He’d even taken the backs off the televisions, ripped open the soft furnishings, unscrewed the ventilation grilles, dismantled the light fittings. From his days of dealing in drugs, he knew just how thoroughly police would take a place apart, and all the kinds of hiding places a smart dealer would use.
Another possible option was that she had left it with a friend. But the name on the package she’d given to the courier was a dummy, he’d checked that one out. He suspected she had been avoiding contacting anyone here. If she hadn’t even told her mother she was back, he doubted she would want word to get out among her friends.
No, he was becoming increasingly convinced that she still had it all in the flat.
Despite all her clever ploys, as Ricky well knew, everyone has an Achilles heel. Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link. An army can only march as fast as its slowest soldier.
Abby’s mother was both her weak link and her slowest soldier.
Now he knew exactly what he had to do.
The Renault van outside Abby’s flat, which had not been driven in a while, was reluctant to start. Then, just as the battery started fading and he was beginning to think this was not going to work, it fired and spluttered into oily, smoky life.
He drove it out of the parking space and replaced it with the rental Ford. Now, when Abby came back here, she would spot the car and think he was in there. He smiled. For the immediate future she would not be entering the flat. There was no residents’ parking sticker on the rental car, so it would probably be given a ticket at some point, and maybe get clamped, but what the hell did that matter?
He removed the GSM 3060 Intercept from the Ford and put it in the van. Then he drove off back towards Eastbourne, stopping only to pick up a takeaway burger and a Coke. He felt happier now. Confident that he was close to having the situation back under control.
78
At 6.30 p.m. the fourth briefing meeting of Operation Dingo commenced. But as Roy Grace began reading his summary to his assembled team, he hesitated, noticing that Glenn Branson was staring at him a bit strangely and twitching his nostrils, as if he was trying to send him a signal.
‘Is there a problem?’ Grace asked him.
Then he noticed several of the others gathered around the work station seemed to be looking at him strangely too.
‘You smell a bit fruity, boss,’ Glenn said. ‘If you don’t mind me being personal. Not your usual brand of cologne, if you get my drift. Have you stood or sat in something?’
Grace realized to his horror what the DS was driving at. ‘Oh, right, I apologize. I – just got back from a dog-training class. The little bugger threw up all over me in the car. I thought I’d managed to wash it off.’
Bella Moy delved into her handbag and handed Grace a perfume spray. ‘This’ll drown it,’ she said.
Grace hesitantly sprayed his trousers, shirt and jacket.
‘Now you smell like a bordello,’ Norman Potting commented.
‘Well, thank you very much,’ Bella said, glaring at him indignantly.
‘Not that I would know, of course,’ Potting mumbled, in a feeble attempt at retrieving the situation. Then he added, ‘I read recently that Koreans eat dogs.’
‘That’s quite enough, Norman,’ Roy Grace said sternly, returning to his typed agenda. ‘OK, Bella, first can you report on your findings so far about Joanna Wilson ever going to America? My guy hasn’t come up with anything.’
‘I contacted the officer in the New York District Attorney’s
Office you suggested, Roy. He sent me an email an hour ago, saying that prior to 9/11 all immigration was handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Agency. It’s different since. They’re merged with US Customs and are now called Immigration Customs Enforcement. He says that unless she had gone in on a visa for an extended stay, there would be no records. He’s checked back through those for the 1990s and she doesn’t show up as having gone in on a visa, but he says there’s no way of finding out whether she ever went there or not.’
‘OK, thanks. E-J, how are you progressing with the family tree. Did you track down any of Joanna Wilson’s relatives?’
‘Well, she doesn’t seem to have had many. I’ve found a gay stepbrother – who’s a piece of work. He goes under the name of Mitzi Dufors, is nudging sixty, wears studded leather hot-pants and is covered in piercings. He does some kind of a drag act in a Brighton gay club. Didn’t have many flattering words to say about his late stepsister.’
‘You can’t trust middle-aged men in leather hot-pants,’ Norman Potting interjected.
‘Norman!’ Grace said, firing a warning shot across his bows.
‘You’re not exactly a fashion guru yourself, Norman,’ Bella retorted.
‘OK, both of you, enough!’ Grace said.
Potting shrugged like a petulant child.
‘Anything else from her stepbrother.’
‘He said Joanna inherited a small house in Brentwood from her mother, about a year before she went to America. He reckoned she took the sale proceeds to fund her acting career there.’
‘We should try to find how much money was involved and what happened to it. Good work, E-J.’
