The Not Quite Perfect Murderer, page 15
Part of the lack of evidence problem was that although Ingrid had seen men emerging from this house, including one that fitted the description of the one calling himself Georgio – he was the exception as he was the chief suspect in a murder case, as well – there was no proof that those particular individuals were connected with crime or crimes. They might merely have been labourers being briefed for a job. Along with other people Gillard didn’t think so and the whole situation was getting extremely frustrating, watches on railway and bus stations having so far yielded nothing.
But Mansell was different. He and Carrick had seen and heard him at the quarry.
Although he could hear the bell ringing somewhere within, no one came. Right, it would have to be a covert operation – definitely not fuelled by what had happened to him personally, even though Mansell might not have been behind it. He had already noted that the house wasn’t overlooked by neighbouring properties as the gardens here were surrounded by mature trees, some of them conifers, and there didn’t seem to be any security cameras either, which was surprising. He relied on a one-time colleague, Terry Meadows, who now had a security company that also supplied armed guards for merchant shipping, to keep him abreast of information on the latest gizmos. But having slowly gone down the side of the house and round to the rear looking out for small and therefore difficult-to-see state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, there appeared to be nothing.
The place had been built, he thought, in the Regency period – the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Bath had become fashionable and enjoyed a building boom during that time, houses and mansions constructed of the honey-coloured local stone. Those who owned quarries had made a fortune burrowing ever more extensively under the growing city which, in modern times, led to collapsing roads and subsidence to houses. This had required some very expensive remedial work.
At the rear, there was a large conservatory, perhaps a Victorian addition. It was in very poor condition, and although it appeared to contain the conventional sort of cane furniture, there were no plants. He looked in and saw that everything appeared to be unused and a bit dusty. Mr Adams, Mansell’s former gardener, had mentioned a patio that he had had to clear after social gatherings, and it was here, in front of the conservatory. A wide lawn extended to a yew hedge that may or may not mark the boundary of the garden; the former needing cutting. Mansell hadn’t yet got another gardener, then. Gillard took this all in at a glance and then returned his attention to the house. He couldn’t see any cameras at all, not even tiny ones.
Walking around the entire property – the garden on the opposite side of the house to the drive was narrow and shady, planted mostly with ferns – yielded no evidence of an alarm system either, so perhaps, he surmised, they were all indoors. Having had no intention of creeping about at night with a torch like a common thief, he looked for places of potential easy entry. Who knew what was happening within? Mansell might have had a heart attack in there. Or a stroke. Or – and this with only a trace of black humour – Georgio might have strangled him after the bollocking he had given them at the quarry cottage.
The next problem was the possible presence of an internal alarm system; he couldn’t believe there wasn’t one. Increasingly these days, most systems were too sophisticated for his small but very handy ‘knackering’ device. A squaddie had given it to him when he left the army and got a job at a security company. It was designed to silence alarm systems that had gone haywire. This had been a weird thank-you – had he thought his senior officer was about to turn himself into a house-breaker? – for Gillard who had got him out of serious trouble for some misdemeanour or other – he had forgotten exactly what.
The outer conservatory door had an old-fashioned lock that had probably been in situ since new and the key wasn’t on the inside. He had a set of what Ingrid called his ‘burglar’s keys’ that would open this but, having donned a pair of nitrile gloves, he discovered that it had been left unlocked. Silently, he went in, very mindful that this might be what he, or anyone else, was expected to do. A quick look round told him that there were no intruder detectors. He turned his attention to the inner, modern, double-glazed French doors, the curtains on the other side of which were drawn. When he carefully tried the handle of one, he discovered that these were also unlocked. He opened the door. No alarms went off.
Perhaps being married to Ingrid had given him some of her ‘cat’s whiskers’ intuition because something was screaming caution at him right now. The room within, possibly a large dining or withdrawing room in the days when the house was built, looked as though it was never used, with chairs and a table pushed against a wall, leaving the centre of the room empty. A massive sideboard was on another wall. The heavy curtains being closed made it dim so he slid one open a little, freezing when the rings it was hanging on clattered on the metal pole. But nothing happened.
Silence.
There were movement detectors, but if the tiny red lights in them were making contact with a central control unit he couldn’t hear any alarms being triggered. Slowly, he crossed to a door on the other side of the room, one of two which were around eight feet apart, and opened it. It was a very large cupboard. He tried the other one. Beyond was a wide passageway with daylight coming through open doorways on both sides. Straight ahead, the passage appeared to widen out into a larger area – the entrance hall perhaps. He silently headed towards it, caution causing him to draw his Glock. The side rooms, with the exception of two, appeared to be used only for storage. What was inside all those cardboard boxes, he wondered, itching to have a look. But not now. Of the other two rooms, one gave every impression of being a large kitchen with further rooms off; the other, smaller, was being used as a general dumping place for coats, hats and shoes. There was a huge fitted cupboard along one wall; one of its double doors was ajar, seemingly because of the pressure of what was inside. He went over to it, didn’t touch anything as he feared an avalanche, just peered around the slightly open door. All he could make out were box files, cardboard boxes and folded fabrics – curtains and towels perhaps.
