Over the Edge (28 page)

‘About you and Dale?’

‘No. About me and someone. We were seen by one of his so-called friends, but he didn’t recognise Dale. That’s when he beat me up. One of the times. He wanted to know who I was with. Said he’d have them killed. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Then he went out and came back with this…this…thing. It was like a long gun. He touched me with it and it gave me an electric shock. It was terrible. After that I’d have told him anything. He was yelling names at me. “Is it so-and-so?” he’d shout, and I’d shake my head. They were all his business friends. All the people he suspected I was having an affair with were his business friends. He’d have killed me there and then if I’d said it was his driver. “Is it Krabbe?” he
shouted at me and jabbed me with the thing. “Yes,” I screamed. I had to, to make him stop. “Yes,” I said. “It’s Krabbe,” and he stopped.’

Mrs Wallenberg was sobbing like a jilted bride. When some composure was restored I said: ‘Tony Krabbe was murdered on the night of the eighth of November. A Saturday. Do you remember where you were on that night?’

‘Yes,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘I was here, at home.’

‘And was your husband with you?’

‘Yes.’ She fidgeted with the cuff of her blouse then added: ‘At first.’

‘So he wasn’t with you all the evening?’

Another long hesitation, but she’d made up her mind that she’d had enough. The time had come to make the break. ‘No, he wasn’t.’

‘Where was he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But he definitely wasn’t here with you?’

‘Not…not later.’

‘So he was here at home with you for the early part of the evening and he went out later?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he go in the car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Driving himself?’

‘No. Duggie came for him.’

‘Duggie? Who’s Duggie?’ As if I didn’t know.

‘He works for Peter, as his driver. He was an old friend of Dale’s, apparently, and he worked for an acquaintance of Peter’s. When his employer died Dale asked Peter to give him a job. When Dale died he started driving Peter. He’s a bit of a thug. I don’t like him.’

‘Would that employer happen to be Joe Crozier?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘Hmm, that’s interesting,’ I said, although I already knew it. ‘So where were we? Duggie came and picked up Peter. What time would this be?’

‘I’m not sure. Fairly late.’

‘Nine? Ten?’

‘About then.’ She stood up and walked over to a reproduction sideboard that was doubling as a video cabinet and found a box of tissues in one of the cupboards.

When she was seated again I said: ‘And what time did he come back?’

‘Not much later. He was only gone about an hour, an hour and a half. I hadn’t gone to bed. I was surprised to see him so early.’

‘Did he say where he’d been?’

‘No…he…he didn’t say.’

‘What did he say, Selina? Tell me what he did say.’

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘He said…he said that I was to forget he’d been out. He’d stayed in all night. He was tense, excitable. I thought they’d had too much to drink and crashed
the car or something. Next day I learnt about Tony Krabbe.’

‘And you put two and two together?’

‘No. I…I don’t know.’

I went over to the door and stood with it open, waiting for someone to come by. It was Robert. ‘Ask one of the WDCs to come here, Bob, please,’ I said to him.

Maggie appeared and I asked her to take Mrs Wallenberg up to one of the bedrooms and take care of her. Maggie gave me a look that my mother would have called old-fashioned and off they went.

Jeff had set up station in the hallway, with a fresh notebook to catalogue everything we were taking away. The WDCs had found Mrs Wallenberg’s shahtoosh hanging in her wardrobe, with another one like it, and a box containing ten brand new ones was found tucked away in one of his wardrobes. There was no sign of the napkin with the address that I’d seen him put in his pocket at the charity bash. I gave instructions for his collection of long black coats to be seized and placed in evidence bags.

Nigel appeared. ‘Found these for you,’ he said, and handed me a pair of black and white photographs that were creased and tattered at the edges. One showed two figures, male and female. He was wearing plus fours and she a long skirt, with tweed jackets and snow goggles. They were
each leaning on an ice axe. The other photo showed just the woman, sitting on a rock with an ice axe leaning against her leg. She looked like Grace Wallenberg.

‘That’s brilliant, Nigel,’ I said. ‘That’s brilliant.’

