Dead and Gone (11 page)

Ormondroyd didn’t reply, but then Ivan hadn’t expected him to.

Nash had just entered Helmsdale police station when Sergeant Binns stopped him. ‘Mike, hang on.’ The sergeant put the phone down.

‘Morning, Jack, what have you got for me?’

‘I’ve just had a message from the control room. They got a call from Ormondroyd Solicitors in Bishopton. When Mr Ormondroyd’s secretary arrived at work this morning, the building was unlocked. She found Ormondroyd in his office. It sounds as if he’s been murdered.’

‘Tell control that Clara and I will go, she’s getting tired of paperwork. What’s the woman’s name?’

‘Mrs Lane.’

When they arrived, Nash looked at the exterior of the building. If a TV company wanted a setting for a small-town solicitor’s office, this would fit the bill perfectly. The walls were grey and green; limestone, clad with ancient ivy. The window of the general office was opaque. Etched into the smoky coloured glass was the name, Ormondroyd & Partners, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. Nash wondered who the partners were, or had been.

They were greeted by a uniformed officer who ushered them into a small vestibule. The general office was to one side; access was via a second half-glass door. Directly in front of them, a flight of stairs led to the first floor.

Nash and Mironova stepped inside the general office. The woman seated behind the desk was slightly the wrong side of
forty, Nash guessed. She looked distraught.

‘Mrs Lane? I’m Detective Inspector Nash. You made the call, I believe.’

Mrs Lane sobbed and nodded. Nash asked gently, ‘Is it just you and Mr Ormondroyd here? Only, the sign on the window says, Ormondroyd & Partners.’

‘That sign was put there by old Mr Ormondroyd, Mr Neil’s father, but that was a long time ago. These days there isn’t enough work to justify another partner. Now, I don’t know what will happen.’ She began to cry again.

‘What I suggest is that you wait down here with the officer whilst DS Mironova and I have a look round.’

They headed upstairs. ‘Do you want us to suit up?’ Clara asked.

‘Not for the moment, we won’t go in the room; not until we have to.’

From the doorway, Nash had no doubt that Ormondroyd had been murdered. He pointed to the dead man’s neck. ‘Garrotted, by the look of things.’

Clara nodded agreement.

The killer’s weapon of choice had bitten deeply into the solicitor’s neck, stifling the dying breath, cutting everything in its path, almost severing the vertebrae. As the man had pitched forward, the heart, pumping resolutely to the last, had caused the blood to spew enthusiastically from the fresh outlets so recently opened up.

The blotter had been hard pushed to live up to its name, eventually giving up the unequal struggle to contain the escaping blood.

Later, after Clara had taken Mrs Lane home and Nash had handed the crime scene over to Ramirez and the forensic officers, he phoned Superintendent Fleming. ‘SOCO will be at least twenty-four hours here, so whilst they’re busy we can’t search the offices thoroughly. We should go and take a look round Ormondroyd’s house. I took his house keys off the ring, so we’ll
be able to get in easily enough. I’ve asked Viv Pearce to join us. I think if we take a look round the man’s home, we might get some idea of the motive or even the identity of the killer from his lifestyle.’

‘What lifestyle?’ Clara asked when Nash had ended the call. ‘I chatted to his secretary, after I’d taken her statement, and according to her, Ormondroyd was pretty much a recluse. Mrs Lane said that as far as she was aware, he hadn’t been out for a meal or a drink; hadn’t visited the theatre or cinema for as long as she could remember.’

‘Maybe he wasn’t a social animal.’

Mironova shook her head. ‘No, Mrs Lane said he wasn’t always like that. She reckons she knew Ormondroyd better than anyone else; had watched him grow up and she admitted that he was obsessively secretive. But she did believe he had been involved with someone up to a couple of years back. She said he changed after that, became even more of a hermit, and even less communicative. I asked her if she knew who it was he’d been involved with, and why it ended, but she has no idea.’

‘That’s not exactly a lot of help. Did she say anything else that might have given us a clue?’

‘Not really. I did ask her one other question. It was the way she kept mentioning his secrecy that prompted it.’ Clara smiled. ‘It shocked her rigid. I suggested the person he might have been involved with could have been another man. When she got over the shock she admitted that it could have been a possibility, but she thought it was highly unlikely.’

‘The other explanation for the secrecy could be that he was seeing a married woman. In a small place like Bishopton, it wouldn’t take much for rumours of an affair like that to spread like wildfire. Anyway, let’s go look at his house and see if we can find any answers there.’

