A Banquet of Consequences (62 page)

Barbara had received an early-morning call from a Shaftesbury solicitor called Ravita Khan who’d briskly announced that any further
dealings with her new clients—Mr. MacKerron and Ms. Goldacre—would have to go through her, so Barbara knew from that phone call forward, everything would have to be on the up-and-up. Still, she was in a lather to get back to MacKerron Baked Goods and the house that faced it. She could well imagine what was going on there inside those buildings while she and Winston waited to be escorted into the presence of Sylvia Parker-Humphries: a team of removal men doing their bit to empty the house of all its contents, followed by massive cleaning and scouring during which anything having to do with Clare Abbott’s demise was carefully and thoroughly removed or destroyed. She told Winston this in a hushed tone. He advised her to step outside and “Have a fag, Barb. It’ll settle your nerves.”

She did so, but didn’t feel much better afterwards. He suggested next that she spend the time getting Dorset Constabulary on board. He was fully confident that they’d have the warrant in hand soon enough, and they were going to need more than just themselves to sort through everything at the bakery and in the house. This seemed a productive plan, so Barbara stepped outside again to make contact with the county’s chief constable. He’d have the manpower they needed. What remained to be seen was whether he would lend them out for a romp in Shaftesbury.

By the time this was all in hand, they’d made it into the office of Sylvia Parker-Humphries, whose fresh face made her look far too young to be a magistrate but who also knew her way round a search warrant request. A Q & A followed. Barbara could have done without this—as well as without the magistrate’s scrutiny of her leopard-print high-tops, Barbara’s bow to dressing for the occasion—but Winston was as ever imperturbable, and his good-mannered confidence seemed to assuage whatever concerns the magistrate had.

They arrived back in Shaftesbury late in the morning to find four Dorset constables hanging about in the parking area. They quickly discovered that Alastair MacKerron was at present in parts unknown but suspected by Caroline Goldacre to be, as recounted by one of the constables, “in Sharon Halsey’s undoubtedly unwashed bed because
I
haven’t seen him”—while Ms. Goldacre was now locked into the house with a Mrs. Khan advising her not to open the door.

“Not even to let Stan here use the loo,” the other constable said, indicating a beefy red-faced police brother who had apparently been forced to do his business down the road and behind yew and hawthorn hedge, no bathroom roll provided. He’d had to use leaves, such and as they were. Ouch, Barbara thought.

Having heard all this and acknowledged their grievances, Barbara and Winston went to the door and rapped smartly. A stunning Indian woman opened it—Ravita Khan herself, Barbara supposed—and held out her hand wordlessly. Into it, Barbara laid the warrant. “House and bakery as well,” she said.

The solicitor closed the door and bolted it. One of the constables said, “Hang on there,” but Barbara told him that reading the warrant was in order. It would take a few minutes. She and Winston had even been the recipients of a compliment from Sylvia Parker-Humphries on the depth of its detailed explanations. Barbara reckoned she owed Dorothea Harriman a pint for having done such a fine job of ensuring their entrance into Caroline Goldacre’s digs.

The door opened again. Ravita Khan nodded. “Search as you will,” she told them. “But keep your distance from my client as she’s not—I assume—under arrest.”

“Cross my heart,” Barbara told her. “You, Winnie?”

“Hope to die,” he finished cooperatively.

The solicitor did not look amused. Nonetheless, she stepped back from the door.

They used a division of labour: with Barbara and two of the Dorset constables taking the house and Winston taking the bakery with the other two constables. Before they began their search, though, Barbara brought the Dorset team into the picture of what they were looking for and its inherent danger to their health. Anything remaining sealed by the manufacturer they weren’t to bother with at this juncture, she told them. Anything whose seal was broken they were not to open at all. Bag it, mark it, document it for analysis at the lab, she said. And be aware: This was a nooks-and-crannies job. What they were after could be in plain sight and merely disguised as something else—“It’s crystalline, so think salt or sugar,” she told them—but it could also be hidden away: under floorboards, in the garret, in a
hollow behind a picture on the wall, tied in place to the sofa springs, buried in a mattress . . . God only knew. What she didn’t add was that it might also be entirely gone at this point, carefully spread along a country roadside in the dead of night over a period of miles so that it dissipated into the wind. Who knew what was actually possible?

