Fatal Last Words

Twenty-eight

‘Jesus, Sammy,’ said Ray Wilding, ‘that’s a bit embarrassing. Are we in the shit? How are the bosses taking it?’

‘Remarkably well, all things considered. They’re taking the view that Collins should have made it clear to you that he was a journo.’

‘Nonetheless, we should have found that out for ourselves.

Schoolboy error, boss; I’m sorry.’

‘Noted. The truth is, Mr Aislado’s attitude probably let you off the hook. If he’d splashed it without warning the DCC, then there might have been an explosion.’

‘I’ll buy his paper from now on,’ Wilding vowed. ‘That seems the least I can do.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be grateful; his circulation’s on the up from what I hear, but every sale counts. Now, where are you?’

‘We’re at Glover’s house,’ the sergeant told him, ‘in his office, as I speak. And we’ve got a problem: somebody’s beaten us to it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The place has been gone over, expertly. Wilkie, the son, brought us here. He’s downstairs just now. When he let us in, the first thing I noticed was that the alarm wasn’t set. I came here earlier, remember, with Carol, to collect his insulin ampoules. When we came in, there was a warning tone, and she cancelled the system. When we left, she reset it. I watched her punch the numbers into the keypad. When we unlocked it, no tone, no nothing.’

‘Maybe she missed something out and it wasn’t set properly. She was under stress, remember; she’d just had a hell of a shock.’

‘Sure, that was my first thought too, until I got up here, into the office. Wilkie showed us his dad’s filing cabinet. His personal records were there, payment slips, receipts, bank statements, all that stuff, but the file we really wanted, his correspondence, it’s missing. There’s a folder, sure, but it’s empty.’

‘Are you sure he kept paper records?’

‘The son says that he did.’

‘OK, but his outgoing stuff, letters he wrote, emails he sent, there will be copies of these on his computer, surely.’

‘I’m sure there are. But the big problem is, it’s not here. Glover’s whole life, so Wilkie says, the originals of his books in various stages, his accounts, his photos, his music, was on a Dell desktop, with everything backed up on an external resource. Alice and I are looking at the computer now; the casing’s been opened and the hard disk’s been removed. There’s no sign of the back-up disk either.’

‘Who would want to do that? The daughter, the son?’

‘I don’t see that, Sammy. Why would they? Wilkie seemed totally shocked when we found this. He says that his father had three new works on the computer, and two of them hadn’t been delivered to his publisher. The way he sees it, this is a disaster. We did ask him where he’s been all afternoon, though. He said that he and Carol never went out of her flat from the moment we left them to the moment we returned. They spent most of that time fielding telephone calls from the media, so if we need to confirm their story it should be easy enough.’

‘Have you looked at Carol’s computer yet, at her dad’s secret email address?’

‘No. We came straight here.’

‘Then you better had. Call me on my mobile as soon as you have. Young Sauce and I are going out to Fred Noble’s place to interview Glover’s agent. She’s ready to see us, but before that, I’ll need to report this upstairs. If you’re convinced it wasn’t Wilkie and Carol protecting their inheritance, then it has to bring Mr Coben, Andy Martin’s mystery visitor, right back into the game.’