what the dishes were, and busily consulting pocket dictionaries and currency converters. The man’s name was Lucien Josse. Until his recent retirement, he had been an officer of the
Police Judiciare
, and had last reported for duty at
le trente-six
four months ago, just after the murder of Debra Foley. Although he was now a little fatter, his flowing moustaches perhaps a little longer and spectacles had become a necessity, he had lost none of his detective’s acumen.

His attention was drawn to a man seated at a nearby table. The man was about forty, well-built, clean-shaven and attired in chinos, a white open-necked shirt and a blazer. Speaking in English, he was engaged in an animated conversation on his mobile phone. Not that that was unusual; at this time of year, there were many English tourists in the capital.

Nevertheless, there was something about the man that interested Josse. It is never easy to quantify the instincts of a detective. It is perhaps a skill honed over many years of dealing with the criminal underclass, but it is not something that can be taught because a detective would be unable to define it, much less set it down in the form of a textbook. Suffice it to say that Lucien Josse possessed it.

Wanting to study the man more closely, but without arousing his suspicion, Josse turned in the man’s direction, but signalled to a waiter who was standing behind the Englishman. ‘
La même, m’sieur
,’ he said, holding up his empty pastis glass, but casting a covert glance at his suspect.

‘
Oui, m’sieur
,’ muttered the waiter, and went back into the cafe to fulfil Josse’s order.

When Josse was still working at the quai des Orfèvres, he had studied and remembered the computer-generated likeness of the man suspected of Debra Foley’s murder that had been prepared by the staff of the Santa Barbara Hotel in the rue de Castiglione. The original E-fit had shown the suspect with a beard and spectacles, but a computer artist at
le trente-six
had produced another version that took away the beard and glasses. Although by no means certain that this was the man seated at the next table, Josse was now sufficiently confident to warrant calling the police. He took out his mobile phone, dialled one-seven and waited for a reply. Turning his back to the man he suspected, he quietly explained who he was and that it was possible that Debra Foley’s murderer was sitting at the next table to him.

Despite Josse having suggested that the police arrive discreetly, five minutes after he had made his call, two police cars arrived from the direction of the place de la Concorde, and another from the Arc de Triomphe. All three had sped to the scene with blue lights flashing and two-tone horns screaming. In the event, it merely served to alert Josse’s suspect.

As the police alighted and moved rapidly towards the cafe where Josse was seated, the retired detective covertly indicated the suspect. The suspect, displaying some innate sense of danger and a degree of physical fitness, leaped from his seat and vaulted over the screen into the next cafe. Knocking over chairs and tables as he ran, he spilt wine and food over furious customers. Ignoring their protests, he vaulted a second screen into a third cafe and out into the street.

Continuing to run very fast, the suspect turned into the rue Washington. As he ran he pulled a key fob from his pocket and released the locks of a Jaguar car. Almost throwing himself behind the wheel, he started the engine, drove off at high speed and back into the avenue des Champs-Elysées.

The police, who had spent too long sitting in cars to be a physical match for the fleeing suspect, had seen the man escape and immediately ran back to their cars.

Within minutes they were in pursuit, the radio operators in each of the cars sending somewhat garbled messages to the control room. Very soon other nearby police units were driving fast towards the avenue des Champs-Elysées. It seemed to the casual onlooker that suddenly the avenue was filled with blue lights and the air rent with screaming two-tones. One cynical bystander suggested to his girlfriend that yet another police drama was being filmed.

The Jaguar, by now doing sixty miles an hour, drove into the place de la Concorde, its tyres screeching, and narrowly avoided a Parisian taxi, the driver of which firmly believed he had a divine right of way, regardless of other road users, density of traffic or street signs.

By now some ten police cars were following, but others were waiting in side turnings across the capital, listening to directions from the leading police car, the officer in which was now in a position to give a lucid commentary on what was happening.

The suspect drove into the rue de Rivoli but took the turning too wide and scraped the side of a postal service van, leaving the driver screaming volubly at the departing Jaguar, now lacking one of its wing mirrors.

From there the suspect threw a sudden sharp left turn into the rue de Louvre, the wheels on one side of his car almost leaving the ground and forcing a cyclist to throw himself and his machine on to the pavement to avoid certain death. Weaving in and out of the traffic in his desperate attempt to escape, the fugitive was paying no heed to the danger either to himself or others using the road. Another screaming left turn took him into the rue Etienne Marcel, scaring the life out of a woman pushing a pram, until finally the speeding Jaguar entered the place des Victoires. But it was here that his luck finally ran out.

By now police cars marshalled from all over Paris had been joined by units of the national gendarmerie and were homing in on the suspect’s vehicle. By some stroke of good fortune – the police subsequently claimed it was good tactical planning – police cars simultaneously entered the place des Victoires from each one of the several streets leading off it.

In his attempt to avoid one such car coming straight at him, intent on ramming him, the suspect veered sharply and collided with the ornate railings surrounding the statue of Louis XIV mounted on a horse.

Still unwilling to surrender, the suspect leaped from his car with a machine pistol in his hand and opened fire at the nearest policeman. The policeman fell to the ground, dead from a bullet in his heart. Two other officers were wounded before another police officer opened fire with his automatic SIG-Sauer Pro SP pistol, killing the suspect instantly.