the rest of the villa, as if its occupants didn’t want anything to do with their tattier neighbour.
Today, Franks’s driveway was empty as I walked up it to the front door. Through the net curtains, I could make out a clean, well-furnished interior but no obvious signs of life. I rang the doorbell but no one answered, then looked through the letterbox. There was a pile of tacky-looking brochures and various other bits of junk mail on the carpet — at least a week’s worth, probably a lot more. It looked like he might have moved out.
I went round to the nearest entrance portico and saw that there were buzzers for three flats on the wall outside. Beneath the buzzers was a sticker saying that the building was protected by CCTV cameras — not that I could see any in evidence. I rang the first two but got no answer, so I tried the third. I needed to ring several times but eventually a moderately annoyed female voice came on the line. ‘Yes?’ she said in an accusatory voice. I identified myself, and explained that I was here as part of an inquiry. Her voice immediately lost its initial hostility, and she buzzed me in. Hers was the ground-floor flat, and she came out of the door to greet me, clad only in a dressing gown and slippers. She was about thirty with short blonde hair, and nice-looking in a Sloaney sort of way. In a dressing gown as well. Perhaps I was going to have to watch out.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize you were the police. I thought you were here to sell me something.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,’ I told her.
She smiled. ‘I don’t know either. Anyway, please, come in. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve got a terrible cold. That’s why I’m not working.’ She sniffed loudly to prove it, then stepped aside to let me in. ‘I hope it’s nothing about David,’ she added, leading me into a spacious, well-furnished lounge.
‘David?’
‘My husband.’
I took a seat and she sat down on the sofa opposite, her legs tightly pressed together. Somehow, I got the feeling I was safe from any predatory advances. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with him. It’s about your neighbour to the left, a Tony Franks?’
‘Oh yes, Tony. Nice-looking guy. Dark hair.’ Her tones were clipped and upper-class. This girl had definitely not been educated at the local comprehensive. Mind you, who had round here?
I nodded. ‘That sounds like him. This is a photo.’ I removed the mugshot from my jacket pocket and briefly showed it to her.
‘Oh yes, that’s him.’ She excused herself while she sneezed into a tissue she’d removed from the pocket of the dressing gown. ‘Why? Has he done something wrong?’
‘I don’t know is the short answer. Possibly.’
‘I thought it was funny.’
‘What?’
‘Well, the way he moved out. It was all quite sudden.’
‘When was that?’
‘I don’t know for certain. I didn’t actually see him go. All I know is about a week ago a man turned up in a van and took some stuff away.’
‘This man, had you ever seen him there before?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I hadn’t. On the day he came I was outside putting the rubbish out for the dustmen when I saw him loading it up. I don’t normally take too much notice of what the neighbours are up to — I mean, you don’t in London, do you?’ I nodded, thinking that that was probably the root cause of so much that was wrong with it, and waited while she continued. ‘But there are quite a few burglaries around here, as you probably know, so I asked him what he was up to, and he told me he was Tony’s brother.’
‘Those were his exact words: “I’m Tony’s brother”?’
She nodded. ‘That’s right, so I thought he must have something to do with him. He was friendly enough, too, not at all furtive, as you’d expect a burglar to be.’ She paused to blow her nose, once again apologizing. ‘He said that Tony was moving out, and he was helping with the removals. There wasn’t a lot I could say to that. I asked him if Tony would be coming along later and he said he would. But he never did.’
‘You never saw Mr Franks again?’
‘No. I haven’t seen him for two or three weeks at least.’
I made some calculations. It was sixteen days since Shaun Matthews’s murder. The timing sounded very convenient. Now for the big question. ‘Did you take down the registration of the vehicle this gentleman was driving?’ I mentally crossed my fingers.
‘Yes, I did. I don’t like to be a busybody and I know it’s none of my business, but I memorized it while I was speaking to him, just in case, and I wrote it down on a piece of paper as soon as I got back in.’ She stood up, sniffing loudly. ‘Now, what have I done with it? Excuse me for a minute, will you?’
She wandered out of the room and I hoped I was going to get a break. Even if it proved difficult to locate Franks, whoever was moving his stuff had to have some information as to his whereabouts. Somehow I knew I was on the right track. Call it instinct, if you like. It was just a matter of continuing to pursue the scent while at the same time persuading my superiors that it was a worthwhile investment of my time. This would be the hardest part, particularly now that it looked like the area’s criminals were beginning to wake up from the previous week’s inactivity. An aggravated burglary the previous night in which a pregnant woman had been threatened with a knife by two intruders, who’d threatened to cut her open if she didn’t reveal the whereabouts of her valuables, had already caused the chief super yet another serious resources headache. What with the continued clamour over the assault on the young girl, things were getting extremely stretched. Already Knox had hinted that the murder squad was likely to be reduced still further in the next twenty-four hours, so time was of the essence.
‘Here it is,’ she said, coming back in the room with a piece of paper. ‘I wasn’t sure whether I’d thrown it away or not, but it was in the drawer.’ She handed it to me, and I put it in my top pocket, thanking her.
‘Can you describe the man for me, Miss …?’
‘Deerborne. Mrs Judy Deerborne. I’m not too good at this, but I’ll give it a go. He was quite well built. Sort of tough-looking, which was why I wasn’t entirely sure about him. About fortyish, maybe a couple of years older, five nine or ten, and I think he was bald, although it wasn’t easy to tell, because he was wearing a cap. He also had quite a big head.’
‘I disagree with you,’ I said, ‘I think you are good at it.’ I was glad I’d worn the suit I’d been wearing yesterday because it still contained the photograph I’d shown to Martin Leppel. I fished it out now, and handed it to her. ‘It wasn’t the man on the right, was it? The one in the suit?’
She looked at it closely for a few seconds. In the photo, the Slap had a cap with him but was holding it in his hand rather than wearing it. His bald dome seemed to stand out a mile.
Finally, she looked up. ‘You know, I think it is. I can’t be a hundred per cent sure — it’s not a brilliant photo, is it? But, yes, it looks a great deal like him.’
Interesting. ‘You’ve been here for how long, Mrs Deerborne?’
‘My husband and I bought this place ten years ago. I think it cost us about a third of what it would go for now.’
‘That seems to be the case for most of London. And how long has Mr Franks been your next-door neighbour?’
‘A long time.’ She appeared to think about it for a moment. ‘Three or four years at least, probably longer. Why? What is it you think he’s done?’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I’m dying to know.’ I told her politely that I couldn’t divulge that. ‘I hope it’s nothing to do with what happened to that poor paperboy. The one who got killed.’
I smiled reassuringly. ‘No, it’s a separate matter entirely. Did Mr Franks live there alone?’
‘I saw people come and go occasionally, but as far as I know it was just him in there. He wasn’t always there either. He’d be away for a few weeks at a time sometimes.’
‘Did he ever tell you what he did for a living? I mean, it’s an expensive house.’
‘I know he rented it but I don’t know how much for. A lot, I suppose. But no, he never said what his job was. He tended to keep himself to himself. He’d talk if you talked to him, and he always said hello, but I don’t think I had more than half a dozen conversations with him in all the time he was here, and not one of them lasted more than two or three minutes. Usually they were about the weather or something mundane like that.’
‘Do you know who owns the house?’
‘Yes, his name’s Roddy Lee Potter. He’s owned it for years. I know because he’s come round here a couple of times, trying to buy our place. I think he owns a few houses in London. It’s how he makes his money.’
I asked her if she had a phone number or an address for Mr Lee Potter and, after a bit more hunting around,
