‘But I was thinking,’ he went on, ‘Toby, you mentioned that your aunt ran a hotel next door to your house at Chelsea Mansions. Is it possible that Nancy, or her parents maybe, once stayed there, and met the people down the street, and maybe Nancy thought she might try to trace them?’
Toby looked at Deb and they both frowned. ‘She didn’t mention anything like that.’
‘Would it be worth seeing if you have any old records or photographs that might tell us something?’
‘We had boxes of old family papers, but they got damaged by damp, down in the shelter.’
‘The shelter?’ John asked.
‘Our cellar. Pa built a bomb shelter for us in the cellar in ’39, before he went off to France with the BEF. Damn stupid idea really-if the house had been hit we’d all have been buried alive. But it’s damp down there so we took what we could salvage up to the attic, next to your room, John. You’re welcome to have a look if you want.’
‘Perhaps I might,’ John said. ‘History was originally my subject. If you really wouldn’t mind, Toby?’
‘Be my guest, old son. If you find any worthwhile photos, we might get them framed.’
After they finished their lunch they lingered for a while in the food hall, and John took hold of Kathy’s arm and steered her away.
‘You think there might be some connection between Nancy and Chelsea Mansions?’
‘I’ve really no idea, John, but it’s an intriguing thought.’
‘It does kind of make sense. The holiday was a bit of a nostalgia trip for her-tracing the lost relatives in Scotland, that kind of thing. And she had brought old photographs with her. Emerson showed me.’
‘Yes, I saw those. I didn’t take much notice at the time.’
‘I don’t remember seeing any of Chelsea Mansions. They were mainly pictures of people. It would be interesting if any of those faces are up in Toby’s attic, wouldn’t it?’
‘It might explain why she came to the hotel.’
But not much else, she thought, as she waved them off in a taxi, the three of them looking like an affectionate family group, the elderly couple and their deferential, grown-up son, indulging the old man’s passion for knickerbocker glories. The sight of them together filled Kathy with a sense of futility. They hadn’t been able to help, although they’d obviously wanted to, and the failure wasn’t theirs, it was hers. She had been in a kind of shock since being dumped from the case, wasting time, clutching at straws like this, when the real questions lay elsewhere.
And the real questions were why Nigel Hadden-Vane had done it and how he’d managed it. They had caught sight of a couple of his connections to the killer and his accomplice, and sketched out a circumstantial case, but nothing more. How had he arranged it, making contact with the son of his old chauffeur in Barlinnie Prison to recruit Harry Peebles? How had he made contact with Peebles, given his instructions, paid the cash? The only person who might have given them an inkling was Danny Yilmaz, and he was dead.
On the way home she went over again in her mind that first interview with Danny. She remembered a slight change in his manner, an apparent eagerness to cooperate, when she began to question him about the man who had made the arrangements for the job over the phone. Did he know the caller? Was it Hadden-Vane himself, or had he worked through some other acquaintance of Danny’s?
When she got back to her flat she went through the case files on her computer once again, searching for the newspaper photograph that Bren had shown her, of Hadden-Vane at the Haringey Sport and Social Club, handing out certificates. When she found it she stared at the faces, a dozen of them watching the ceremony. The quality was poor, the features grainy, but there was one other that seemed familiar. It took her a moment to place him, then she remembered. In the back row, face partially obscured, stood a man who looked very like Wayne Everett, the security man on duty the night Moszynski died.
TWENTY-SEVEN
W hen she got to the hospital the following morning, Brock was dressed and getting ready to leave.
‘Kathy!’ he beamed. ‘I was going to give you a call. They’re letting me go home at last. Fancy a train ride?’
They caught a cab to Victoria Station, Brock opening the window to take in the smells of the city, untainted by hospital chemicals, and it was only when they were on the train that he began to speak of what was on his mind. He had been careful to choose an empty compartment, and as the train pulled out of the station he said, ‘Chivers called in to see me this morning. He brought me a book about preparing for retirement. I nearly threw it at him. Apparently he’d heard a rumour that I’d decided to go.’
They were rumbling across Grosvenor Bridge, the chimneys and bulk of the old Battersea Power Station on the far side of the river, and hovering overhead a helicopter coming in to the heliport that Moszynski had used. Life goes on, Kathy thought.
‘Did he say how his investigation is going?’
‘I rather gathered that they haven’t found anything more concrete to link Hadden-Vane to Peebles, nor a motive for him to be involved in either death.’
‘I might be able to help him.’
‘You got something from the hotel people?’
‘No, they couldn’t help. But afterwards I was thinking about Danny Yilmaz, and wondering who else might have made the arrangements for Peebles’ visit, if it wasn’t Hadden-Vane himself. So I looked again at that picture of him at the Haringey club, and I recognised Moszynski’s bodyguard, Wayne Everett, among the onlookers. And that makes sense too, because Hadden-Vane is a director of the company he works for, Shere Security.’
Brock nodded, thoughtful. ‘I see.’
‘Should I tell Chivers?’ Kathy asked.
‘Hm, I think he’d regard it as just another circumstantial detail. So Everett was in the photo, so what? And it doesn’t help us with the most important thing, the thing that’s bothering him most: the motive. Why on earth would Hadden-Vane want to harm Moszynski or Nancy Haynes?’
They were passing through the densely packed terraces of inner South London now, the brickwork blackened with age and long-extinct coal fires. It was an area Brock had once worked as a young CID officer, and he said, ‘This feels like being in limbo, doesn’t it? Watching life through glass.’
‘You could get away. Take a holiday, go somewhere nice with Suzanne.’
‘She’s busy, and I’m supposed to check in to the clinic every day for tests. I could still be a walking time bomb, according to the specialist. So if you hear me ticking, watch out.’
When they got off the train they stopped at the Bishop’s Mitre on the way back to Brock’s house. Brock ordered his habitual pork pie and pint of bitter, and Kathy watched him address them like a sacrament for a life recovered.
When they were finished she took a couple of sheets of paper from her bag and spread them out on the table. ‘This is our victim profile for Nancy Haynes. Thin, isn’t it? I realised when I was talking to the hotel people how little we really know about her. We don’t know why she chose Chelsea Mansions or if she’d been to London before, and we have only a vague sketch of her background and family structure. It didn’t seem particularly relevant. Now I wonder. What if she had had some previous contact with Hadden-Vane?’
‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ Brock said. ‘In fact I’ve been wondering if Sharpe might be right about you leaving London.’
She gave him a puzzled look and he said, ‘Have you ever been to Boston?’
She hadn’t. In fact she’d never been to North America, and at first she didn’t like the idea of leaving. It felt like running away, and she objected that they could talk to Emerson and Nancy’s relatives on the phone, but Brock wasn’t having any of that.
‘It’s not the same, Kathy. You’ve got to see them on their home ground. Get the taste of it, where she lived, what kind of life she had. You know that.’
So they went back to Brock’s house and explored the idea, and when they’d finished Kathy got on the web and started to make some bookings.
On the train back to central London later that afternoon, Kathy called John Greenslade. He was at the Tate
