The Chalon Heads (29 page)

She shook back her hair, water dripping all around her on to the warm stone paving. ‘What do you reckon this is?’ She gave him the tube, two inches in diameter, nine inches long, with a metallic green finish. ‘It was in the sump below the grating in the centre of the pool floor. Is it something to do with the chlorination?’

He turned it in his hands and read a tiny inscription on the bottom. ‘Made in Italy’. He turned the top and it began to unscrew. ‘It’s a small vacuum flask. Neat.’ He looked up at her, then beyond her towards the bushes where Toby Fitzpatrick had appeared. ‘Let’s take it inside.’

‘OK,’ she said, and picked up her towel.

When they got to the kitchen he laid a sheet of plastic on the table and set out a small stack of sample bags. He drew on a pair of latex gloves and finished unscrewing the lid of the canister. It was an elegant little container, a designer item, something to store a chilled cocktail for a warm day at the races, perhaps. But in this case it contained three small plastic bags. The first contained a little black pipe and a disposable butane lighter, the second a few crumbs of what looked like gravel, and the third a smear of white powder.

‘What are the little rocks?’ Kathy asked.

‘Looks like freebase,’ he replied. ‘They treat the powder with solvents to get rid of impurities, and it ends up like this. It’s very pure, and it can be smoked, which would save her nose.’

Kathy sat back and thought, then she reached for her notebook and the phone. She found the number she was after and pressed the buttons.

‘Hello? Is that Sally Malone? . . . This is DS Kolla, Sally, from the Met. I saw you yesterday, with Chief Inspector Brock, remember? . . . Yes, look, this sounds a bit odd, but I wanted to check something with you. The thing that brought Sammy and Eva together, was it the swimming? . . . No,
swimming.
Only, why I ask, I understand Eva was a great one for the water, and I thought maybe that was something they had in common? . . . Really? Are you sure?’

Kathy listened for a while to Sally’s voice then said goodbye. She snapped the phone off and smiled at Desai. ‘The man you saw out there by the pool, the neighbour.’

‘Yes, what about him?’

‘His wife told me that Eva liked the pool, but she’d never seen Sammy go near it. Well, according to Sally, Sammy hates the water. He’s never learned to swim. He’s terrified of it, and his son died of drowning.’

‘Ah.’

‘The one place Eva could be absolutely sure her husband would never go was the bottom of the pool. Unless they drained it first.’

Desai smiled. ‘Why don’t you tell McLarren the good news?’

‘You do it, Leon.’ She stopped herself saying, ‘You probably want his approval more than me.’ It was a mean thought, just because he seemed to have given up on Brock. ‘You’re in charge. I’ll go and get changed.’

While she was in the little hut, changing back into her clothes, her mobile rang. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Kathy. Bren.’

‘Bren! Thank goodness. What’s going on?’

‘We’ve been closed down, that’s what’s going on.’ He sounded flat.

‘What’s been happening?’

‘They’ve been searching Queen Anne’s Gate for that bloody Canada Cover. And Brock’s house. No success, naturally. Bloody idiots.’

‘Where is he?’

‘As far as I can make out, he spent today helping them with their enquiries. The word to Dot this evening was that he would be on stress leave for a while. None of us have seen him since first thing this morning.’

‘What about you?’

‘Remember that case a couple of days ago, about a tourist murdered in the Caribbean? I’m at home now, packing my hot-weather gear, what I’ve got of it. What do coppers in the West Indies
wear
, do you reckon?’

‘They’re sending you to the West Indies?’

‘First available flight. Do you know how many headquarters’ detectives are overseas at any particular time, giving advice to local forces? Twenty per cent. We’ve been missing out, Kathy.’

‘Oh, Bren . . . This is terrible.’

‘Yeah, well, never mind. At least you’re still on the case. Got plenty of coverage in the papers this morning, I see. “Horror Find in Surrey Mansion”, stuff like that. Concerning the case, I took a call this morning from the Farnham police, just before all hell broke loose. In the excitement I forgot about it. Seems the Starlings’ milkman spoke to them. He’d heard the radio report that Mrs Starling had been missing since she went to London on the fourth. He wanted to tell them that he thinks she may have been there later than that.’

‘He saw her?’

‘No. Something about the stuff he delivered. Farnham police didn’t think it amounted to much, but I thought I’d better pass it on.’

‘Thanks, Bren.’

‘How’s McLarren?’

‘Like he always is, only more so. He thinks his favourite character is behind all this.’

