Make Them Pay (7 page)

‘I suppose you think I’m just a silly old woman,’ said Lady Fairfax, once again.

‘Not at all. These people can be very persuasive.’ Lizanne left unspoken her opinion of people who combined stupidity with avarice. ‘I’m sorry to say that people fall for this sort of fraud almost every day.’ She tapped the envelope containing the certificates. ‘May I hold on to these? I’ll give you a receipt, of course.’

‘Certainly. They’re no good to me. I’m glad that Michael’s not still alive. He’d’ve had something to say about it, I can tell you. But then if he’d still been here it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘Did you discuss this with anyone, Lady Fairfax?’ asked Sheila Armitage. ‘Once you’d realized that you’d been swindled.’

‘I spoke to my solicitor and he had a look at the certificates, but he said what you’ve just said. In short, that I’d been seen off by a clever fraudster. He suggested I should tell the police, but that I’d probably be wasting my time and theirs. Funnily enough I mentioned it to a friend of mine, and he’d fallen for it too.’

‘The same shares?’ asked Lizanne.

‘Yes, and the same letter. He was in the army, as well. He’s a retired sergeant major I meet at our social club. He’s about my age, I suppose, perhaps a little older, and he claimed to have remembered Michael. He said the general was highly respected by the men, but he would say that wouldn’t he? You know how crafty old soldiers can be.’ She smiled. ‘But there again perhaps you don’t.’

‘Is this club local?’ asked Sheila, still busily making notes.

‘Yes, it’s here in Pinner. He’s become a good friend over the years and he collects me in his car every Tuesday to go to the club.’

‘That’s very good of him. Perhaps you’d give me his name and address. We’d like to have a word with him, in case he’s able to give us some more information.’ Following Brock’s instructions, Sheila asked no questions about what sort of car the man drove.

‘It’s William.’ Catherine Fairfax paused. ‘I’m just trying to remember his surname. Ah, yes, I’ve got it, it’s Rivers, William Rivers, but he told me he was always known as Billy in the army, after Billy Two Rivers. The army’s very good at giving one nicknames. I know my husband had one, but I can’t remember what it was now.’

‘Do you have an address for Mr Rivers?’

‘I’m afraid not, my dear. I only know he lives locally, but I couldn’t tell you where.’

‘Thank you, Lady Fairfax,’ said Lizanne, as she and Sheila Armitage rose to leave, ‘and thank you for the tea. I’d like to say that we’ll have good news for you next time we meet, but if I’m honest I very much doubt it.’

‘M
r Brock, a moment of your time, if you please.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and replaced the receiver.

Why the hell couldn’t the commander just wander into my office for a chat like any real detective instead of telephoning me? But I knew the answer: he wasn’t a real detective. He had been the beneficiary of what in the Job is known as a ‘sideways’ promotion. In other words, he’d spent his entire career in the Uniform Branch until some administrative genius high in the ivory tower of New Scotland Yard decided that the CID were deserving of his talents. Most other senior officers to whom this transition had occurred just sat back and let the detectives get on with it, but our revered commander actually thought he
was
a detective. The only drawback, as far as he was concerned, was that he could no longer wear his uniform and that meant that people might not know how important he thought he was.

‘Ah, Mr Brock, close the door, and bring me up to date about this suspicious death in Richmond.’ The commander always referred to any death we were investigating as suspicious, just in case it turned out to be manslaughter instead of murder. Or even suicide. But he is something of a pedant.

‘Deaths, sir, plural.’

‘Ah, yes, quite so. Deaths.’ The commander hated getting things wrong and disliked even more being corrected by a junior rank. But a commander who’d come up through the ranks of the CID wouldn’t have had to ask for that information in the first place; he’d’ve been in the incident room the same day, poking about and finding out for himself.

‘They’d both been murdered, sir. A single shot to the head in each case, and then the camper van was deliberately set on fire.’ I started to tell him about the information we’d received from the Essen police, but the moment I mentioned it, he interrupted me.

‘There’ll be no question of you going to Germany, I hope, Mr Brock.’ Any suggestion of unnecessary expenditure was anathema to the commander, and to him all expenditure was unnecessary. I don’t know why he was so uptight about it. He’d already got a Queen’s Police Medal, and he’d been appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the last Honours List. What more was he hoping for? Promotion? I wish! So long as it was back to some Uniform Branch post. If I were in his position, I’d just coast happily towards my retirement and let my minions get on with the nastiness of everyday detecting.

