I came to the conclusion that we had wasted our time talking to Shelley Maxwell. She hadn’t told us anything useful about the party. Furthermore, I had great difficulty in believing that anyone would hold a party to celebrate the installation of a new kitchen. There again, it was Chelsea, and all manner of strange things go on there.
I could tell that, for the most part, Shelley had been avoiding the truth in an attempt to shield her live-in lover. If that were the case, she hadn’t done a very good job. Even so, I was fairly certain that she knew where Hendry would have gone following his dramatic flight, and I just hoped that one of the Hampshire Constabulary patrols would pick him up. I thought it highly likely he would make for London, there being a fallacy harboured by villains that they can get lost there. It ain’t so.
We moved on to Tadley Street, which was not far from Birley Road.
‘Are you Carl Morgan?’
‘Yes, that’s me. Who are you? Are you from the company?’
‘No. Mr Morgan, we’re police officers. May we come in?’
‘Yeah, sure. What’s it all about?’ Morgan took us into the front room of the house.
Once there, I introduced Dave and me, and explained that we were from Scotland Yard.
‘I’m investigating the murder of a Mrs Diana Barton last Saturday in Chelsea.’
‘Who? I’ve never heard of a Diana Barton. And I’ve never been to Chelsea. In fact, I never go to London. Are you sure I’m the bloke you want to talk to?’
I was certain we had got the right man, but didn’t bother to say as much.
‘I understand that you were a steward on the same cruise liner as Tom Hendry.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Look, what’s this all about?’
‘Bear with me, Mr Morgan,’ I said. ‘Were you aware that he was dismissed in early February?’
‘Yes, it was the day we docked here at Southampton. He was stupid enough to have sex with a woman passenger. He was always doing it, but on this occasion her husband complained, and the skipper put Hendry ashore. Permanently.’
An elderly grey-haired woman entered the room. ‘What is it, Carl?’ She stared suspiciously at Dave and me as we stood up. ‘Who are these people, son?’
‘They’re police officers from London, Ma. They want to talk to me about a murder up there.’ Morgan glanced at me. ‘This is my mother,’ he explained.
‘A murder? You don’t know anything about a murder, do you, son?’ asked his mother, as she sat down on a sofa beside him. She glared at the two of us.
‘No, Ma.’
I gave Morgan the brief details of the murder, and told him that when officers called at the house in Tavona Street, the man who answered the door gave the name of Carl Morgan. ‘But,’ I said, ‘I can see that you’re not him.’
‘I’ll bet that was Hendry,’ said Morgan, clearly annoyed. ‘It was the best thing the company did when they got shot of him. He was always in trouble.’
‘Really? What sort of trouble?’
‘Fiddling, mainly. For example, he’d nick a bottle of champagne from the bar, keep it and then put it on a passenger’s bill. All the passengers were given company credit cards at the start of the voyage. Most of them never bothered to check their account at the end of the cruise, and settled up. Or if they queried the champagne, the purser would just knock it off.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Dave.
‘No way,’ said Morgan. ‘For a while, Hendry doubled as a cocktail steward in the Coconut Bar, but he was fiddling passengers’ chits there, too. Usually by bunging a few tots on the bill of a passenger who was three sheets to the wind. But the purser could never prove it, and when he spoke to the passengers they always said they couldn’t remember how much they’d had to drink the night before. It was only simple stuff, like putting an extra tot of spirits – whisky, brandy, gin or vodka – on the chit. But it all added up, and when Hendry had fiddled enough tots to make up a bottle – that’s twenty-six tots – he’d have a bottle away from the store. Anyway, the purser banned him from bar duty just the same. He was pretty switched on, was the purser.’
‘How d’you know all this?’ asked Dave.
‘There are a lot of fiddles going on, and being a steward you don’t miss much, believe me. But I never did it,’ added Morgan, keen to distance himself from Hendry’s nefarious activities. ‘It wasn’t worth getting the sack for the sake of a few quid. Anyway, if you looked after the first-class passengers, they always gave you a good tip at the end of the cruise. Some of them even bunged you each time you served them.’
‘Where were you last Saturday night, Mr Morgan?’ I asked. ‘And last night?’ Despite his protestations of innocence, I still wanted to make certain that Morgan was telling us the truth.
‘He was here with me,’ said Morgan’s mother. ‘He’s hardly left the house since he got back from his last trip.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Morgan. ‘I don’t go out much when I’m on shore leave. My father slung his hook years ago, so my mother’s by herself most of the time. It’s bad enough leaving her on her own when I’m away, so when I’m at home I spend as much time with her as I can.’
Dave and I stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Morgan, and you too, Mrs Morgan,’ I said. ‘We’ll not need to trouble you again.’
‘It’s Mrs Marsh,’ said Morgan’s mother. ‘I remarried, but I’m a widow now.’