‘Raphael the super-forger? You’re joking!’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘Bloody hell. That guy’s amazing. Just keep your head down, Kathy, till this blows over. That’s what we’ve all got to do, Brock included. Trust nobody. Especially Desai.’

Kathy felt chilled. ‘Oh? How do you mean?’

‘He’s up to something.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Kathy glanced out of the doorway of the hut, checking that she was alone.

‘I didn’t like the way he was going on about Brock having a breakdown, for a start.’

‘Well, he has been acting oddly, Bren.’

‘It isn’t just that . . . Leon’s thick with McLarren.’

‘Today, you mean? McLarren needs a lab liaison—’

‘Not just today. Last week.’

‘Last week?’ Kathy felt a little jolt of alarm. ‘You sure?’

‘Last week, before any of us knew what was going on, Dot took a call from McLarren’s office. Superintendent McLarren returning DS Desai’s phone call. She mentioned it to me.’

‘When was this? Saturday?’

‘Saturday was the auction. No, it was before that. Friday. Brock had sent Leon off to work with the lab people on making the copy. Dot gave McLarren’s office the lab number.’

Kathy was silent. She shivered, and ran her hand through her damp hair. They had first met with Sammy on Thursday. The third ransom note hadn’t arrived until Friday morning. At that stage there was no conceivable reason why McLarren should have been aware of what was happening.

Desai found Kathy’s silence on the journey back up to central London mystifying and rather intimidating. She merely nodded when he told her how pleased McLarren was with their find, and answered in monosyllables when he tried to make conversation. Trying to get some clue to her mood, he found himself struggling to make small-talk, something which, being no good at it, he normally despised. He would have been startled to know that her mind was preoccupied with calculations as to just how duplicitous he might be, and just how much allowance she should make for the fact that, as she was now prepared to admit to herself, she found him so attractive.

McLarren was waiting for them at the Broadway entrance of the New Scotland Yard building. As Kathy and Desai got into the back seat, McLarren’s driver started the car and moved out into the traffic.

‘Uxbridge,’ McLarren told them. ‘You weren’t planning on an early dinner tonight, were you?’ He chuckled. ‘And is that the incriminating evidence?’

Desai reached forward and gave him the packages.

‘Ah, yes. Excellent, excellent. This should put Mr Starling off his food for a wee while.’

‘Expecting trouble, are we, sir?’ Desai looked over his shoulder at the car following close behind, its windscreen filled by the silhouettes of large men.

‘I’m very much afraid that we’re going to cause Mr Starling some social embarrassment,’ McLarren said. ‘It’s time we put some pressure on him. We understand that he and Mr and Mrs Cooper—the couple he’s staying with in Uxbridge—have guests tonight. Two Malaysian property investors and their wives. They should just be getting tucked into the smoked salmon.’

‘Do we know the Coopers?’

‘No criminal record. They’re both directors of a Portuguese time-share investment company in which Starling has—sorry,
had—
an interest, and they’ve a number of other business interests of their own. Younger than Starling. Sporty couple, by all accounts. Racehorses and ocean-going yachts.’

The house was a large neo-Georgian mansion, trying hard to look several hundred years old, but actually newer than the classic Aston Martin parked on the gravel drive in front of it. There was also a large white Mercedes and, tucked discreetly to one side, a van bearing the logo of a chef ’s hat and the name Lush Nosh. The front door was opened by a sleek tuxedo-clad youth, hired, so Kathy assumed from his look of confusion, for the evening. McLarren asked for Mr Cooper. After a moment a tall, tanned man in a cream suit came to the door. A third car had joined the two from the Yard, and Cooper looked alarmed at the invasion.

‘May we come in, sir?’ McLarren said, showing him his warrant card.

The hall was paved with squares of black and white marble, an archway leading directly off to one side to a room occupied by a long dining-table. The lingering summer evening light was supplemented by candles, their flames glittering on crystal and silver, casting a warm glow on the faces turned expectantly towards the visitors in the hall.

McLarren examined them in turn. ‘Mr Starling with you, sir?’

‘He . . . he’s in his room.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘Eh? He went to fetch something a couple of minutes ago. Why?’

‘I have a warrant for his arrest,’ McLarren said, loudly and distinctly enough for everyone to hear. At the dining-table, an athletic-looking blonde woman in a black cocktail dress sprang to her feet, and four pairs of Malaysian eyes widened in consternation.

‘My God!’ Mr Cooper said, in a whisper. ‘You’re wrong, you know. Quite wrong. He worshipped Eva. He wouldn’t harm a hair—’

‘Mr Starling is wanted on drugs-related charges, Mr Cooper. And we also have a warrant to search these premises, sir,’ McLarren went on, in an official monotone, offering him a sheet of paper. ‘We have reason to believe there are prohibited drugs on the premises, contrary to section one, paragraph four of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971.’