‘That remains to be seen, sir,’ I said, just for the hell of it. I couldn’t really see the necessity for a trip to Germany, but I enjoyed planting the seed of doubt. ‘As I was saying, sir, it appears that we’ve stumbled on a scam of monumental proportions—’

‘A scam?’ The commander abhorred criminal argot, even though he knew what I meant. He peered at me over his half-moon spectacles. I’m sure he only wore them because he believed that they lent him an air of importance. And I’d put money on them containing plain glass.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, declining to explain what ‘scam’ meant. ‘We’ll probably have to involve the Fraud Squad, but at the moment my priority is to discover the murderer or murderers of Eberhardt and Schmidt.’ I then told him what Horst Fischer had found in Eberhardt’s basement. ‘The German police are interrogating Wilhelm Weber as well, sir.’

‘Who is this Weber, Mr Brock?’

‘He’s the man who lent the camper van to Eberhardt, sir. But all he’s told them at the moment is that Eberhardt travelled several times to the Bahamas.’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of going to the Bahamas either, Mr Brock.’ The commander looked quite distressed at this latest piece of information.

‘I doubt it, sir,’ I said, without wishing to antagonize him further, but I was by no means sure that a trip there was out of the question.

‘Very well, Mr Brock,’ said the great man, ‘but keep me informed.’ He turned enthusiastically to a pile of files in his in-tray and moved the topmost one to the centre of his desk. He loves paperwork does the commander and devours it with all the enthusiasm of a dedicated bureaucrat.

I returned to the incident room and began to read the statements about the team’s visits of yesterday. They all told the same depressing story of naive people taken in by unscrupulous fraudsters.

‘This Lady Fairfax, Lizanne . . .? Did she know the address of William Rivers?’

‘No, guv,’ said Lizanne Carpenter. ‘She just said that he picked her up in his car every Tuesday to take her to this social club they belong to. But she did say that he lived locally.’

‘Rivers was on
Herr
Fischer’s list, sir, and he was interviewed by Charlie Flynn,’ said Colin Wilberforce, proving yet again that he was well and truly conversant with every aspect of the enquiry. ‘His statement’s the third one in the file you’ve got.’

‘Where is Charlie, Colin?’ DS Flynn was a former Fraud Squad officer and it was beginning to look as though he would be a useful man to have on this enquiry.

‘He’s just slipped out for a haircut, sir. Should be back any minute.’

‘Ask him to see me the moment he gets back.’

Charlie Flynn appeared in my office five minutes later. ‘Sorry, guv, but I needed a quick trim,’ he said apologetically.

‘No problem, Charlie.’ I knew that my detectives, working the hours they did, rarely had time off when civilized establishments like hairdressers were open. ‘Tell me about Rivers,’ I said, waving Flynn to a chair.

‘His story’s much the same as the one Lizanne got from Lady Fairfax, guv, and from the documents I obtained from Rivers it appears to be the same bogus company that the poor old fool invested in. Some IT company in Buenos Aires.’

‘Did you find out what sort of car he’s got? Apparently he picks up Lady Fairfax and takes her to this club.’

‘Yeah, it’s a red Renault Twingo, about five years old, I should think. And it’s registered to him. I checked.’

‘That doesn’t tally with the description of the car that Guy Wilson saw near the van. The one he told Miss Ebdon about.’

‘I shouldn’t think Rivers is capable of committing a murder anyway, guv. He must be at least eighty and he looked as though he was at death’s door.’

‘He’s a former soldier, according to Lady Fairfax.’

‘Yes, he said he’d been a sergeant major. There was a shield on the wall of his sitting room that looked like it was one of those regimental things, a bit like the Met Police shields we give away. I don’t know what it was, but it had what seemed to be a flaming dagger on it. Anyway, I took a photo of it while he was upstairs looking for the documents.’ Flynn fiddled with his mobile phone and held it up for me to see.

‘That’s not a flaming dagger, Charlie,’ I said. ‘According to a book I read it’s a downward-pointing Excalibur wreathed in flames on a crusader shield.’

‘Yeah, well, whatever, guv,’ said Flynn.

‘It’s the crest of the Special Air Service, Charlie.’

‘Blimey, the SAS. I wonder if he took part in the Iranian Embassy siege back in 1980. He’s about the right age.’ Every policeman knew about the siege; it was the only time the SAS had been called in to assist the Metropolitan Police.

