The Kill Call

27

The machinery was soon swinging into action. A stop on Michael Clay’s Mercedes, a description issued of the man they were looking for. But it was always the same in these cases. The moment a man’s description was circulated, people would start to see him everywhere.

‘So Michael Clay has suddenly become our number one suspect?’ asked Cooper. ‘Because he’s gone to ground?’

‘Well, perhaps he wasn’t directly involved,’ said Fry. ‘He doesn’t seem to have been in Derbyshire at the time that Patrick Rawson was killed.’

‘Well, no…’

‘I think there must be something in their business affairs that will cast a light on the motive for Rawson’s death, though. The trouble is, that could take time for us to figure out now.’

‘You know we were looking for a rival dealer who might have had a feud with Patrick Rawson?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes?’

‘What about the relationship between Patrick Rawson and Michael Clay? Partnerships like that can easily go wrong, especially where there’s criminality involved.’

‘You’re right, Ben. And even more so if it’s just one of the partners who happens to have criminal tendencies. I can imagine Rawson filling his own pockets, and Clay catching him out.’

‘Do you think it could it have been Clay who shopped his partner to Trading Standards?’ said Cooper.

‘He might not have gone that far in the first instance. But it’s possible he provided evidence against Rawson when the investigation started.’

‘To save his own skin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Trading Standards never mentioned that, though, did they?’ said Cooper.

‘No. They might have been able to put a case together without Michael Clay, once they’d got the information they needed. That would have allowed Clay to look clean.’

Cooper eased back in his chair, teasing out the theory. ‘But perhaps Rawson found out what he’d done, that Clay was the informant. That would cause a problem between them, all right. But then it would have been Rawson who came after Clay. What do you think?’

‘Well, it’s a possibility,’ said Fry. ‘What have you got on at the moment, Ben?’

‘Still a few calls on the Horse Watch file,’ said Cooper, looking at the items checked off his list. ‘I couldn’t get a reply from the owner of the Dutch Warmblood.’

‘Leave it for now. This is more important.’

‘OK.’

They spent the rest of the afternoon concentrating on trying to piece together Michael Clay’s movements since he left his home in Great Barr. If his daughter was telling the truth now, he had set off on Tuesday afternoon, and must have arrived in Derbyshire early in the evening. Did Patrick Rawson’s death prompt the journey? But how could Clay possibly have known about it by then?

A quick phone call established that he hadn’t booked in at the Birch Hall Country Hotel, where Patrick Rawson had stayed. Why was that? Well, maybe Clay was more careful with the company’s money, and had found somewhere less expensive. Perhaps he just wasn’t interested in golf.

That raised the question of Michael Clay’s relationship with Deborah Rawson. Fry thought back to the one occasion she’d seen them together, in the reception area downstairs. Had there been any hint of a closer liaison between them than was suggested on the surface? Could she have read a suggestion in their body language that they were having an affair?

Fry set Beck Hurst and Luke Irvine to phoning other hotels in the area. There were plenty of them, but at least it wasn’t the height of the tourist season in the Peak District, when strangers passing through for a night or two were so common that they might hardly be noticed.

‘And once you’ve covered the hotels, start on the B amp;Bs,’ she said.

Unlike Patrick Rawson, Clay hadn’t used his credit card everywhere, or his movements would have been traced by now. Here was a man who had learned the lesson about dropping out of sight, then.

Normally, Fry would have had hopes of tracking his movements by his mobile phone. When a mobile phone was turned on, it was constantly transmitting its position to the nearest tower, identifying itself to the network by its electronic serial number. Phone companies were required to keep records to assist criminal investigations. But in a rural area like the Peak District, the region covered by a tower could be pretty large. Another bit of technology that was more useful for catching criminals in a city.

In this case, the disappearance of Patrick Rawson’s phone, and the fact that Clay’s had already been turned off when she’d tried to call him herself that morning, convinced her that she was dealing with someone who was aware of the technology.

‘Have we got anything from the mobile phone company yet?’ she called. ‘When did Clay’s phone log off the network?’

‘Wednesday afternoon, about two thirty. But they say they can’t narrow down the position of the handset better than a radius of a mile or two. And since then he could have gone anywhere, with his phone switched off.’

