Gunrunner (11 page)

‘I’m the licensee, gentlemen. Yvonne tells me you’re from the police. There isn’t any trouble, I hope.’

‘We haven’t found any yet, Mr . . .?’ Dave opened his pocketbook and waggled his pen.

‘Mr Butler.’

‘First name?’

‘Reginald. Reginald Butler.’

‘I understand that Kerry Trucking holds its Christmas party here, Mr Butler.’

‘Yes, that’s right, every Christmas Eve, but they’re never any trouble.’

‘I don’t much care if they are, Mr Butler,’ I said, taking a sip of my beer. ‘D’you know any of the people from there?’

‘Oh, yes. They’re a nice bunch. Their Mr Bligh is the one who makes all the arrangements. They invite all the staff every year: office people, drivers, everyone. And that Mrs Hammond always comes. She’s the boss, you know. Mind you, she wasn’t here this Christmas just gone.’

‘She wouldn’t have been. She was murdered on Christmas Eve.’

‘Oh, good grief, surely not?’ Butler fingered his moustache. ‘I didn’t see anything about that in the papers.’

‘That’s because it hasn’t been released to the press,’ said Dave, ‘and we’d be obliged if you’d keep it to yourself for the time being. Otherwise you’ll find that your pub is suddenly full of journalists, and they’re notorious for not buying a drink.’

‘What a terrible shock,’ said Butler, clearly stunned by the news. ‘Who would’ve wanted to murder Kerry?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to establish,’ I said. ‘Mr Bligh has told us that he was here on Christmas Eve, with his wife and Mr and Mrs Thorpe. D’you know if that’s the case?’

Butler glanced at his barmaid. ‘Yvonne, you were looking after the Kerry party on Christmas Eve. Perhaps you can answer these officers’ questions.’ He glanced down the bar, and then back at me. ‘D’you mind if I serve those customers?’ he asked, indicating a couple of thirsty-looking men.

‘No, you carry on, Mr Butler.’ I’d already come to the conclusion that Yvonne was likely to know more about the party than her boss.

‘It’s always a big do,’ said Yvonne. ‘Must’ve been about a hundred of them all told. The staff bring their partners, and I think there’s one or two of their clients who get invited. But Kerry Hammond wasn’t here this year, or her husband, but now that I hear she’s been murdered, I know why.’

‘They’d planned a holiday in New York,’ I said, ‘but only Mr Hammond got there.’

‘What a bleedin’ tragedy, her getting killed,’ said Yvonne, shaking her head. ‘Life and soul of the party, that girl was.’

‘Really?’ said Dave. ‘In what way?’

‘Well . . .’ Yvonne leaned forward, resting her folded arms on the bar and revealing an inch or two more of cleavage. ‘The Christmas before this one just gone, she turned up in the skimpiest Father Christmas outfit you’ve ever seen. Nothing to it, there wasn’t. Short skirt, bare midriff and a low-cut bra, all in red furry stuff, and she was wearing black tights and heels the height of Blackpool Tower. Left nothing to the imagination, I can tell you, love. Not something I’d wear. Mind you, I might’ve done twenty years ago.’ She sighed and her face assumed a wistful expression. ‘And she wasn’t above putting herself about.’

‘Meaning what?’ I asked.

‘Flirting with all the men, and at one stage she disappeared for about half an hour with her secretary. That was the year before last, of course.’

‘What, with a woman?’ Dave took a sudden prurient interest.

‘No, silly, a bloke. Only a young chap, he was. About twenty, I should think.’

‘Any idea of his name, Yvonne?’ I asked. The barmaid’s information tallied with both Bernard Bligh’s and Susan Penrose’s suspicions about Kerry’s promiscuous behaviour.

Yvonne thought about that for a moment. ‘Bryce, I think. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was Bryce.’

‘What was his first name?’ asked Dave.

‘That was his first name, but I don’t know what his surname was.’

‘Was there anyone else she seemed particularly close to?’

‘Yeah, there was a shaven-haired hunk called Gary; one of the drivers he was. Common sort of bloke with an earring and tats, but him and Kerry seemed very friendly, if you get my drift. P’raps Kerry liked a bit of rough.’

‘What sort of tattoos?’ asked Dave, pocketbook at the ready.

‘Nasty serpent thing up his left arm, and a skull and crossbones on the other,’ said Yvonne. ‘It put me right off, I can tell you. I don’t like men with tats.’

‘I’d put money on that being Dixon, sir,’ said Dave.

‘Sounds like him.’ I redirected my attention to Yvonne. ‘Was Kerry’s husband here on that occasion?’

