Chelsea Mansions (44 page)

Brock came over to her side and said, ‘Did we find out any more about Toby Beaumont?’

‘Yes, a little, about his father.’ She searched through the papers on her desk and found what she was looking for. ‘Well, not much. His name was Miles, so presumably he wrote that note on the back of the photo.’

‘And probably took the picture too,’ Brock said.

‘Yes. Born 1910, Eton, Oxford, the army. He was sent over to France with the British Expeditionary Force in 1939 and evacuated from Dunkirk the following June. In September 1941 he joined the Special Operations Executive which had just been formed to carry out raids in occupied Europe. In 1942 he was parachuted into Greece as part of Operation Harling, which blew up the railway viaduct at Gorgopotamos and cut the railway line from Thessaloniki to Athens and Piraeus which was being used by the Germans to supply their army in North Africa. He subsequently returned to England, took part in D-Day and was awarded the Military Medal.’

‘A distinguished record, then.’

‘Very. Toby must have idolised him.’

‘So what did Miles do next?’

‘Nothing. At least nothing we can discover. There are no records of him after he quit the army in 1946 as a full colonel, until he committed suicide ten years later, in November 1956.’

‘The time of Suez,’ Brock said. ‘The end of innocence—wasn’t that what Toby called it? He was at Suez, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

They said nothing for a moment, Brock deep in thought. ‘So what was he up to?’ he said finally. ‘This hero of wartime special ops who vanishes from the record, and then plays host to an American diplomat and a senior Soviet party member at his home in London. What kind of
larks
was he up to?’ Brock shook his head and got to his feet. ‘I think we’ve been mesmerised, Kathy, by the Russians. Let’s go and have another chat to Toby.’

As they made for the door they were called back by Zack, who had returned from taking the surveillance hard drives to the SERIS unit in South London.

‘We’ve looked at that gap on the night of Sunday May the thirtieth,’ Zack said, ‘when Moszynski was killed. The system was checked at eighteen minutes past midnight, and it was discovered to have been switched off at nine-fifty-two p.m., just before Moszynski left the house.’

‘That’s what the security people said.’

‘Yes, and that’s what the copy that we took from the hard drive showed. But we’ve now had a closer look at the hard drive, and it seems that the system was actually switched off at six minutes past eleven. The previous hour and fourteen minutes had been recorded, but then erased.’

‘Aha.’ Brock leaned forward. ‘Wayne Everett. But is it possible to retrieve the missing time?’

‘If you go to the computer suite I’ll show you what we’ve got so far,’ Zack said.

They hurried there, where Zack typed on a keyboard and the screen in front of them buzzed into life, a crackle of white static at first, clearing to show the front steps of the Moszynski house and the street beyond. A car drove past, then a figure came out from beneath the camera and stood for a while at the top of the steps, the man’s head and shoulders bathed in the porch light: Mikhail Moszynski. He looked to left and right up the street, then walked down the steps and across to the gate in the fence to the gardens on the far side, where the lower half of his body was visible as he fiddled with the lock, swung the gate open and disappeared off the top of the screen.

‘Nothing happens for a couple of minutes,’ Zack said, and there was a buzz of static as the recording was fast-forwarded. ‘Now . . .’

The lower half of a figure emerged in the top left of the screen. It was wearing dark trousers, and against the background of dark foliage it was difficult to make out any detail. It walked quite slowly to the gate and went into the gardens.

‘Another five minutes where nothing happens,’ Zack fast-forwarded the film. ‘Here we go.’

The dark trousers had reappeared at the gate, and retraced their route out of view.

‘There’s nothing more for another twenty minutes,’ Zack said, ‘until Wayne Everett comes out and goes across the road, just as he said. There’s no sign of him carrying a knife.’

Brock was getting to his feet. ‘Come on, Kathy.’

‘You know who it is?’ she said.

‘Yes, so do you. Didn’t you see the stick?’

There was a car standing at the kerb outside the hotel when they arrived, its engine running. As they went up the steps the front door opened and Toby emerged, one hand clutching his stick and a briefcase.

‘Hello, Toby,’ Brock said. ‘I’m glad we’ve caught you in.’

‘Oh.’ He glanced from Brock to Kathy and back. ‘I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a rush, Chief Inspector. Let’s make it another time.’

‘Sorry, this won’t wait.’ Brock advanced on him so that he had to back through the door. Looking over her shoulder Kathy noticed the driver get out of the waiting car. It was the concierge, she saw, Garry, the silent one.

They moved into the hotel office. Filing cabinet drawers were open, papers strewn across the table, as if there had been a hurried search for something, and Toby’s photographs were missing from the wall.

‘Where are you off to?’ Brock asked.

‘Can you tell me what this is all about?’ Toby said, a touch of annoyance in his voice. ‘I really am in rather a hurry.’

‘Sit down, Toby,’ Brock said, and drew out a chair for himself.

They heard the front door slam shut and Garry came in and stood behind them in the office doorway.

‘We’ve managed to decipher the CCTV footage shot by the camera on Mikhail Moszynski’s porch on the night he died,’ Brock said. ‘It shows him going into the gardens, closely followed by yourself.’

Toby stood there and stared, inscrutable behind the tinted glasses. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. You stayed with Moszynski for about five minutes and then left. You were the only one in the gardens with him until the security guard went in there twenty minutes later and raised the alarm. Care to explain?’

‘I think not.’