‘If you’re looking for someone who did your murder, I’d start with Hendry,’ said Morgan, as he saw us to the front door. ‘He’s a bad ’un if ever I saw one.’
I reckoned he was probably right. So, all we had to do now was find Hendry.
But that too was resolved for us. As we were walking back towards the police station, my mobile rang.
‘Harry, it’s Jock Ferguson. You’ll be happy to know we’ve got your boy for you.’
‘Splendid, Jock. Where is he?’
‘On his way back from Southampton General hospital as we speak. He was captured by a traffic unit. Apparently they spotted him on the M3, and he took off. Speeds of up to a hundred miles an hour.’
‘Bloody hell! What was he driving, Jock, a Ferrari?’
‘Would you believe an R-reg Ford Escort? Anyway, our traffic lads called in other units in an attempt to box him in, but he swung on to the A31 at Shawford Down, and started making his way back to Southampton. But they put a stinger down at Otterbourne. He tried to go on, but eventually he lost it and crashed into a tree.’
‘Was he injured in the crash? You mentioned that he was in hospital.’
‘Surprisingly no, Harry, but he had a nasty gash on his right forearm, so they took him in to Southampton General to get him stitched up.’
‘That was probably caused when he did a header through his kitchen window,’ I suggested.
‘Maybe, Harry. Anyway, he’ll be back here at Central nick very shortly.’
‘Thanks for your help, Jock. I’ll see you there.’
It was six o’clock by the time that Thomas Hendry arrived at Southampton Central police station. Having had very little sleep, Dave and I had been on the go from first thing this morning. It had been a long day, but interviewing Hendry couldn’t wait.
‘Hendry will be charged with dangerous driving, and failing to stop for police,’ said Jock Ferguson. ‘But if you charge him with murder, I doubt the Crown Prosecution Service will worry too much about taking him to court for driving offences.’
Hendry carved a pitiful figure when he was brought into the interview room. He was wearing a bloodstained tee shirt and jeans, and his right arm was bandaged and in a sling. God knows how he managed to drive with an injured arm, but desperation will often summon a hitherto unknown resourcefulness among those attempting to escape the police.
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of Scotland Yard, and this is Detective Sergeant Poole,’ I said. ‘This interview will be recorded.’
Hendry stared at me, but said nothing.
‘Why did you run away the moment you heard us at your front door in Birley Road?’ I asked.
‘I thought you were going to arrest me,’ said Hendry, leaning forward and resting his injured arm on the table between us.
‘Why should you think that?’
‘It’s what you do, innit? The police, I mean. You find someone and fit ’em up with a job what they ain’t done.’
I knew Hendry had one conviction behind him, but I wondered how many others he’d avoided. He seemed to have a contemptuous view of the police that was not warranted by a single entry on his criminal record.
‘You were at twenty-seven Tavona Street, Chelsea, on the night of Saturday the twenty-seventh of July.’
‘Who says I was.’
‘Shelley Maxwell.’
‘You don’t want to listen to what that silly moo says. Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s on about.’
I produced the photograph we had obtained of Hendry from the shipping office.
‘The police officer who called at twenty-seven Tavona Street has seen this photograph, and positively identifies you as the man to whom he spoke that night.’ I hoped that Dave would be impressed by my sentence construction. ‘He also mentioned that Shelley was wearing a thong and nothing else.’
Hendry smirked at that, and leaned back, grimacing as his injured arm came off the table. ‘OK, so I was there, but I didn’t have nothing to do with Diana’s death.’
‘Who said anything about a death?’
‘Well, that’s what this is all about, innit?’
Dave shot a warning glance in my direction. I knew that look; he was implying that I should caution Hendry. But I didn’t think so. Not yet.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘The dead body of Diana Barton was indeed found there shortly after your departure, but I suppose you maintain that you didn’t kill her.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’ Hendry drew the words out, emphasising each one.
‘Then who did?’
‘I don’t have a clue, mister.’
‘When did you discover that she was dead?’
‘It was just before that copper came knocking at the door. The party had more or less wound up by then, and everyone had gone home except Shell and me. I didn’t know where Diana had gone, and so I had a look round the house so I could say cheers and thanks for the thrash. When I got to her bedroom, I saw her body. There was blood everywhere, and I could see she’d been stabbed a lot.’
‘If you had nothing to do with it, why didn’t you call the police?’
Hendry sighed again. There was a long pause before he answered. ‘We’ve got history, Diana and me,’ he said eventually.
‘Care to explain that?’ I guessed what was coming, but we knew nothing beyond the fact that Hendry had been dismissed in February for having sexual intercourse with Diana Barton on the cruise.
‘I got to know her on a cruise in January. I was a steward on the liner she was on, and she and her husband occupied a stateroom that was serviced by me.’