I had a wander around, taking my first decent look at the house where two generations of crooks had lived. The impression was that the old man and his wife had a certain amount of taste, but little of it had passed down to their only child. The place was desperately in need of a makeover. Modern tat sat uncomfortably with several decent pieces of furniture that looked as if they belonged there. Most of the rooms had real fireplaces, and the ones in the lounge and kitchen had the embers of log fires still smouldering in them. Neat piles of kindling and logs were stacked in the fireplaces. Very nice, I thought, when you had someone to do the dirty work.

A team was going through a room upstairs where they kept all the stuff of memories. Every house has somewhere like that. There were bicycles with upright handlebars and wicker baskets, wooden skis that must have weighed a ton, boxes of
Beano
and
Film Fun
annuals. Everything was piled up in the order that it had ceased to be of interest, like an archaeological site dedicated to amusement. I reminded the troops what to look for and resumed my wanderings.

The audiovisual team took video footage of everything. Their role is two-fold. They are part of the evidence-gathering process but they also protect our backs against accusations of wrecking the place.

‘The staff arrived at nine,’ Jeff told me, next time I passed through the hallway, ‘so I sent them home. There’s a secretary, a housekeeper and a gardener who looks about 90. I’ve taken their names and addresses.’

Two DCs came down the stairs carrying bulging evidence bags. ‘Three overcoats, as requested,’ one of them said, and Jeff wrote the details in his book and labelled the bags.

Maggie arrived back from ministering to Selina. ‘Another one you left sobbing, Charlie,’ she said, and then coloured up and looked embarrassed.

‘Is she OK?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. I made her a cup of tea. I’m…sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Don’t worry about it. C’mon, show me where the fixings are and we’ll make a cup for the troops.’

We were standing in the kitchen, checking on the strength of the brew before allowing it to be distributed, when Dave knocked at the window. I held up my steaming mug and mouthed: ‘I’m busy,’ at him, but he shook his head and gestured for me to come outside. I gestured for him to join us but he was adamant.

‘It’s important,’ I heard him shout, his voice reduced to a murmur by the double-glazing.

‘I’d better see what he wants,’ I said, standing my hardly touched mug of tea on the counter. Maggie did the same and followed me outside.

He was round the back of the house, where the sun rarely shines. The ground was still wet and the brief dry spell had not been enough to drive off the air of decay and dereliction that lay around there. The grass was long and the hedge overgrown with brambles. Dave was standing outside the woodshed.

‘In there,’ he said, nodding towards the lean-to building.

I went in very slowly, looking all around me, allowing my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Down at the floor, up at the tiled roof, forward at the wall which was whitewashed and hung with various tools. One end was piled to the roof with neatly sawn logs, and at the other end an ancient circular saw stood, its motor caked in sawdust, only the gleaming blade indicating that it was in working order. I took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of the wood. It conjured up memories of childhood bonfires and school camps. I was looking for the sawn-off end of the ice axe used to kill Krabbe, but it wasn’t there. Between the saw and the logs was a pile of kindling, each piece cut to precisely the same size as its companions. It was a big pile, enough, I
imagined, to see them through the winter.

I turned back to Dave and shrugged my shoulders. ‘What?’

‘Keep looking,’ he said.

The sawdust in the air was making my eyes water. The tools on the wall were old carpenters’ tools. Giant brace and bits, several clamps and a spare saw blade with teeth the size of chocolate Hobnobs. I looked up at the roof. Big hooks were screwed into some of the beams. An ancient hurricane lamp hung from one, and various threaded components, caked in rust and dust, from some of the others. They looked as if they might be for screwing through fenceposts, or be gate-hinges, but I was guessing.

I turned round. ‘C’mon, sunshine,’ I said. ‘What have you found?’

Dave broke away from the conversation he was having with Maggie and joined me in the shed. He stood in front of the pile of kindling and pointed. ‘Down there.’