‘It’s Friday now,’ said Fry. ‘He could have reached Australia since Wednesday afternoon, for heaven’s sake. Erin Lacey has a bit of explaining to do, when I get to speak to her.’

‘I wonder what she thought her father was up to,’ said Murfin.

‘Well, what’s the betting she suspected that he was involved in Patrick Rawson’s death?’

‘And she was giving him a chance to get away?’

‘That, or a chance to come home and give an account of himself.’

Fry felt sure that Michael Clay was no longer in Derbyshire. Why should he be? If Clay was involved in Patrick Rawson’s death in some way, he’d had at least one accomplice. Someone local, too, with access to horses.

Clay hadn’t been in Derbyshire for very long, but long enough to make his mark. No one had yet been found who admitted seeing him, which was predictable at this stage. Even his own daughter had been reluctant to talk. Yet someone must certainly have crossed his path. They needed to get more public appeals out in the media, but that was a slow process. Time lost again. It was so frustrating.

‘What sort of area are we looking at from the mobile phone signal?’

‘Let’s work it out.’

They pored over the map. Even with masts sited at Sir William Hill and Calver Peak, the potential area for Michael Clay’s last-known location covered the whole of Eyam, Birchlow and Foolow, as well as Longstone Moor and eastwards towards Calver.

‘We’re looking for a car again, aren’t we?’ said Hurst. ‘Mr Clay drives a blue Mercedes.’

‘The details have already been circulated.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Cooper. ‘Does this mean that Michael Clay wasn’t the second man having dinner at Le Chien Noir on Monday night?’

Fry shook her head. ‘He can’t have been, if the daughter is telling the truth now. Erin Lacey says he drove up to Derbyshire on Tuesday.’

‘Didn’t the description fit?’

‘The manager at the restaurant was very vague in his description of the second man. Very vague. It could have been almost anyone – one of the other contacts in Patrick Rawson’s phone book, perhaps.’

Murfin put the phone down from a call to Clay’s bank.

‘Well, that could explain why Mr Clay wasn’t registered at any of the hotels. It seems he’s been paying rent on another property. Right here on our patch, too.’

‘Well, well. Have you got the address, Gavin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

‘Wait just a second.’ Cooper held up a hand. ‘Diane, I can see you’re convinced that Michael Clay is implicated in Rawson’s death somehow. And you think you’re going to go chasing off and arrest him. But stop for a minute. Isn’t it also possible that we have two victims now? Two victims, but only one body.’

Eden View was a nice double-fronted stone property on the edge of Birchlow, with farmland to the rear and views over the village itself to the front. ‘For Sale’ signs stood outside the house, and an estate agent arrived, breathless and worried, to let them in.

‘The property belongs to a local farmer, who had it built for his son,’ he explained. ‘But the son has left the area. He moved to Leeds to try a career as a teacher.’

‘So you found a tenant for him while the house was empty?’ said Fry. ‘Isn’t that unusual?’

The agent fiddled with a set of keys to find the right one for the front door.

‘We knew the property would be vacant for a long period,’ he said. ‘It’s been on the market for two years already.’

‘Why haven’t you been able to sell it?’

‘It has an occupancy restriction.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Oh, the five-year permanent residence rule?’

‘That, or a strong local connection and essential need. You know the way it goes.’

‘Yes, that must make it difficult.’

In some areas, the national park planning authority had taken steps to prevent villages from being taken over by incomers and second-home owners, restricting ownership of new properties to people with a minimum of five years permanent residence in the parish or adjoining parishes living in unsatisfactory accommodation or setting up a household for the first time. The only exceptions were those who had an essential need to live close to their work, or to care for an elderly or sick relative.

‘It reduces the market value by a vast amount,’ said the agent. ‘Unrestricted, this property might have fetched the best part of three hundred thousand, but we’re marketing Eden View for just below two hundred. Even so, it’s going to be difficult finding the right buyer.’

