‘You were expecting your man, weren’t you?’ Zenia asked, standing in the dusk on Kate’s doorstep. ‘Poor Kate, the way your face fell when you saw it was only me.’
Kate made no attempt to deny it. ‘Come along in. I’ve just broached the whisky bottle.’
‘Oh, no, not spirits, thanks. They’re fine in punch but not on their own. No way.’ Zenia headed into the living room and sat down in a way that belied her next words. ‘Now, I won’t keep you. I can see you’re busy. But my cousin’s having this party and—’
‘We’re talking your cousin Rafe – the gorgeous one?’
‘We are. Can I tell him you’ll come?’
‘I’ve got a man, Zenia.’
‘You’ve got this much of a man.’ Zenia spread index finger and thumb. ‘That much only. You need the whole of a man, Kate.’
‘We love each other.’
‘So why was I on your doorstep, not him? And why you got the whisky and just the one glass?’ Her accent slipped from slightly Brummie towards distinctly patois. ‘You give my Rafe a chance, girl – he give you a better time all the time.’ She dropped her voice and leaned closer. ‘Tell you what, girl: the little you see of your married man, you could see both him and Rafe: Rafe’d never know the difference. And since when did anyone notice a slice off a cut loaf?’
‘I couldn’t … be … unfaithful to him.’
Zenia exploded with laughter. ‘You mean you can’t fuck with anyone else while you’re waiting for him? Get real, girl, you think he doesn’t fuck his wife?’
‘I gather— I don’t think she likes—’
‘So he’s just coming to you for a quick poke. God, girl, doesn’t that make you feel a teeny bit like a whore?’
Kate stood up fiercely. Then she subsided. ‘I love him.’
‘And maybe he love you. But I don’t see him here.’ Zenia knelt beside her and hugged her. ‘Oh, Kate: someone have to say these hard things. And seem to me that someone’s me.’
The early phone call the next morning came not from Dave but from Derek to tell her that there was a letter on her desk with a foreign stamp. So instead of zapping straight across the city to Sutton Coldfield and the incident room, she joined the city centre chaos instead. As soon as she could, she phoned Dave Allen to explain and apologise. If she was expecting a howl of complaint, she didn’t get it.
‘I meant what I told you last night,’ he said. ‘Two women dead, a third at death’s door. It’s all beginning to look a bit Harold Shipman, isn’t it? You want to watch yourself.’
‘I will, Gaffer. Tell you what, checking this new will stuff back here will take some time. Plus I want to decipher what Mrs Duncton’s GP laughingly calls handwriting. We don’t have Mr D’s file, however.’ She explained.
‘Bloody hell. Don’t these people realise we’re trying to find a killer?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘I’ll get someone on to it. Sounds as if you’re a bit busy.’
‘Just a bit. While you’re at it, Gaffer, is there any chance of a bit of uniform support checking house to house round Cornfield’s place? Some of the houses have been divided into offices or consulting rooms. Not to mention someone talking to the cardiologist treating Mrs H.’ She gave his name and clinic hours.
‘Your wish is my command,’ he said. ‘What time will you be in?’
‘As soon as I’ve chewed my next move over with DI King,’ she said. ‘I’ve an idea, though, Gaffer, that someone may be taking a couple of trips abroad, very soon.’
‘And that someone is you, Power,’ Lizzie said, ten minutes later, from her side of an overflowing desk. ‘Look, I’ve told you: we don’t fart around waiting for Foreign Office permission. I draw up a flowery letter on best headed paper asking in the most complicated English I can manage for the esteemed co-operation in the matter of whatever it is. It’s always worked for me. Every time.’
Kate braced her legs. ‘With due respect, Gaffer, I’d rather go through the proper channels.’
‘This is an order, Power. We’re so under-strength I’d welcome that Big Issue seller down there in the squad and they go and bloody pull you out. Oh, it’s a case of what Rod Neville wants, Rod Neville gets. And don’t say I didn’t warn you next time he tries to get his hands in your knickers. Which you’ve certainly got in a twist over this will business.’ Lizzie laughed. ‘Now, you’re on your own as far as Portugal’s concerned, but, as it happens, I’ve got this old mate in Berlin. We had a bit of a fling when I was younger, between you and me. I’ll give him a buzz. Get him to meet you off the plane at Tegel, go with you to interview this Steiner guy and take you back to Tegel. Shouldn’t take you more than a day.’ The laugh became a cackle. ‘Though I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to take twenty-four hours so long as you didn’t try to swing hotel expenses. If you want to fuck Jo, Kate, fuck him with my blessing, only do it in his flat.’