‘Whether he did or not, if he’s ex-SAS he’s a trained killer, Charlie. Not the sort of bloke you’d like to meet on a dark night if you’d upset him. Like if you’d defrauded him. How much did he lose in this scam?’

‘Ten grand, guv.’

‘Did he indeed? I think it’s worth me having a chat with him.’

‘But the car isn’t the one that Wilson saw, guv.

‘There is such a thing as hiring a car, Charlie.’

‘Possible, I suppose,’ said Flynn.

‘By the way, there is a job you can do when you’ve got a moment.’ I gave Flynn details of the bank into which Lady Fairfax had deposited her two cheques totalling forty thousand pounds. ‘The cash got moved on a bit sharply according to the enquiries that Lady Fairfax made, Charlie. See if you can get any more details. Not that I think you will.’

William Rivers’s house at Pinner was nothing like the house in which Lizanne Carpenter had said that Lady Fairfax lived. The old soldier’s abode was a two-up-two-down semi in one of the less salubrious parts of the Harrow suburb.

I hammered on the door, but there was no reply.

A woman in a flowery apron immediately appeared from the adjoining house and stood on tiptoe, peering over the dividing fence. She had frizzy bottle-blonde hair and an excess of make-up.

‘If you’re looking for Bill Rivers, he’s gone away,’ she said.

‘D’you know when he went?’ I asked, silently thanking God for nosy neighbours.

‘Late last night. Can I give him a message when he gets back?’

‘I’m a police officer, madam,’ I said. ‘I rather want to talk to him urgently.’

‘He’s not in trouble, is he?’ But the woman’s attitude gave the impression that if Rivers was in a spot of bother with the police, it would be something to gossip about to her neighbours.

‘No, not at all,’ I said, although I wasn’t too sure about that. ‘Have you any idea where he went?’

‘He said he was going on holiday for a week or two. He usually goes to Brighton. He’s very fond of Brighton, is Bill. He mentioned several times that he always goes there. I think he even goes sea-swimming. Not something I’d care to do at his age, but he’s a tough old nut.’

‘Have you any idea where he might be staying. If he always goes to Brighton, he might be putting up at the same place.’

‘No, love, he never let on. He tends to keep himself to himself does Bill, if you know what I mean.’ The woman smiled and touched her hair. It was black at the roots.

‘Did he take his wife?’ asked Dave.

‘No, dear, Bill is a widower. His wife died about twenty years ago, I think.’

‘Did he take his car?’ asked Dave.

‘Yes, I think so,’ said the woman. ‘At least it’s not outside where it usually is.’

‘That’d be the Renault, would it?’

‘I think that’s what it is,’ agreed the woman. ‘He used to have a Volkswagen, but then he bought that French thing he’s got now.’

We left it at that and returned to our car.

‘Have you got an address for Lady Fairfax, Dave?’ I asked.

‘Yes, guv,’ said Dave, and read out the address from his pocketbook. It was only a ten minute drive from where we were.

Lady Fairfax appraised the two of us somewhat nervously. Dave, being six foot tall and black, tended to have that sort of intimidating effect on people.

‘I’m sorry to bother you, Lady Fairfax,’ I said, once I’d told her who we were, ‘but I’m anxious to speak to William Rivers.’

Catherine Fairfax showed us into her sitting room. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know where he lives, Chief Inspector.’ Being an army officer’s widow, Lady Fairfax obviously knew about ranks and didn’t leave out the ‘chief’ as did the actors who appeared on television. I’m always irritated that fictional TV chief inspectors not only allow themselves to be called ‘inspector’, but even introduce themselves as such. There’s a difference of about eight grand a year in pay, and real coppers don’t make that mistake or allow others to do so.

‘We know where he lives, Lady Fairfax,’ said Dave. ‘We’ve just called at his house, but I was told that he’s gone on holiday. Quite suddenly it seems. According to a neighbour he went late last night, probably to Brighton.’

‘Oh dear!’ said Catherine Fairfax. ‘He didn’t say anything about that to me. I wonder how I’m going to get to the club tomorrow morning.’

‘I’m afraid there’s not much we can do to help you there.’ In view of what DS Carpenter had told me about the amount of money the woman had lost, I didn’t like to suggest a taxi.

‘There were two nice young lady police officers here only yesterday, Chief Inspector, a sergeant and a constable. Is it something to do with the enquiries they were making?’