Pearce was waiting for them outside the semi-detached Victorian building. Everything looked as it should. Once inside, they did a brief tour of the premises and could find nothing untoward.
Every room bore the hallmarks of a solitary man living a bachelor existence. ‘It’s just as Mrs Lane said,’ Clara commented. ‘Rather sad and pathetic really; a man without friends or family.’

They were standing in the large airy room to the rear of the ground floor, which had been furnished as a study. Two of the walls were lined with bookshelves. A third wall, alongside the French window leading to the back garden, had a glass-fronted china cabinet, on top of which was a framed photograph of a good-looking young woman. Nash and Mironova examined the photo.

‘Her face looks vaguely familiar. I feel I ought to know her,’ Clara remarked. ‘Hang on.’ She pointed to the features. ‘Viv, take a look, who does she remind you of?’

Viv stared at the photo, but with no success. ‘Sorry, you’ve got me beaten. Who do you think it is?’

Mironova placed her hand over the lower half of the photo, covering the woman’s body. ‘Now, imagine the hair as short and try again.’

‘Yes, I see it now. She looks a bit like Dean Wilson.’

‘A bit? More than a bit. A lot, I’d say. I may be wrong, but at a guess, I’d say this was a photo of Linda Wilson.’

‘Linda Wilson? Isn’t she the woman who—’

‘Disappeared along with several millions at the time that Bishopton Investments went bust. If the likeness is correct, she must be Dean Wilson’s sister.’

‘I haven’t met him, so I bow to your knowledge,’ Nash said. ‘What intrigues me is why this photo has pride of place in Ormondroyd’s private sanctum. Unless Linda was the woman he was involved with. That would tie in with what Mrs Lane told you, Clara. If Linda Wilson let Ormondroyd down the same way as she did the investors, he would have gone into his shell. Maybe he’s been carrying a torch for her all this time.’

‘Do you think her disappearance could be connected to Ormondroyd’s murder?’ Clara wondered.

‘I can’t begin to see how. Anyway, let’s have a good look round in here and see what else we can find.’

They made a start, with Pearce concentrating on the two-drawer filing cabinet whilst Clara read Ormondroyd’s diaries. Nash went through the contents of the desk drawers one by one. They had been at work for almost half an hour when Nash located another photo. He stared at it for several moments before muttering, ‘Hell’s bells!’

Clara looked up and saw the stunned expression on Nash’s face. ‘What is it? What have you found?’

Nash didn’t reply, so she peered over his shoulder. ‘Good Lord! That’s obscene.’

‘Did you meet Naomi Macaulay?’

Clara shook her head.

Nash continued. ‘The girl in this photo looks very much like Naomi. However, the hair colour is totally wrong. This girl’s a blonde, a natural blonde at that, and Naomi’s hair is bright red. Unless Naomi’s hair is dyed.’

Pearce hadn’t seen the photo. ‘How do you know the girl in the photo doesn’t have dyed hair?’

Nash turned the photo so Viv could see it. ‘Oh, I didn’t realize it was that sort of photo. I can see now.’

‘If this isn’t Naomi, who do you think it is?’ Clara asked Nash. Failing to get a response, she glanced at him. He was staring at the photo, his mind obviously elsewhere.

‘Mike,’ she prompted, ‘if you could tear yourself away from ogling the nude for a moment.’

‘Sorry.’ He grinned. ‘Did you speak?’

‘I asked who you thought the girl was. Do you think Ormondroyd was into child pornography? Might that have been the motive for his murder?’

Nash didn’t answer her directly. ‘I’d like to know when this photo was taken.’ His voice was quiet, pensive. ‘Think about this. Naomi Macaulay is, what, eighteen or nineteen years old. We know Ormondroyd was thirty-three. What does that suggest?’

Mironova and Pearce exchanged glances, and it was clear they had no idea what Nash was driving at. ‘Think about hair colouring,’ he prompted them. ‘Here we have a highly suggestive
nude photo of a young girl with blonde hair, who I think looks a lot like Naomi Macaulay, although Naomi has red hair. When this photo was taken, I reckon this girl’ – he tapped the photo – ‘would be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Now think about Ormondroyd, and apart from a few flecks of grey, his hair is as red as Naomi’s. Red hair isn’t that common, and in a small place like Bishopton there can’t be many people with the same colouring unless they’re related.’