‘Very well. Toby Beaumont, I am arresting you on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Mikhail Moszynski. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Toby listened in silence to the caution, immobile as if on parade. Then he glanced at Garry and slowly sat down, facing Brock across the table.

‘Very well. You want the truth, do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mikhail Moszynski made my life hell. For some reason that I could never fathom, he was obsessed with this building, with Chelsea Mansions, and was determined to own it all. One by one he bought out the other owners until there was just us left. When I refused to sell he resorted to subterfuge. I needed money to carry out a much-needed modernisation of the hotel, and one day a guest, a very plausible sort of chap, got talking to me about it. How much would I need? he asked. More than the bank was prepared to lend, I told him. It turned out he worked for a private investment company that specialised in loans for property developments of various kinds. We discussed the ideas I had in mind, and why the bank thought them too ambitious while I was convinced they would work. He thought so too, and a few days later he presented me with a proposal. It was exactly what I needed. I scanned the terms and noticed a couple of clauses that looked a little strict, but he assured me that his company was very experienced in this sort of project and understood the need for flexibility. I took him at his word and signed up, and the money was in my bank account the next day.

‘Then the problems began. There were endless delays with the council over approval for alterations to the interior of a heritage building, by putting in a lift and so on. Good grief! I pointed out that the bloody Russians next door had gutted their heritage building and turned it into something from Las Vegas, but it made no difference. I discovered later that the poison toad, Hadden-Vane, had gone behind the scenes and used his influence and Moszynski’s cash to fix the building inspector. Then there were extraordinary problems getting a builder. They would promise to tender, then back out at the last minute. Everyone we approached seemed to suddenly find themselves unexpectedly tied up elsewhere.

‘The end result was that when the time came to start repaying the loan, we were hopelessly embroiled, the place a mess, no guests and no income. I failed to meet the first deadline for a repayment and when I asked for flexibility I was told that the letter of the contract would apply. Within a week we were rushed to court, where, surprise, surprise, Moszynski appeared as the owner of the loan company, backed up by a phalanx of barristers and solicitors. He didn’t just want the first repayment. We were in default, he said, and so the surety on the loan, the building itself, was now his. He also demanded that I cover all his legal costs, amounting to a quarter of a million so far. When the judge mildly pointed out that this would ruin me, Moszynski nodded and said, “So be it.”

‘In the end the judge saved us. He didn’t like the way Moszynski was using the law like an assault weapon. He gave me another week in which to fulfil the terms of the contract, and made Moszynski carry his own costs. Somehow we scrambled together enough money to settle the first account, and later arranged a loan from another lender and paid off Moszynski’s debt in full. The hotel, as you see, was left unimproved.

‘I tell you this, not by way of mitigation, but so that you understand the nature of this man, Mikhail Moszynski. If there was something he wanted, he was utterly ruthless and relentless until he had it.

‘Well now, on Sunday the thirtieth of May we held a memorial service for Nancy Haynes. You were there, Inspector Kolla, and so, to my surprise, was Moszynski. I was even more surprised when he spoke to me and asked to meet with me in the gardens at ten o’clock that evening for a private conversation. I was inclined to tell him to go to hell, but I had learned to be cautious where Mikhail Moszynski was concerned.

‘It was dark, and the others were concerned about my going. Deb wanted me to take Garry here with me, but Moszynski had insisted I come alone and I decided to comply. I am somewhat incapacitated of course, but not entirely helpless. I made my way to the gate and took a pace into the gardens, then stopped. I could see nothing. But then I smelled his cigar, and he called out to me, and I followed the gravel path to the bench where he was sitting.

‘He seemed in a good mood, cheerful about something. Apart from the cigar I could smell brandy, and his voice was slurred. He said he had an interesting proposition to put to me.

‘He began talking about Nancy Haynes, asking if she’d told me that she had visited Chelsea Mansions once before, as a teenager, staying with her parents at my great-aunt’s hotel next door. I said no, she hadn’t mentioned it, and he told me that she had met him at the Russian cathedral the previous Sunday, and told him about the visit. I hardly knew whether to believe him, because Nancy had given no hint of it to us, but then he said that she told him she had also met my father back then, and had developed a bit of a crush on him, and even had a photograph of him. He took it out of his pocket to show me, and though it was too dark for me to make it out, I was inclined to believe him.

‘He then started talking about Nancy’s murder, and how unfortunate it would be if further unpleasant consequences were to flow from that tragic event. Well, my ears pricked up at that—from the tone of his voice it sounded like a threat of some kind, and I demanded to know what he meant. Then he told me, as calmly as you please, that he would give me one final chance to sell the hotel to him, and if I refused he had it in his power to arrange things in such a way that the police would have incontrovertible proof that I, assisted by my staff here at the hotel, had murdered Nancy.

‘Well, the idea was so preposterous, even for that megalomaniac, that I just laughed and told him he was drunk. I asked him, what would be my motive in killing her? He replied that he would tell the police that Nancy had revealed to him that my father had raped her on that visit, and she was about to make it public. He would also arrange for physical evidence of some kind to link me to the murder. He said that he rather hoped I wouldn’t agree to sell, and that he could watch me being destroyed, and my staff along with me.

‘And that’s when I realised that he wasn’t drunk, and that he wasn’t a man to make threats he couldn’t carry out. I also realised just how much he hated me, and that he would carry out his threat whether I agreed or not.’