Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
On Sunday morning, Megan arrived at the Launceston nick feeling like a drowned rat, and looking like one, too, to judge by the desk sergeant’s grin.
Her oilskins had been little protection against torrents of rain blown sideways by boisterous gusts.
She usually biked in from her bedsitter on Tavistock Road, but this morning she hadn’t dared.
On the moor and over on the coast, the wind must be truly terrifying.
“Lovely weather for ducks,” said the sergeant.
“If they have any sense, they’re huddled in the rushes for fear of getting their feathers blown off.”
He laughed. “Bit of a blow,” he conceded. “I’ll have a paraffin heater taken up to your room, love.”
“Thanks.” She didn’t like the “love,” but he was old enough to be her father, so she let it pass. “Mr Scumble here yet?”
“Came in a couple of hours ago. He’s been asking for you.”
“What? The bastard! He told me not to come in till noon and it’s only half eleven. He could have rung me at home.”
“I wouldn’t remind him, if I was you. He’s like a bear with a sore head.”
“When isn’t he?” Megan asked bitterly and hurried upstairs.
The phone on her desk rang as she entered Scumble’s room. She grabbed it without sitting down, not wanting to drip all over her chair. “Pencarrow here.”
“At last,” snarled the inspector not quite sotto voce from across the room.
“I’ve got Scotland Yard on the line for you. DS Faraday.”
“Just a moment. It’s the Yard, sir. D’you want to talk to him?”
“The boy wonder, is it? You can handle him.”
“Put him through, please.” She managed to escape her cape and sou’wester before Ken’s voice came on.
“Megan? You haven’t blown away yet? Or washed away? They say the Southwest’s getting hit pretty hard.”
“We’re used to it. Any news?”
“Of a sort. Not much help. I’ve talked to most of the neighbours, and none of them saw Donaldson come home from the hospital or leave again—”
“Hold on a mo. I never got the full story on your end of things, just what was in the papers, and you people were pretty cagey. We were too busy talking about this end. Give me a quick run-down.”
“You know he was robbed at home? He doesn’t have a shop, as such, just offices in the City.”
“Ah, that must complicate matters.”
“We’d certainly move faster if the City force weren’t so touchy about its rights and privileges vis à vis the Met,” Ken said dryly.
“It wouldn’t hurt, either, if our own Fraud boys would get off their lazy bums and do a stroke of work at the weekend.
The insurance people, too. It’s impossible even to get hold of anyone in authority till tomorrow. ”
“Did he put in a claim already? From the hospital?”
“No, but we found his policy and notified them. They were investigating last week, but more on the lines of what the hell was Donaldson doing taking stuff home.”
“And what was he doing taking stuff home?”
“His line is showing specially selected jewelry privately by appointment. Not common, but not an unknown way to work, I gather. When he has an appointment on a Saturday, he almost always takes the stuff home with him so that he doesn’t have to go into the City to pick it up.
There’s a small-print clause inserted in his insurance policy to cover it, as long as he takes certain precautions, locks and alarms and so on. ”
“Methinks some lowly underwriter’s going to get the sack,” said Megan, taking notes.
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, Medlow Insurance was looking into whether he had taken the proper precautions, not easy when he was in hospital under sedation. They hadn’t really got started on the possibility of fraud, and won’t now until tomorrow.”
“So he took the goods home and the villains broke in—”
“They didn’t have to. Nabbed him on the doorstep and hustled him inside. No one else saw or heard a thing. He lives in Richmond, in one of those detached Victorian villas hidden in a thicket of laurel and rhododendron. His nearest neighbours are in Majorca, lucky sods.”
“No wife, right? Who found him?”
“The beat bobby actually. They do have their uses. A bright lad who’d noticed that Donaldson’s front gate was always latched and went for a look-see when he saw it hanging open.
He seems to have been a bit of a recluse, apart from his business contacts.
We got onto his char and she said he’s never home when she goes to clean—five mornings a week and she leaves him something to heat up for his supper.
Sometimes on a Monday she’ll find someone’s been staying over the weekend. ”
“Lady-friend?”
“Male, she’s sure. Separate bedrooms and no sign of any funny business.
No one turned up last weekend or this. We also talked to his assistant and his secretary.
I spoke to both of them again yesterday.
The assistant says Donaldson has mentioned a place in the country but he’s never said where it is.
He’s probably just retired there to recuperate. ”
“He ought to have told you, though.”
