Napier and Gallinis were still in custody along with their continued pleas of innocence. Ottey’s instinct was to push them each separately and see if they’d flip on each other. Her theory was that one of them had killed the old man and the other would want no part of it. Her money was on Gallinis as she’d informed Carson who was, it had to be said, keeping this line of enquiry at arm’s length. Cross was content for her to go ahead. But he preferred to wait for the canine hair analysis to come back. This was always his way. To construct interviews with evidence in hand. The only evidence they currently had was that the two men had lived, presumably uninvited, in Moreton senior’s cottage in the weeks leading up to his death.
‘Okay. But let me ask you a question,’ said Ottey, who couldn’t help herself. ‘Do you think they killed him?’
‘I think it’s a possibility. But it’s not the only one. Dr Hawkins says the bites occurred at the same time as the stab wound. So, if the dog hairs found in the bites are a match for Bert, then we have a good case. Hence my inclination to wait,’ he said.
‘So, what do you suggest we do in the meantime?’ Ottey asked with no rancour.
‘In the meantime, we should talk about Sandy Moreton,’ he said.
Cross and Mackenzie had been looking deeper into the MP. The problem was that there was so much material available. The man was a publicity seeker with an inordinate appetite for being in the public eye. At times it seemed like he homed in on ultra-sensitive issues and battered them with controversial opinions that generally caused a certain amount of outrage and therefore media coverage. Someone once accused him of being the Katie Hopkins of the Tory party. When Ottey had explained to Cross that she was a former Apprentice winner who had now gone on to pronounce hateful far-right views at any given opportunity, he was none the wiser.
Sandy Moreton was a bachelor and had been throughout his adult life. Never been married nor, it would seem, close to it. He’d been linked with various eligible women, the majority of whom seemed to have the ‘Rt Honourable’ or ‘Lady’ before their names. He was certainly aiming high in his social aspirations. He had been in the City for a while having left university – Oxford – where he worked as a hedge fund manager. He made a small fortune before going into politics. He was in a famously safe Tory seat in the politically blue belt of Dorset, the comfort of his sizeable majority giving him licence to be as outrageous or controversial as he liked on any volatile political issue. Whenever something newsworthy happened Moreton seemed to be on hand to give a succulent soundbite.
Recently there had been a flurry of claims of bullying on his part in the Commons. Firstly, as a chief whip and then as a junior minister. An inquiry was set up. The resulting report had led to him resigning the ministerial post in the summer. He protested that the untruthful and unfounded allegations being hurled against him were the direct result of a smear campaign led by the opposition. This, however, couldn’t explain away the allegations of bullying that then surfaced from his time at the hedge fund. The bullying issue hadn’t gone away by any means, even with his resignation, particularly with these new accusations from Canary Wharf. It had now led to the successful petition for his recall and a by-election in his constituency. Apparently he was going to stand as an independent. It seemed his self-confidence had no anchor in reality. Didn’t he understand that the recall came from his constituency in the first place? Why would they vote him back in?
The story kept cropping up in the papers like a recurring yellowhead on an adolescent’s chin. This wasn’t helped by the government’s initial failure to set up a proper investigation into the matter. There was one journalist in particular who had written several investigative pieces looking into Moreton. She was called Maggie Norman and obviously didn’t like the man. She had proof of his links with various dodgy Middle Eastern princes, also his offers of getting businessmen sit-downs with the prime minister in return for a fee. This had come to a head when he was the victim of a newspaper sting. A tabloid journalist posed as a Russian oligarch who wanted to move a ton of money into the UK and wanted to invest in media outlets here. Moreton offered meetings not only with senior ministers in the Department of Trade and Industry but also with the main man himself. Cross set up a Zoom call with Maggie.
‘Listen, he’s one of those guys who got a bit of money, got bored with what he was doing, craved a bit of attention and notoriety and that’s why he went into politics. Pure and simple,’ she told them. It was difficult to tell on Zoom but she seemed to be a diminutive woman who could easily have been an academic with her unruly hair and oversized cardigan. She exuded a sense of unease. As if at any moment she could be the subject of an attack of some sort.
‘Are you saying he had no political ambition?’ Cross asked.
‘Well, like everyone else when they go into that world, they have ambition when they first enter the House. Then they get worn down by the sordid and tawdry reality of Westminster and its internal politics. But he got into too many scrapes. The man just can’t help himself. He often says the first thing that comes into his head with no thought for the political consequences. He’s the definition of entitled and that doesn’t work as well for people in politics as it used to. He’s made too many mistakes. It’s cost him his ministerial career. There could have been a lull or plateau before he returned to the front bench like so many of them. But that just won’t happen now with the report and his recall. His political career is over but like so many narcissists he just can’t see it. He jumps on any contentious issue he hears about on the political agenda like a massive wrecking ball. He’s also been in trouble with the privileges committee, not declaring interests and gifts, like staying in people’s Tuscan villas at their expense and not mentioning it.’
‘I get the feeling you don’t like him,’ Ottey commented.
‘The more you get to know him, the less there is to like. And to be frank, there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot to like in the first place.’
‘He’s never married,’ Cross observed.
‘No, and that’s another dodgy area. He’s had to hush up a lot of sexual harassment cases both in the House and before, in the City. All female complainants. He likes to think of himself as something of a playboy.’
Warner immediately crossed Ottey’s mind. Why did these men think they could get away with it? Because they so often did.
‘Presumably you know about his father?’ asked Cross.
‘His murder? Yes. Whatever the old man did in the past he didn’t deserve that,’ Maggie said.
‘What do you mean?’ Cross asked.
‘You must have come across all the claims of physical abuse at his hands in All Saints.’
‘We have,’ replied Ottey.
‘The man was a tyrant. How no one saw it at the time is unbelievable. You know he had a load of German shepherds named after Wagner operas,’ she said in disbelief.
‘We did.’
‘No wonder Moreton’s so weird, growing up in the shadow of that,’ Maggie added.
‘We understand he’s devoted to his father,’ said Ottey.
‘Absolutely. On the two occasions I’ve actually sat and interviewed Moreton he spoke about his father in almost reverential terms. Did I not know what a great man he was? It seemed to me he’d always sought his father’s approval. He joked about how critical his father was about MPs. The old man was very opinionated and didn’t care what people thought of him. According to his son he almost revelled in people’s dislike of him. From the time he was a head teacher right to the end. Which he obviously thought was a good thing. They sounded pretty close.’
‘That’s interesting,’ commented Ottey. ‘We found several storage boxes filled with articles exclusively about Sandy Moreton both in the City and as an MP.’
‘It’s timely that you should be in touch now because I’ve been wanting to put together a piece about corporal punishment. But my editor said it belonged to another age and that the readership wouldn’t be interested. But we are now a country ruled by people who thought it was the norm to be beaten with a cane by a teacher. Are they really fit to be in charge? With the report and the recall, the editor now thinks it might have legs.’