Caroline Goldacre was nowhere to be seen, for which Barbara thanked her stars as she and the constables ducked into the house. Ravita Khan informed her that her client was above stairs and there she would stay until the search reached that part of the house, at which point she would retreat elsewhere.

Barbara doubted that Caroline would manage this feat of keeping herself away from what was happening, and this proved to be the case. Once one of the constables set to work in the kitchen, another in the sitting room, and Barbara herself in the laundry room, pantry, and what appeared to be a home office, Caroline’s footsteps sounded in the upstairs corridor and quickly afterwards they came down the stairs.

“Ms. Goldacre,” spoken by Ravita Khan went completely unheeded.

“I want to see what they’re doing to my house” was her sharp reply.

“Please be advised,” the solicitor said.

“Oh, I have no bloody intention of saying a word to them, but if they’re taking
anything
out of my home, I intend to watch them do it and you’d do the same.”

“I’m here to monitor—”

“You’re here because my husband’s a fool. I am not. And as he’s not present at the moment, you’ve little enough to do, so don’t block the stairway or I’m afraid I’ll have to elbow past you.”

The silence that followed might have indicated anything from Ravita attempting to control her temper to a bout of arm wrestling between solicitor and client. As things turned out, it indicated that Ravita had stepped away, giving Caroline access to the officers who were conducting their search.

Her commentary followed: “You can’t be thinking I’d be so stupid as to put something there . . . Hang that picture back properly . . . If you break a single plate from that collection . . . They’re pre-World War I and they’re extremely valuable and . . . Really, would
anyone
hide something up a chimney? . . . Do
not
overturn that sofa! . . . A
hollowed-out book? This is unbelievable . . . What on earth could be hidden in a fireplace poker?”

Barbara reckoned that the constable was thinking what to do with the poker, not what was hidden in it. She popped into the sitting room. She said, “You can bang on as much as you like, Ms. Goldacre, but you’re slowing the process which is only going to result in our being here hours longer than this would’ve taken if you kept your distance.”

Caroline, she saw, was stylishly dressed for going out in a tea-length skirt, soft-looking leather boots, a large pullover worn to hide her girth, and a handsome scarf to tie everything together. Dorothea Harriman couldn’t have managed it better, but Barbara wondered what the message was supposed to be: a busy woman whose day has been interrupted by the local rozzers or a visual distraction intended to throw the coppers off their game.

“What is it exactly that you’re looking for? And do you think I’m so stupid—if I did
anything
, which I did not—as to keep evidence lying round this place? I’ll tell you this much, if you’d care to listen, if you stumble across—”

“Ms. Goldacre.” Ravita Khan made an heroic attempt to gain control of the situation. “You have to understand that in the presence of the police, anything you say—”

“They haven’t cautioned me,” Caroline argued. “I watch the telly. I know my rights. I can say anything I please in my own home, which I intend to do.”

Barbara wanted to get on with things, but this was too interesting to walk away from. She leaned against the doorway as one of the two constables made for the stairs to begin above. She said, “Go on.”

“Ms. Goldacre,” the solicitor said, and then to Barbara, “You’re being warned not to encourage this.”

“Why do I think she doesn’t need encouragement?”

“I’m asking you to get about your search and get off this property immediately afterwards,” Ravita Khan said.

“I have something to say,” Caroline told her, “and I won’t be stopped by you or anyone.” When the solicitor did not reply, she shot Barbara a look that seemed triumphant. She went on with, “There’s
nothing
here. Do you understand that? Neither of them would be so idiotic as to hang onto whatever it is they used in the first place, and even if they were both of them completely mentally incompetent, they’d at least be wise enough to keep this . . . this
stuff
at her house, which is where you ought to be conducting your search.”

Barbara nodded. “I’ll take that on board.”

“You’ve got a warrant for that, don’t you?” Caroline persisted. “Because if you’ve come here without the intention of going there next, you’re more stupid than—”

The front door opened. Winston came in and gave Barbara a head jerk indicating a word was in order. She excused herself to Caroline, asked the second constable to finish up in the sitting room and head into the kitchen to take up where she’d left off, and joined Winston in the garden.