She was hardly out of Lizzie’s office – seething at the thought of being bequeathed anyone’s ex, but particularly Lizzie’s – when Rod called her from down the corridor.
‘Kate! Kate Power! Have you got a minute?’
Sergeants tended, didn’t they, to have a minute for a superintendent. Kate stopped short, and walked back towards him.
‘Dave Allen tells me there’s been a development on the will front. Can you brief me? Let’s go down to my room. I might be able to organise some coffee.’
She had an idea that he was scrutinising her rather more closely than she’d have preferred after a particularly bad night, against which the homeopathic pills had been almost useless. They walked in silence to his office. A casual observer might have thought he was taking her back there for a bollocking. The way he ushered her in, pulling up a chair for her, however, was more social than business, as was the way he poured and handed her coffee. Again she was aware of his scrutiny.
‘So what’s the latest?’ he asked.
‘We’ve just had the second of the two handwriting samples I wanted,’ she began, ‘from Max Cornfield’s friends. Neither of them, incidentally, gives an adequate account of how the signing took place. So we may have conspiracy to defraud. Worse, even to my eyes one signature at the bottom of the will doesn’t seem quite the same as the one on the specimen one that’s just arrived. Leon Horowitz’s. And – though this may not make much sense without an explanation – he says he’s right-handed. I’m talking to a forensic handwriting expert at eleven. If she thinks there’s anything fishy, then I need to talk to both witnesses to compare their accounts of the will signing itself. One of whom hangs out in Berlin, the other in the Algarve. So Lizzie’s told me to pack a bag. She’s talking about tomorrow, if I can get a flight. Which may affect our plans for Saturday. Sorry.’
‘We can always make it Sunday,’ he said dismissively. ‘Lizzie’s dealing with all the Foreign Office red tape, I take it?’
She tried to avoid his scrutiny. ‘Sure: everything’s in her hands.’
‘It always used to take ages,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Maybe there’s some euro-fast-track these days.’
‘If Lizzie can find it, she’ll be on it,’ she laughed.
‘Are you OK about flying?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Sure. Why?’
‘Because – more coffee? No? Because you look quite washed out. As if you didn’t sleep last night, to be frank. Kate, if something’s worrying you, you would tell me, wouldn’t you? As a friend?’ Concern was written all over his fine features. ‘It’s more than just Lizzie, isn’t it?’ he added, very gently.
‘I’m fine, honestly.’ The last things she wanted were kindness and sympathy. Maybe that was why Lizzie kept fending hers off. ‘Things are beginning to look pretty bleak for Max Cornfield, though.’
‘You don’t want to nail him if he’s killed three women?’
‘If I thought for one second he had, there’d be no one keener than me.’
Sam Kennedy could make time to look at the new sample of handwriting between ten and half-past. So Kate had a chance to sit in the quiet of her office to read through Mrs Duncton’s medical file, which seemed, now she came to think of it, remarkably thin for a woman of her age. No wonder. All it contained was a print-out of her recent prescriptions. Bloody Smallwood. That was why he’d handed it over with so little protest!
She reached for the phone.
The receptionist informed her that the doctor didn’t take phone calls during surgery hours.
‘In that case I’ll speak to the practice manager.’
‘The practice manager is in a meeting.’
‘Interrupt the meeting, then.’
‘The meeting, Sergeant, is in London.’
Kate said, very politely, ‘In that case I must speak to Doctor Smallwood. Now.’
‘But he’s with a patient.’
‘I don’t care if he’s conducting a gynaecological examination of the Queen Mother. I want to talk to him now. Or both he and you, madam, will be discussing the consequences of wasting police time. With a magistrate.’
She was put through.
‘I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, sir,’ she told Smallwood, ‘but it’s a very stupid one. When I ask for a patient’s file I expect a full set of notes in date order. And I shall be expecting to find it waiting for me when I come into the surgery in one hour’s time.’
‘My good woman—’
What century did the man think he was in? ‘In one hour, Doctor,’ she said flatly, and put down the phone. Thank goodness for the Dr Kennedys of this world.
‘I would say,’ Sam Kennedy said, peering at the magnified will, ‘that it is likely that the person who wrote the will forged Horowitz’s signature. And more so since you tell me that Horowitz is right-handed, it makes it even more likely.’ She smiled. ‘Want to have a look? Look, this is the will version, this the new one.’
