Murder on the Second Tee (11 page)

Cynthia glared at him but did not seem shocked by what he had said. With a snort of disgust she left.

Baggo waited until the door had swung shut then opened it to check she had not stayed to listen. He pushed it shut then said quietly, ‘I know.’

Not raising his eyes and sounding almost disinterested, Knarston-Smith asked, ‘What?’

‘Sulphur Springs, Politically Exposed Persons, bearer bonds. And the photograph.’

‘The photograph?’ he squeaked.

‘You know the one I am talking about. Why do you think I asked your wife to leave?’

‘Do you have it?’ Desperation in his voice, he turned towards Baggo.

‘It is evidence.’ He let that sink in then pulled a chair up close. ‘You are, as they say, deep in the shit, my friend. Now that we know what has been going on we will gather a case. It may take time, as documents have been shredded, and we will want to see what is on the computers, but we will do it. You will not look at all good because you activated the bad transactions. I know you did what Parsley said, but it will be far too easy for the surviving directors to paint you as a rogue trader, solely responsible for a great deal of money laundering. You will have to spend several years in jail.’

Knarston-Smith ran his hands through his hair, making it stick out comically. ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he said tearfully, his shoulders shaking.

Poor drip, Baggo thought, letting silence ramp up the tension. ‘Tell me everything,’ he said quietly, ‘then I will help you.’

For a moment Knarston-Smith sat immobile then began to speak quickly, words tumbling over each other. ‘I joined the bank in 2007. My father knew Simon Eglinton. At first everything was great. Cynthia and I had been married the previous year, I was earning good money and she was able to spend time writing her book – a family saga thing, not my cup of tea but people say it’s quite “evocative”.’ He blew his nose into a linen handkerchief. ‘Have you met Nicola Walkinshaw?’ he sniffed.

‘I have, briefly,’ Baggo lied.

‘Well, she’s a man-eater. She took a fancy to me and, well, she seduced me – a lot of talk about fast-tracking me to a directorship, that sort of thing. I’d heard that the guy doing my job before me had turned her down and she’d made his life hell. I love Cynthia, Mr … what’s your name?’

‘Chandavarkar, Detective Sergeant Chandavarkar.’ He produced his warrant for a second time.

‘Oh, right. Well, I do love her, really I do.’ He looked pleadingly at Baggo. ‘She doesn’t know about Nicola, or the photograph.’

‘I will do my best to keep it that way, if you tell me everything. Now, please.’

‘The first time, I thought it would be a one-off, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t say no to her. Tuesday evenings after work, sometimes her place, sometimes a quickie across the desk. She helped me with my work, kept promising me a directorship. I stopped enjoying it – I was terrified Cynthia might find out. Then there was the evening she wanted to stay in the office and we did it on her desk. Right in the middle, Hugh Parsley came in and took some photos. Looking back, there were two things that were odd. She had gone to lock the door herself – she usually told me to do that – and I swear Hugh Parsley had his phone out and ready to take the pictures as soon as he came in.

‘The next day, Hugh came to me and told me to conceal a series of payments from Sulphur Springs. It was late September 2008, and the whole financial system looked as if it was going to go belly-up. He waved the phone at me as he spoke, so I knew I had to do it or Cynthia would know. The sex with Nicola stopped a few months later but the money laundering has been going on until very recently. But you obviously know that.’

‘I have to prove it, and someone has been doing a good job with the shredder. Has the money laundering stopped?’

‘There’s been nothing new for the last month and we haven’t been paying out. I don’t know why.’

Baggo raised his eyebrows. ‘Who produced the documents for this morning’s meeting?’

Knarston-Smith tensed but said nothing.

‘It was you, was it not?’

Knarston-Smith nodded unhappily.

‘Did you print them off a memory stick?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘Did the searchers find it?’

He shook his head.

‘Where did you hide it?’

Knarston-Smith’s face twitched and he ran his fingers through his hair.

Baggo smiled. ‘I think I can guess. You’re going to hand it over. Now, please.’ He moved close enough to lick the tears from the other man’s cheek, invading his space, intimidating him.

‘No.’

Baggo moved away, shaking his head. ‘No? Can you not take a little embarrassment? Do you not mind if Cynthia finds out? Do you want to spend a lot of years in jail? There will be men in prison who will make mincemeat of you. In more ways than one, I am afraid.’

Knarston-Smith gulped audibly. ‘All right, but please don’t tell Cynthia.’

Baggo raised an eyebrow. ‘Now, please,’ he repeated.

