They were twenty minutes early for the meeting with Smart’s friend Tony Boyle, and Tartaglia decided to make a quick detour via the house in Castelnau where John Smart had gardened in his spare time. Minderedes pulled up opposite on a double yellow line to let him out.
‘I’ll park around the corner,’ he said. ‘Shall I come and find you?’
‘No. Go and talk to the neighbours on either side and call me when you’re done. I’ll see if the owner is in. What’s the woman’s name?’
‘Jane Waterman, according to the file. I called around last night but there was nobody in.’
The house was set back from the road behind a high wall, screened by two huge conifers as tall as the roof. Tartaglia recognised it from the pictures Smart had taken. He pushed open the gate and walked up the small semi-circle of drive. There was a garage to one side, with a door beside it leading to the back. Fallen leaves had been raked into two large piles on the grass, so it looked as though somebody was around. He went up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. After a moment he tried again, but there was no answer. He stepped back and looked up at the house. It was double-fronted, built in heavy, late Victorian style, with bay windows, gables and a small turret at either end; comfortable rather than aesthetically pleasing. All the windows were dark and dirty looking, as though they hadn’t been cleaned in years. There was no sign of life inside. He caught the smell of burning leaves on the wind. The smoke seemed to be coming from the back, over the roof of the garage. Stepping into a flowerbed, he peered through the grime into a sitting room. A huge vase of brown dried flowers stood on a table in the window, half blocking the view, but he could see a mug and newspaper sitting on a coffee table beyond. The room on the other side was furnished as a dining room and equally empty. He was about to leave when a youngish man appeared through the side gate from the back, pushing a wheelbarrow. He was dressed in overalls, with a beanie pulled down over his hair.
‘I’m looking for Jane Waterman,’ Tartaglia said. ‘Is she here?’
‘Sorry, what was that?’ The man pulled out an earphone from under his hat.
‘I want to speak to Jane Waterman. Is she in?’
‘She’s away at the moment.’
‘Where’s she gone?’
‘Staying with family, I think. She hasn’t been well. She went off with her nephew a few weeks ago.’
‘Do you have a contact number for her?’
‘Sorry.’
‘When will she be back?’
‘Search me. She never says. Comes and goes as she pleases.’
‘It’s police business,’ Tartaglia said, showing his warrant card. ‘If she comes home, can you ask her to give me a call?’ He handed the man his card. ‘Who looks after the house while she’s away?’
‘I do.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Jason. Jason Williamson. I do the gardening and a bit of maintenance. Why?’
‘Have you come across a man called John Smart?’
Williamson looked blank. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘This would have been about a year ago. He apparently used to do the garden here.’
‘Before my time, I’m afraid. The bloke before me was Polish, but he didn’t stay long.’
‘Why was that?’
‘He nicked some of her silver. She had the police after him, she told me, but they never caught him.’
‘OK, thanks. As I said, if you see her, make sure she gives me a call.’
Tartaglia found Minderedes at the next-door house, standing on the doorstep chatting to a woman holding a toddler in her arms. The house was similar in style to Jane Waterman’s but recently refurbished, with clean brickwork, gleaming paint and a new-looking Porsche Cayenne in the drive. Iron gates blocked the entrance and he was forced to call out to attract Minderedes’s attention.
‘Woman’s name is Gregson,’ Minderedes said, coming back. ‘The family only moved in a few months ago, so they never knew John Smart.’
‘What about Jane Waterman?’
‘She doesn’t know her, but said she saw an old lady in a wheelchair being pushed out of the house and helped into a car a few weeks ago.’
‘That tallies with what the gardener said. Apparently, she’s gone off to stay with relatives. When you get back to the office, check to see if she reported the theft of some silver within the last couple of years. Apparently, a Polish gardener may have been involved.’
Minderedes made a note.
Have you tried the house on the other side?’
‘Nobody in. I’ll go back again later.’
Tartaglia checked his watch. ‘Let’s walk over to Tony Boyle’s house. I could do with stretching my legs.’
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the comfortable front room of Boyle’s small terraced house close to Barnes Bridge, overlooking the river. A fire was burning in the grate and Boyle’s wife had provided them with a large tray of coffee and biscuits, which Minderedes was making the most of. Jim Adams, Smart’s other close friend, was there too.
‘In spite of what the police said, it didn’t make sense his disappearing,’ Tony Boyle said. ‘He wouldn’t just go off somewhere, so I knew something must have happened to him.’
‘You saw him the night before he disappeared?’ Minderedes asked.
Tony nodded. ‘He’d been working on that BBC thing . . . what’s it called?’ He looked over at Jim.
‘It was a play for Radio 4, one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.’
‘That’s right. He came into the Sun afterwards for a pint on his way home.’
‘He seemed perfectly normal,’ added Jim. ‘Other than some gripe about how little he was getting paid, not a care in the world.’
‘What did you talk about?’ Tartaglia asked.