When he reached the wider area, he saw that it was indeed the entrance hall, and the first thing he noticed was a set of muddy footprints on the black-and-white tiled floor. It looked as though someone had entered through the front door, which was to the right. The traces of mud petered out a few steps up the stairs. Carefully, not going too close, Gillard bent down and scrutinized them. Something wasn’t quite right.
Mentally noting this, he headed up the stairs, walking close to the bannisters on the right-hand side. How many times had he done this sort of thing during army and MI5 training sessions in the past? Then, there might have been trip wires, electrically live door handles, concealed assailants waiting to ambush, even cold-water drenchings to make trainees lose concentration. Not to mention snipers armed with live ammunition. And the training officers with a fine line in well-tuned abuse.
‘Is anyone there?’ a weak voice called.
The skin on the back of his neck tingling with shock, Gillard nevertheless didn’t go rushing up to where he thought the voice might have come from. He had been taught the hard way about that, too. He did not respond and carried on with his surreptitious ascent, pausing on the first-floor landing. This was where Mansell had brought him when he called round about the insurance claim – the room with a door to the right of him now. It was closed. Another door further down the landing was ajar. Then he heard a slight sound coming from within, perhaps a groan or a deep sigh. Going over, he pushed the door right back and looked in.
An elderly man lay on the floor, moving just a little, restlessly, blood on his head and face. Straight ahead of Gillard, a body was slumped on a blue sofa. Identification was almost impossible as most of the face was just a jumble of blood, teeth and bone, an avalanche of more of the same down the front of the corpse. But who else could it be but Mansell? A blood-stained long-handled spade – Gillard recognized it as a Devon shovel – lay on the carpet.
Rapidly checking the room for anyone else, Gillard holstered the Glock and went over to the old man.
‘Mr Adams?’ he said quietly. He appeared to be unconscious now.
The pale blue eyes opened. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, it’s you, sir – the insurance man. Please tell them I didn’t do it.’
Having just entered the room and observed the murder victim, Carrick swore very quietly and then said, ‘I’m not going to ask you why you were here, and if anyone asks me I’ll tell them that the deceased was a client of yours and you’d called round on an insurance matter. I’ll then remind them that the law permits anyone to break into a premises if they think there is danger to life or limb with regard to those inside.’
He had been speaking crisply and in the manner of an Elder of the Kirk delivering the sermon as the minister had just been arrested for drink-driving, so, just then, Gillard merely thanked him.
‘And you reckon this was Mortimer Mansell?’ Carrick went on to say, gesturing to the corpse.
‘As far as identification’s possible, yes.’
Mr Adams had just been taken to hospital, the sound of the siren still audible in the distance as the driver fought their way through the city’s traffic. Waiting scenes-of-crime people had followed the DCI in and now started work. A pathologist was expected at any moment.
‘What the hell happened here?’ Carrick burst out. ‘Can you really carve someone’s face half off with something like a shovel? There’s enough blood on it to point to it having been the murder weapon. The old man, Mr Adams, is his one-time gardener, you say?’
Gillard nodded.
‘D’you know his first name?’
‘His wife calls him Bobby.’
‘Probably Robert, then. He gives every impression of having been beaten over the head with the poker that’s near Mansell’s right hand, so did he try to fight him off?’
‘Trying to answer a previous question, would anyone really try to kill someone with the blade of a shovel? Far easier surely to bash them over the head with it.’
‘Someone’s gone to speak to Mrs Adams, so we won’t know any more for a while. Are you aware of anything else that might be important?’
‘Not right now, but I’d like to remind you that Mansell appears to have been involved with crime and criminals. His gardener doesn’t seem to fit into that. Oh, and I hope your team has noticed the muddy footprints in the hallway leading towards the stairs. Adams was wearing shoes; the prints were made by someone with boots, and – this a guess from my tracking days – they weren’t on anyone’s feet but on their hands, to make it look as though someone had worn them when they came in the front door.’ He moved to leave.
‘I’ll pass on the message,’ Carrick said. ‘Where’s your next appointment?’
‘Hinton Charterhouse.’
‘For God’s sake, don’t find any more mutilated corpses.’
‘The man was responsible for Adams losing his job, and Adams might even have blamed him for the added damage to his pick-up,’ James Carrick pointed out on Monday morning. ‘Mrs Adams has been spoken to and said she was present when her husband received a phone call from Mansell to say that he owed him wages and was minded to give him his job back. So he went over there by bus as his vehicle had a puncture. As you can imagine, she’s very upset.’
Patrick Gillard said, ‘Although Adams did say that Mansell owed him wages when I first spoke to him, that rings alarm bells with me straight away. I simply cannot imagine Mansell offering to pay anything he owed him. How is Adams, by the way?’
‘In intensive care with a fractured skull, a broken left arm and severe general bruising. He might not survive.’
‘He probably will. I got the impression that he’s tough.’