‘It’s very embarrassing. I’ll need to go to the bathroom. I panicked when I knew they were going to search the room. I’d seen them stick things up there, you know, on TV.’

‘I’ll come with you.’ Seeing the stricken look on Knarston-Smith’s face, he added, ‘It was my unhappy duty to search a lot of back passages in the drugs squad. I won’t hurt you.’

Moving awkwardly, Knarston-Smith went to the bathroom, lowered his trousers and boxers and bent over the basin. Baggo had a rubber glove left over from the search. Ignoring the squeaks of discomfort and an agonised facial expression in the mirror, he inserted two fingers and pulled out a memory stick wrapped in one of the hotel’s clear plastic shower caps. He unwrapped it, wiped it and put it in his pocket.

‘Please may I have the password too.’

‘homeofGOLF18#1.’

Baggo noted it on his waiter’s pad. ‘Next, I need to know which directors knew about the money laundering,’ he said as Knarston-Smith, blushing furiously, tidied himself and the detritus.

‘I don’t know.’ He wrapped Baggo’s discarded glove in toilet paper and put it in the waste bucket.

Baggo grabbed his shoulder and turned him so they were face to face. ‘That is not the correct answer. Walkinshaw?’

‘I think so, maybe.’

‘You can do better than that. Please do so.’

‘All right then, I’m sure she did. She enabled Parsley to take the photo.’

‘Saddlefell?’

‘Yes,’ a whisper. ‘Certainly recently, but maybe not till after Sir Paul died.’

‘Forbes?’

‘Yes. He definitely has known for some time.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘A couple of years ago I was working late and he came into my room. He made it clear he knew what was happening, hinted he’d check I wasn’t creaming some off the top for myself, and warned I’d be in trouble if I didn’t keep him in the loop. So I gave him a confidential update every few months.’

‘Without telling Parsley?’

‘Absolutely. Hugh was obsessive about secrecy. So is Forbes.’

‘Has there been much talk about it in the office over the last few weeks?’

‘No. They all pretend it hasn’t happened. To hear Saddlefell sometimes, you’d have thought he’d invented integrity.’

‘What about Davidson?’

‘I don’t know about him. Genuinely.’

‘Eglinton?’

‘I’m sure he didn’t know about it. Till very recently anyway, if at all.’

‘Who told you to make the memory stick?’

‘Saddlefell.’

‘When did he tell you?’

‘About two weeks ago.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘Just that he’d need it for this weekend.’

‘Does Cynthia know about the money laundering?’

‘She suspects something is far wrong. She was asking me about it when you came in.’

‘Oh, and after this morning’s meeting, are you now on the board?’

He shook his head. ‘They didn’t appoint anyone.’

Baggo took him by the shoulders once more and looked him in the eye. ‘They would not have appointed Sheila Anderson because she knows nothing and has too much integrity, and they would not appoint you because they’re getting ready to hang you out to dry for the money laundering and probably for the murders.’

‘Murders? I didn’t, I wouldn’t. God knows, I couldn’t.’

‘Actually, I think I believe you. I am not in charge of the murder investigation, but I am involved, so keep in with me. Keep nothing from me, nothing. Do you understand?’

Knarston-Smith, pale and trembling, nodded energetically.

‘Do you know anything at all about the murders, Parsley’s or Sir Paul’s?’

‘Nothing, nothing. I promise.’

‘Well keep thinking and tell me anything you can. Right?’ He handed him a card. ‘My mobile’s on that, so no excuses, please.’

‘I promise. I promise.’

Baggo gave him a final glare then left. He passed an unhappy-looking Cynthia in the corridor. He wished her a good afternoon but she ignored him.

* * *

‘Inspector, ma’am, Lance, you must see this.’ Baggo struggled in the doorway of the conference room, a heavy bag over one shoulder and his laptop on the other. He threw the bag into a corner, booted up the laptop and held up the memory stick.

‘Before I packed I visited Mr Knarston-Smith and persuaded him to surrender this. He had hidden it, wrapped in a shower cap, where the sun doesn’t shine, but now sees that the best policy is cooperation and the sun shines on it. It has been well and hygienically wiped,’ he added.

He typed in the password for the one file on the stick. It contained many pages with columns of figures, some of which were highlighted. After some minutes’ study, Baggo knew he had struck gold.

‘This details the transactions with Sulphur Springs. Some are genuine and some are false. See, the false transactions are highlighted, otherwise it would take a team of accountants to detect them. Then we move on to individuals who come to the bank because they want money laundered.’ He scrolled down. ‘Parsley introduced them, they made the usual deposit with the investment arm plus the dirty money then sent the rest to the client wealth management arm. There are some famous names here.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Flick said. ‘At least we can show something bad was going on. But it doesn’t help that much in the murder.’

