Time of Death (29 page)

‘Anyway,’ said Joe, ‘she’s still at work. And she wants to speak to you.’

‘Great.’ Carlyle’s heart sank. ‘What about?’

‘Agatha Mills. She wants to know why she hasn’t seen the final report into the woman’s murder.’

That’s because I haven’t written it, Carlyle thought. ‘Shit. What did you tell her?’

‘I haven’t told her anything,’ Joe said defensively. ‘I just took the message from her secretary.’

‘Okay.’ Carlyle thought about it for a moment. ‘Could you draft something for me, very factual, straight up and down, just the way she likes it?’

‘All right,’ said Joe, not sounding too happy about it.

‘Good. I’ll take a look at it in the morning. Thanks,’ said Carlyle, pleased at having managed to exercise his power of delegation for once. ‘See you, then.’

No sooner had he ended his call with Joe than the phone went again. This time it was Fiona Singleton from the Fulham station.

‘Have you seen the news?’ she asked, in a tone far more matter-of-fact than Joe’s burbling call.

‘Yes,’ Carlyle replied. ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’

‘Not that amazing really,’ Singleton replied. ‘Lovell has already confessed.’

‘Sorry?’ said Carlyle, confused.

‘Simon Lovell,’ Singleton explained, ‘the saddo who was stalking Rosanna Snowdon. We picked him up last night and he was quite happy to admit that he’d done it. It was
going to be in the paper today, but we’ve held it over because of all this . . . other stuff. I thought you might have heard anyway, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up.’

‘Thanks.’ Carlyle thought about it for a moment. ‘Did he really kill her?’

‘Lovell? I suppose so.’ Singleton ran it through in her head one more time. ‘Snowdon was dropped off outside the flat by her boss. Lovell admits he was waiting for her. He
looks like a bit of a gentle giant, but he could have easily thrown her down those stairs, no problem at all.’

Justifying the easy win, Carlyle thought. ‘She was drunk?’

Singleton grunted.

‘Maybe it was an accident?’ he suggested.

‘We don’t think so,’ she said firmly.

‘Is there any physical evidence?’

‘I don’t think so. It probably doesn’t matter now.’

‘Just make sure that this isn’t another lame-brain going down for an easy win,’ Carlyle said. ‘It’ll come back to haunt you, if it is.’

‘Not your problem,’ Singleton replied, sounding as if she was regretting having made the call.

‘What about the boyfriend?’ Carlyle asked, moving on.

‘The rugby player? He’s in New Zealand on a tour.’

‘Good alibi.’

‘Yes,’ Singleton agreed. ‘The colleague who spoke to him on the phone said he didn’t seem particularly grief-stricken.’

‘No?’ If I’d just lost a girlfriend like Rosanna Snowdon, Carlyle thought, grief-stricken wouldn’t be the half of it.

‘No,’ Singleton laughed. ‘It may have something to do with a story in the tabloids yesterday about him groping a couple of groupies in a nightclub while watching a
dwarf-throwing competition.’

‘People deal with bereavement in different ways,’ Carlyle reflected. ‘Anyway, thanks for the call.’

‘No problem.’

Carlyle studied the Simpson story once again, without finding out anything new. When he had finished, he looked at the clock behind the counter which told him that it was already almost four. No
one had entered the café in the last twenty minutes and now Marcello was making a show of getting ready to close up. It was time for the inspector to take the hint and let the man get
home.

After paying for his lunch, he decided to go back into Winter Garden House. Alice would be home from school soon. It would be nice to be there to meet her and find out how her day had been.
Carlyle’s own day was pretty much a write-off. A lot had happened but he’d achieved nothing. Sometimes you just had to quit while you were behind. Better now just to let things lie,
then wait and see how they looked in the morning.

S
tepping out of the café, Carlyle almost walked straight into a couple strolling arm-in-arm along Macklin Street. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, keeping his eyes on
the pavement.

‘Inspector!’

Carlyle looked up to see Harry Ripley – Heart Attack Harry – with a homely looking woman who appeared to be in her early sixties. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘how are
you?’ He nodded at the woman.

‘This is Esther,’ the old soldier beamed, ‘Esther McGee. We met at a Residents’ Association coffee morning not long after . . . er, you and I last met.’