Cooper looked at the house. That seemed a shame. But then, there were lots of people who were having difficulty selling their houses. He remembered Fry telling him once about the young migrant workers who had been replacing the students in her part of town. Poles, Czechs, Romanians. It was odd that the country should be so open to European migrants on the one hand, while here in some of the villages, properties could only be bought by someone from the very same parish, by a person who belonged here, in the old-fashioned, traditional sense. They were two distinct worlds, existing alongside each other.

Finally the agent let them into the house. The interior seemed incongruous, hardly fitting for a house worth half a million pounds on the open market. No one was taking much care about cleaning and maintenance. That might be common for a rented property, but the feeling of the place didn’t fit the image of Michael Clay, the businessman and certified accountant.

In the sitting room, a pile of celebrity gossip magazines lay on the table by an armchair. They all seemed to have headlines like Chanelle spills the beanz. Not what he would have imagined as Mr Clay’s choice of reading.

‘Perhaps I was right about there being a woman involved,’ said Fry. ‘But I just had the wrong man.’

‘You think Michael Clay might have been the one having an affair?’

‘This looks like a kind of love nest to me, Ben.’

‘A love nest on the cheap, though.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Clay’s wife died five years ago,’ said Cooper. ‘Why would he go to such lengths to conceal a relationship? Who was he hiding it from?’

Fry shrugged. ‘His children? I bet Erin Lacey doesn’t know about this place. Or maybe his business colleagues? Perhaps he was ashamed of his relationship. Ashamed of her, whoever she is.’

The kitchen seemed to contain a microwave and not much else. Cooper opened a cupboard. No, he was wrong. Half a jar of coffee and a tin of powdered milk.

‘I can’t imagine that Michael Clay spent much time here himself.’

In a corner were black plastic bin liners bursting with rubbish. Amazing how often he saw that. As if it was too much trouble to put the stuff out for the binmen once a week. Or maybe the household had got on the wrong side of the garbage police and been penalized for putting the wrong stuff in their recycling bin. You could get your collections suspended for failing to distinguish between tin foil and plastic these days. Some authorities were really cracking down on bin crime.

One wall of the main bedroom was decorated with a poster containing the famous peace symbol, a circle surrounding a cross with its horizontal arms inclined downwards. Cooper had once read that the designer of that symbol had based it on the representation of an individual with palms stretched outwards and downwards. The gesture of despair, associated with the death of Man. And the circle, an unborn child. But the symbol was also said to incorporate the semaphore letters ‘N’ and ‘D’ for ‘nuclear disarmament’. It was best known as the official logo of the CND.

‘Did Michael Clay strike you as an old hippie?’ he called to Fry.

‘No. But how can you tell? Lots of hippies turn into accountants and bank managers when they grow up, don’t they?’

‘I’ve heard there are even some in the police.’

One of the top drawers of the dressing table was very stiff. At first, Cooper thought it was locked, but with a good tug it moved slightly, and he realized it was just jammed. Probably the wood had warped over the years, so that the drawer no longer slid straight on its runners.

With a bit of manoeuvring, he managed to get the drawer straight, and it finally squealed open. Inside was just one item – an old-fashioned, velvet-covered jewellery box with metal clasps. Quite a large box, too. It had filled the drawer completely. When Cooper gently prised the box open, it was like looking down at a miniature dragon’s hoard. A tangled mass of silver chains lay on the velvet, with the occasional glint of a solid band or the glitter of a gemstone. Blue stones, translucent stones like diamonds – and one that was jet black. Was that onyx? He couldn’t quite remember. Then Cooper smiled. He should have been thinking gold and silver-coloured. Because surely these items were all imitation. They would have been worth a fortune otherwise.

Something at the bottom of the heap caught Cooper’s eye. A glint of gold, but an unusual shape. He pushed the chains aside and drew it out. He found himself holding a small badge. A crown and a wreath around a curious little figure he couldn’t quite make out. The left hand seemed to be raised to the eyes, and the right hand was holding a flaming torch. And the figure was wearing – what? A breast plate? Armour? The only help was the motto etched on a scroll at the bottom of the badge. It said: Forewarned is forearmed.

‘What the heck does that mean?’

At that moment, Fry called him to join her in the other bedroom. She had opened a case containing a laptop computer and some papers.

