Cross was in his office early the next morning studying his notebook. Again. He’d been doing this a lot recently. Today he concentrated on the notes he’d made on their visit to Sandy Moreton’s house. The burglary had naturally been of interest to them at the time. Particularly with the missing umbrella cane, Mozart. It then turning up with Montgomery had led them down a dead end. Again, nothing stood out to him. He began a trawl of all the social media accounts that Moreton’s constituency office ran for him. Photographs of him at his country house, working in his study. Frame grabs of him speaking in the Commons. Hospital visits, hugging sick children clearly confused as to who he was. Opening fetes, at local sports events, drinking a pint of local beer in a pub. Then one caught his attention. Moreton cuddling two homeless dogs at a local dogs’ home. He looked up the sanctuary’s website. It was called PAWS and was a dog trust and charity. In the news section there were a couple of mentions of Moreton. Closer examination revealed the board of trustees and its honorary patron – Alexander Moreton. It appeared he was actively involved. But it was one paragraph in particular that caught Cross’s eye. Moreton frequently fostered dogs while they were waiting to find their permanent homes. Sandy Moreton, it would appear, had frequent access to dogs despite the fact that he didn’t own one.
*
Cross and Ottey arrived at PAWS just after lunch. They were greeted at a very modern reception. The whole place had an air of being well-run, clean and well-funded. On the journey down Cross had found a lot of photographs on the internet of their fundraising endeavours and Moreton was omnipresent. At one point a post described his fundraising efforts as ‘Herculean’. They asked to see the manager and were shown into the small office of Meghan Bairstow. It was a well organised room. On one wall were dozens of photographs of dogs that had been successfully rehomed, some with their new owners. Cross reflected it was rather like the office of a fertility or paediatric consultant, several of which he’d been in over the years as part of his work, who had photographs of impossibly small babies next to others with them as fully grown teenagers.
Bairstow was immediately sympathetic and eager to help when they said they were investigating the murder of the father of their leading fundraiser and patron.
‘We met with Mr Moreton recently,’ Ottey told her.
‘Oh, Sandy…’ she exclaimed with a smile and a sigh of commiseration. ‘I don’t know where we’d be without that man.’
‘Is he very involved with the charity?’
‘Oh yes. He devotes a good deal of time to us. He says it’s purely selfish as he loves dogs so much.’
‘I’m thinking of getting a dog,’ Ottey announced out of nowhere. Cross knew this wasn’t the case and was immediately confused.
‘Really?’ Bairstow asked.
‘Really?’ Cross repeated.
‘Yes, I’ve just moved. I have a bigger house now and a garden.’
‘But as a police officer your hours must be quite irregular and time-consuming,’ Bairstow observed, as if the suitability interview of Ottey as a potential dog owner had already started.
‘Yes, but I have two daughters and my mother lives with us in the downstairs flat,’ Ottey said at the same time, wondering why she was justifying herself to this woman, when she had absolutely no intention of getting a dog.
‘Well, you should bring them along,’ said Bairstow as if Ottey had passed the first hurdle.
‘Mr Moreton is patron and trustee. What does that involve?’ Cross asked slightly irked by what he saw as Ottey’s unprofessional dog adoption enquiries.
‘He sits in on board meetings when he can and advises us on all kinds of things. His position also means he can open all sorts of doors for us and he’s a ferocious negotiator with our suppliers,’ she replied.
‘As well as fundraising,’ Cross commented.
‘That’s what I mean when I say I don’t know what we’d do without him. He’s raised thousands of pounds. Just recently we’ve been able to fund a new operating theatre, largely down to his efforts. It means we can treat the dogs here without them having to undergo all the stress of a transfer somewhere else. He has an annual garden party at his home for us. We are very, very lucky to have him.’
‘You sound very enamoured of him,’ Cross said, choosing his words deliberately. It immediately made her uncomfortable and possibly defensive.
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she said blushing. ‘I’m just immensely grateful.’
Cross calculated there was more to it than this, but it wasn’t relevant to their visit.
‘Does he often foster dogs from here?’ he continued.
‘Yes, he does foster quite a lot. I mean, when he can. He loves them. Particularly ones with behavioural problems or difficult temperaments. He has a way with them and they often come back to us completely different animals, well behaved, calm.’
‘Do you keep a record of the dogs who are fostered and the people who look after them?’ Cross asked.
‘Gosh, yes. We wouldn’t know where we were otherwise. We’re quite overrun and need to keep a proper record,’ she replied.
‘Would that include Sandy Moreton?’ Cross went on.
‘Of course,’ she replied, sounding a little offended. ‘We keep a strict record of everything.’
‘Could I see it?’ he asked.
She thought about this for a second and then said, ‘Yes, I don’t see why not.’
She handed him a book.
‘We keep a record on our computers, but I like to write it all down. It seems to make it stick somehow,’ she explained.
‘Kwekwe,’ Cross said out loud as he looked through the book.
‘Ah, Kwekwe, yes, a troubled soul. But as soon as Sandy saw him he said he’d take him. I did warn him but he insisted.’
‘This was on Wednesday the thirteenth of September,’ Cross read out. ‘But he was back with you within a few days.’
‘That’s right. Sandy said he just couldn’t cope with him. He was way beyond the most aggressive dog he’d had from us. Thought he was a lost cause.’
‘What breed was he?’ asked Ottey.
‘A Rhodesian Ridgeback,’ she replied. ‘Hence the name. Kwekwe is the name of a city in Zimbabwe.’