‘As we saw, Mansell’s body had a bloodstained poker near the right hand, which does give the impression that he put up a fight. But, of course, we won’t know any more until forensic reports come in and we can interview Adams.’
‘He told me that he didn’t do it.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘Yes, I did, actually.’
‘You don’t think he might have gone over there, in good faith, to get the money owed to him and then Mansell taunted him, perhaps refused to pay, and he lost his temper?’
‘That’s possible,’ Gillard conceded.
‘And why, for God’s sake, did he take that long-handled shovel with him?’
‘We don’t know that he did.’
‘I simply can’t believe that thing belonged to Mansell.’
They were talking in Carrick’s office, Gillard having called in to find out if there had been any developments overnight. But right now, he didn’t think the DCI looked at all well.
‘James, are you feeling all right?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t actually.’
‘One moment.’ He went into the corridor to find Lynn Outhwaite and almost immediately came upon her. ‘Lynn, I think you ought to get a first-aider and possibly a paramedic to the boss – he’s not well.’
‘Flu?’ she queried.
‘He might have an infection.’
Carrick was found to have a high temperature and was taken to hospital as a precaution. When the ambulance had departed, Gillard sought out the DI and offered his assistance.
‘We’re still hunting high and low for this Georgio character and his mob,’ she said. ‘And now everything’s been complicated by Mansell being murdered, so we won’t be able to question him. Anyway,’ she went on to say, ‘don’t you have other obligations?’
Gillard had never been able to work out whether she liked him or not. Ingrid had no problem with her; they got on amazingly well, in fact, as they appeared to have the same sense of humour, and, seemingly, that also applied to Joanna. Carrick thought Lynn was the best cop on the premises, which was probably true. But she had been promoted to DI only recently.
‘Would you rather I went away?’ he asked quietly.
‘No! I didn’t mean it like that. Perhaps …’ She shrugged sadly.
‘Have you contacted Joanna?’
‘The boss did before he was taken off. I asked her to go and talk to Mrs Adams, so that’s where she is right now.’
‘Has Adams actually been arrested and charged?’
‘No, he was just about unconscious by the time the paramedics arrived.’
‘I did try to keep him awake,’ Gillard murmured. ‘Does Mrs Adams know that Mansell’s dead?’
‘I don’t see how she can, but I told Joanna she could tell her if it seemed appropriate and depending on her mental state.’
‘I think that old man might have been set up and they intended to kill him. It would have been very neatly sewn up for them, wouldn’t it? Mansell dead, obviously murdered, suspect dead too, with injuries that suggested the murder victim had fought back.’
‘Evidence?’ Lynn asked.
‘Absolutely none right now.’
‘You probably won’t agree, but I’m going to get a warrant and search Adams’s place. He is the main suspect right now and it’s something I ought to do. I’ll be asked why I didn’t otherwise.’
‘It’s not for me to agree or not with what you’re doing, Lynn,’ Patrick said. ‘Coffee courtesy of Carrick’s whizz-machine?’
She smiled. ‘Why not?’
Like Gillard, Joanna had had a problem finding Rose Cottage and, having finally arrived, was hoping that Mrs Adams wasn’t actually at the Royal United Hospital hoping to see her husband. There were no cars parked at the top of the narrow lane that led down to the house and only a pick-up with a flat tyre could be glimpsed in the yard to the rear of the house. Perhaps the old lady had to go everywhere by bus.
‘Rural idylls aren’t necessarily that good when you’re getting on in life,’ Joanna whispered to herself. She knew that Elspeth Gillard was very grateful for her own circumstances, still able to drive and living in a pretty village with the security of a loving and, it had to be said, reasonably wealthy family literally on her doorstep. But this couple …
A dog was barking somewhere within when Mrs Adams answered her knock at the door almost immediately. ‘Oh, I’ve already answered questions, you know.’
‘This is more of a friendly visit to offer help and support,’ Joanna replied, having just decided that’s exactly what it was.
‘You’d better come in, then,’ Mrs Adams said reluctantly. ‘Wait a sec and I’ll put the dog out the back.’
Invited, moments later, to seat herself in the living room, Joanna wondered why the woman seemed to be on the defensive. Perhaps she just didn’t like the police.
‘Have you heard how your husband is?’ she began by asking.
‘Poorly, but what else can we expect? It baffles me utterly. What on earth happened?’
‘You said yesterday that he got a phone call from Mr Mansell saying that he owed him wages.’
‘Yes, that’s right, and said perhaps he ought to give him his job back. Didn’t actually apologize but said he regretted what had happened.’
‘And your husband had to go into Bath on the bus?’
‘Yes, we had to sell the car. Now he’s talking of selling the truck as it’s getting too old and expensive to run. The good Lord knows what’ll happen then.’
‘Did he go into Bath on the same day, Saturday, as the call?’
‘That same afternoon – the call came in the morning.’
‘Mrs Adams, did your husband take anything with him to Bath? Any tools?’
‘No, of course not. Why would he? It was only going to be a chat.’