Baggo said, ‘We need to prove which directors knew about this and when. It is going to be easy for them to pin the blame on Parsley, who’s dead, and Knarston-Smith, who can easily be made the fall guy. Knarston-Smith says Forbes, Walkinshaw and maybe Saddlefell have known about this for some time and I want to nail them all.’

‘I think the three of us should formally question Saddlefell now,’ Flick said. ‘He won’t expect us to know about this and it’ll be a good time to catch him off-guard.’

A loud knock on the door interrupted the discussion. McKellar rushed in. His voice panicky he blurted out, ‘There’s been another murder. Santa bloody Claus. Actually, Mr Davidson.’

‘Mild He lays His glory by,

Born that man no more may die …’

In the foyer the singers were belting out the old Wesleyan carol for the enjoyment of the happy crowd and a queue of parents with small children snaked back from the grotto, from which Santa was noticeably absent. Collecting her thoughts, Flick made her way to the lifts. The body was in Davidson’s room.

‘Felicity! Nice to see you!’

There was only one person since school days who had called her Felicity. Flick turned, horrified, to see No pushing towards her through the Christmas Fayre crowd.

‘What are you doing here?’ she blurted.

Elbowing a lady looking at Christmas cards, No stood in front of her, invading her space. ‘Helping you, that’s what I’m doing. I assume that young lad gave you the tip about the money clip?’

‘It was you, was it? What are you doing here?’ she repeated.

‘What I’m good at. Catching villains.’

‘Who’s paying you? You are retired, aren’t you?’ Flick had a vision of No and a couple of other dinosaurs being recruited to form a
New Tricks
team from hell.

No waved a finger at her. ‘That’s confidential, Felicity,’ he said reprovingly. ‘But I’m on the side of justice.’

‘Well don’t impede my investigation,’ she snapped. ‘Now, I’m busy.’ She strode past him, trying to conceal her shock.

In the lift she found herself behind a tall man with crinkly fair hair going grey. When they reached the first floor he turned sideways.

‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ Flick gasped before she could stop herself.

Oliver Davidson’s exclamation was cut off. When the door slid open it was clear that something extraordinary had happened. A group of people had gathered round one door on the Old Course side of the corridor. PC Robertson stood in front of it, a roll of crime scene tape in his hand. When Flick approached, the manager, whom she had met briefly, explained that one of the under-managers had found a body in the room about five minutes earlier. Further along the corridor, Jocelyn stood shaking, her hands to her face. Di Falco stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder.

Addressing the manager, Flick asked him to open the door. She turned to Robertson and told him not to allow entry to anyone other than herself, Sergeant Wallace and Sergeant Chandavarkar.

As they went in there was a scuffle in the corridor. Robertson and McKellar managed to restrain Davidson, who was nearly hysterical.

Daylight was fading fast. In the subdued light one thing stood out. Beside the table at the window a figure in a red-hooded Santa Claus costume lay face down.

Flick knelt beside it, put on plastic gloves and gently pushed the head to one side. Underneath the white beard and moustache she recognised Bruce Thornton, his face contorted, his eyes wide open. Blood, still wet, had trickled forward from the back of his neck, matting the beard and staining the carpet.

Wallace was already checking the bathroom while Baggo looked round the room, in wardrobes and under the bed.

‘Everything seems normal in here,’ Wallace said.

‘He’s still warm,’ Flick noted.

Baggo pointed to a lofted iron club on the bed. ‘Is that the murder weapon?’ he asked.

Flick got up and took command, ordering Wallace to call scenes of crime officers and Dr MacGregor. That took little time. In the corridor Davidson was loudly demanding to be allowed in.

‘We’d better break the news to him,’ Flick said. ‘Sergeant Wallace, would you help escort him to our room downstairs? Sergeant Chandavarkar, would you remain in this room to preserve the crime scene?’

* * *

‘Someone said he was murdered. Is that true?’ a distraught Oliver Davidson asked Flick and Wallace.

‘We believe so,’ Flick said.

‘Did he suffer much?’

‘We can’t tell yet, I’m afraid.’

‘I want to see him.’

‘That’ll have to be later, sir. But rest assured, we respect your relationship.’

Flick sensed that Davidson might talk more freely if she were alone with him. She sent Wallace to organise statements, wait for the SOCOs and arrange for the hotel to make another bedroom available for Davidson. She added, ‘You have Mr and Mrs Thornton’s address. I’ll inform them after I’ve talked with Mr Davidson.’

