‘No, it wasn’t. It was quite nice.’ She’d resorted to her little girlie voice. ‘Charlie…’
‘Mmm.’
‘Will you come and see me, sometime?’
I’d be seeing her, sometime, no doubt about it. I just wasn’t sure about the circumstances.
‘No, I don’t think so, Lisa,’ I said.
‘I thought you said you liked me.’
‘I do, Lisa. I think you’re terrific’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I can’t make it, tomorrow.’
‘Saturday?’
‘No. I’ll be seeing Annabelle over the weekend.’
‘Then it will have to be tomorrow.’
‘I’m busy, tomorrow.’
‘I thought you wanted to know all about K. Tom. And the…you know…the stuff.’
‘You mean the gold?’
‘I might do.’
‘I don’t believe you know anything about it,’ I teased.
‘You’d be surprised what I know,’ she claimed. ‘But I’m not saying anything on the phone. Why don’t you come and see me in the morning, about ten o’clock?’
‘That’s a very tempting offer.’
‘So you’ll come?’
‘I might.’
‘Good. And if you’re a very good boy, Aunty Lisa might tell you all about…you know…it.’
‘Right,’ I replied, my voice coming from somewhere down in my bowels. ‘I’ll do that. Ten it is.’
I let Gareth Adey run the morning meeting. Soon as it ended I strode into the CID office and said, ‘You, you and you. Inner sanctum.’ I was in a good mood. I’d changed my normal route to work in order to drive past the local pub again. Two posh limos were standing forlornly in the car park, their windows opaque with morning dew for the first time in their lives. After my visit the silly prats at the bar had shared a taxi home.
Nigel, Sparky and Maggie followed me into my corner. ‘First of all,’ I told them, ‘I’m giving a lecture a week today at Bramshill. It’s on ethics.’ I turned to Nigel. ‘Could you have a little think about it?’ I asked him. ‘Write down a few ideas for me, if you don’t mind.’
He nodded.
Sparky gasped. ‘Ethics! You!’
‘What’s so funny?’ I demanded.
‘It’s like asking Genghis Khan to talk on road safety.’
‘Right,’ I said, pointedly ignoring him. ‘The enquiry into Goodrich’s death is over. Where are we with the Jones boys?’
‘You mean the suspect bank accounts?’ Maggie said.
‘Yep.’
‘It’s all in the reports, just like you insist.’
‘I know, but let’s hear it in the spoken word.’
Nigel said, ‘Maud and Brian reconciled three of the Jones’ lists of money in Goodrich’s book with real accounts in local banks.’
‘And where did it go from there?’
‘About half went to IGI, for diamonds. The other half went on a variety of things: one cheque of eighteen grand to Heckley Motors, presumably for a car; some went into legitimate investments.’
‘Goodrich was a big wheel in second-hand endowment policies,’ Maggie told us.
I pulled the flip chart from the corner and handed a pen to Sparky. ‘You can be teacher, this morning, Dave,’ I told him. ‘Good night, last night?’
He grimaced at me and stood up. ‘No, bloody awful,’ he admitted, turning over the pages until he reached a blank one.
‘Sorry, Maggie,’ I said. ‘You were telling us about second-hand…endowment policies, did you say? What are they?’
‘Maud explained it to me. If someone takes out an endowment policy, then finds out that they are dying, say of AIDS, they want the money now, not after the event. The insurance company will pay them a surrender value, based on the number of payments they’ve made, but another option is to sell the policy to a third party for a lot more money. This third party then takes over the payments, and draws the full amount when the original holder pops it.’
‘And that’s legit?’ I gasped.
She shrugged. ‘Everybody benefits, Charlie. It’s a brutal world out there.’
‘The insurance companies benefit, Maggie. Why can’t they pay the full amount early, minus payments? They’d have to, eventually, if some poor sod didn’t need the money.’
Nigel said, ‘We’re not the morality police, Boss. If it’s legal, it’s legal.’
‘OK. So what next?’
‘Michael Angelo Watts knew Goodrich,’ Sparky told us, writing the information on his chart.
‘And,’ I said, pausing for effect, ‘he also knows K. Tom Davis.’ They looked at me, inviting an explanation. ‘I had a ride round there, Wednesday afternoon,’ I went on. ‘Did a little spying. Saw him pay them a visit.’
‘That’s interesting,’ Nigel said.
‘And he’s a drugs dealer,’ Maggie added.
‘Allegedly,’ I said, smiling. ‘Go on.’
‘IGI go bust,’ from Nigel.
‘Right.’
‘Michael Angelo Watts very annoyed,’ Sparky suggested.
‘I’d bet he was,’ I said. ‘The surprising thing is that we found Goodrich dead in his chair and not standing on the riverbed with his feet in a concrete block. So how did he sweet-talk Watts into leaving him be?’
‘Blame IGI — K. Tom Davis — for the failure?’ Nigel wondered.
‘Can’t see Watts falling for that,’ Sparky said.
‘Nor me,’ I confirmed.
‘How about an alternative method of payment?’ Maggie proposed.
‘Such as?’
‘Well, what’s this about the gold?’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you what we know. Mr Smart Arse Caton said right from the beginning that the drugs dealers would prefer payment in gold, because they’re awash with cash, but, on the other hand, anybody holding gold would welcome the opportunity to convert some of it into cash.’
‘Jack Spratt and his wife,’ Sparky said.
‘Precisely. It’s a marriage made in heaven. And now there are rumours that K. Tom was involved in the Hartog-Praat bullion robbery. Only rumours, sadly, but the fact is that someone, somewhere out there, is sitting on a ton and a half of a very desirable metal.’
‘So what’s next?’ Sparky asked.
‘Next,’ I replied, ‘is that I am going to interview K. Tom’s daughter-in-law, Lisa Davis, later this morning. She reckons to know something, but I’m not sure. Then, when I have the time, I want to talk to a man called Jimmy the Fish, in Bridlington. Hopefully, they’ll put some flesh on the rumours. Have you all got plenty to be going on with?’
They always say they have. I turned to Dave. ‘I’m seeing Lisa Davis at ten, so I’d better be off. I want you to give me a ring on my mobile at ten thirty, no later. In fact, better make it twenty past. Say there’s been a murder, and I’m urgently needed. OK?’
‘Will do, Chas,’ he replied.
We were on our way to the door when Nigel said, ‘Have we time for a quicky?’ He meant a joke, not sex.