‘Nothing particularly interesting, as far as I can recall. I remember they’d finished the recording and he wasn’t working the next day.’
‘He didn’t mention being worried about anything, however small?’
Tony grimaced. ‘He certainly talked about the plans for his birthday at the weekend. He was really looking forward to it, although Isobel had insisted on organising it, which was tricky.’
‘Tricky in what way?’ Tartaglia asked.
‘Well, he couldn’t exactly ask Rose, could he? But I could tell, even though he didn’t want to criticise Isobel, he really wanted her to be there too and I think he and Isobel had had a bit of a row about it. They were barely speaking the week before he disappeared.’
‘Is Rose his girlfriend?’
Jim laughed. ‘Good lord, no. She’s his other daughter.’
‘I didn’t know he had another daughter,’ Tartaglia said.
‘Nor did he, until a couple of years ago,’ Jim said. ‘Then this woman writes to him out of the blue, saying she’s his daughter. It was quite a shock.’
‘Is this Rose?’ Tartaglia asked, taking out the photo of the young, dark-haired woman from his bag.
‘That’s her,’ Tony said. ‘She’s a lovely girl. He often used to bring her to the pub for a drink or a bite to eat. He couldn’t take her home, of course, what with Isobel being so tricky.’
Jim nodded. ‘Rose got in touch with him via his agent. At first he thought it was a try-on, someone after some money, or something. But then he met her and she was the spitting image of him, only pretty. There wasn’t any point doing any of that DNA testing business. It was clear as crystal she was his.’
‘Who’s the mother?’ Tartaglia asked.
‘Some actress he had a fling with when he was in rep, back in the early eighties,’ Tony said. ‘She only told her daughter who her real father was recently.’
Jim nodded. ‘John said the woman was also married so I suppose that’s why.’
‘And Isobel knows about all of this?’ Tartaglia asked, thinking back to their conversation. It explained why she had wanted to shut out all questions about her father’s private life. She had then lied about not knowing who ‘R’ was.
‘Most definitely. Eaten up with jealousy, I think, poor thing. Didn’t want to share her father with anyone.’
‘I suppose she was just defending her mother, or her mother’s memory,’ Tony said. ‘But Isobel refused to meet Rose and it really hurt John. His son, Ian, was OK with it in the end, luckily. He’s got a family of his own and I guess he could afford to be more grown up. But Isobel was a right bitch about it, if you’ll excuse my French. She said if Rose came to his birthday, she’d leave.’
‘Do you know how we can get in touch with Rose?’ Tartaglia asked, deciding he would speak to Isobel immediately the interview was over.
Tony shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen her since John disappeared.’
‘She lives out of London, somewhere,’ Jim said. ‘I remember she was worried about missing her train home. I think it went from Paddington.’
‘Isn’t she an actress?’ Tony asked.
‘A set designer, I think,’ Jim said. ‘Freelance. Or at least something to do with the theatre. It’s obviously in the blood, although Isobel hasn’t inherited any of it. She’s much more like her mother. Not at all artistic.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Rose?’ Tartaglia asked, practically shouting. He didn’t care who heard.
‘Because it isn’t important.’ Isobel Smart clamped her thin lips shut as if that was the end of the matter.
They were standing in a small meeting room at the office in Marylebone where she worked as an accountant. He had hauled her out of an internal meeting, threatening to take her down to the local station if she didn’t cooperate.
‘This is a murder investigation. Everything’s important. What else have you lied about?’
‘Nothing. I swear. I didn’t tell you about her because there was no point. She couldn’t help you anyway.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that. She seems to have seen your father quite often, and he certainly seems to have cared about her. Maybe he told her something he didn’t tell you.’
Isobel looked as though she had been slapped but made no reply.
‘I need her phone number. Right now.’
‘I don’t have it.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I tell you, I don’t have it. Why would I want it? I didn’t want to speak to her.’
‘If I find you’re lying again . . .’
She glared at him, arms folded tightly across her ample chest. ‘I don’t have it. When Dad disappeared, she kept calling me at the office; he must have told her where I work. Anyway, she drove me nuts. She wanted to come over to the flat and look through his stuff. She probably wanted to take something . . .’
‘Maybe she was genuinely worried. Maybe she wanted to find out what had happened to her father.’
‘Well, she had no right. He wasn’t her father. That was a story to try and get money out of him.’ Tears were streaming down her face now. In a way he sympathised. The bubble of a perfect family life had been burst by a secret from the past. She had clearly idolised her father and her reaction was no different to that of a jealous lover – and equally irrational.
‘What did you say to her?’
‘I said the police were handling it and that I’d get a solicitor onto her if she didn’t stop harassing me.’
‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’
‘About a year ago. She called me again and I told her the police had found nothing. I haven’t heard from her since.’
‘Did she contact the police?’ There had been no mention of another daughter in the Missing Person report.
‘How the hell do I know? And I don’t bloody well care. Now can I get on with my work?’