The following morning, Flyte got in early, as did Dean Willets, but after an hour he still hadn’t said a word about Luke’s notebook – not to her anyway. Seeing Seb head for the kitchen she left it a few moments before following him out.
‘Want one?’ he asked, dropping a tea bag into his mug, which bore the legend ‘I’d rather be playing golf’.
An impatient headshake. ‘Did Willets say anything to you about the notebook hidden in Luke’s freezer?’
‘No, nothing. Why? It wasn’t exactly a smoking gun, was it?’ He looked at her admiringly. ‘You’re looking particularly beautiful today, you know.’ He put his hand on her waist but she shook it off.
‘Don’t,’ she hissed, nodding at the door. ‘Do you remember the final note in Luke’s notebook?’
Seb shrugged and reached into the cupboard for the biscuit tin. ‘It was gibberish, wasn’t it?’
Flyte had read and reread Luke’s hieroglyphic note a hundred times since yesterday but it was only on waking up that morning that something had occurred to her.
Sitting on the edge of her bed in her satin pyjamas, she had read the note again, and felt a smile tugging at her lips like it did when she completed The Times Sudoku – ‘Fiendish’ version.
SK – ‘zero’ PD!! AO=NDW. Abney. Caution?
It wasn’t a ‘zero’ in front of PD: it was a capital O. OPD.
Now, moving to the kitchen door she pushed it closed with a soft click. Lowering her voice to a murmur, she said, ‘I’ve worked out part of it. I think Luke discovered that Sean Kavanagh had been caught cottaging in a place called Abney Park, a big Victorian cemetery in Stoke Newington. This was about a year before he was murdered. He was querying whether he’d got a caution for OPD.’
OPD was the acronym for ‘Outraging Public Decency’ – the splendidly Edwardian-sounding offence of participating in a public sex act where passers-by might see you. Flyte was annoyed with herself for not deciphering it earlier but until Zeke had come clean about he and Sean being lovers she’d been totally focused on the steroids dealing. The only consolation was that Seb hadn’t spotted it either.
‘Seriously?’ Seb’s face grew a frown. ‘Even if he was let off with a caution it’s an indictable offence.’
‘Which for a police officer would have meant instant dismissal. I know.’
‘So what, you’re saying that Kavanagh mounted a cover-up? How? You can’t alter the computer record.’ Seb pulled a face. ‘Sounds to me like this reporter was a conspiracy theorist. Hiding his notebook in the freezer isn’t exactly normal, is it?’ He stirred milk into his tea. ‘Show me the note again?’
Pulling up the image, she handed him her phone.
‘What is it?’ she asked, seeing a flicker cross his face.
‘Nothing. Still looks like gibberish to me.’ He picked up his mug. ‘Anyway, some of us have work to do. You want to grab a drink later?’
‘Sure.’ Feeling deflated by his response, she didn’t press the theory that Sean and Luke’s murders could be linked. Given that it was the last note Luke had taken, it seemed likely that whoever he had arranged to meet on Hampstead Heath the night of his murder was somebody he believed could tell him more. Which surely pointed to Luke being killed because he was investigating Sean’s murder.
She had just retrieved her Tupperware box of lemon segments from the fridge to make her own tea (she didn’t trust anybody – not even Seb – to make it to her specifications) when she got a call from Cassie Raven.
‘I got a surprise visitor last night,’ she said, before relaying what Bethany Locke had told her. When she reached the part about the £150,000 that Locke had admitted receiving from a mysterious Canadian bank account after Sean’s disappearance, Flyte had to stifle a gasp.
‘Do you think she’s telling the truth? That she really has no idea who sent the cash?’
Cassie hesitated. ‘I honestly couldn’t tell you.’
After a pause, Cassie added in a casual tone ‘In case it’s relevant, she also said that Sean was being unfaithful to her with other men. I think she found that aspect of his infidelity really hard to take.’
‘Yes, I know. You were right about that,’ said Flyte stiffly. ‘Anyway, thanks for this – leave it with me.’
*
Her cooled tea left undrunk, Flyte marched over to Willets’ desk. He was on the phone but she ignored his dismissing headshake and stood there until he hung up. ‘I hope this is good,’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s pretty good,’ she said with sarcastic false modesty before bringing him up to speed. ‘Locke agreed to let Cassie pass the info onto us,’ Flyte told him. ‘She claims it’s to “show that she’s innocent and willing to help”. It could all be smoke and mirrors, of course.’
‘Didn’t I say all along this was about the steroids?’ said Willets, lounging back in his chair. ‘That kind of money? It’s got to point to a smuggling operation.’
Flyte made a non-committal sound. Having been stung by Seb’s ‘so what?’ response to her interpretation of Luke’s note she wasn’t going to risk a slap-down from Willets. He sent her a suspicious look. ‘Why didn’t Locke come to you directly? Why use the mortuary girl as intermediary?’
Flyte shrugged. ‘She lied to us, and now she’s scared.’ She wasn’t about to pass on what Cassie had said, that Locke supposedly thought she was snooty or some such nonsense.
She handed him the note she’d taken. ‘This is where the money came from. The payment reference was in Sean Kavanagh’s name but the account wasn’t. Probably opened using a fake ID.’
The note said ‘First Vancouver Bank; Ms N. Toussaint’, followed by the account number and sort code.
As Willets frowned down at it, he seemed to become very still.
‘Dean? Does it mean anything to you?’
‘Not a thing.’ He shook his head. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said, turning back to his screen. ‘I’ll get onto the Vancouver bank when they wake up over there.’