Wheel of Fire

Three

It was quiet in the pub. Monday lunchtime. Vogel decided not to make himself known at this stage, not to the landlady or any of the other customers. He preferred to observe.

The food was good, with a reasonable vegetarian selection. Vogel noticed that there were even vegan dishes on offer. He pondered momentarily on how times had changed. Vogel had become a vegetarian as a teenager after watching a TV documentary on abattoirs. In those days UK pubs and restaurants made scant concession to what was regarded as little more than an inconvenient dietary peculiarity. And his parents had dismissed Vogel’s vegetarianism as a phase. But Vogel never touched meat again. He didn’t do phases. Not even as a boy.

They’d just ordered; crab sandwiches for Saslow and grilled goat’s cheese salad for Vogel, when Vogel’s phone rang.

It was Micky Palmer with a progress report.

‘We’ve been looking into the Fairbrother family like you asked, boss, and Sir John may have been popular in the Blackdown area, but not with his own family, it seems,’ Micky began, at once backing up what Ted Dawson had said earlier. ‘He’s been estranged from his son, Freddie, for almost twenty years apparently. His daughter, Christabella, known to everyone as Bella, is a city high flier and used to be deputy chair of Fairbrother International, number two to her father. Always regarded as a chip off the old block. But a little over a year ago now there was some sort of blazing row between them. It’s a matter of record in the press, boss. Not a huge story, but it’s there. Nobody ever knew what the row was about. She simply quit, then she joined a rival bank. That went down like a ton of bricks, as you can imagine.’

‘She’s been told of her father’s death, I presume?’

‘Yep, the Met sent a couple of wooden tops round in the early hours, got to her just before news of the fire hit the media.’

‘Have we made contact with her yet? We’ll need to talk to her as soon as possible.’

‘Of course, boss,’ replied Palmer. ‘I’ll get Polly Jenkins on to it.’

Vogel grunted his approval. Polly Jenkins was one of the brightest young coppers he knew.

‘What about the Greys?’ he asked. ‘Got anything on them yet?’

‘Well, George Grey is a Londoner, proper East Ender apparently,’ replied Micky. ‘Not many of them about now, Hackney’s very nearly the new Mayfair—’

‘Get on with it, Micky,’ interrupted Vogel, who had already gleaned what Grey’s background was, just from meeting him the once.

Everybody knew that Micky Palmer was inclined to ramble. In Vogel’s opinion it was the man’s only fault. All the same, there was a great deal of work to be done in that brief golden period following a major crime.

‘Sorry boss,’ replied Palmer, who was well aware of how much Vogel respected him, and wasn’t in the slightest offended. ‘OK, he’s known to the Met. All pretty petty stuff though. Minor robbery, handling stolen goods, that sort of thing. There was a GBH charge too, brawl in a pub. He lost it and used a glass. Did time for that. Been inside more than once. But nothing serious, and nothing lately. Latterly he ran a market stall, probably dodgy, but no evidence of that.’

‘I see. Anything on Janice Grey? Has she got any sort of record?’

‘Not that I’ve discovered so far,’ said Micky. ‘But I suspect there’s something not right there. She and George were married eight years ago, and so far I can’t find out anything about Janice before that. Almost like she didn’t exist. I’m on to it, though, boss, big time.’

Vogel smiled as he ended the call. If there was anything of relevance, anything at all in Janice Grey’s past, his money was on Micky Palmer unearthing it. Meanwhile, the DI quickly filled Saslow in on what he had just learned.

‘It’s all very interesting, isn’t it?’ remarked Vogel. ‘Why would a man like Sir John Fairbrother hire a dubious character like George Grey and his wife to take over from an apparently thoroughly respectable couple whom he’d employed for years and — if Ted Dawson’s got it right, which he probably has — trusted to damn near run his Somerset life for him?’

The food arrived. Saslow began to eat at once. She was ravenous. Vogel sat back in his seat staring unseeingly at his goat’s cheese salad.

‘It’s unthinkable that Fairbrother didn’t know the sort of man he was hiring,’ the DI mused. ‘You would expect him to have had people who checked out anyone he might be considering taking into his employ, particularly people who are going to be as close to him as the Greys were, living on his property, presumably seeing him every day when he was at the manor.’

‘I thought that,’ said Saslow through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘Doesn’t make sense, does it?’

‘No. And not the only mystery, either. There’s also the matter of George Grey’s possibly rather mysterious wife.’

‘Maybe, but if there’s anything about her we should know, Micky will find it, boss,’ said Saslow, echoing Vogel’s own thoughts.

She began to turn her full attention to her crab sandwiches, but had taken only a few bites more when her phone rang. She listened for several seconds before holding the phone away from her mouth.

‘It’s Taunton nick,’ she said. ‘Boss, you’re not going to like this.’

‘Oh, get on with it, Saslow,’ said Vogel. ‘You’re as bad as Micky.’

‘Grey’s walked out of the hospital.’

‘He’s done what?’

‘He’s walked.’

‘I thought I asked for someone to be put on duty outside his room?’

‘Yes, boss. Taunton said they didn’t have anyone available. They were working on it. But they hadn’t yet got anyone over there. The cuts and all that.’

‘The cuts?’ queried Vogel, a note of bewilderment in his voice. ‘Haven’t they heard about prioritising? How often does Taunton nick have to deal with double death in a fire that’s almost certainly arson?’

Saslow shrugged. ‘What shall I say, boss?’ she asked.

‘Tell ’em as it’s too damned late now, they can go back to concentrating on litter and parking,’ growled Vogel.

Saslow tried not to smile.

‘Oh, never mind, ask them if they have any idea where he is. Could he just have gone home?’

Saslow spoke into her phone again.

‘They say not, boss,’ she said. ‘They’ve phoned his missus. He’s not there apparently and she’s not heard from him. Sounded genuinely surprised, they say.’

‘Right, tell ’em to put Grey on missing persons straight away. We need to find him fast. If anyone knows what’s been going on, it’s this feller. He could well be the arsonist, too, I reckon.’

Saslow did as she was bid.

By the time she ended the call, Vogel was on his feet and heading towards the door, abandoning the rest of his goat’s cheese salad without a backward glance.

‘C’mon, Dawn,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I think we need to pay Mrs Grey a visit sooner rather than later. Now her husband’s gone missing that changes everything.’

Saslow was only halfway through her crab sandwiches. She was still hungry. She quickly wrapped her napkin around the remaining half and took it with her as she followed Vogel to the car park.