I followed his pointing finger. Hooked over a nail, half-hidden by the pile of sticks, was the implement used to chop them. It was the head of another ice axe, but with a different handle. A short one designed for a hammer, at a guess, and suitably modified. I wondered about fingerprints, decided we had nothing to learn from them, and carefully picked it up. Cast into the side of the pointed blade was the manufacturer’s name:
Scheidegger
. Dave had found the twin of the axe that had killed Krabbe. For 50 years, unknown to Wallenberg, it had been used by the gardener to chop kindling to keep the home fires burning. Now it was going to put the head of the household in jail for the rest of his life.

‘Well done, kid!’ I said. ‘Blinking well done!’

We’d had a good day. We were taking three overcoats back for forensic examination, plus photographs showing that Wallenberg’s parents had
owned two ice axes similar to the ones in question, plus the actual blade of one of them. Wallenberg had a motive for killing Krabbe, his alibi was shot to pieces and Duggie was incriminated, which meant I’d be able to play one off against the other. And then there was Selina. She’d signed Krabbe’s death warrant to save her boyfriend and herself, but that wasn’t against the law.

First thing I did when we were back at the nick was put out an APW for the arrest of Peter Wallenberg. If he tried to leave the country we’d have him. Then we had a debriefing.

The Customs and Excise people took the shahtoosh. They’d send samples to the Textile Technology group to confirm that they were what we thought and raise their own prosecution of Wallenberg. The overcoats went to our lab for examination.

One team had looked in the triple garages at the house. Mrs W’s Mazda was in there but not her husband’s Range Rover. The garages were
well-equipped
with tools, they reported, and we wondered if this was where they prepared the cars used in the races. I asked for details of the Range Rover to be circulated and arranged for Mrs Wallenberg to be given protection.

The prison service likes to flex its muscles occasionally and let us know that it is an independent entity, beholden to no one. They shelter
their charges jealously. If we need to see one of them we have to go through their visits office and take our turn with the wives and mothers and girlfriends that most of them attract like carpets attract the side of your toast with butter on. There is another way, of course. I rang Bentley prison and asked to speak to the governor. It helps when you’re old friends, and everybody is susceptible to a bit of flirting. She’s no fool – you don’t get to be governor of one of the toughest jails in the country by falling for smooth talk – but when I explained that Duggie Jones was facing a murder charge and his co-conspirator was still on the loose, she agreed to cut a few corners for me. I thanked her and said I’d arrange transport to bring him to Heckley in the morning.

I filled in the diary and started to think about a submission to the CPS, but before that we had to find Wallenberg. When I felt myself nodding off seated at my desk I decided to call it a day and went home. I collected a rogan josh from the Last Viceroy and after a shower I fell asleep in bed and dreamt about log fires – which was understandable – and those traffic cones that have a flashing yellow light on top, which was weird. I had to count them, but they were moving around all the time and if one flashed I had to start again and my hat kept falling over my eyes. I only thought about Rosie after the alarm insisted another day had begun.

They found Wallenberg’s Range Rover Vogue in Heckley multi-storey car park. I was in Gilbert’s office, giving him a positive update for once, when the message came through. I asked for it to be handed over to Forensics for a thorough examination, and told them to let me know if they came across an electric cattle prod. One hadn’t surfaced during the search of his house.

That meant that Wallenberg was either still in Heckley or had an accomplice who had spirited him away.

‘Or he’s travelling by public transport,’ Gilbert suggested.

I pulled a face at him.

‘Taxi to the airport?’ he explained.

‘Possible,’ I conceded.

There was a message on my desk when I returned to my office. A woman called Lorraine rang, it said. She wouldn’t leave a surname but she’d try again later.

The convoy bearing Duggie Jones arrived and he was ushered into the station. I grabbed a mug of tea, two sausage rolls and a Kit Kat while he familiarised himself with his solicitor and his story. When we were good and ready Dave and I joined them in interview room number one.

It was laid out ready with notepads and pens for each of us, and four new tapes still in their cellophane wrappings sat in the middle of the
Formica table. Dave fumbled with them until he found a loose corner and set the recorder going. I did the introductions.

‘We’re talking about fresh charges, Duggie,’ I said, ‘so I have to caution you again and remind you of your rights under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Do you understand?’