Need You Dead

60 Monday 25 April

Potting perched himself on the empty chair beside Guy Batchelor, and looking at each of his three fellow detectives in turn said, ‘I’ve just found another best friend of Lorna Belling’s, a lady called Kate Harmond — and been to see her.’

‘How did you find her, Norman?’ Batchelor asked.

Looking rather pleased with himself, he said, ‘Facebook. I went to Lorna Belling’s page and looked at the people she liked and had messaged. There seemed almost a bit of code going on between these two ladies, so I figured they were more than just plain Facebook pals. I was right. She’s the manager of a boutique in the Lanes. Wasn’t too much of a hardship seeing her — cor — she’s a belter!’

‘Did you say we have a new suspect or that you have a new date, Norman?’ Grace asked a tad impatiently.

‘Sorry, guv.’ Looking contrite, he pulled out his notebook, opened it and read for a moment. ‘According to Kate Harmond, Lorna had been having an affair for some while.’

Grace frowned. ‘With whom?’

‘Is it Kipp Brown?’ queried Batchelor.

‘No, someone called Greg,’ Potting replied.

‘Do we have his last name?’

Potting shook his head. ‘No, she said she never told her his last name. She said his wife was called Belinda, but she was always very circumspect with her about him.’

‘How come her other best friend, Roxy Goldstein, didn’t give us all this information?’ Batchelor asked.

‘Perhaps she didn’t know. Kate Harmond told me, in confidence, that Lorna had covered for her some years back when she’d had an affair — so she was reciprocating now.’

‘Greg and Belinda?’ Batchelor said. ‘She’s her best friend and she never told her his full name? Isn’t that odd? What about his profession — what did he do for a living?’

‘Sounds like he lied for England, chief,’ Potting replied. ‘Kate Harmond had a very tearful phone call from Lorna on Friday morning, April 15th, the week before she died. This man — Greg — seems to have been stringing her along that he would leave his wife, and that Lorna and he would have a life together. According to Kate, this was what kept Lorna going — sustained her — through her very abusive marriage. But he’d given her one excuse after another for not leaving his wife.’

Potting turned the page. ‘She said Lorna had apparently found out the truth by chance. This Greg told her he was taking his wife away on a holiday to help her get over the trauma of her father’s death and was going to break the news on their return that he was leaving her. A hairdressing client who was by chance on the same island in the Maldives had met them — Lorna Belling saw a photograph of them all looking very loved-up. Lorna did some checking on his real identity and found out this Belinda’s father is still alive and well, that Greg had totally lied about his profession, and — one other thing that really floored her, that he had never told her — he had a daughter. He’d always told Lorna he and his wife weren’t able to have children, and that when they got together, finally, they would start a family.’

‘Shit,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘What a complete bastard.’

‘So he was just stringing her along all this time?’ Batchelor said. ‘For a bit of sex on the side?’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Potting agreed.

‘Right, we need to look at her appointments diary, which I believe has been recovered from her home, and as a priority action, trace all her clients. They may have something to add.’

‘I’m on that, Guy,’ Potting said. ‘There’s a bit of a problem — it seems to have been mislaid. It’s not in the exhibits cupboard.’

‘You need to find it quickly, Norman, and get on it.’

‘Yes, guv.’

‘So what was it this Greg told Lorna he did for a living, Norman?’ Batchelor asked.

‘Kate Harmond was a bit vague on that — she said he’d told Lorna he was in financial services.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Batchelor observed. ‘Just like our friend Kipp Brown.’

Then Grace asked, ‘So what does he actually do, Norman?’

‘Well, this is the thing. Kate was away on a week’s buying trip in Italy when she had that call. She’d arranged to meet Lorna for lunch last Thursday, April 21st — the day she was found dead — and Lorna had promised she’d tell her all the details then. And here’s the most significant bit — she said that Lorna was livid with this man and was going to expose him to his family and work and ruin his life. She didn’t actually tell Kate what his job was. Kate said she told her not to act impulsively, to wait until they’d met up and talked it through — she was concerned for her about the consequences of blowing it all open and her husband finding out. Apparently Lorna replied that she didn’t care. Her sister lives in Sydney, Australia, recently divorced from a wealthy guy with a big settlement and a fancy house, and she was planning to up-sticks and join her out there.’

The four of them were silent for some moments. ‘Nice work, Norman,’ Guy Batchelor said.

‘So what we don’t know is’ — Glenn Branson was looking pensively up at the ceiling, as if thinking out loud — ‘did Lorna Belling lose the plot with him on or before the day she was killed?’

