Maddocks shrugged. 'No idea, but Colonel Clancey said it was very clear to him and his wife that Jane was having cold feet about the wedding, even if it was Leo who called it off. Claims he can't understand why she would want to top herself when he left.'
'Any ideas?'
'Only the obvious, that she killed them herself or witnessed the killing and then suffered a similar breakdown to the one she'd had at the time of Landy's death. She's pretty damn weird, that's for sure. I mean, according to what we've found out, her favorite backgrounds for photographic shoots are cemeteries, derelict factories, and graffitied subway walls.' He took a folded page that had been ripped out of a magazine, from his pocket. 'If you're interested, that's her most famous photograph to date. It's that black supermodel standing in front of a filthy tiled wall with every obscenity you can imagine scrawled all over it.'
Cheever spread the sheet on his desk and examined it. 'Fascinating,' he said. 'She's quite an artist.'
'Well, I think it sucks, sir. Why put a beautiful woman against crap like that?'
'Where would you have put her, Gareth?' asked the other man tartly. 'On a bed?'
'Why not? Somewhere a bit more glamorous, anyway.'
The Superintendent frowned. 'It's a statement. I think it's saying that real beauty is incorruptible, never mind how profane or ugly the setting.' He pinched the end of his nose. 'Which is interesting, don't you think, in view of the ugliness of Landy's death? I wonder when she started using backgrounds like this in her work. There's something rather moving about the triumph of fragile human perfection over a wasteland of mindless filth.'
Maddocks decided the old man was going gaga. It was only a creased fashion photograph, not the Mona Lisa.
HELLINGDON HALL, NEAR FORDINGBRIDGE, HAMPSHIRE-12:30 P.M.
Miles Kingsley shook his mother angrily, then pushed her back onto the sofa. 'I don't believe it. My God, you're such a stupid cow. Why can't you keep your bloody great mouth shut? Who else have you told?' He glared across at his brother, who was skulking at the far end of the drawing room, feigning an interest in the leather-bound books his father had bought by the yard when they first moved into the Hall. 'Your neck's on the line too, you little shit, so I suggest you wipe that smirk off your face before I slap it off.'
'Sod off, Miles,' said Fergus. 'If I had any sense I'd never have listened to you in the first place.' He kicked a Chippendale chair. 'It was your idea, for Christ's sake. 'Foolproof,' you said. 'What can possibly go wrong?' '
'Nothing
'That's what you said last time.'
RAMSEY ROAD POLICE STATION-12:45 P.M.
Frank read the documents on his desk relating to the Landy murder, then dialed the contact number Maddocks had given him. DCI Andrews had been involved from the outset.
'The case was effectively closed at the end of '85,' he said down the wire from Scotland Yard, 'when Jason Phelps was put away for the Docherty murders. Remember him? Clubbed an entire family to death for twenty grand on the instructions of Docherty's nephew. They both got four life sentences. We tried to persuade Phelps to confess to the Landy killing, because it was a carbon copy of the Docherty murders, but we never got a result. There was no question he did it, though, and if we could have got him to spill the works, we'd have nailed Kingsley.
'Tell me about the daughter,' prompted Frank. 'What was she like?'
'I rather took to her, as a matter of fact. She was a good kid, deeply shocked of course, and suffered a nervous breakdown afterwards. She kept saying it was all her fault but we never believed she had anything to do with it. Meredith put it to her that she was afraid her father was responsible, but she said no. A day or two later she lost her baby.'
'Did she ever suggest who might have done it?'
'An unknown artist whose work Landy had rejected. She said he could be very cruel in what he said, and she was insistent that he'd told her a few days before the murder that he was being watched by some creep who'd come to the gallery. She didn't think anything of it at the time, because he treated it as a joke, but it certainly preyed on her mind afterwards. We checked it out, but there was no substance to it and we took the view that if the watcher existed at all, it was as likely to be Kingsley's contract killer as an embittered artist.'
Cheever pondered for a moment. 'Still, it's something of a minefield. The only contact I've had with Kingsley was years ago when he beat his future brother-in-law to a pulp to warn him off the wedding. Now you're telling me he pulped his son-in-law
'That was his daughter's argument. She claimed Kingsley had done his best to get rid of Landy three years previously by having him sacked from his job, but had long since accepted defeat on the matter. Our view was that the pregnancy changed things. She admitted that she and Landy had been going through a rocky patch but said the baby had brought them together again, and we didn't think it was coincidence that the wretched man was murdered a week after she told her parents she was expecting. We guessed Kingsley was relying on the marriage failing and when he was presented with evidence that it wasn't, he signed Landy's death warrant.'
Cheever tapped one of the pieces of paper in front of him. 'According to the memo you faxed through, you and Meredith believed Kingsley adored his daughter. But we're talking about something much sicker than adoration, surely? I could understand it if Landy had been treating her badly and Kingsley wanted him punished, but from what you've said, he acted out of jealous rage. There'd have to be a pretty powerful sexual motive behind actions like that.'
'In a nutshell, that's what we thought it was all about. Look, the man was very highly sexed, he was visiting the Shepherd's Market prostitute every week. The second marriage was a disaster because the poor creature he settled on wasn't a patch on the first wife and took to the bottle within a couple of years. Her sons never matched up to the first wife's daughter, who, to make matters worse, is the spitting image of her dead mother. There's no evidence that Kingsley abused the child, but they lived alone together for five years before he married again, and we estimated the chances were high that he did. We had his psychological profile drawn up based on what was known of him, and it was very revealing. There was a heavy emphasis on his need to control through ruthless manipulation of people and events, and it was thought very unlikely that his daughter could have escaped unscathed.'
'Did you suggest it to her?'
'Yes'-a hesitation-'more's the pity. We gave her the profile to read, and the next thing we knew, she was under the care of a psychiatrist with severe anorexia and suicidal depression. We felt rather badly about it, to be honest.'
