The Best of British Crime omnibus (48 page)

‘You made a very thorough search,' said Closter-Bennet earnestly from in front.

‘With good reason and to no purpose. Probably Helga Greet and her partner just use the place as a pied-à-terre. And a business address to impress. It'd do that all right, for customers who didn't actually go there.'

‘Darling, what would you have done if you'd been taken for a burglar?'

‘Referred the taker to Doctor Fritzoller. Indirectly, Krontag is probably paying the rent for the flat. In their fee to Lybred and Greet. Anyway, if it came to it, Fritzoller would have bailed me out. He's co-operating totally.'

‘And Miss Greet was on her way into the flat when you saw her?' asked Molly.

‘Unfortunately, yes.'

‘What happened wasn't your fault.'

‘Certainly not,' Closter-Bennet added firmly, supporting Molly. ‘Case of a guilty conscience. I wouldn't be surprised if the kid …' He left the last word uncompleted and broke into a heavy and palpably phony fit of coughing. He had remembered in time about Henry Pink not being privy to the kidnapping.

‘You don't think Krontag is involved in anything but the take-over?' asked Molly, her words more circumspect than Closter-Bennet's.

‘I'm pretty certain they're not,' said Treasure thoughtfully. ‘I'm not even sure that Miss Greet or her company is responsible for the nastiest aspect of what's been happening.'

‘I don't follow you?'

‘I'm not following myself at the moment.'

They reached Chiswick in ten minutes' fast driving along the M4 motorway. The block of flats was called Mereworth Court: it was where Mr Popinov lived and practised. There were two police cars and an ambulance parked outside.

Treasure frowned at the vehicles. ‘Hope they're not ominous. I think you'd better stay in the car, darling,' he said to his wife, as Pink brought the Rolls to a halt.

‘Not this time,' Molly responded firmly. She had the door half open already.

Treasure shrugged. ‘Wait for us here then, Henry, will you? What's the number again?'

‘Flat fourteen on the third floor, sir.'

Entry to the building was through unlocked double doors into a large six-sided, tiled hallway. There were two lifts in the wall opposite the entrance, with front doors to individual flats in the other ones.

‘No porter. No entryphone,' remarked Molly as the three got into one of the lifts.

‘But every flat has a very wonderful burglar alarm system. That was the sales pitch the letting agents gave Miss Gaunt,' said her husband.

‘Entryphones are often a snare and a delusion,' said Closter-Bennet, but he didn't elaborate. He was pawing at his neck. The too-tight collar button of his shirt had come off, as a result of all that turning about in the car.

The door to flat fourteen was to the right of the lift, and wide open when they got there.

Standing just inside the hallway to the flat was Hughie McFee. He was in earnest conversation with a short, sandy-haired man.

‘Good God! Mark!' exclaimed McFee, looking up in surprise. ‘And Giles and Molly? You've got the news already?'

‘What news?' asked Treasure. ‘Is Dermot Hackle here?'

‘He's here, yes. And very dead, I'm afraid. His body's in the living room, through there.' He made a despairing gesture with his arms. ‘Sorry, Molly. It's going to be a terrible shock for everybody. I found him. The police doctor's here. It seems he died of cardiac arrest. Some time during the last two hours.' He turned to the man beside him. ‘This is Detective Inspector Furlong.' He introduced the others to the policeman, then went on. ‘I had to explain about the kidnap. No need for secrecy now, of course.' This was no doubt what had accounted for the presence of someone of Furlong's rank.

Treasure still felt uncertain about the disclosure.

‘Does Rosemary Hackle know what's happened?' asked Molly.

‘Mr McFee has phoned his wife, Mrs Treasure. She's on her way to Mrs Hackle now,' said Furlong, not sure yet what to do with the newcomers, nor how to reconcile a death from natural causes with the deceased being an alleged kidnap victim.

The policeman was in his early thirties, a spare, energetic figure with a freckled forehead, lively, eager eyes, a tenor voice, and shoulders that moved backwards and forwards like a metronome as he spoke. ‘If you'll excuse me a second, I need another word with the doctor,' he went on. ‘Perhaps you'd all stay here in the hall? If you don't mind.'

