Little Knell (20 page)

‘I may not be an accountant, Sloan,' said the superintendent dangerously, ‘but I am not a fool. Surely that sort of money would show up in the figures?'

Detective Inspector Sloan sighed. ‘I'm afraid, sir, that the figures for the Lake Ryrie Reserve were wrong. And it was when they showed up wrong that the trouble began.'

‘And that's what the girl spotted?'

Sloan nodded sadly. ‘I expect she thought it was just a simple clerical error so she made the mistake of telephoning Howard Air to check.'

‘And wrote her own death warrant by doing so?'

‘I'm afraid so. The telephonist at Pearson, Worrow and Gisby had noted the call, though.'

‘And all Air had to do in response to Jill Carter's query was agree with her that there had been a mistake?'

‘I'm sure that's what he did in the first place. Probably laughed it off and blamed the typist.'

‘And whom should he have blamed?' Leeyes never ever for one moment took his eye off the ball.

‘The accident to the senior audit clerk at the accountants, David Barton. That was what started it all. He was the one there who Howard Air was in cahoots with. Not the partners.'

‘The man who's still unconscious?'

‘Him. It was that and the fact that Wayne Goddard went to look at Whimbrel House on Tuesday with Sid Wetherspoon that really sent the balloon up.'

‘Ah.'

‘We don't know for certain but I imagine that Goddard, who was a drug pusher in a very small way, recognized all the signs…'

‘And smells. Don't forget that some drugs smell, Sloan.'

‘And then made the mistake of telling someone higher up the drug chain that he now knew where their distribution was done from.'

‘Not very clever.'

‘He wasn't. But someone was. Very.'

‘So both the people who knew anything were killed then?'

‘Yes, sir. We think the girl was abducted in the pub car park as she left – Nigel Worrow stayed on a bit and didn't see the going of her – and that she was killed at Whimbrel House.'

‘She would have accepted the offer of a lift home from the Ornum Arms car park from Howard Air,' agreed Leeyes sagely. ‘Only natural.'

‘So her body was at Whimbrel House, which they were going to have to stop using pretty soon anyway.' Sloan attempted to continue his narration.

‘Because Wayne Goddard knew about it?'

‘That's one reason,' said Sloan.

‘Everyone would know Goddard wasn't reliable,' pointed out Leeyes. ‘Stood out a mile. I can see that he would have to go.'

‘There was another reason,' said Sloan, explaining that sooner or later Peter Caversham would have to be accepted as the legal owner of Whimbrel House. ‘And he would be even less reliable,' said Sloan. ‘He's a total wreck, but that wouldn't have stopped him inheriting the settled estate.'

‘From what you say about him, Sloan, the drug people would have known that themselves.'

‘Yes, sir. Getting Jill Carter's body out of the house in the mummy case was a good way of starting a fresh hare as well.'

‘When in doubt,' declared Superintendent Leeyes, a long-term veteran of the Berebury Town Council's Watch Committee, ‘confuse the issue.'

‘Stirring up the coroner did that, too,' said Sloan. ‘Queered the pitch nicely by making us suspect Marcus Fixby-Smith, among other things, but the real reason was so that Howard Air would know how the investigation was going. Don't forget he was Chairman of the Museum Committee.'

‘I wonder if Locombe-Stableford's taking drugs,' said Leeyes thoughtfully. ‘You never know these days, do you?'

Sloan hurried into speech. ‘This man Barton, sir, from the accountants…'

‘Ah, yes. Where does he come in?'

‘He prepared the Lake Ryrie figures for Jim Pearson to sign.'

‘I thought you said they didn't amount to much.'

‘They didn't on the accounts Jim Pearson signed off.'

‘But?'

‘But the accounts that went to the Calleshire County Bank to authorize sending the money out to Lasserta had three zeros restored to the top of the column.'

‘Three zeros.' The superintendent raised a podgy hand. ‘Don't tell me, Sloan. Let me guess. Standing for thousands, I take it?'

‘That's right, sir. Jim Pearson didn't expect to find them on his copy and they weren't there. The bank did and the thousands sign was at the top of the columns on the copy that went there. The bank, you see, had reason to know that Howard Air was both rich and generous.'

‘That should have alerted them,' said Leeyes unfairly. ‘It's not a combination you often see.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Simple, when you come to think of it.'

‘Well, it's one way to launder more than three-quarters of a million pounds each year,' said Sloan sedately.

‘No wonder he could afford to try to bribe you, Sloan.'

‘Peanuts to him, sir.' He took a breath. ‘But I should have spotted that Air was up to mischief myself earlier: there was no call for him to have been at the accountants' yesterday when we got there.'

‘That's not evidence.'

‘And, sir, I should have picked up that he was coughing a lot then.' The hospital had told him that earlier diagnosis probably wouldn't make any difference to the dolorous outcome of Howard Air's chest illness. ‘I didn't think…'

‘Coughing? What on earth are you talking about, Sloan?'

‘Howard Air was ill in bed when we got to his house, sir.'

‘Nothing trivial, I hope?'

‘Very serious indeed, sir, the hospital say. He's caught anthrax from handling the mummy. The pulmonary variety. It's like pneumonia, only worse. Dr Dabbe says the disease is always on the cards if you don't take the proper precautions when handling the contents of a mummy case.'