Grace made some notes, then moved on to Branson. ‘Glenn, did you and Bella get hold of the Klingers?’
Branson grinned. ‘I think we got Stephen Klinger at a good time, after lunch – pissed as a fart and well chatty. Told us that no one liked Joanna Wilson much – she sounds like she was a real slapper. She gave Ronnie a right old song and dance, and no one cared too much when she ditched him – or so it seemed – and went off to the States. He confirmed that Ronnie had married again, after dutifully waiting out the legal period for desertion, to Lorraine. When Ronnie died she was inconsolable. What made it worse for her, if that’s possible, is that he left her up shit creek financially.’
Grace made a note.
‘Her car got repossessed, then her house. Sounds like Wilson was a man of straw. Had nothing, no assets at all. His widow ended up getting evicted from her posh house in Hove and moved into a rented flat. Just over a year later, in November 2002, she left a suicide note and jumped off the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry.’ He paused. ‘We went and saw Mrs Klinger as well, but she more or less confirmed what her husband told us.’
‘Any of her relatives able to verify her state of mind?’ Grace asked.
‘Yeah, she’s got a sister who works as a hostess for British Airways. I just spoke to her. She was at work and couldn’t really speak. I’ve got an appointment to see her tomorrow. But she also pretty well confirmed what Klinger said. Oh, yeah, and she said she took Lorraine to New York as soon as flights were running again. They spent a week traipsing around the city with a big photograph of Ronnie. Them and a million others.’
‘So she’s convinced Ronnie died in 9/11.’
‘No question,’ Glenn said. ‘He was at a meeting in the South Tower with a guy called Donald Hatcook. Everyone on the floor Donald Hatcook was on perished – almost certainly instantly.’ Then he looked at his notes. ‘You asked me about this geezer Chad Skeggs?’
‘Yes, what did you find out?’
‘He’s wanted for questioning by Brighton CID regarding an allegation of indecent assault on a young woman back in 1990. The girl’s story is that they left the club and went back together, and then she was badly beaten up by him. It could be linked to an S &M scenario. Possible that she initially went along with it and then he wouldn’t stop. It was a very nasty assault, together with an allegation of rape. But it was decided at the time that it wasn’t in the public interest to go to Australia and bring him back. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him in England again, not unless he’s very stupid.’
Grace turned to DC Nicholl. ‘Nick, what do you have to report?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s actually quite interesting. After I did a nationwide search on Wilson, which didn’t come up with anything we didn’t already know, I decided that a businessman like him, with his smart house in Hove 4, was likely to have some life insurance. I did some digging and discovered Ronnie Wilson had a life insurance policy of just over one and a half million quid with the Norwich Union, taken out in 1999.’
‘Presumably his widow didn’t know this?’ Grace said.
‘I think she did,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘They paid out to her in full in March 2002.’
‘When she was in a rented flat, in distress?’ Grace asked.
‘There’s more,’ the DC said. ‘In July 2002, ten months after her husband died, Lorraine Wilson received a payment of two and a half million dollars from the 9/11 compensation fund.’
‘Three months before she jumped off the ferry,’ Lizzie Mantle said.
‘
‘Two million five hundred thousand dollars – with the exchange rate back in those days, that would have been worth close to one and three-quarter million quid,’ Norman Potting said.
‘So she died in abject poverty, with over three million in the bank?’ Bella said.
‘That amount of moolah would buy you a lot of Maltesers,’ Norman Potting said to her.
‘Except the money wasn’t in the bank,’ Nick Nicholl said. He held up two folders. ‘Managed to get these a bit quicker than we should have done, thanks to Steve.’
He waved a hand in acknowledgement to thirty-year-old DC Mackie, seated further down the table, dressed in jeans and an open-neck white shirt.
Mackie spoke with quiet authority and had a tidy, efficient air about him, which Grace liked. ‘My brother works for HSBC. He fast-tracked my request.’
Nick Nicholl then removed a sheaf of documents from one folder. ‘These are all the joint-account statements of Ronnie and Lorraine Wilson going back to 2000. They show an ever-increasing overdraft, with just occasional small amounts coming in.’ He put them back in the folder and raised the second one. ‘This is much more interesting. It’s a bank account opened in Lorraine Wilson’s sole name in December 2001.’
‘For the life insurance money, presumably?’ Lizzie Mantle said.
Nick Nicholl nodded and Grace was impressed. Normally the young man lacked self-confidence, but at this moment he seemed really together.
‘Yes, that was deposited in March 2002.’
