The sky was grey and heavy with cloud, a cold drizzle just setting in again as Tartaglia climbed out of Minderedes’s BMW. It was nearly eleven in the morning and they were in Markham Square in Chelsea, where Richard English had lived. Tartaglia’s head felt thick but he didn’t mind a bit of rain and it was good to have some fresh air and get out of the office for a while. The briefing meeting earlier had not gone well. His team had greeted the news that they had been taken off the Dillon Hotel case with unanimous and loud objections. Sam Donovan had been universally liked and everybody wanted to help find her sister’s killer, but Steele had been immovable. He was glad that it was she, with her calm, unemotional manner, who had had the job of explaining that the case had already been reassigned to the other team under her command. In the end they had been forced to accept it, but it was going to be difficult to keep everybody focussed on the car park case, when their hearts and minds were elsewhere.
A quick visit to the Sainsbury’s car park had yielded nothing. They had been over the ground again and looked at the logistics of what might have happened, but nothing new had emerged and the homeless man known as Dodger was still nowhere to be seen. Things had not improved as the morning wore on; the lab result had shown that the DNA sample provided by Richard English’s daughter had no familial connection with any of the body parts. However, the wallet was still considered significant – it had to have been placed at the scene deliberately – but if none of the body parts belonged to English, what was his connection to the others? Could he possibly be a suspect?
English’s house was almost at the end of the terrace, with a shiny dark-green door and a knocker in the shape of a dolphin. Halloween had been and gone a few days before but a huge pumpkin still stood grinning on the doorstep and the window overlooking the road was festooned with garlands of fake cobwebs and spiders. Tartaglia pressed the bell and the front door opened soon after.
‘Are you the police?’ A young, blonde-haired woman peered short-sightedly up at him.
‘DI Mark Tartaglia.’ He held up his warrant card.
‘I’m Lisa English. I was expecting you. Come inside.’
She was of medium height and very thin, dressed in tight, light-blue tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt with some sort of logo on the front mapped out in tiny crystals. He followed her into the sitting room, where she motioned him towards a beige-coloured leather sofa.
‘Do sit down. Would you like tea or coffee?’ Her voice had a brittle tone, with a trace of a South London accent.
‘I’m fine. Thanks,’ he said, making himself comfortable. ‘We’ve got the results back from the lab of the DNA sample taken from your daughter, Mrs English. There’s no familial link with the body we found in the car, which means your husband may still be alive.’
He had expected a look of relief, or surprise, but her face showed no emotion. ‘I thought you found his wallet,’ she said flatly, sitting down opposite him in a large armchair and crossing her legs. ‘His credit cards haven’t been used since he disappeared. You can check with the bank.’ She sounded almost irritated.
‘Yes, they are still in his wallet, but whatever the explanation, he isn’t the man in the car.’ He was careful to use the singular. ‘We also found a set of keys close to the wallet, which we assume belong to him. Could they be for here?’ He held up the plastic evidence bag containing the keys, showing her the fob with the initial ‘R’.
She studied them closely for a moment, then shook her head. ‘Our front door’s got a Banham lock. If they’re his, they’ll be for his office, or maybe his flat.’
‘His flat?’ The only address listed in the report was the Markham Square house.
‘He’d moved out. We were getting divorced.’
At least that explained her strange reaction. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘It was for the best.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘There’s something . . . I don’t want it to go further than this room. It’s possible Charlotte isn’t Rich’s daughter.’
He looked at her surprised. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’
She shrugged, a gesture of what he hoped was embarrassment, although he doubted it. She didn’t look the type. ‘I didn’t know for certain, until now.’
‘Does he have any close relatives? Parents, or siblings? We really do need to try and get a DNA sample, if only to eliminate him.’
‘Rich was an only child and both his parents are dead, but he has two sons from his first marriage. Last I heard, the eldest is off travelling somewhere on his gap year, but you can try the younger one. He’s at some posh boarding school out of London. He’s an absolute dead ringer for his dad. He’s definitely Rich’s son.’
‘We’ll contact him immediately, if you can give me the mother’s details?’
‘Sure.’
She still seemed oddly detached, even for a woman who clearly didn’t like her missing husband. ‘Are you alright, Mrs English?’
‘Of course I am. Why do you ask?’
‘Talking about what may have happened to your husband doesn’t upset you, then?’
