Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) (36 page)

‘And what about his partner? Tash?’

Pendrick gave Suttle a look. Amusement again? Or something more complex? Suttle couldn’t decide.

‘Tash is a law unto herself,’ Pendrick said softly.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning Kinsey fancied the arse off her. Tash knew that. And made him look a complete dick.’

‘How?’

‘By filling his head with all the hippy crap. By going round there and trying to turn him into a human being.’

‘Round where?’

‘Round to his apartment. She does this stuff for a living. Touchy-feely. Astral therapy. Getting in touch with your inner self. That could have been ugly in Kinsey’s case.’

‘She told you all this?’

‘Tash tells me everything. Tash tells everyone everything. That woman knows no shame.’

Suttle nodded, remembering how candid she’d been about servicing Kinsey’s needs. Five minutes max. A hundred quid a minute.

‘You think she had a relationship with Kinsey?’

‘That wouldn’t have been possible. There was nothing to have a relationship with. Did she teach him to get in tune with himself? Did she shag the man if the price was right? Quite possibly.’

‘But you’d know though, wouldn’t you? If she tells everyone?’

‘I would, yeah.’

‘So did she?’

‘Of course she did.’

‘And was she shagging anyone else?’

‘Like who?’

‘Like you?’

The suggestion appeared to amuse him.

‘Are you serious?’ he started to laugh. ‘Me and Tash?’

Suttle let the silence thicken. Pendrick gave his face another wipe with the towel.

‘Tell me about Milo,’ Suttle said at last.

‘I just did. Mr Puppy Dog.’

‘His partner’s Tash, am I right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And she’s shagging Kinsey and maybe one or two others and not bothering to keep it a secret, yes?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘So how does that make him feel?’

The silence was much longer this time. There was a logic in these questions and Pendrick knew it.

‘You’re looking for motivation, right?’

‘I’m asking a question.’

‘Because you think someone
killed
Kinsey? Went up there and chucked him off his balcony?’

Suttle didn’t answer. Pendrick held his gaze.

‘Kinsey was an arsehole,’ he said softly. ‘Arseholes sometimes self-destruct. Fuck knows why, but they do. Maybe it’s God paying debts. Maybe it’s in the stars. Maybe Tash gave him the shag of his dreams and he decided to quit when he was ahead. Who cares? All I know is the guy’s gone. And good fucking riddance.’

‘The shag of his dreams? For winning, you mean?’

‘Whatever.’

‘But that night? Saturday night? After you’d all gone?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You think she might have driven back to Exmouth Quays?’

‘How would I know?’

‘But she had a key to his apartment? Is that what you’re telling me?’

This time Pendrick didn’t answer. At length he checked his watch. Time was moving on. He had a couple of calls to make.

Suttle thanked him for his time. He might come back. He might ask Pendrick to attend the local nick for a more formal interview. In the meantime he had one last question.

‘The takeaway Tash went to on Saturday night. Which one was it?’

Pendrick was picking at a loose thread in the towel. He looked up.

‘The Taj,’ he said. ‘In Rolle Street.’

Rolle Street was a couple of minutes’ drive from Pendrick’s place. The Taj Mahal lay between a hairdressing salon and an estate agency. The door was locked. Suttle got the phone number from the menu in the window. When he rang the number he could hear a phone ringing inside. Then came a recorded message. The Taj could take reservations but takeaway orders had to be collected in person.

Suttle tried again. This time the phone triggered a stir of movement from somewhere upstairs. Then came the clatter of feet on the stairs and a voice in Suttle’s ear.

‘What do you want? Who is it?’

‘Police. Can you open the door please?’

The guy had obviously been asleep. He was middle-aged, portly. He was wearing loose cotton trousers and an Exeter FC football top. He rubbed his eyes, asked Suttle to come in.

‘You own this place?’

‘I do, yes.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ratul.’

Suttle gave him Saturday’s date. He wanted to know whether Ratul could lay his hands on the card receipts from takeaway orders.

‘Upstairs,’ he said. ‘They’re upstairs. You’ve got a name for the order?’

‘Either Kinsey or Donovan.’

‘Wait please.’

He disappeared up the stairs. Suttle could hear movement overhead. A drawer opened and closed. He picked up a menu, realising how hungry he was. Then Ratul was back.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘It was a lady. I remember.’

He gave Suttle a copy of the order. It was in Tash Donovan’s name. In all, the food for Saturday’s little celebration had come to £67.49. The debit-card slip was stapled to the order. This time there was no name, just the last four digits of the number on the card.

Suttle had memorised the last four digits of the slips he’d seized from the escort agency: 2865. He checked the numbers: 2865. Ms Sonya Jacobson.

Suttle had time to grab a sandwich from an Exmouth café before he drove back to Middlemoor. He was certain now that
Constantine
should be revived, and that knowledge made him feel very good indeed. Everyone had put Kinsey’s death in the wrong box. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it had been quicker and cheaper to assume suicide and consign the file to the Coroner’s office. Only Suttle had taken the harder path. And now it turned out that he’d been right.

Carole Houghton was still in her office. In less than an hour Suttle needed to leave for Bournemouth.

‘This has to be quick, boss.’

She already knew about the card receipt from the Exeter escort agency. Now he told her about the matching slip from the Taj.

‘Same account, boss. Has to be.’

‘So what are we saying?’

‘We’re saying that Tash Donovan was charging the earth for all kinds of stuff with Kinsey, including regular sex. That we can prove because she told me. We’re also saying that Donovan persuaded Kinsey to bung Milo a couple of grand to help with his movie with more to follow.’