‘Greg is in financial services. Could it be Kipp Brown using a pseudonym?’ Grace posited.

‘It sounds like it could well be, chief,’ Batchelor said.

‘We need to find out urgently the real identities of Greg and Belinda,’ Grace said. ‘Are there any clues on Lorna’s social media pages?’

‘Nothing on Facebook about either of them,’ Potting said. ‘Lorna has a Twitter account, but she only has seven followers, all in hair products.’

‘There’s a problem with that, boss,’ Batchelor said. ‘We still haven’t found her computer.’

‘What about phone calls to him? She must have made calls or sent texts to him?’

‘They’ve gone back two months on the phone that was in her house,’ Potting said. ‘In addition to Kate Harmond and Roxy Goldstein, Lorna Belling made calls to her husband, to the police, to a few takeaway places — a Thai, a pizza place and an Indian. To a couple of car dealers, and to the man we already have as a suspect, Seymour Darling. You’d have thought if she was having an affair there would be dozens of calls or texts, or both, to her lover. But nothing. That would indicate she had a second phone.’

‘We know she had a second phone, from Kipp Brown’s interview, and we have the number,’ Grace said. ‘It’s a burner — a pay-as-you-go — make a note that we need to get the records. Perhaps whoever killed her took both that phone and the computer and ditched them. It sounds possible that she confronted this Greg after catching him out, perhaps threatening to expose him, and he killed her to stop her from telling anyone, then took both that phone and her computer.’

‘It’s a good hypothesis, boss,’ Glenn Branson said.

‘Which puts this mysterious Greg as our prime suspect, do you think?’ Guy Batchelor asked.

‘It does, but I’m not ruling out anybody at this stage. We just don’t know what happened between that call she had with her friend in Italy on the Friday and Wednesday afternoon or evening.’ Grace thought for a moment. ‘Greg and Belinda. Have we talked to any other friends of Lorna Belling?’

‘We’re working through her clients that we know about,’ Potting said. ‘After the Argus report some of them came forward, including a lady called Sandra Zandler who was due to see her early Thursday morning at Lorna’s home address. There was no reply when she got there and she was devastated, because she was flying off early in the afternoon on a special fiftieth birthday trip, with her husband, to Venice. We asked if she knew any of Lorna Belling’s other clients, but she didn’t. I’m afraid without the appointments book it’s very slow progress. We’ve definitely not spoken to everyone yet. DCs Jack Alexander and Velvet Wilde are on it — and our American friend, NotMuch.’

Grace looked at him. ‘I’m sorry — who did you say, Norman?’

‘Arnie Crown. NotMuch.’

‘NotMuch?’

Potting nodded. ‘Yes, he’s very short — you know, chief. Not much cop.’

Branson and Grace both grinned. ‘Very good, Norman. So you’re planning to ruin any possible friendship we might have with the FBI?’

‘Actually, chief, he told me that was his nickname in the States.’

Grace looked at his watch. ‘OK.’ He turned to Potting. ‘You’ve done a great job, Norman. I’ll leave you and Guy to get on with everything. Make sure you get hold of Lorna’s appointment book.’

As the two detectives left his office, closing the door behind them, Grace said to Branson, ‘So what do you think?’

‘Four suspects, each with a rock solid motive. Her husband, Seymour Darling, Kipp Brown and now this Greg. And suicide still in the frame.’ Then seeing the Detective Superintendent’s quizzical look, he said, ‘What?’

Grace smiled.

‘Am I missing something?’

Grace shook his head. ‘Not you specifically. All of us, including me. We’re all missing something.’

‘Oh yes — what is it?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t bloody figured it out. It’s just a gut feeling — something’s not right.’

‘Not right?’

He was interrupted by his private phone ringing. It was Cleo.

Apologizing to Branson, he answered. ‘Hi!’

‘Can you talk?’ she asked.

‘I’m in a meeting. Anything urgent? How did it go at the school?’

‘They’ve accepted him! Bruno can start right away — I’m just sorting out his uniform now.’

‘That’s brilliant news — is he pleased?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Listen, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’

‘Love you!’

Sheepishly, looking at Branson, he murmured, ‘Me too.’

As he ended the call, Branson asked, ‘What’s not right, Roy? What are we missing?’

Grace shoved the bundle of SIO files on Operation Bantam across to him. ‘Can you take a look through it for me with fresh eyes and see if you can find out?’

‘OK, sure. Want me to read it here or take it to my desk?’

‘Take it to your desk, bell me when you’ve finished.’

Branson looked at the thickness of the file. ‘In about three weeks?’

‘Try three hours.’