Her brown eyes widened. ‘Why should it? I just hoped you’d be telling me it was him in that car.’
Taken aback, he studied Lisa English closely. In his experience, divorce was rarely something cut and dried. Emotions ran high, and in all sorts of directions. Complete calm and such coldness were unusual, even after a gap of two years, and he decided that her blasé attitude must be an act. He suspected that, underneath, she felt the bitterness of somebody badly hurt, and he guessed that Richard English had left her, not the other way around. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, not that she needed it; she was pretty enough. She was older than he had initially thought, maybe late thirties, heading towards forty, a tricky age for some women. He noted the light sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks and small nose, the way her mouth turned down at the corners, and the fine laughter lines around her eyes. He couldn’t imagine her laughing or having a sense of fun, but maybe he wasn’t seeing her on a good day. The photos of English in the missing persons report showed a middle-aged man with the bulky build of an ex-rugby player gone to seed and a taste for loud, striped shirts and shapeless leather jackets. He struggled to picture the two of them together.
‘So there was no love lost between you?’
‘That’s one way of putting it. I’d just like to know if he’s dead. We’ve been in limbo too long.’ She looked at him, as if daring him to make some sort of judgemental comment.
He decided to change the subject. ‘Mr English was clearly a wealthy man,’ he said, more as a statement than a question, appraising the expensive furnishings and wondering if money was behind Richard English’s disappearance and possible murder.
‘Making money’s all he cares about.’
‘What sort of work was he involved in?’
‘Hotels and restaurants and stuff. You’d better ask Ian, if you want the full gen. I didn’t get involved.’
‘Ian?’
‘Rich’s business partner.’
‘He’s the one who reported Mr English as missing?’
‘Yes. He can fill you in better than I can. Rich is the man with the Midas touch, the creative one. Ian’s the numbers guy, Mister Nuts and Bolts, or at least that’s what Rich always calls him. It’s the perfect marriage.’
‘You keep referring to Mr English in the present tense. You think he’s still alive?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think, really. I’ve been through it all in my head over and over again. If he’d had an accident, we’d know about it. He carries ID. He certainly likes a drink, particularly if it’s some special, fancy vintage, but he doesn’t do benders, he doesn’t go AWOL and he’s not the sort to top himself. He loves himself far too much. So something must’ve happened. Sometimes I wonder if he’s done a runner.’
‘A runner?’
‘It’s possible. If something’s up, it’ll be to do with work, I’ll put money on it.’
‘So you think he disappeared deliberately?’
‘I don’t know, but if he’s in some sort of trouble and he’s taken off, Ian would look after everything for him. That’s the only thing I can think of.’
He looked at her, intrigued. She seemed to be telling the truth, and assuming her description of her husband was accurate, she was right: people like Richard English didn’t just disappear into thin air. ‘Did he have any enemies?’ he asked.
‘Again, you’d better ask Ian.’
‘Tell me more about Ian,’ he said, curious, deciding that he should be the next priority.
‘He’s like Rich’s brother. They’ve known each other since school. I often felt like Ian was the other woman in our relationship.’
‘If your husband is dead, are you the main beneficiary?’
She shifted in her chair and re-crossed her legs. ‘I get half his estate, according to the solicitor. Luckily for me, he hadn’t gotten around to changing his will before he disappeared.’ She didn’t bother to mask the satisfaction in her tone.
‘What happens to the rest of it?’ he asked, thinking that if English had deliberately decided to disappear, it didn’t sound very carefully planned.
‘Ian gets some shares in the business and the rest is put in trust for Charlotte and his two kids from his first marriage. Once he’s officially declared dead, that is.’
‘Do you know what your husband was worth?’
She smiled openly. ‘Tens of millions, from what the solicitor says. Rich was a right sod as a husband, but he knew how to make money.’
Struck again by her directness, which against his better judgement he found disarming, he was silent for a moment. Money was always one hell of a motive for murder, but he reminded himself that it was none of his concern, unless English was one of the victims in the car.
‘One last thing, when did you learn that Mr English was missing?’
‘Ian called me right away when he didn’t show up at work. He wanted to know if I had any idea where Rich was. I told him I hadn’t seen Rich in weeks but I was sure he’d turn up. Bad pennies always do, don’t they?’
‘Thanks, Mrs English,’ Tartaglia said, getting to his feet. ‘I think that covers everything for now.’