‘Nice young man, but a wee bit confused in the circumstances,' said McFee when Furlong was out of earshot.

‘He's not the only one. This is dreadful news,' said Molly.

‘If he died of heart failure, was it anything to do with the kidnapping?' asked Closter-Bennet.

‘If he died of heart failure,' Treasure repeated, with emphasis on the first word. ‘How did you find him, Hughie? Did you get this address from my secretary?'

‘No, no. From Alison, my wife. But how did your secretary get it?' After Treasure briefly explained, McFee did the same: ‘It happened Alison was in this building this afternoon. On a private visit. Total coincidence. She thought she saw Dermot's car parked in the basement. She told me as much when I got home. It was the number she remembered. Dermot and I took delivery of nearly identical cars on the same day last year. From the company dealer. The colours were the same. The registration numbers nearly so. All except for one digit. I told Alison she was most likely mistaken, but I had to check, you understand? There was no alternative.'

‘And it was his car?' said Closter-Bennet.

‘No question. Parked in the bay belonging to this flat. I thought of calling the police, but that would have been letting the cat out of the bag. With only a day or so before the SAE had promised to release the man, bringing in the police might have been unwise. Anyway, that's what I decided.' He gave a determined sniff. ‘So in the end I came up here alone.'

‘That could have been very dangerous,' Closter-Bennet put in. ‘You should have rung one of us first.'

‘And taken a worse risk if the line was tapped? I mean, we still don't know where we stand with these people. Whether their intelligence is as good as they said it was. If they'd found out we knew their hideout they could have done anything. Lain in wait for us to come. Skipped with Dermot— '

‘Or left him dead,' Molly interrupted with a shudder.

‘Right. So I decided to play the innocent. See what happened when I rang the bell. Nothing did, so I went in search of the caretaker. A woman I met in the lift told me where I could find him. In a flat in the next block. I told him a friend of mine was staying in here and hadn't answered the phone for two days. That he'd missed a dinner date with me. I said my wife and I were worried about him. The man came over with a key. Reluctantly. Dermot was lying in there on the floor.'

Treasure looked about the quite large square hall which also served as a dining-room. There was an open door to the right into a kitchen. Opposite, on the left, was a lighted corridor with two doors leading off it. On the far side of the hall, across from the front door, was the double door into the living room that Furlong had just closed behind him.

The hall was furnished with reproduction pieces of middling quality. There was a sideboard and a linen chest in the Regency manner, with a circular inlaid table in the centre and four upholstered Chippendale-style chairs around it, with two more set against the walls. But everything was starkly new, like the blue Wilton carpet that was still shedding fluff. It was a credit to the designer that with colourful modern prints on the white painted walls, some pretty lamps, and a liberal scatter of glass and china ornaments the place had been given an air of reasonable quality, if not exactly a lived-in look. Broadly the banker supposed that the steep rents quoted to Miss Gaunt for this and the other five flats would find some takers, though he wouldn't have expected a queue.

‘Did it seem to you that Dermot was being kept prisoner here?' he asked McFee. ‘I mean, was he bound or gagged? Were there signs of a struggle?'

‘None at all. He was in a dressing gown. Just a dressing gown. His other clothes were in the bigger of the two bedrooms. That's the first door along this corridor. Not many clothes. Just what he'd been wearing, I suppose, and whatever he must have had in an overnight case.' He glanced at Molly, then away again to Treasure. ‘The bed's in a turmoil. Pillows and bedclothes all over the place.'

‘You don't imagine he'd just got up?' asked Molly.

McFee shrugged. ‘He might have done. And been on his way back from taking a bath. Then collapsed.'

‘In the living room,' said Treasure, only half questioning.

‘Were there signs that
any
other people had been here?' asked Closter-Bennet.