‘Who, Nick? Yeah, he was here; bit of a wimp by the look of him. I didn’t take to him at all.’

‘Didn’t he mind what Kerry was getting up to?’ asked Dave.

‘It didn’t seem to bother him, love. He just sat in the corner and got slowly pissed. I think a couple of the drivers poured him into a taxi at about half past nine, but Kerry stayed on till midnight.’

‘And about this guy with the tattoos: did he have a wife or a girlfriend with him?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Yvonne. ‘He only seemed interested in Kerry.’ She glanced up and down the bar, and then moved her head even closer to us. ‘I did hear that she was having an affair with someone, mind you,’ she added in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘You’d be surprised what you pick up when you’re behind the bar.’

‘Have you any idea of his name?’ asked Dave.

‘No, love, but from the way she was flaunting herself, I think there might’ve been more than one. Quite blatant, she was. It takes another woman to know the signs, and I think she was looking to get laid.’

‘To get back to Mr Bligh,’ I said. ‘What time did he arrive?’

‘About eight o’clock. That’s when it began. They start it that late to let the drivers go home and get changed, Mr Bligh said. Them as weren’t away on a driving job, of course.’

‘Was Mr Bligh here all the time?’

‘Well, he was here, love, but I can’t swear that he was here all the time. I was behind the bar and too busy serving drinks to keep an eye on everyone. Why? D’you think he done it?’

‘We don’t know who did it,’ said Dave.

‘Thanks, Yvonne,’ I said, deciding that we’d extracted as much as we could from the informative barmaid.

‘Well, I hope you catch the bugger who did for Kerry. Despite what I said, she was a nice girl.’

‘We shall, Yvonne,’ I said confidently, but secretly I wasn’t so sure. There was a long way to go yet.

EIGHT

‘
I
t’s only about twelve miles from here to Heathrow, guv,’ said Dave, as we drove away from the pub. ‘Bligh could’ve gone out there, done the deed, and then gone on to the party.’

‘It’s possible, Dave. But from what Henry Mortlock said, it’s possible that she died at any time between six o’clock and midnight on Christmas Eve. And you’ve established that Kerry’s car checked into the car park at three minutes to seven.’

‘We could ask his wife if he disappeared
before
going to the party,’ suggested Dave. ‘Or at any time during it.’

I laughed. ‘And what d’you think she’d say?’

‘She’d agree, guv,’ Dave said with a sigh. ‘So are we going back to the haulage yard to interview this Bryce bloke?’

‘No, Dave. I’ll get Miss Ebdon to send one of the team out there to get a list of all the employees together with their home addresses. Then we’ll interview Bryce at home. If we talk to him at the office, I’ve no doubt that Bligh will get to hear why we talked to him. And in his present mood, he’d probably sack the bloke. After all, Bryce has got no one to be a secretary to now, has he?’

‘No, sir.’ Dave was calling me ‘sir’ again, probably because he didn’t like the construction of my last sentence.

We returned to Curtis Green and checked with Kate Ebdon to see if there was any more news of Gary Dixon. But there was none, and if Dixon was the tattooed partygoer who Kerry fancied, he remained on our wanted list. Having given Colin Wilberforce the details of Dixon’s tattoos for inclusion on the PNC, I decided that Dave and I would pay Mrs Dixon a visit.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat, and made our way to Ealing.

Hardacre Street, where the Dixons lived, was a narrow road of terraced houses that had cars parked bumper to bumper on both sides. Green wheelie bins blocked the pavement, from which I presumed that it was dustbin day, although it could’ve been that the residents were too idle to take in their bins. Or had nowhere to put them if they did take them in.

I guessed that the woman who answered the door was in her mid-twenties, but she had a careworn appearance that made her look older. She was wearing jeans and a crop top that revealed the tattoo of a bird power-diving towards her navel. It seemed that tattoos were popular in the Dixon family. The baby girl she held in one arm stared at us with big blue eyes and chewed on a dummy.

‘Yes, what is it?’ the woman asked listlessly.

‘We’re police officers. Are you Mrs Dixon?’

‘That’s me.’ Sonia Dixon’s response was delivered in a resigned tone of voice, as though she was accustomed to frequent visits from the police. ‘I s’pose you’ve come about Gary again. There was a lady copper here a few days ago asking about him.’

‘That’s correct, Mrs Dixon. Inspector Ebdon is one of my officers.’