Kate nodded. ‘Oh, yes. It’s those striations you told me about. They go in a different direction on Horowitz’s sample signature.’
‘And the quality of line is much better. When you write the same name every day, you don’t have to think about it. If you’re writing someone else’s signature from memory – he didn’t even have it to hand to copy, presumably? – then the line fades and deepens where you’d expect uniformity. See?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t sound very pleased,’ Sam said accusingly.
‘I’d much rather everything had been completely legal and above-board. I’m going to have to ask a nice man some nasty questions. And maybe get him sent down.’
Sam stared. ‘How can someone be a nice man and do a wicked thing like this?’
It might, of course, be even more serious, mightn’t it? If you could forge a will bringing you millions of pounds, there was always a chance – as Lizzie and even the late Maeve Duncton had pointed out – that you might have killed the person making the will. But not, surely to goodness, not if you were Max Cornfield.
Kate pulled herself straight, managed a smile. ‘So it looks as if I may be popping off to Berlin soon.’
‘Lucky you. You don’t want someone to carry your bags? No? Tell you what, why don’t you meet up with my bloke? He could show you bits of Berlin the tourists don’t get to see.’
‘That’d be great, though I suspect I shall fly back the same day.’ Yes, someone’s current lover would be nicer than someone’s discard.
Stopping long enough to collect a thick file from a receptionist who contrived to be both cowed and surly, Kate headed briskly back to Sutton Coldfield and the incident room.
Dave Allen greeted her with a cheery wave, and her news with an enveloping handshake. ‘Well done, excellent news. So we can fry the bugger on toast for that at least.’
‘At least?’
‘Yes, the bleeder seems to have an alibi for the morning Mrs D was killed. At least two office workers saw him, three neighbours heard him and there were indeed three calls to the council complaining about the smoke from his bonfire. Not even the same three neighbours, as it happens: two of those complaining say they wouldn’t have if they’d known it was that nice Mr Cornfield’s fire. So unless we can break the alibi – and believe me, that’s number one priority at the moment – it’ll be hard to pin that murder on him at least.’
‘That murder?’ she repeated. ‘Who else?’ As if she didn’t know. ‘Mrs Hamilton – has she … is she …?’
‘Mrs Ha— Oh, the old lady in Sellv Oak. No, she’s OK, or she was when we checked with the consultant this morning. He says her heart’s simply wearing out. It’s been bad for years and years, he says. Something making her jump could have caused problems, but so could an exciting passage in a book – and she was in the middle of a Dick Francis. All bloody inconclusive. Why don’t you sit down? You make the place untidy hovering around like that.’
Kate said nothing. She had a nasty suspicion what was coming next. If she’d thought it, every other decent cop would have thought it.
Dave raised a finger. ‘So it’s up to you: if you can get a couple of nice incriminating statements from his buddies, then what we’ll do is apply to the Home Office to have Mrs Barr exhumed. Despite what her GP said.’
‘GP?’
‘Yes, Lizzie King got on to him this morning. She said you hadn’t got round to it for some reason, so she’d get him sorted. Have I said the wrong thing?’
Opening and shutting her mouth in disbelief wouldn’t help. ‘Since when has DI King been involved in the case, sir?’
He slapped his desk. ‘Oh, for crying out loud! DI King? Sir? You’re not coming the prima donna, are you?’
‘I wasn’t aware of her involvement, that’s all.’ She forced herself to relax. Putting Dave’s back up was hardly the way to help the case. ‘I suppose – where did this exhumation idea come from, Gaffer? Lizzie?’
‘That’s neither here nor there.’
It was the first time she’d seen Dave bluster.
‘Gaffer, you may think I’m off my head, but may I suggest something that may save us all a lot of time and effort? I think we should haul Cornfield in and simply talk to him.’
‘And you suppose he’ll sit down and tell us he’s killed her! Come on, Kate!’ He shook his head, more in sorrow, she thought, than anger.
She bit her lip. ‘He’s not a young man. He’s in a very emotional state, especially after yesterday, and he may just want to get things off his chest. It’s not even a particularly high-risk strategy. The evidence will still be there waiting for us if he denies it, won’t it?’
He looked at her for several seconds, pulling his lip. At last he said, ‘OK, Power. If that’s what you think, what are you waiting for? Go, go, go!’
‘Only one thing, Gaffer,’ she said, smiling ruefully, ‘today’s his day for travelling. He’s down in Cheltenham at the moment.’