Carlyle stuck out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Esther,’ he said. ‘I’m John Carlyle, one of Harry’s neighbours.’

‘Oh, yes, Inspector,’ the woman smiled. ‘Harry has told me all about you.’

‘I hope he’s looking after you well,’ Carlyle grinned, some of the couple’s obvious good spirits now rubbing off on him.

‘Oh, yes, he’s a right gentleman.’ A naughty twinkle appeared in Esther’s eye, as she pulled Harry close. ‘And still in such good shape,’ she winked,
‘if you know what I mean. There’s still plenty of lead in his pencil.’

‘Well, yes,’ Carlyle coughed, feeling himself blush. But that was nothing compared to Harry, who had gone a bright beetroot red. The old dog, Carlyle thought. But at least we
don’t have to worry any more about him trying to top himself. Hoorah for the power of love, or whatever this is. ‘Nice to run into you both,’ he stammered. ‘I’m glad
things are going so well, Harry.’

It took the old man a few extra seconds to regain the power of speech. ‘Nice to see you, too, Inspector,’ he said finally. ‘And give my best to Helen and Alice.’

‘I will,’ Carlyle replied. ‘The pair of you must come round for tea some time soon.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Esther agreed, ‘that would be lovely.’

‘There you are, Harry,’ Carlyle smiled. ‘Speak to Helen and she can let you know when would be a good time.’ With that, he scuttled across the road and quickly retreated
inside Winter Garden House.

C
arole Simpson sat morosely at her kitchen table in Highgate, holding a very large glass of Langoa Barton 2001, while waiting for her £800-an-hour lawyer to call. When
the call finally came, she pounced on the handset lying in front of her.

‘Hello?’

‘Carole, it’s John Lucas. I’ve just come out of Kentish Town police station.’

‘Yes.’ She could hear traffic noise in the background. Presumably the lawyer was walking along the road looking for a cab. Good luck to him, Simpson thought. Kentish Town was one of
the neighbourhoods affected by the recent burst of rioting that had spread across the city before the Met had been able to react. Even at the best of times, it wasn’t the kind of place a man
in a suit should be wandering around alone at night. She hoped that Lucas would find a taxi before he got mugged.

As if to allay her fears, she heard Lucas suddenly bellow, ‘TAXI!’

She waited as he clambered inside and told the driver to head for a restaurant in the West End, before restarting their conversation. ‘You were in the station a long time,’ she said,
knowing what that must mean, waiting for the final confirmation of how completely her life had been demolished.

‘Yes,’ the lawyer said, sounding more chipper now that he was safely ensconced in the back of a black cab. ‘More than eight hours, in fact.’

Simpson did the calculation in her head. Good God, she thought morosely, that’s more than six grand. She wondered how much money she had in her purse. £50? All of their bank accounts
had been frozen. Would they find the money to pay the legal bills?

‘He’s confessed, Carole. He’s admitted to defrauding his investors.’

‘You told him to do that?’ she asked incredulously.

‘No, no,’ the lawyer said, shocked. ‘Of course not. I’m not even completely sure what exactly he’s confessing
to
, at this point. He was looking to wind the
fund up, which isn’t really what you would expect of someone in these circumstances.’

‘What do you mean “
in these circumstances
”?’ she asked sharply.

‘Well . . .’ Lucas chose his words carefully, ‘in a so-called pyramid or ponzi scheme, things usually get to the point where the whole thing collapses as a result of too many
people trying to take their money out at the same time. Here, it seems, Joshua was trying to give their money back to them – or at least part of it.’

‘Doesn’t that make him innocent?’ She used the word in the narrowest, legal sense.

‘By crystallising the losses,’ Lucas continued, not caring to answer the question, ‘he could have been hoping to share out the losses among everyone, rather than leaving the
last ones left in holding the baby, and facing total financial ruin. If that was the thinking behind it, he would have known that there would still have been a big row about it, but the whole thing
could have been represented as bad luck rather than actual fraud.’

That made his damn letter even more stupid, Simpson decided.

‘At the moment,’ Lucan continued, ‘all this has to be argued over. We certainly don’t know what the authorities have as yet, in terms of developing a case. Given where we
are at this stage, I told him to say nothing. He chose to ignore me.’