I glanced at Dave, hoping that he wouldn’t laugh. He had a different definition of ‘servicing’ in this context.
‘Yes, go on,’ I said.
‘It was obvious that she’d taken a fancy to me. You get a lot of women like that on cruises. A bit of sun, and some sea air, and they get horny. She wasn’t bad looking for her age, neither, and I could see what she wanted; you can always tell. And her husband was an old guy, well past it, I should think. I doubt that even a treble dose of Viagra would have helped him much.’ Hendry laughed, but it was a cynical laugh. ‘So it became quite regular, and I s’pose I must’ve laid her about six or seven times during the cruise. She’d always give me a tip, usually fifty quid, but I knew what she was really paying for.’
‘But you finished up getting the sack.’
‘Yes, thanks to her bleedin’ husband. He told the skipper that I’d raped his wife. The skipper took it seriously because it turned out that old man Barton was a director of the line, or was tied up with it somehow. That was all on the day before the cruise ended. So, the skipper sent for me the next day and gave me the boot.’
‘Which annoyed you, presumably?’
‘What d’you think? Of course it bloody annoyed me. I haven’t been able to get a job at sea since.’
‘Annoyed you enough to want to kill Diana’s husband.’
Hendry stared at me. ‘Don’t tell me he’s dead an’ all.’
‘Yes, he was murdered last night.’
‘Bloody hell! Well, I can’t say I’m sorry. It was him what lost me my job. Even after Diana admitted to the skipper that she’d been willing.’
That was a fascinating example of self-delusion. Hendry obviously refused to see that it was his own misdeeds that had resulted in his dismissal.
‘Where were you yesterday?’
‘Here in Southampton, all day, and all night.’
‘Can anyone vouch for that?’
‘I picked Shell up from the supermarket when she finished work at four o’clock, and took her home. We went out for a pizza at about eight, had a few drinks in a pub, and then went back home again at about eleven.’
‘Where did you have this pizza?’ asked Dave.
Hendry furnished the name and address of the restaurant. ‘They’ll remember us; we’re often in there.’
‘I hope they do,’ said Dave, as he wrote down the details. ‘For your sake.’
Hendry’s account of his movements the previous evening had been a little too perfect, and tallied precisely with what Shelley had told us. Although neither of them was very bright, they were still devious enough to have arranged that alibi in advance.
‘How come you went to a party at Diana’s house, then?’ I asked.
‘The last time I bedded her on the cruise was the day before we docked. That was about twenty-four hours before I got the push,’ Hendry added bitterly. ‘And that was all because her old man had seen me coming out of their stateroom. But Diana had said that she wanted to see me again, in London. She give me her address and phone number, and I went to see her a few times.’
‘For more of the same, I suppose?’ put in Dave.
Hendry gave a sly grin. ‘Well, it wasn’t for afternoon tea and biscuits, mate.’
‘Why did she have a party in Chelsea?’ I asked.
‘She said she wanted to celebrate having a new kitchen fitted. That was all bullshit, of course. Just an excuse. Not that she needed one. She said her old man was away, so there wouldn’t be no problems with him. If he’d been there, I wouldn’t have gone nowhere near the place.’
‘And presumably he was away on the previous occasions when you went there.’
‘Too bloody right. But I was still a bit doubtful about going to a party because before that it had been one on one, if you take my meaning, but she said to bring a bird if I wanted to. I said I’d take Shell. And Diana said OK, because there’d be some other guys there who’d keep Shell amused while Diana and me were having fun.’
‘What did Shelley say about that?’
‘She was all for it. We might live together, but we go our own ways when it suits us.’
Now we were getting to the crunch. ‘And who were these other guys who were there?’
Hendry’s chin dropped to his chest, presumably in thought. ‘I remember a geezer called Gaston,’ he began.
‘Was he a Frenchman?’ asked Dave.
‘Yeah, I think so. He spoke with a funny accent anyhow. Oh, and there was a bloke called Bruce. He was an Aussie. And there were two other guys: Dale and Barry.’
‘Surnames?’ I asked.
‘No idea,’ said Hendry.
‘What about the women?’
‘There were three of them, I think, apart from Shell.’ Hendry paused in thought again. ‘Liz, Debbie and Charlene. That Liz was some bird, I can tell you.’ He looked wistful. ‘Long blonde hair and big boobs.’
‘And were they all in a state of undress, like Shelley was when the police came to the door?’
Hendry grinned. ‘Yeah, they’d all got their kit off by the time the party got going.’
‘What did Diana Barton think of all that?’
‘It was her idea. She said it wouldn’t be a party if it wasn’t un … er, unhib something.’
‘Uninhibited?’ suggested Dave.
‘Yeah, I think that’s what she said.’
‘And was Diana dressed like that?’