‘I’m truly sorry,’ she said after Wallace had gone. She sat silently and, she hoped, exuded sympathy. Davidson gave her a puzzled, helpless look then nodded. She had seen many people whose lives had suddenly been thrown into grief-stricken turmoil and his empty, forlorn expression, made more pathetic by his wrinkles, showed that Davidson was another, the aggression of their previous meeting in the past.

‘It was just supposed to be a bit of fun,’ he said wistfully. ‘They have this Christmas Fayre in the hotel and Santa had fallen ill. I overheard them wondering who could replace him and I volunteered. I’ve never played Santa Claus,’ he added. ‘Then things got very fraught at our noon meeting and I needed to think and talk to some other directors this afternoon. So Bruce said he would do it. The costume arrived after lunch and I went for a walk to clear my head. He was putting on the costume as I left.’ Shoulders shaking, he buried his face in a handful of tissues. Different people react differently to sudden bereavement. Some clam up, others need to talk. Flick’s instinct told her Davidson was a talker.

‘I called him Ambrose, you know,’ he continued in a shaky voice. ‘We haven’t been together long, you know. My previous partner had left me, too much baggage with the divorce, he said. One night I went to a gay bar and found myself beside this good-looking boy. “I’m Olly,” I said. “Ah’m Bruce,” he replied. With the background noise and his Scottish accent I thought he said “Ambrose”. It became my pet name for him. And we had golf in common. Our relationship was really coming on. He had been so unsure of himself. We didn’t live together, you know. I wanted to, but he said he needed more time.’ He blew his nose. Flick put a hand on his arm and squeezed gently.

‘He was nervous about this weekend, more because of his parents than anything else. They couldn’t cope with him being gay and that upset him. His friends had known for a while. Ironically, young people are much more mature about it these days.’

‘Very often,’ Flick said.

‘I heard someone say something about a golf club. Was he killed with one?’

‘He may have been. There was a heavy-looking iron club in the room. Do you know anything about it?’ Flick wished she knew more about golf.

‘That would have been his lob wedge. He had been practising chipping on to the bed and getting the ball to stop on the sheet.’

‘Where did he keep it when he wasn’t using it?’

‘Just in the corner as you open the door.’

‘Who knew you were planning to act as Santa, sir?’

‘I told the rest of the board at the start of the meeting. Before it got difficult.’

‘Why did it get difficult?’

The spell was broken. Davidson sniffed and shook his head. ‘I’m sure it has nothing to do with Bruce’s murder.’

‘You should let us be the judge of that, sir. It’s possible the killer may have thought he was attacking you, not Mr Thornton. And if so, he or she may try again.’

‘Then I’ll be careful, Inspector.’

‘Who knew about your change of plan, that Mr Thornton would be playing Santa?’

‘I can’t think of anyone. We only decided after your search. When the meeting broke up I went to the room then Bruce and I went to the Fourth Floor Bar for a light lunch. Everyone else was there. Then we heard you were going to search our rooms and we all went down so we would be present when ours was being searched. We returned to the Fourth Floor to finish our sandwiches and I knew I needed time to think. Bruce was bored and he said he’d always wanted to play Santa, too. So we agreed he should. I left him in the room, putting on the suit. I went straight out and walked to the turn.’

‘The turn?’

‘You don’t play golf? The bit of the Old Course near the Eden Estuary.’

‘What time did you go out, sir?’

‘Just after half past two, I think. I told Bruce he had half an hour to practise his ho-ho-hos. He was due at the grotto at three o’ clock.’

‘And did anyone connected with the bank see you leave?’

‘I noticed Cynthia Knarston-Smith in the foyer. She was at the Christmas pudding stall. I think she pretended not to see me.’

‘Why might she do that?’

Davidson clamped his lips then said slowly, ‘We decided not to appoint any new directors. It would have been a big disappointment for her.’

‘Was she the only bank person who could have known about the switch?’

‘Oh no. I forgot. On our way out of the Fourth Floor we stopped to talk to the Eglintons. Simon and I arranged to meet for a chat at half past three. There were business matters we needed to discuss. I told them Bruce would be Santa.’

‘Might other people have overheard?’

Davidson frowned with concentration. ‘Nicola and Mark were a couple of tables away, I think. But Simon and I weren’t speaking loudly. Belinda Parsley was with Simon and Eileen. Like us they’d watched their rooms being searched then came back to finish their lunch.’

‘What about Lord Saddlefell?’

‘He arrived at the Fourth Floor with Sandi as we left. He was in a terrible temper over your search, especially having our computers seized. He had been on the phone to all sorts of people, he said.’

