a stretched canvas, about two by two, which hadn't been used. All this talk of pictures had inspired me. I under painted the canvas with a big red circle and then divided it into segments. It was going to be an abstract inspired by a cross-section of a tapeworm. I edged the segments in blue, didn't like it and tried orange. That was better. By one o'clock it was mapped out and I knew exactly how it would look. The circle had become broken and scattered, a jumble of interlocking triangles and rectangles. All it needed now was the colour piling on, thicker than jam. It was a happy and optimistic me that fell into bed, still smelling of natural turpentine, to dream of girls and art galleries and long student days.
Sparky was rapidly becoming the bringer of good news. I was having my morning coffee with Mr. Wood when he knocked and came in, looking pleased with himself. 'Pour yourself a cup, David,' Gilbert invited.
'Not often we see you up here.'
'No thanks, boss,' Dave replied. 'I prefer it from the machine. It has this pleasant… under taste of oxtail soup.'
'Don't know how you drink the damn stuff,' Gilbert declared.
'He doesn't drink it,' I said. 'He drinks mine. What is it, Dave? You came in grinning like a dog with two bollocks, so you've obviously something to tell us.'
He tilted his head to one side, thought about it for a few seconds and stated: 'Generally speaking, dogs do have two bollocks.'
'Not on the Sylvan Fields estate,' I snarled.
'Oh, right. Nobody has two of anything there. Nicholas Kingston. The one with a Kendal address, that is. Our little friends at the Serious Fraud Office have done the homework that I set them yesterday and scored ten out of ten. They've got better contacts than we have, that's for certain.'
'Go on,' I invited.
'Well, first of all, this Nick Kingston earns a respectable income as a university lecturer, which is what we had hoped for. Bit more than you take home, Charlie, but not quite as much as Mr. Wood. The interesting bit is the university. He's at Lancaster.'
'Lancaster!' I exclaimed.
'Yep.'
'Struth!'
'What's special about Lancaster?' Gilbert asked.
'On Monday,' I replied, 'or perhaps Tuesday, we had a phone call from Duncan Roberts junior, known as DJ. He's the teenage son of Andrew Roberts, brother of Duncan senior who topped himself after putting his hand up for the fire in Leeds.'
Gilbert nodded, pretending he understood.
'He wanted to talk about his Uncle Duncan, see if we could tell him anything. His parents live in Welwyn Garden City,' I continued, 'but when we checked, young DJ was ringing from Lancaster.' I turned to Dave. 'Can you see if he's at university there, please?' I asked.
'Dunnit. He is, reading mechanical engineering.'
'Blimey!' I exclaimed. 'That's interesting. I don't know what it means, but it's interesting.'
'Could be a coincidence,' Gilbert warned. It's his job to remind us of the mundane possibilities.
It's mine to go off on wild flights of fancy; to soar with the eagles and wage war on the forces of evil. That's how I see it. I turned to Dave. 'Well done, Pissquick,' I said. 'You'd better take a day off this weekend.'
He pulled a glum face and said: 'But… don't you want to know what I came to tell you?'
'You mean there's more?' I queried.
'Just a bit. University lecturer is only one of his jobs.'
'Where did you say this info came from?' Gilbert interrupted.
'The SFO,' Dave answered.
'No, where did they get it from?'
'No askee,' he replied with a shrug, implying ask no questions, be told no lies.
'The Inland bloody Revenue, I bet,' Gilbert stated.
'Like I said,' Dave told him, 'they have better contacts than us.' The Inland Revenue's principal task is collecting taxes. They're not a reservoir of essential information for the law enforcement agencies. If it were common knowledge that they supplied us with details of their clients' finances it would hamper their tax-collecting abilities, so they don't do it. Anything an individual employee of theirs might pass on is strictly off the record.
'So what else did they say?' I demanded, impatiently.
'Apparently,' Dave continued, 'Mr. Kingston also earns a healthy salary working as a freelance consultant. His main customer for this work in fact, his only customer for the last few years is… wait for it… something known as the Reynard Organisation.'
'The Reynard Organisation?' I whispered.
Dave nodded. 'Yep!'
'Reynard the Fox. Holy mother of Jesus!' That was it. We had the link. Duncan senior started the fire, Melissa put him up to it, Kingston was pulling her strings. Crosby owned the house and he was Fox's sworn enemy. And Kingston worked for Fox. QED, quod erat demonstrandum. 'Which was to be proved.' All we had to do now was the demonstrandum bit.
Chapter 9
I put the phone to my ear and nodded to Annette Brown, our swish new DC. She was seated in my office where I could see her through the window. We'd set up a telephone conference on the internals, with Dave, Nigel, Jeff and myself all listening in the big office.
Annette picked up my phone and dialled the Kendal number. After three rings a man said: 'Hello.' It's difficult to form an impression from just hello.
'Is that Mr. Kingston?' Annette asked in her best little-girl voice.
'It might be,' he replied.
'Oh, hello, Mr. Kingston,' she went on. 'This is Janine from ABC Windows. We're doing a promotion in Kendal at the moment, with fifty per cent off, and are looking for a show home in your area. Would you be…'
'What did you say your name was?' he interrupted.
'Er, Janine, Mr. Kingston.'
'And do you have a boyfriend, Janine?'
'Er, yes.'
'So in that case why don't you piss off home and get him to give you a good stiff seeing-to.' CLICK!
The four of us in the outer office buried our heads in our arms and shook with laughter. When I looked up Annette was standing there, blushing. 'That was short and sweet,' she said bravely.
It wasn't politically correct, but I couldn't resist it. I flapped a hand towards the door and said: 'Well, off you go then.'
It was Friday and he was at home. I didn't want to wait until Monday, but we were supposed to be having a team meeting in the afternoon. Dave knew as much as I did about this case but we were both a week behind with the burglaries, although it was obvious that there had been nothing new to report. I decided to dash up to Kendal to try to catch Kingston at home while they held the meeting without me. Dave and I discussed tactics and at just after eleven I filled the car with petrol and pointed it towards Cumbria, formerly Westmorland, aka the Lake District.
First stop was Kendal nick. I had a long talk with my opposite number, who I'd never met before, and told him the minimum I could. He realised I wasn't being too forthcoming but had the good sense to know that I probably had my reasons and didn't ask too many questions. The main thing was that he offered his co-operation and gave me directions to Kingston's house.
Somebody once said that schizophrenics build castles in the air, psychopaths live in them and psychiatrists collect the rent. OK, so he was a psychologist, but he was doing very nicely. The house was the end one of three that a farmer had built in one of his fields in the middle of nowhere. How he'd obtained planning permission was