‘You think Ormondroyd is Naomi’s father? But he wouldn’t have been old enough,’ Pearce objected.

‘Not legally, perhaps,’ Nash agreed. ‘But physically, he would have been quite capable of fathering a child, even if he wasn’t over the age of consent. If I’m right, that leaves one unanswered question. Is this Naomi’s mother? If she had an affair with Ormondroyd, then perhaps we should be talking to Mr Macaulay about the solicitor’s murder.’

Clara was examining the photo. The pose was overtly sexual, and from the way the young girl was looking at the camera, Clara had little doubt that the object of her desire was the photographer. ‘If your theory’s right then this photo would have been taken before digital photography was widely available. So I wonder if Ormondroyd was interested in photography. I doubt you’d have got anyone to develop these. I can’t see a young lad marching into the chemist’s shop in Bishopton high street and leaving that roll of film, can you?’

‘Good point, Clara. Maybe we should look round the rest of the house. However, let’s concentrate on this room first.’

It was Mironova who made the only other significant discovery. The first entry in the diary to catch her attention was in the 2009 book. ‘We were right,’ she exclaimed. ‘Neil Ormondroyd was dating Linda Wilson. It’s in here. All it says is “Linda” followed by a time and place. However, they went away for weekends together. In the Lake District, to London, Edinburgh, all over.’

She turned her attention to the next in the sequence. ‘The last mention of Linda is here, in February of 2010.’ She continued
reading. ‘This is interesting. There’s an entry that reads, “Linda, Netherdale station, 7.30, London train.” Next day there’s another. “Linda didn’t show. Can’t raise her at home or on her mobile. Where is she? Worried.” Then another a few days later. “Bad rumours about B.I.G. and Linda. Can’t believe it. Linda wouldn’t let people down that way.”’

Clara read on, her face registering the emotion. ‘This is awful. The poor guy was heartbroken. He was obviously deeply in love with Linda Wilson. Her disappearance hit him very hard. After a few more entries, there’s no further mention of her. And at the same time the tone of the diaries changes. It’s almost as if his personal life has ceased to exist; either that or he’s afraid to commit his thoughts to paper.’

Clara skimmed through the more recent diaries, and put them aside one by one. When she picked up the one for the current year, an envelope dropped out onto the desk. ‘Hello, what’s this?’ She was intrigued, but her expression changed to one of disappointment. ‘Oh, sorry.’ She saw her colleagues looking expectantly at her. ‘I thought for a moment it might be something interesting, but it’s only some credit card statements.’

‘Have a look at what he spent his money on,’ Nash suggested.

Clara glanced through a few of them. ‘Paying bills, mostly. By the look of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the business was in trouble. There are even a lot of calculations here scribbled in pencil that I can’t make head or tail of, which suggest he was trying to work out how to pay his creditors. Sad, but hardly a motive for murder.’

She put the envelope back inside the diary cover and set the volume down. ‘That’s it, I’m done.’

Pearce had finished on the filing cabinets, but as he was about to turn away, he noticed a small curl of electric cable sticking out from behind the side of the wooden frame. He reached down and pulled gently at it. The cable proved to be connected to a voltage adapter and was plugged into the mains. He stared at the end for a moment. ‘Mike, when you went into Ormondroyd’s office, did you see a laptop?’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. Our attention was taken with the body, to be honest. If there was one there, SOCO will have documented it, and the scene-of-crime photos will show it.’

When they had finished in the study, they turned their attention to the rest of the house. The sitting room was their next target and immediately on entering, Nash stopped and glanced around. ‘Clara’ – he gestured at the surroundings – ‘does this look familiar?’

Clara looked at the Adam-style fireplace with a hearthrug in front of it, one with a distinctive pattern. ‘That nude photo of the girl,’ she exclaimed. ‘It was taken in here. She was lying on that rug.’

‘Exactly what I thought.’

Their next discovery came about almost by accident. As they were preparing to search upstairs, they walked down the hall towards the staircase. Pearce opened the cupboard under the stairs. It was then that he realized that it wasn’t a cupboard at all, but the entrance to a flight of stairs leading to a cellar. ‘Mike, here.’

They descended the steps, treading carefully in the semi-gloom only partly alleviated by the glow of a low-wattage bulb at the bottom of the flight. On reaching the basement, they looked round. ‘Well, here’s the darkroom,’ Nash said.