‘How much?’

‘Another forty-five grand.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘To keep Symons sweet.’

‘You can prove that too?’

‘No.’

‘But you’re telling me we can evidence all these other payments?’

‘Not so far. The two grand he paid Symons must have come out of the Jacobson account. The forty-five was on a promise. I’m guessing that the rest, the money he was paying Donovan, came out of the Jacobson account too. Donovan would have wanted cash. Kinsey must have had ATM drawing rights.’

‘But what’s he doing with his wife’s account?’

‘Ex-wife’s. So far I don’t know. But my guess is that it was some kind of private stash. Maybe he needed to hide money from the Revenue.’

‘Sure. Or his ex-wife.’

Suttle nodded. Either way, they needed to access the Jacobson account.

‘Donovan may still have the card, boss. And she’s obviously got the PIN number.’

‘The card wasn’t retrieved by Scenes of Crime?’

‘No. I checked just now.’

‘And you’re sure the Jacobson account doesn’t figure in his business records?’

‘Absolutely. And if he operated it through the Internet, there’s no way you’d ever know it even existed.’

‘His PC hard disk?’

‘That’s a possibility. I’ll feed the account number through. See if they can raise anything.’

‘Did he have a laptop?’

‘Not that we’ve found.’

‘Unusual.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

Houghton pushed the performance review files to one side and reached for a pad. Suttle watched her making a neat list of bullet points. Then she looked up.

‘Saturday night,’ she said. ‘Walk me through it.’

Suttle left for Bournemouth at half four, phoning Lizzie as he headed for his car. After the dramas of the past week, it was good to hear the lift in her voice.

‘You’ll be back when?’

‘Tennish. I’ll phone.’

‘Be careful, yeah?’

‘Always.’

‘I love you. Remember that.’

Suttle grinned to himself. Traffic out of the city was already heavy but he edged into the outside lane as soon as he hit the Honiton road, maintaining a steady 70 mph as he headed east. Houghton had wanted him to hang on and talk to Nandy, but Suttle had pleaded a personal crisis at home. He’d be back first thing tomorrow. If she needed to make contact in the meantime she could always bell him.

As he left her office, she’d been on the phone to Nandy. The Det-Supt was driving the Bodmin job at breakneck speed but Suttle knew there was no way he’d ignore the weight of evidence he’d unearthed. Pausing at the door of Houghton’s office, he’d looked back at her. Still on the phone, she’d smiled at him and raised a thumb.
Constantine
was obviously back from the dead. Brilliant.

Lizzie was feeding Grace when she got the call from Pendrick. She glanced at it and put the phone to one side. When he tried again, she didn’t even pick it up. Then, moments later, came the beep that indicated a text waiting. With a tiny shiver of apprehension, she retrieved the phone. It was Pendrick again: ‘If you don’t pick up, I’ll drive out to yr place. Yr call. XXX’.

She looked at the row of kisses, angry now. He answered as soon as she keyed recall.

‘We need to talk,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘We have to.’

‘No way.’

‘Is your husband there?’

‘No. But he’s back any minute.’

‘We could meet in a pub. Invent an excuse. Bring the baby. Whatever.’

‘You’re out of your mind. There’s nothing to talk about.’

‘Wrong. There’s everything to talk about.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you and me.’ He paused. ‘And other stuff.’

‘What other stuff?’

‘Stuff about Tash. I’ve had the Old Bill round.’

‘When?’

‘This afternoon. These guys aren’t stupid. I’m in a bad place. I mean it. I need your help. Is that too much to ask?’

The phone went dead. Lizzie didn’t move for a moment or two. Then she stole into the hall, double-bolted the front door and returned to the kitchen.. She bolted the door from the kitchen out into the garden too, then looked at Grace. The biggest of the carving knives was in the drawer under the sink. She took it out, wrapped it in a tea towel and laid it carefully on the table. Then she reached for the cooling spoon of mashed potato.

‘Open wide,’ she said.

Suttle was on the outskirts of Bournemouth a couple of minutes before eight. With the help of his satnav he threaded his way through a tangle of streets and found a parking spot round the corner from the main parade of shops. He’d no idea what John Hamilton looked like but was alarmed to note the yellow no-parking line across the road from the Café Rouge. Traffic was still thick, clotted with buses.
This guy’s supposed to be good
, he told himself. One way or another he’d have the rendezvous plotted up.

Suttle stepped into the café. Dave Fallon had already arrived. He was sitting at a table towards the back, with another man beside him. Suttle hadn’t seen Fallon for a while, not face to face, and the intervening years had done nothing for his dress sense. The same tired leather jacket with the fraying cuffs. The same baggy jeans. The same curry flecks on his once-white shirt. Fallon had put on weight and it showed.

‘This is Carlos.’ He nodded at the other man. ‘We’re in business together. Right, Carlos?’

The other man said nothing. Younger than Fallon, he was tall and lean. He had steady eyes and the kind of tan you’d pay a lot of money to acquire. Beautiful suit, thought Suttle.

Fallon didn’t want to waste Suttle’s time. Carlos, he said, was in the delivery game. His mission in life was to please people who wanted wrong things put right. In this case they were dealing with a German art dealer who’d lost his daughter, a girl called Renata, to some scumbag thug in a botched contract killing near Malaga.

‘With me so far, mush?’ Fallon was looking at Suttle.

‘Go on.’

‘This German guy’s got money. Quite a lot of money. In fact he’s fucking minted. Losing his daughter like that has really upset him, and way down the line he wants to do something about it.’