“He’s not—as far as we’re aware—a criminal.
He can go wherever he wants. Sorry I can’t tell you any more.
I’ll get back to you as soon as I have solid info but it’ll probably be tomorrow.
There’s something on that car, though. The Hillman that was dumped in Exeter.
Where did your chaps find the plates, by the way? ”
“Under some bushes by the railway tracks. Just chucked there, no serious attempt to hide them. Why?”
“The car was sold for cash the morning of the robbery, by a very dodgy dealer in the East End. The previous owner saw the licence number in the paper and went to his local nick to say he’d sold it to this outfit earlier in the week.
One of our chaps went round. They had a record of the number plate, and sketchy ledger entries of what they paid for it and what they claim they sold it for, but that’s about it as far as paperwork goes. ”
“Did your man show them the pics of Norman Wilmot and Trevor?”
“We didn’t have Trevor’s yet. Nor did the Observer or the Sunday Times, not the early editions, anyway.
Incidentally, how did you get—No, I haven’t got time now, tell me later.
In any case, the salesman who sold the car wasn’t there yesterday.
What’s more, I very much doubt if he’ll admit to remembering anything about the buyer.
Definitely a shady lot. We’ll try again to get hold of him of course. No dabs?”
“No, they seem to have been canny enough to put on gloves and keep them on. The briefcase was near the licence plates and there was nothing on that, either. Not even the jeweller’s fingerprints.” Only Aunt Nell’s, but he didn’t need to know about those.
“It was a chilly evening when he was robbed. He was wearing gloves, too. You’re sure it’s his? Not just proximity to the plates?”
“There’s the monogram. W A D.”
“Good enough. Anything else I need to know?”
“I think that’s all.”
“Right. Got to go. ’Bye, love.”
Megan said goodbye, hung up the phone, hung up her oilskins, and reported to Scumble.
At the back of her mind as she spoke, she wondered whether the love was a term of endearment, or only the equivalent of ducks, or dearie, or the Cornish my lover.
Except that, judged by Nancy Mitford’s class-based categories, all those were definitely non-U, and Ken was about as Upper as a junior policeman could be.
“Trevor could be anywhere,” Scumble complained.
“The Cotswolds, the Lake District, a Birmingham squat. Still, we can be pretty sure it’s Donaldson’s stuff we recovered since your aunt came clean about the monogram.
” He paused, as if waiting for her to protest this characterisation of Aunt Nell’s story.
Though indignation bubbled inside her, she managed to hold her tongue.
“Right, you’d better ring your pal in Bristol and see if they’ve got anything for us. ”
“They said not till Monday, sir. Besides, Mr Everett’s an inspector. I’m sure he’d prefer to speak to you.”
“I daresay. But you know at first hand what he’s dealing with, the area, the people. You should be able to understand what he’s talking about better than I can, and ask the right questions. If you put your mind to it. And maybe they’ll get moving with the job if you ask nicely. Get on with it.”
Megan flipped through her notebook, found the number, and dialled. She held on for two or three minutes, hearing nothing but buzzes and clicks. Her finger hovered over the cut-off button.
Scumble looked up from his paperwork. “Can’t read your own writing?” he enquired nastily.
She was about to press the button and redial when a recorded voice came on.
“Telephone lines are down in the Bristol and north Somerset area due to floods and gale-force winds. Available lines are reserved for emergency services. If this is an emergency, please ring 999. Normal service will be restored as soon as possible.”
Megan put down the receiver. “They’ve got flooding in Bristol, sir. The area we’re interested in is the waterfront. The Bristol police’ll be too busy to worry about our request.”
“Damn!”
“I can’t get through unless I claim it’s an emergency.”
“Well, it’s not that,” he conceded. “With any luck, the floods’ll stop up the rats in their holes till they can get to them. I’d really like confirmation of your girl’s story.”
Amazing how anything problematic immediately became your. “Camilla? Don’t you believe her?”
“Do you?” He was watching her.
“I believe she was telling the truth as she remembers it,” Megan said carefully. “She chose to come forward about her recognition of the photo as Norman Wilmot. The others didn’t.”
“So maybe she made it up, thought you’d be a soft touch and get her out of a situation that wasn’t to her liking.”
“I suppose that’s possible. But her description of Trevor is borne out by the similarity of the portrait to Mr Gresham’s version—”
“From your aunt’s description.”
“And Mrs Stearns’s.”
“True.”