‘Michael Clay’s?’ asked Cooper.

‘Yes, it seems to be. He must have been here at some time since he left home on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the laptop is password protected, so we’ll have to hand it over to the experts if we want to get anything off it. Did you notice that both bedrooms have been occupied?’

‘Yes. That’s interesting.’

‘And what do you make of this?’

Fry shook out the contents of a large buff envelope on to the bed. Cooper saw an old colour photograph of about a dozen men and one woman, all dressed in identical outfits, a sort of blue tunic and trousers, with berets worn at various rakish angles. They looked cheerful, a group of mates enjoying their work. He guessed their ages must have ranged from about seventy down to seventeen or so. A motley bunch, definitely.

But when was it taken? Most snaps had been in black and white until the early sixties, if the Cooper family album was a typical example. The earliest colour photo he could remember was of his parents on holiday in Wales with some friends, back before they were married – 1962, or around that time. In this photo, the subjects were standing in front of a small brick tower with a set of steps leading up the outside wall. There appeared to be no roof to the tower – he could see the sky through a doorway at the top of the steps. There also seemed to be an old-fashioned striped canvas deckchair leaning against the wall up there.

Automatically, Cooper turned the print over. Many people did what his mother had always done, and recorded all kinds of information on the back of a photograph. Date, place, the names of everyone shown in the picture. You never knew your luck.

But this one was infuriatingly sparse in its caption. It said simply 4 Romeo.

He pointed out the inscription to Fry.

‘Which one is Romeo, then?’ she said.

‘Number four? The fourth one from the left?’

They both looked closely at the line-up faces. The fourth man from the left was a fat character with a jowly chin. An unlikely Romeo. Cooper counted four from the right instead, and came up with a weedy-looking youth peering at the camera through round, wire-rimmed glasses. TinTin maybe, but not Romeo.

Fry placed a finger on another face. ‘I think this one could be Michael Clay, though,’ she said. ‘A lot younger, of course. But there’s something about the shape of the face that’s very distinctive.’

‘What else is in the envelope, Diane?’

‘Just these -’

Fry held out a tie with a small logo on it, and a badge identical to the one Cooper had seen in the drawer in the other bedroom.

‘“Forewarned is forearmed” – but what does it mean?’

Before Fry could reply, the front door of the house opened cautiously. They heard a nervous voice downstairs.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

Her name was Pauline Outram, and she seemed to be permanently on the verge of bursting into laughter. What Fry had at first taken for a nervous cough was actually a sort of constant half-snigger, as if she didn’t want to be considered lacking in a sense of humour if someone made a joke that she didn’t understand. Fry wanted to tell her to stop it, that she wasn’t about to make any jokes.

‘We’re here because we’re looking for Michael Clay,’ said Fry.

‘That’s funny, because so am I.’

‘You don’t know where he is?’

‘He should be here. But I guess…’

‘You know who we are,’ said Fry, after identification had been shown. ‘Now explain to us who exactly you are.’

Fry was genuinely curious to know. She didn’t think Pauline Outram looked much like a secret mistress. Not even the right age, really. A fifty-one-year-old man going through a mid-life crisis was likely to go for someone about half his age. Or so she’d heard. But Pauline must be in her late thirties, and there was nothing sexy or glamorous about her. Nothing about Pauline Outram suggested she’d come here to meet a lover.

But the question didn’t seem easy for Pauline to answer. She looked from one detective to the other, struggling for words.

‘We won’t be shocked,’ said Fry. ‘You can tell us the truth. We only want to locate Mr Clay. It doesn’t matter what your relationship was, as long as it helps us to find him.’

And then it dawned on Pauline what Fry was suggesting.

‘Oh no, you’ve got it wrong,’ she said, shaking her head, that nervous half-laugh setting Fry’s nerves on edge.

‘Are you not having an affair with Michael Clay?’

‘No, no. You don’t understand. I’m not his lover. That’s not why he leased this house for me.’

‘Who are you, then?’

Pauline Outram looked her in the eye, her face calm and serious for the first time. And it was only then that Fry saw the faint family resemblance to Michael Clay.

‘I’m Michael’s niece. His brother Stuart’s daughter.’