Gunrunner (4 page)

There was a good reason for that. It’s of invaluable assistance to a detective to watch the reaction of a man when he’s told of the murder of his wife, particularly when he’s suspected of that murder. And in the absence of any firm evidence, and based on the history of homicide, right now Nicholas Hammond had to be a front runner. Wife-killers are devious people. It’s surprising how often a bereaved man is keen to appear on television, appealing for information about his partner’s murder, only for police eventually to discover that he’s the guilty party.

Having obtained all the information that we could, we left the Maitlands to enjoy their Christmas pudding, although I suspected that our visit had put a damper on the celebrations.

Back at Curtis Green, DS Flynn was waiting with news.

‘Both Nicholas and Kerry Hammond were booked on the flight to New York’s JFK Airport that left Heathrow at twenty-hundred hours on Christmas Eve, sir. But only Nicholas Hammond turned up. He asked the passenger service agent to page his wife, but there was no response. The man I spoke to said that Hammond seemed extremely fraught that his wife hadn’t arrived.’

‘I wonder if he was covering his tracks,’ I suggested. ‘He could’ve been making a fuss so that his concern about his missing wife would be remembered. It wouldn’t be the first time it’d happened.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me, guv,’ said Flynn, who shared most CID officers’ suspicions of the husbands of murdered wives. ‘However, when she failed to show, Hammond left his wife’s ticket at the airline desk, and asked the agent to tell her he’d gone on ahead. He said to tell her he’d meet her in New York, and that she knew the hotel they would be staying at.’

‘Par for the course.’ I was beginning to move Nicholas Hammond to the top of my suspect list; leaving the airport without knowing what had happened to his wife did not gel in my book. ‘Did you find out which hotel they were staying at, Charlie?’

‘No, guv. The man I spoke to didn’t know and he said that Hammond hadn’t mentioned it.’

‘If the flight left at eight o’clock, what time would it arrive in New York?’

‘About nine o’clock that evening local time, guv. New York is five hours behind GMT.’

‘Just in time for a late-night dinner
à deux
at Cipriani’s on Forty-Second Street.’ On one occasion in the distant past, I’d sampled that famous restaurant’s cuisine, and having seen the prices I was extremely grateful that the NYPD had picked up the tab.

‘We could ask the New York police to try and track him down, guv,’ suggested Dave. ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult as we know he was due to arrive at JFK at about nine o’clock New York time.’

‘What, and alert him to our interest? If we did that, he might never come back, Dave, and then we’d be into extradition. Assuming, of course that he had murdered his wife. Not that we’ve got any evidence. Yet!’

‘We won’t have long to wait, sir,’ said Flynn. ‘Hammond’s ticket was a return. He’s due back the day after tomorrow, the twenty-seventh, and, as you suggested, Dave has already lodged his details with the Border Agency to intercept him on his return and notify police.’

‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Dave and I will be there to greet him. What time’s he due in?’

‘According to his return ticket, sir, he should be touching down at Heathrow at three in the afternoon, our time.’

It was now past midnight and very little had been achieved. Admittedly, we knew the identity of the dead woman, and had obtained a few sparse background details from the Maitlands. The next two important steps would be to interview Nicholas Hammond on his return from New York, and to visit the offices of Kerry Trucking. DS Flynn had said that Hammond would not be back until the twenty-seventh, but there was a chance that Kerry Trucking would be operating on Boxing Day, particularly if it had the international commitments that Peter Maitland had suggested it had.

I sent the team home, but told them that I expected to see them the following day. There were a few groans, but a general acceptance that murder enquiries rarely fitted in with detectives’ social arrangements. It was not the first time my Christmas had been ruined, and I don’t suppose that it will be the last.

I arranged for a duty car from the Yard to take me home to my flat in Surbiton. I’d decided that it would be most unwise to return to Gail’s house, not that I would have shared her bed in any event; Gail is a little shy of sleeping with me when her parents are staying with her. Apart from anything else, George and Sally Sutton were travelling back to Nottingham later on Boxing Day, and that would avoid my having to answer George’s question about whether I intended to marry his daughter. It also meant that I would miss out on further gripping yarns about the land speed record and Formula One motor racing. But I could live with that.

I was in the office by nine o’clock. Dave was already there, as were Kate Ebdon and the rest of the team.