‘The curse of the Pharaohs, Sloan.' The superintendent didn't sound unduly regretful.

Detective Inspector Sloan, still smarting at the insult of attempted bribery, said, ‘I rather like to think of it as the long arm of justice myself, sir.'

*   *   *

‘Another way, Crosby, in which Howard Air was able to convert cash into an asset,' said Sloan, ‘was by buying the Kirk sisters' nephew's endowment insurance policy from him.'

‘I don't get it, sir.' The detective constable's brow clouded over.

‘It's known as a viatical settlement,' said Sloan, fresh from a tutorial from a mightily relieved Jim Pearson. ‘And it's quite legal.'

‘Come again, sir.'

‘When Derek died, all that Howard Air had to do as the last owner of the policy was to send Derek's death certificate to the insurance company and sit back and wait for a large cheque to come through.'

‘Nice work, if you can get it,' said Crosby.

‘Of clean money,' underlined Sloan. The superintendent had cottoned on to this more quickly than Crosby had but Sloan was still feeling benevolent towards the detective constable.

‘Smelling of roses, I shouldn't be surprised,' said Crosby. ‘Like his aunts. They didn't have a clue that the heroin was parked at their sanctuary when it came ashore.'

‘The dogs that did bark in the night,' said Sloan. ‘Mind you, Pearson and Worrow guessed that was what Derek had done, although they didn't know who had bought the policy.'

‘Catch them shopping a client…'

‘All the same, the accountants should have told the proper authorities they suspected something,' said Sloan righteously. ‘So we'd better let Colin Thornhill go now, hadn't we, sir? Before he sues us for wrongful arrest…'

*   *   *

‘This is Berebury District General Hospital. Is Detective Inspector Sloan available to take a call?' said a woman's voice.

‘Speaking,' said Sloan, suppressing a yawn brought about by an unhealthy combination of tiredness and hunger.

‘That you, Sloan?' said another voice. ‘Dabbe here. Just reporting on that post-mortem.'

‘Which one?' enquired Detective Inspector Sloan. There had, after all, been rather a lot of them this week in which the police had had more than a passing interest.

‘Rodoheptah. We had to put him on the back burner when the Goddard body came in.'

Sloan could have wished for a happier metaphor, but he held his peace.

‘We've just got him down as Rodoheptah. Is that right? We don't have a Christian name.'

‘He wasn't Christian.' Offhand, Sloan couldn't think of whom or what Rodoheptah would have worshipped: Ra, the sun god, most probably. Or had it been Osiris, ruler of the hereafter?

‘Sorry, I was forgetting. Anyway,' the doctor airily dismissed theism and went back to his own subject, ‘the post-mortem examination was very interesting. These palaeopathologists certainly know their stuff.'

Sloan said he was glad to hear it.

‘Of course, with a truly mummified body there is quite a lot of material preserved that is lost in the ordinary way.'

Sloan wasn't at all sure that he wanted to think about the ordinary way. Certainly not as applied to Jill Carter, innocent victim, and Wayne Goddard, not so innocent victim but still not deserving of an early death. Or Peter Caversham, as good as half dead.

‘All of which means,' continued the pathologist, ‘that Professor Miles Upton and I have been able to identify the probable cause of his death.'

‘Really, doctor?' Sloan pulled his notebook towards him and tried to take a proper interest in the year 2000
BC
or thereabouts.

‘Sand.'

‘Sand?'

‘And the dry dusty climate. Sandstorms would have been a great trouble to him. Difficult to get away from it, there.'

‘I can see that, doctor, but…'

‘Leading in the case of this mummy to sand pneumoconiosis. Professor Upton found massive fibrosis of the lungs, which I was able to confirm endoscopically. And we've just had the histology report back.'

It was a disease of the lung that was going to kill Howard Air, too, thought Detective Inspector Sloan as he made another note. Pollution of one sort or another was an older problem than he had imagined, then. Murder, on the other hand, wasn't. The ancient Egyptians had always experienced murder – and worse, much worse.

‘Sand was ever their great difficulty out there,' the pathologist was saying. ‘They couldn't prevent it getting into their food as well as their lungs and the grit ground their teeth down.'

‘Which must have made eating difficult,' said Sloan, conscious that he himself was in real need of food now.

‘Very.'

‘So the coroner can have his post-mortem report after all,' mused Sloan. And, although he didn't say so, the superintendent his Sunday morning's round of golf.

‘On an adult male, aged about thirty, date of death unknown,' said the pathologist.

‘Isn't science wonderful?' murmured Sloan, deciding that perhaps they would have their kitchen floor covering renewed. It was, after all, important to keep matters in proportion …

By the same author

The Religious Body

A Most Contagious Game

Henrietta Who?

The Complete Steel

A Late Phoenix

His Burial Too

Slight Mourning

Parting Breath

Some Die Eloquent

Passing Strange

Last Respects

Harm's Way

A Dead Liberty

The Body Politic

A Going Concern

Injury Time (Short Stories)

After Effects

Stiff News

LITTLE KNELL
. Copyright © 2000 by Catherine Aird. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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ISBN 0-312-26983-8

First published in Great Britain by Macmillan, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd

First U.S. Edition: April 2001

eISBN 9781466873513

First eBook edition: May 2014