‘I told her I never knew where he’d gone, but you’d better come in, I s’pose.’ She turned from the door, leaving Dave to close it, and showed us into the front room. It was surprisingly tidy, the windows shining and the curtains clean, and it was apparent that Sonia Dixon was one of those women who did her best to keep everything in order. Despite having a womanizing husband who came and went as he pleased.

A three-year-old boy was sitting on the floor, totally absorbed in a programme on the television.

‘Go and play in your room, Gerard.’ Sonia Dixon turned off the television oblivious to the boy’s howls of protest. ‘Go!’ The boy grabbed hold of a Harry Potter toy model of Grawp the Giant, and wandered off mumbling to himself.

‘We’re anxious to speak to your husband, Mrs Dixon,’ I began. ‘He could be a vital witness in a murder enquiry.’ Not that I thought Dixon would fall for that excuse, even if Sonia relayed it to him. ‘Have you any idea where he might be?’

‘I wish I knew. One thing’s certain: he’ll have collected his benefit from the social, but if he has, I ain’t seen nothing of it.’

‘Is he claiming unemployment benefit, then?’ asked Dave. ‘Or Jobseekers Allowance, I think they call it now,’ he added, in a tone that indicated his dislike of euphemisms.

‘Course he is,’ said Sonia. ‘He ain’t been in work since he got the sack from Kerry’s.’

‘About three months ago, your husband was fined five thousand pounds for illegally importing alcohol,’ I said. ‘D’you know how he paid that fine, given that he’s on unemployment benefit?’

‘
Five thousand pounds?
’ exclaimed Sonia, her mouth opening in an expression of utter amazement. ‘You must’ve got that wrong, mister. Where would Gary have got that much money from? We’re practically on our beam-ends. And I never knew nothing about him bootlegging. That is what you mean, innit?’

‘Yes, that is what I meant. And you knew nothing about it?’

‘Not a word. He never said nothing to me.’ The baby girl started to grizzle, and Sonia rocked her back and forth until she quietened. ‘Is that why he got the sack?’

‘Probably.’ There was no point in discussing Dixon’s smuggling activities any further, and I switched to another line of enquiry. ‘Did you ever meet Mrs Hammond, Mrs Dixon?’

‘Was that one of his fancy women?’

‘Did he have any fancy women, then?’

‘A few, but it’s what men do, innit?’ Sonia sounded resigned to the infidelity of husbands in general and her own in particular. ‘But he always come back, ’cept this time.’

‘Mrs Hammond was his boss at Kerry Trucking.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know that. No, I never met her.’

‘Did your husband ever take you to the firm’s Christmas party at The Bull in Scarman Street, Chiswick?’

‘What, with two kids to look after, and not a cat in hell’s chance of getting a babysitter? Leastways, not round here. No, Gary went, but I never.’

‘You said just now that Gary received unemployment benefit, Mrs Dixon,’ said Dave. ‘How did he get it? Paid into his bank, was it, or did he collect it in cash?’

‘His bank?’ scoffed Sonia. ‘We ain’t got no bank account. Gary wouldn’t have no truck with banks. Anyway, we’d have nothing to put in it even if we did have one.’

‘Well, how
does
he get his money?’ asked Dave, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice.

‘He’s got one of them cards what he takes to the post office and they give him cash over the counter. Not that I see much of it.’

‘Does he go to any particular post office?’

‘I haven’t got a clue. Gary don’t tell me nothing.’

That closed that line of enquiry. It meant that we’d be unable to set a trap for Dixon at a specific post office; with a post office card, he would be able to collect his benefit anywhere in the country.

‘When he returns, Mrs Dixon, perhaps you’d ask him to contact me,’ I said, repeating the request that Kate Ebdon had made of the woman. I handed her one of my official cards with no hope whatever that Dixon would turn up at Curtis Green one fine morning.

But as we turned to leave, Sonia Dixon spoke again.

‘There was a man what come here a few days ago, looking for Gary. Was he one of your lot?’

‘No, he wasn’t. Did he give a name, this man?’

‘Nah! He just said he had a bit of business to discuss.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He was a tall bloke, well dressed an’ all. Good looking, he was.’

‘Was there anything particular about him, such as the way he spoke, for example?’

‘Nah, he was just ordinary.’

‘Did he say what this business was, that he had to discuss with your husband?’

‘Nah, he never said.’

And we left it at that. From the brief description of the mysterious caller that Sonia Dixon had given, it crossed my mind that it could’ve been Nicholas Hammond. Or a hundred other men.

‘I think it’s time we had another word with Nicholas Hammond, Dave,’ I said, once we were back at the office. ‘I want to hear what he has to say about his amorous wife.’