‘Kerry Trucking is operating today, guv,’ said Dave. ‘It seems they don’t recognize Boxing Day. Bit like us.’

‘In that case, we’ll get out there.’ I glanced at Kate. ‘Anything for me?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been checking on Kerry Hammond’s mobile, guv. There were several unanswered calls from Nick Hammond on Christmas Eve at about the time he discovered she wasn’t at the airport. And over the past few days there have also been calls from a mobile that goes out to a Gary Dixon. There were quite a few calls from him over the preceding weeks, the last one being at about three thirty on Christmas Eve. There were also a few from Kerry to a Miguel Rodriguez. So far I don’t know who Dixon or Rodriguez are, but I’m working on it.’

‘Well done, Kate, and thanks.’

‘There’s one other thing, guv,’ said Dave. ‘The CCTV tapes from the airport car park.’

‘Yes?’ I asked hopefully.

‘They were duff, guv. Half of them weren’t working, and those that were operative weren’t focused on the area we’re interested in.’

‘Terrific!’ I said. But it was no more than I’d expected.

THREE

K
erry Trucking occupied a huge area in Scarman Street, Chiswick. There were several Volvo articulated lorries in the yard, a couple of which were backed up to the loading bay. A group of forklift trucks stood in a rank at the other end of the compound where a bulk container was being hoisted on to a flatbed truck. Beyond it there were about twenty similar containers stacked in groups. And all this on Boxing Day. You didn’t have to be in the haulage business to see that Kerry Trucking was a huge operation.

A security guard approached as we arrived.

‘Can I help you, sir?’

I identified Dave and myself. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ I asked.

‘That’ll be Mr Bligh, sir. Mr Bernard Bligh. He’s one of the directors.’

‘Is he here today?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’ The security guard smiled. ‘He seems to spend most of his time here.’

‘Perhaps you’d tell me how I can get to his office.’

‘No need, sir. That’s him standing on the loading platform.’ The guard pointed to a stocky figure whose gaze was sweeping back and forth across the yard. ‘Either he or Mr Thorpe always like to keep an eye on things.’

‘Who is Mr Thorpe?’ I asked.

‘He’s the company secretary, sir, but he’s also a director.’

Dave and I crossed to the loading platform and mounted the short flight of steps at the side.

‘Mr Bernard Bligh?’

‘That’s me. Who are you?’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Brock of New Scotland Yard and this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’

‘What’s this about, then? Illegal immigrants or bootlegged liquor?’ Bligh sounded resigned to it being one or the other.

‘Neither, Mr Bligh. It’s about Mrs Hammond.’

‘What’s she been up to?’

‘It might be better if we went into your office, sir,’ I suggested, having noticed a loader doing a bit of earwigging.

‘Yes, right, follow me.’ Bligh led the way up a flight of wooden stairs and into an office that overlooked the loading bay. ‘Always like to keep an eye on the drivers,’ he volunteered. ‘Never know what the buggers are up to otherwise. Now, what’s this about Kerry?’ He gestured towards a sofa upholstered in threadbare corduroy, and took a seat behind his paper-laden desk.

‘She was found murdered in her Jaguar in a car park at Heathrow Airport yesterday,’ I said, seeing no reason to avoid the stark truth.

‘Good God!’ For a moment or two, Bligh stared at me. ‘Murdered? But what the hell happened?’

I gave Bligh the brief details of the finding of Kerry Hammond’s body, and that she had been due to fly to New York with her husband on Christmas Eve.

‘Do you know of anyone who might’ve held a grudge against Mrs Hammond?’ I asked.

Bligh laughed. ‘The haulage business is a pretty cut-throat game, Chief Inspector, but I doubt that any of our competitors would resort to murder.’

‘Did she have any problems that you know of?’

‘Doesn’t everyone? But no, she’d none that I can think of. She was very much a hands-on sort of boss. She took over the company when Dick was killed.’

‘That’d be Mr Lucas, I take it?’ queried Dave.

‘Yeah. He was killed in a car accident on the M1 about seven years ago. They were devoted to each other. Dick even named the company after her. He worked it up from nothing. Well, we both did, but he was the brains behind it.’

‘But I understand that she got married again,’ I said.

‘Yeah, to Nick Hammond. They got spliced about five years back.’

‘Does he have anything to do with the business?’ asked Dave.