‘Did you speak to him then?’

‘No.’

‘Is there anyone you can think of who had any reason to want either you or Mr Thornton dead?’

Davidson shook his head. ‘Honestly, no, Inspector. At least not anyone here in St Andrews. My ex-wife …’

‘But she’s not here,’ Flick said quickly. ‘Look, Mr Davidson, I am genuinely very, very sorry about your loss, but I need to catch a murderer and I need to know what has been going on in your bank. I believe there is a lot you haven’t told me. I will find out and if I find you’ve been holding out on me, I won’t hesitate to prosecute. Please understand that. I assume you really do want your lover’s killer brought to justice. Give yourself time to think and I’ll speak to you later.’

Her last words brought tears to his eyes. She called Wallace on her radio and asked him to escort Davidson to the room that had been made available for him. After some thought she decided to take McKellar with her to inform the dead man’s parents.

* * *

Osborne’s plans were coming unstuck and he hadn’t a clue what was going on. He had gone to the first floor where he heard talk of Santa Claus being killed with a golf club. Saddlefell, who had not been arrested after the search, had glared at him and Forbes had hissed ‘We must speak’. Ominously, behind Fortune as she went through the foyer, Baggo, no longer dressed as a waiter, had been with the experienced-looking man who Osborne guessed was her number two. He needed time for things to settle down. Meanwhile he should stay out of the way. He drifted to the concierge in the hope of hearing something useful.

‘What’ll we do about the bairns wanting to see Santa?’ one porter said to another.

‘There’s a spare costume in the store. You could put it on.’

‘No’ me. With this crowd we both need to be on.’

‘Are you looking for a Santa?’ Osborne heard himself ask.

‘Aye, we are. The bairns are getting desperate, no’ to mention their parents.’

Five minutes later, with the choir singing
Jingle Bells
, Osborne took his seat in the grotto duly attired as Santa with instructions to give out one present to each child, boys’ toys on the right, girls’ on the left. He had played Santa once before, in his drinking days when he was cleaning up the East End of London in his own, irregular way. He’d had one drink too many and told his chief superintendent’s granddaughter to fuck off when she didn’t like the doll he had given her. No danger of anything like that this time, he thought. He wouldn’t give the little buggers time to unwrap their presents before heaving them off his knee. He hoped none of them would pee on him.

The first few children were easy. If they knew what they wanted he nodded and went ‘ho, ho, ho’. If they were overawed and tongue-tied he just went ‘ho, ho, ho’.

Beside him, on a low table, a plate of mince pies had been left. He ate one then another and wanted something to wash them down. Fortunately there was a glass of lemonade beside the pies. He gulped down a big mouthful as a little girl with pigtails, wearing a spotless pink dress with red circles and trimmed with lace, perched on his knee.

But it wasn’t lemonade. It was a very strong gin and tonic. Osborne coughed some over the little girl, whose father demanded the hotel should pay for cleaning the frock. The girl began to cry. Osborne shoved her off his knee and gave her a second gift, not caring that it came from the boys’ sack. He had not drunk alcohol for months and the gin pressed all the wrong buttons. He didn’t just want more. He needed more. Ignoring the little girl’s father, who was shaking his fist at him, Osborne drained the tumbler and, with a blast like a trombone solo, emitted a room-clearing fart.

* * *

As Flick made her way through the foyer with McKellar she was aware of a noisy altercation in the grotto between Santa and two porters. Although it drew the crowd’s attention she ignored it, rehearsing what she might say to Bruce Thornton’s parents. It was one of the worst tasks a police officer had to undertake and she was not about to delegate this one to a subordinate.

The house was situated in the village of Strathkinness, a couple of miles west of St Andrews. As the streetlights came on Flick could make out its red pantiled roof and a neatly-kept front garden with a bed of brutally pruned roses prepared to take whatever winter would throw at them. Paving that was no longer quite level went up to the front door of a bungalow typical of 1960s architecture. A nice, middle-class home, Flick thought. The chiming bell was answered, with obvious reluctance, by a stressed-looking woman of about fifty with pure white hair cut unflatteringly short who grudgingly conceded that her name was Grace Thornton. She wore an apron bearing traces of flour and cocoa powder. Her eyes were red as if she had been crying. Flick could see in her the same sharp, regular features that had made Bruce handsome. She did not react when Flick explained that they were police, but led them into the sitting room where a thin, bald man in a home-knitted jumper was watching a rugby match on the television, the volume up high. Walter Thornton’s expression was as unwelcoming as his wife’s.