‘Difficult to say.' McFee had already decided to leave it to others to answer the last question – to determine whether more than one person had been in that bed, for instance. Nor was he volunteering why his wife had gone to the basement in the first place – and neither would she: they'd agreed that killing time was to be her excuse, if she was pressed. ‘While we were waiting for the ambulance and police to get here, the caretaker and I had a quick look round. Very quick. The second bedroom looks as if it's never been used. It's laid out like the Ideal Homes Exhibition. That almost goes for the living room and kitchen too, except they're not quite so band-box.' He paused, hands thrust into the side pockets of his jacket, his feet set well apart in a characteristic stance, shoulders well back. His expression was solemn – while he remembered all those soiled towels in Hackle's bathroom. ‘I didn't really take in the master bathroom. Bit of a jumble in there.' He was hedging again. ‘Dermot's portable phone is in the living room, by the way. Battery's quite flat. Would be if it hasn't been charged since Sunday, of course.'

‘Kitchen's fairly tidy,' confirmed Molly who had moved to stand in the doorway. ‘Is there food in that fridge?'

‘Plenty. According to the caretaker, the place was officially let for the very first time last Sunday, with food supplied as— '

‘Let to whom?' Treasure cut in sharply.

McFee shook his head. ‘He didn't know. The letting agents rang him on Friday, just to tell him there'd be someone here. He didn't pay much heed. You see, he's not the caretaker in the strict sense. A keyholder, that's all. For the six flats this company owns in the building. Three of the others are on this floor, by the way, and they're all empty just now. The company pays him a small retainer, that's all.'

‘So he's not involved in servicing the flats?' said Molly.

‘That's right. Nor his wife either. They wanted to be, he told me. They work where they live, in the bigger block next door. Nothing to do with this one which doesn't have a resident caretaker. They had time available. But the servicing of the six flats went to a specialist contractor.'

‘Who wouldn't have been here since Saturday,' observed Treasure.

‘How d' you know that?' asked his wife.

‘The letting agent told Miss Gaunt the occupied flats are cleaned and serviced every Saturday.'

‘So if the SAE intended using this place from Sunday till Friday they needn't have been seen by anyone?'

‘But they'd have had to pick up a key from someone at least,' said Closter-Bennet. ‘From the next door caretaker?'

‘No. Normally from the letting agents. That's an estate agency along the road in Hammersmith,' Treasure supplied. ‘I think we'll find Miss Greet did that, also that her company were the paid-up tenants for the week. So it seems they'd arranged the perfect hideout for the period.'

‘Which was to end Friday. When they promised to release Dermot.' This was Closter-Bennet.

‘Except the poor man died on them,' said Molly, with a sigh.

‘But if Dermot was kept here against his will, why is there no sign of his … his jailors?' Closter-Bennet asked.

‘That's a good question, sir,' said Detective Inspector Furlong who had just re-emerged from the sitting room, leaving the door ajar behind him. Treasure could see a number of figures through the opening, some in uniform, as the policeman continued: ‘There's no sign of restraint on the body, and none of foul play either. Not in the living room, anyway. We'll be going over the rest of the flat shortly.'

‘There was no physical injury at all?' This was Treasure.

‘There's a small scratch on the back of the deceased's neck that could be significant, sir. They'll check that out at the autopsy. But at the moment the doctor still reckons on a straight case of heart failure. Anyone know what sort of age he was?'

‘He was thirty-six,' said Closter-Bennet.

‘Any history of heart disease?'

‘Don't believe so.'

‘But he was approaching the age for that, of course,' said McFee dourly. ‘And he did lead a very stressful life.'

‘We'll be taking the body to the hospital mortuary now,' said Furlong. He turned to Treasure. ‘Mr McFee has explained it was a kidnap with a twist, sir. No ransom. But your directors had to sell their shares. And no one informed the police.' He looked hurt at that, as if he was about to deliver the obvious homily, but Treasure's stare deterred him. ‘The villains are assumed to be members of a group called Stop Animal Experiments.' He went on, looking down at the notebook in his hand. ‘Krontag, the big Swiss company, being the only beneficiaries from the crime so far?'

‘The grounds for that conclusion are circumstantial, Inspector. Also highly conjectural,' observed the banker pointedly. He was sorry that McFee had been so forthcoming. ‘I don't believe anyone will be accusing Krontag of involvement in the kidnap. Not if they're wise, anyway. Nor in Dermot Hackle's death. Assuming it should turn out to be something more sinister than a heart attack.'