‘Never comes near the place,’ said Bligh. ‘He runs some sort of poncey estate agent’s outfit in the West End. I don’t think he’s doing too well, mind you. As a matter of fact, I think that Kerry had to bail him out a couple of times.’ He paused and stared at me. ‘Are you sure it was her? I thought she was off to the Big Apple for Christmas. That’s what she told me, anyway.’

‘I understand that those were her plans,’ I said, ‘but she only got as far as the airport.’

‘D’you think Nick killed her?’ asked Bligh bluntly.

‘D’you have a reason for asking that?’

‘Not really. I just wondered. They’d had the odd falling out, but no more than most married couples, I suppose.’

I had a gut feeling that Bligh wasn’t telling us the whole truth. ‘We’ve no idea who murdered her, Mr Bligh,’ I said. ‘It’s early days yet, but our enquiries are continuing.’

Bligh laughed. ‘That’s what all the detectives on TV say.’

‘Probably,’ I said. I have an ingrained dislike of the way in which the CID is portrayed in fiction with, for the most part, airy-fairy pseudo-intellectual chief inspectors and dim sergeants.

‘Does the name Gary Dixon mean anything to you, Mr Bligh?’ asked Dave, referring to his pocketbook. ‘Or Miguel Rodriguez? Kerry had spoken to both of them on her mobile over the last day or so.’

‘Yeah. Dixon was one of our drivers up to about three months ago.’

‘Why did he leave?’

‘I sacked him. He got captured by the customs guys at Dover, bringing in a load of bootlegged booze from Calais.’

That was interesting. Dixon’s calls to Kerry’s mobile had continued long after he’d been dismissed. I wondered why, but I was not about to ask Bligh because I thought I could guess.

‘And Rodriguez?’ I asked.

‘No idea. Never heard of him.’

‘Is the company in a good way of business, Mr Bligh?’ I asked.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ said Bligh, ‘despite the recession, although we’ve had to make one or two cutbacks. It’s made Kerry a very rich woman. Well, good luck to her, I say. She worked bloody hard to learn the ins and outs of the trade after Dick was killed. And she did, despite knowing nothing about the haulage business to start with. But she knows a hell of lot about it now. She even got a licence to drive a forty-four tonner just so she’d know what the guys were up against.’

On the afternoon of the day after Boxing Day, Dave and I made our way to Heathrow Airport in good time to meet the aircraft that should be bringing Nick Hammond back to England from New York. Don Keegan, the relief incident room manager, had done something he called ‘trawling the Internet’ and discovered that the flight in which we were interested was estimated to land twenty minutes earlier than its scheduled time of three o’clock. Even so, I made a point of getting there at two o’clock. In my experience, aeroplanes are unpredictable beasts and could arrive much earlier or much later than they were supposed to.

As it happened, Hammond’s aircraft did in fact touch down at twenty minutes to three, having benefited from a tailwind across the Atlantic. I’d made contact with the Port Watch police at the airport, and one of the unit’s sergeants accompanied Dave and me to the arrivals area. Even though Dave had already done so, the sergeant then alerted the Border Agency officers to our interest so that they could identify Hammond for me, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

At five past three, the passengers started to trickle through the control. I immediately recognized the tall figure of Nick Hammond from the wedding photograph we had taken from his house at Barnes. Waiting until he had cleared the control, Dave and I approached him.

‘Mr Nicholas Hammond?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I am he.’ Hammond looked nervous. But so do most people arriving at an airport when they’re stopped by a couple of officials.

‘We’re police officers, Mr Hammond. We’d like a word with you.’

‘Is it about my wife?’

‘Why should you think that?’ asked Dave.

Hammond dropped his carry-on bag. ‘Well, she didn’t turn up here on Christmas Eve, and she didn’t arrive in New York either. Has something happened to her?’

The Port Watch sergeant touched my arm. ‘Would you like to use our office, sir?’

‘Yes please, Skip.’

The sergeant led the way through a deserted customs hall and into a small office that had one-way windows large enough to see all that was happening in the arrivals area.

‘I’ll leave you to it, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘If there’s anything you need, I’m only in the next office. Just give me a shout.’

‘What’s this all about?’ demanded Hammond, when the three of us were alone.

‘Mr Hammond, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of New Scotland Yard,’ I began, ‘and this is DS Poole. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your wife is dead.’