‘Yeah, she was the first to get her gear off. All of it.’
‘And did you have sex with her?’
‘Of course. That’s why I was there. She was bloody good in the sack was Diana.’ It was interesting that he’d admitted that. Shelley had claimed not to know that her boyfriend had been intimate with anyone at the party.
‘And did the other men?’
‘Did they what?’
‘Have sex with her?’
‘Probably. It was a bit of a free for all, if you know what I mean. I lost track of who was doing it with who.’
‘I get the picture,’ I said. ‘These other women, did they come with the other men who were there?’
‘I s’pose so, except for Bruce, the Aussie. He come on his tod.’ Hendry paused and wrinkled his brow. ‘Or did he bring Charlene? That’s an Aussie name, innit? But I’m not sure. I know that Liz was Gaston’s bird. He knew how to pick ’em all right.’
‘Whose idea was the music?’ I asked.
‘One of the guys brought an iPod player and a docking station. That was Barry, I think. Yes, it was him. I s’pose that’s what upset the guy next door. But Diana didn’t give a stuff, and told Barry to turn up the volume.’
‘Was there much alcohol at this party?’
‘Stacks of it. Diana laid it on, and some of the guys brought bottles. Well, you do, don’t you?’
‘What about drugs?’
‘Dunno nothing about that.’
‘And were you drinking?’ asked Dave.
‘I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, I had a few bevvies, but Shell don’t drink, and she was going to drive us back to the hotel.’
‘Except you didn’t go to the hotel, did you?’
‘No, not after what we’d found. I never had anything to do with Diana getting done in, but I thought it best to get the hell out of it as quick as I could.’
‘When did the party end?’ I asked.
‘About midnight. Everyone pushed off together, except Shell and me. And, like I said, I went to find Diana to fix up for coming to see her again. Believe me, the fifty quid she gave me each time came in very handy now I’m out of work, and we couldn’t live on what Shell gets down the supermarket.’
‘Before you left, who was the last to leave?’
‘Well, no one. They all left together. I remember because they was laughing and shouting outside in the street, and I thought that the law would turn up. And they did.’
‘The fire officer’s report said that the fire was started with an accelerant.’
‘Do what?’
‘It means that something flammable was used to spread the fire quickly. What d’you know about that?’
Hendry stayed silent for a few moments. Like politicians who find themselves in deep shtuck, I imagine he was considering his position. But I was surprised at his next statement.
‘That was down to me.’
Dave looked at me with that same expression as he had used before. This time I nodded, and Dave quickly cautioned the ex-steward.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.
‘I was sure the police would find out that I’d known Diana, and would reckon I’d topped her. So I thought that to get rid of all the evidence would let me off the hook.’
‘Where did the flammable liquid come from?’
Hendry smiled. ‘There was plenty of Scotch and brandy and vodka in the house. I know it was a terrible waste, but I used that.’ He seemed more upset by the profligate use of the alcohol than he did about setting fire to the house. And his statement tallied with the empty bottle that Linda found with his fingerprints on it. Not that that meant anything; he’d admitted drinking at the house.
‘I’ll ask you again: why didn’t you immediately call the police? You had ample opportunity when the officer called at the house minutes later.’
‘Because I knew you’d put it on me.’
I was still having difficulty in believing Hendry’s account. He had motive, opportunity and means, and setting fire to the Bartons’ house appeared to confirm his guilt. But even so, none of that constituted enough evidence to secure a conviction for murder. We needed more.
‘Are you willing to provide a sample of your DNA?’ I asked.
‘What for?’ Hendry’s tone implied refusal.
‘I can always get an order from a senior officer to take it.’ I knew that Jock Ferguson, holding the requisite rank, would sign the authority without hesitation.
Hendry shrugged. ‘Yeah, OK.’
Dave produced the necessary kit from his briefcase. Using a special cotton bud, he took a sample of Hendry’s saliva, placed it carefully in a small container, and labelled it.
‘Thomas Hendry, I am arresting you for committing criminal damage by fire at twenty-seven Tavona Road, on or about the twenty-seventh of July this year. You will shortly be taken to London where you will be charged with that offence.’ And although Dave had cautioned him, I cautioned him again. At long last, I’d learned the words.
‘Yeah, well, like I said, it was down to me.’
Dave wrote that statement in his pocketbook.
Once Hendry had been placed in a cell, I spoke to Jock Ferguson, and told him what had happened.
‘You’ll be wanting to charge him in London, I suppose, Harry.’
‘It’ll be more convenient, Jock,’ I said. ‘And it’s the venue of the offence.’
‘OK. We’ll keep him here until you can arrange an escort. I’ll let the CPS worry about the driving charges. But I don’t suppose they’ll bother about them in view of what you’ve nicked him for.’ Jock Ferguson was a realist.