‘Not much use then, were you?’ Simpson said bitterly.

The lawyer chose to ignore the barb. He’d been here many times before. One of his great strengths, so he liked to think, was an ability not to get wound up by clients who were, inevitably,
having to operate under a great deal of pressure. ‘That is always the client’s prerogative,’ he said gently. ‘It may even be for the best, in the long run.’

‘How so?’ she asked, not prepared to believe it.

‘Well,’ the lawyer said, ‘this way we can avoid a trial and can negotiate a lesser sentence.’

‘So that’s it?’ she said, trying not to wail.

‘Goodness, no,’ said Lucas, trying to sound fatherly, even though he was at least five or six years younger than the woman struggling to hold it together on the other end of the
line. ‘Not at all. Whatever Joshua has said, it is still very early days here.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘He’s going to be handed over to the City of London Police’s Economic Crime Directorate. In due course, they will probably look to charge him under the Fraud Act of 2006. I
expect that they will claim he is guilty of either false representation, failing to disclose information and or abuse of position. However, there’s a long way to go yet. There are still
various different possible outcomes, and we want to optimise the result for Joshua – and for you.’

‘Should I go and see him?’

‘Not yet,’ the lawyer said firmly. ‘Apart from anything else, they’ll probably move him about a bit, depending on cell availability. You know what it’s
like.’

‘Yes,’ she said icily, ‘I do.’

‘You don’t want to be rushing off on a wild-goose chase across London, especially if the media are on your tail.’

‘No, you’re right.’ Simpson thought about taking a slug of wine, and decided against it. Putting the glass on the table, she cut to the chase. ‘Will he go to
jail?’

Definitely, thought Lucas. And for quite some time. There had never been a worse time to be caught out as a financial crook. All it needed now was for the American authorities to get involved
and the silly sod would have hit the jackpot. Those buggers would quite happily lock you up forever, with an extra hundred years on top, just to make them feel better. ‘That is a
possibility,’ he replied cautiously, ‘maybe even a probability. But that is not what you should be worrying about now.’

‘No? What should I be worrying about?’

‘We need to have a meeting in the morning. In the meantime, you should start thinking about the practicalities.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, remember the good news here – the very good news – which is that there is no suggestion that you were party to any of this.’

‘I wasn’t.’ Simpson picked up the wine glass and this time drank about half of its contents.

‘No,’ the lawyer said hastily, ‘of course not. But you know what it’s like in these situations.’

Simpson drained the remaining wine in the glass, and resisted the urge to smash it against the wall. ‘No, I don’t actually,’ she bristled, all her desire to be rational, to be
reasonable, slipping away.

‘Well,’ Lucas summoned up extra reserves of empathy and patience, ‘as his wife, you will find that there will always be gossip and speculation. But
you
are not under
investigation and there is not, as things stand, any . . . direct threat to your job. In the first instance, however, you need to consider various aspects of your relationship with your husband and
in particular the distribution of your respective assets.’

After a day of feeling numb, Simpson suddenly recoiled as if she had been slapped in the face. ‘Are you saying that I should divorce him?’

‘Not at all,’ Lucas said calmly. ‘It is not my place to give any such advice. And, remember, technically, I am Joshua’s lawyer, not yours. You should, of course, get your
own representation. However, for the moment at least, there is a great commonality of interest here.’

‘For the moment?’

Lucas gritted his teeth. He was getting increasingly irritated by Simpson’s verbal tic of echoing what he said. But, once again, he ploughed on. ‘Let us assume, for the moment, that
the authorities will want to try and recover as much of Joshua’s assets as possible. You will need to prove to them that anything you keep is not something that was gained as a result of his
schemes.’

‘Christ!’ Simpson muttered as she grabbed the wine bottle and refilled her glass.

‘Stop here!’ Lucas told the cab driver. Before clambering out, he returned to his call: ‘Remember, Carole, that you are a very successful professional in your own right.
What’s more, you have dedicated your entire career to public service. It should not be difficult to demonstrate that you have built up a reasonable portfolio of legitimately acquired assets
over several decades. Draw up a list this evening, and we can discuss it in my office in the morning.’

‘Fine,’ Simpson sighed.

‘Shall we say eleven?’