‘You can trust me, boss.’
***
Chief Superintendent Goddard was under pressure, which meant that Isaac Cook and the entire Homicide team were as well.
‘It’s like this,’ Goddard said as he sat in Isaac’s office. ‘Gilbert Lawrence is receiving a lot of press interest, understandable given the man’s lifestyle, and his wife upstairs.’
‘Not to mention the fact that he owned a lot of property,’ Isaac said.
‘The man’s will, has it been resolved?’
‘Not to everyone’s satisfaction. The only problem is that the main beneficiary appears to be Lawrence’s solicitor.’
‘Complicated, but why? Normally the children would inherit the majority.’
‘That’s the problem. Lawrence wasn’t normal, was he?’
‘Who gained from the man’s death?’
‘The solicitor. Lawrence’s daughter inherited five million pounds, and her two children one million each. Ralph Lawrence, his son, nothing, although there were conditions under which he could inherit.’
‘Cut out of the will?’
‘Without question, and Ralph’s son is an anarchist, as well as a drug addict.’
‘Dead within a month, if the drug addict got hold of some of the money. Anarchists would have no issue with Gilbert Lawrence being murdered.’ Goddard said.
‘They’re only pretend anarchists. A brick thrown at a bank, a demonstration somewhere else. Just assorted ratbags, although their leader, Professor Giles Helmsley, is a unusual character.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Academic, well-spoken, and up until six years ago, a member of the faculty of the London School of Economics.’
‘Any reason to suspect him of the murder of Gilbert Lawrence?’
‘No proof. That’s the problem, the man is killed, nobody sees anything, nobody hears anything. The housekeeper is not a suspect either.’
‘Why not?’
‘No motive. She’s been working for the family for decades, even before Lawrence went crazy. And she received a million pounds in the will.’
‘If she knew about the wife upstairs, she could have felt the need to do something.’
‘No one had been up there, not for a very long time, apart from the dead man. The CSIs have been over the place with a fine-tooth comb. We had a concern about what Molly Dempster may have known, but we’ve not come up with anything. The off-licence where he used to go once a week is not in the best area. Someone could have followed him home, seen the opportunity to accost the man, steal some money.’
‘Did the people in the street, the off-licence, know who he was?’ Goddard asked.
‘Some would have.’
‘And nothing from the CSIs?’
‘There was a clear sign where the housekeeper had walked, as well as the postman, but nothing more.’
‘Then it’s not someone off the street, is it?’
‘Gilbert Lawrence sent a letter to everyone important outlining certain facts, including why his wife was upstairs. No document has been received with accounts, real estate holdings, passwords. Everything is with Dundas.’
‘And Lawrence is certified as sane?’ Goddard said.
‘We’re checking, but we’re expecting Ralph Lawrence to dispute the will. He may be a con artist, but he’s got a point. An evaluation of sanity can only be based on the facts presented. And not one of these experts knew about how he had taken his wife, buried her in the ground underneath the cellar floor for some months, and then exhumed her, removed what he could of the excess skin and internals, and then had her remaining body eaten by dermestid beetles until she was virtually only bone.’
‘But she could have been murdered?’
‘It’s possible. Unprovable, though.’
Isaac realised he’d given his senior very little. As soon as he’d left he called in his team.
‘What do we have?’ Isaac said.
‘Ralph Lawrence met with his sister,’ Wendy said.
‘How do we know?’
‘I’ve been keeping a watch on him after I found him at another hotel. Since meeting with her – they met at a restaurant – he’s moved out of the hotel and back into something decent.’
‘What about Dundas and his daughter? Any movement there?’
‘They’ve done nothing wrong that we can see,’ Larry said.
‘Yet they have gained the most from this.’
‘On the face of it.’
‘Larry, we need to go and interview the postman who found Gilbert Lawrence,’ Isaac said.
Chapter 11
‘I still had to deliver the mail,’ was not the comment that Isaac and Larry were looking for.
Jim Porter, the postman, had been found at his home five miles from where he had discovered the body of Gilbert Lawrence. Judging by the condition of the flat he lived in, he was a slovenly man. He had not been pleased to see two police officers at his door, although it was a block of flats which the local police would have been only too familiar with. It was grim, low rent, and definitely not the sort of place that Isaac liked. His small flat in Willesden was not much larger than the postman’s, but it did have a pleasant outlook, whereas the view from where the three men stood was of an old industrial site.
‘They’re putting up some fancy high-rise for the wealthy, not for us,’ Porter said as he looked out of the window.
‘Gilbert Lawrence was wealthy,’ Isaac said. ‘You must have been tempted.’
‘Who wouldn’t be? I’d heard stories about the man: reclusive, never spoke, the smell of rotting fish.’
‘Rotting fish?’
‘That’s what they said at the off-licence.’
‘Who else have you spoken to about him?’ Larry said. He looked around the flat, realised his wife wouldn’t have crossed the threshold. He had to admit his wife looked after him, the children, and the house well, and with her, there were no dirty cups in the sink, no magazines thrown haphazardly across any vacant space.
‘Nobody, not really, but sometimes people liked to talk, and old man Lawrence was as good a subject as any other.’
‘Molly Dempster?’
‘She liked to talk, but if I asked about him inside, she’d clam up. I was