He said to her, “Didn’t take long, Barb. There’s not much. Most is sealed up proper back where it came from. We got everything from the fridge, we emptied the pellets from the heating unit, we bagged whatever was left unsealed.”

“Loose floorboards, a garret, chimneys, a safe, cupboards too shallow to be reasonable?”

He shook his head. “Nuffin. An’ I got to say: Way I see it, not likely anyone’d hang on summat so dangerous.”

“
If
they knew exactly how dangerous it was.”

“They got to or they’d be dead themselves, innit. This’s the wrong tree, Barb, you ask me. We c’n bag stuff and cart it off and have the lab do its bit, but I say the proof of who did what is goin to come from where everything else’s come from in this case.”

“Which is?”

“Words. What got written, what got read, what got said, what got recorded, what got heard. Tha’s what it’s been from the first. You ask me, the answer’s at Clare’s digs where it’s always been.”

“That’s what the inspector thinks as well. Sumalee’s words, in his case.”

“Well?” Winston said.

Barbara didn’t disagree, but once again they were caught in a
t
’s-and-
i
’s spot. So she thought about words from every direction, and
she considered where they were with the case because of words. Ultimately, she could see that aside from checking every inch of the property for a sign that sodium azide had ever rested upon it, there was another route to go and they even had the search warrant to go it.

She said, “Pack up every computer, then. There’s at least one in the bakery’s office. There’s probably others in the house as well. An’ she’s got a laptop. If it’s words we’re after, we might as well go straight to the source and see where else they lead us besides her nibs’s emails.”

He nodded. “Will do, then,” he said.

“It’ll take bloody hours,” she warned him. “Christ, Winnie. It could take days.”

“Not like we have much choice,” he said. “I know you got the super hanging over your head, wanting a result and all that. But . . . what else we got, Barb?”

“Like you say, nothing. Pray we get lucky with the computers, then.”

FULHAM

LONDON

Lynley arrived at Rory Statham’s flat round half past one in the afternoon, making the drive over from London Zoo with Arlo in the passenger seat. He hadn’t seen Daidre, but he hadn’t expected to see her. When he’d rung her to tell her Arlo’s mistress was being released from hospital, she’d reported that a beastly day was in store for her—“pardon the pun,” she’d added with a laugh—since one of the giraffes was due to deliver as was one of the zebras. But she would make certain that all of Arlo’s belongings were packed up and ready in her office. Her assistant would hand the dog over. “We’ll all miss him, Tommy. He’s been a delight,” she said. “Again, he makes me think I ought to have a dog. Or something.” Lynley didn’t ask what the “or something” was. He hated to think that
or something
might mean that he was being compared to a dog.

In Fulham, once he turned into the street in which Rory had her flat, Arlo’s floppy ears lifted, elephant-like, in the universal sign of
dog expectation. His feathery tail began a rapid beat. When Lynley parked and came round the side of the car for the animal, the dog shot out, made a dash for the proper building, and hurtled up the steps.

Lynley followed, carrying the dog’s belongings, along with what he had of Rory’s. He used his elbow on the bell, and Arlo’s happy yipping was all the identification required for Rory or her sister to release the lock on the door. The dog was inside before Lynley had the door open more than twelve inches, and he was up the stairs before Lynley had the door closed behind him.

The sounds of greeting between dog and mistress floated down the stairs: Rory laughing, Arlo barking joyfully, Rory’s sister saying, “Come inside, you two.” When Lynley got to the flat, the door stood open. Rory was supine and giggling on the floor as Arlo sniffed her, licked her face, ran in tight circles, and licked her face again.

Around the sitting room stood the boxes of materials that had been removed earlier by SO7. Heather was in the midst of returning items to the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom and instructing her sister to occupy the sofa and rest. This Rory was clearly reluctant to do, as prior to Lynley’s arrival she’d apparently been at her desk, involved in dealing with the accumulated post and in putting things back in order. She returned to it as Lynley entered.