‘Good grief!’ Mr Cooper had turned much paler.

‘Drugs?’ one of the Malaysian men murmured anxiously across the table to the other. ‘Drug squad?’ They began talking rapidly in Malay, their wives joining in an agitated whisper.

‘This is preposterous!’ Mrs Cooper said loudly, bearing down on McLarren from her place at the head of the table. ‘You’ve made some ridiculous cock-up!’

‘I don’t believe so, madam.’ McLarren smiled benignly.

‘But we’ve just served the salmon!’ Mrs Cooper said, in a tone of outrage, then faltered at the absurdity of the whole thing.

‘Well, I am extremely sorry about that. It’s Mrs Cooper, is it? Superintendent McLarren.’ He wiggled his bushy eyebrows and gave her a wolfish smile, which greatly increased her alarm. ‘Please do continue with your dinner. We’ll be as unobtrusive as we possibly can.’

She stared at him in disbelief, then turned back to try to calm her guests, who were rising to their feet. ‘Please,’ she said, the faintest note of hysteria detectable beneath the hockey-captain confidence of her voice, ‘there’s really no need to be concerned. There’s been some incredibly stupid mistake. My husband will sort it all out. You read about this sort of thing in the papers all the time.’

Her four guests exchanged looks, trying to decide what was the socially acceptable thing to do.

‘Mr Cooper,’ McLarren went on, ‘why don’t you take us to see Mr Starling?’

Cooper led them along a short corridor to a door connecting to the self-contained granny-flat, which he referred to as the guests’ wing. He knocked on the door, but there was no reply. He opened it and they went in. Across the sitting-room, the evening breeze stirred the curtains on each side of the open french windows leading out to the back garden. There was no sign of Sammy Starling, his scattered possessions suggesting a hurried departure.

While the others began their search for Starling, his records, and his prohibited substances, Kathy returned to the dining-room, where Mrs Cooper was sitting among the ruins of her dinner party.

‘They’ve gone,’ she said bitterly, waving at the empty seats of their guests. ‘I just can’t believe it. We’ve worked
so
hard for this, and we were
this
close, and this happens. It’s all so . . . so . . . stupid!’ She shook her head in despair.

Kathy took the seat beside her.

‘I don’t want to talk to that Scottish git!’ Mrs Cooper continued, a flatter Midlands accent coming more strongly now through the home counties boarding-school vowels. ‘Who does he think he is?’ She reached into her small handbag and brought out a packet of cigarettes, one of which she lit aggressively from a candle. As she bent her face to the flame it illuminated the many little creases and wrinkles that long hours spent sailing and sunbathing had added to age and experience.

‘It was Eva, wasn’t it? The drugs thing,’ she said, after drawing in a deep breath of smoke. ‘Sammy wouldn’t touch that stuff with a barge-pole. It terrified him.’

‘He had a record in that area, at one time,’ Kathy said gently.

‘Oh, when he was a kid! God, we all do stupid things when we’re kids. But not any more. Not for years. But I suppose your records are for ever, aren’t they? God, it’s so stupid! I’ve heard him talk about drugs, here, at this table, with Eva here too, and how it frightened him, the way things had become now.’

‘How long have you known that Eva used drugs?’

‘Oh . . . I suppose I’ve always suspected it, right from the beginning. She had these mood swings, and this way of being sort of abstracted sometimes, detached, her eyes and mind somewhere else. For Sammy it was part of her mystery and appeal, but I used to think, oho, this girl’s on something.’

‘This was right at the beginning, you say? When he first met her?’

Mrs Cooper sucked at her cigarette and breathed smoke out through both mouth and nose. ‘In Portugal, yes. She and her family lived in this house on a block of land we wanted to make up a development site for a block of apartments. The house was nothing much, old and a bit run-down, but the site was spectacular, the best bit on a hillside overlooking the beach. We’d heard that the old man who owned the house was difficult, a crusty old bugger, the last in a long aristocratic line. When we eventually got an appointment to see him, Ivor didn’t want to take Sammy. He thought it might put the old count off, Sammy being Chinese, but Sammy went anyway, and they got on quite well. Even more surprising, Sammy took a fancy to the old man’s daughter. I remember Ivor talking about it afterwards. “Sammy’s been smitten,” he said, and he was right. I thought, when I heard how old she was, that he was a bloody fool, and he was just going to have to get over it, but he never did.’