THURSDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER
The area around Cresswell Street had been literally blanketed with uniformed and plain-clothes police going from door to door, working through till almost midnight last night, and back at it again this morning, asking the same questions over and over again. Have you seen this woman? When? Where? What time was that? Did you hear anything? See anyone cruising the street?—which, considering the neighbourhood, was thought by most to be a silly question, but it still had to be asked.
Simone was well known, and apparently well liked by many of the residents of Cresswell Street, because a number of the locals had come forward to say that they had seen her in the street that night. A list of names, together with approximate times, had been compiled on the whiteboards in the Incident Room, but there was nothing later than ten past ten. A woman who lived over one of the shops in the street was returning from walking her dog when she saw Simone standing outside the darkened chip shop at the bottom end
of Cresswell Street. Simone had patted the dog, the two women had exchanged a few words, and they’d said good night.
After that, nothing! Simone had simply vanished, and any hope they’d had of finding Rutledge through Simone had vanished with her. That in itself was bad enough, but Paget’s immediate concern was the fate of Simone herself. If, as he suspected, she had been picked up by the killer, the chances of finding her alive were, at best, extremely thin.
Grim-faced, Paget stared at the whiteboards and shook his head. More than four days into the investigation and they were no closer now to finding Bolen’s killer than they had been on day one. He sighed heavily.
“We don’t have any choice,” he told Tregalles. “We have to start again from scratch. We go over every bit of evidence again, and we concentrate on the people who had the most to gain from Bolen’s death.
“Len,” he said to the sergeant who had been listening at his desk, “I want backgrounds on all members of the Bolen family and on Keith Lambert: relationships, personal situations, business connections, financial positions, and anything else you can think of. Dig deep. But most of all let’s check and double-check their alibis. Tregalles and I will be talking to the principals themselves, but I want every angle covered. And get a couple of people over to the Tudor Hotel and have them interview the staff again; maybe lean on them a bit if they seem to be holding back at all. Especially Quint. Let’s make sure they’ve told us everything.”
He glanced at the clock. “And let’s hope to God we find something before someone else is killed.”
“Sorry if I seem distracted, Chief Inspector,” John Bolen apologized, “but it’s been a bit hectic around here since my father died. Harry and I have spent most of our time working with solicitors, banks, and building societies, trying to come to some sort of agreement
with them regarding the mortgages Dad took out. We would like to cancel them, but there are penalties, and no one is willing to negotiate until the will is probated. Unfortunately, while all that is going on, we are faced with some pretty stiff monthly payments we can ill afford.”
Paget and Tregalles were seated in a small glass-walled office in the corner of a larger office in the Bolen Building. They had once again been going over John Bolen’s visit with his father the night he died, but had discovered nothing new. Now Bolen looked pointedly at his watch. “I have an appointment with one of the solicitors in half an hour,” he told them, “but I can give you a few minutes.”
“Speaking of your father’s will,” Paget said, “I believe you told me that your mother is the sole beneficiary as far as the business is concerned, but are there any other bequests or provisions?”
Bolen sat back in his chair and regarded Paget and Tregalles with brooding eyes.
“As I told you,” he said with exaggerated patience, “my mother inherits my father’s share of the firm, which amounts to fifty-one percent. Harry owns forty-nine percent. I inherit nothing. My sister inherits nothing. Does that make my mother the—what’s the term you use?—prime suspect?” he asked sarcastically.
“Not necessarily,” Paget said blandly. “As you mentioned the other day, if your father had gone ahead with the Ockrington project, everyone in your family would have lost, including your uncle, so in that sense, everyone had something to gain by his death.”
Before John Bolen could reply, Tregalles put a question to him. “As I understand it,” he said, “your father was very much in charge of the day-to-day running of the firm when he was alive. Who is in charge now that he is gone? Would that be you, sir?”
Bolen eyed Tregalles for a long moment, then shook his head. “No, although, because of the family connection, and my familiarity with our financial position here, I have been working with Harry to get things sorted out, but he is nominally in charge.”
Paget raised an eyebrow. “I was under the impression that your
uncle avoided the administrative side of the business,” he said. “He told me he prefers to oversee the jobs themselves.”
“He does,” John agreed. “But when it comes down to it, Harry is just as capable of running this business as my father was. People tend to underrate Harry because he is less aggressive, but he grew up with the business, and he’d have no trouble running it. Whether he wants to do that is another question, but you’d have to talk to Harry about that.” He looked at his watch again. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I must prepare for my meeting,” he said.
“Just one more thing before we leave,” said Paget as he rose to his feet. “Can you tell me where you were last Saturday evening between the hours of, say, seven and nine?”
John Bolen frowned. “Seven?” he repeated. “My father was alive when I left him about nine-thirty, so why seven?”
“If you would just answer the question, sir?”
Bolen frowned. “Very well, but I don’t know that it will do you much good. I was at home, by myself, trying to think of some way to stop my father from going through with the Ockrington project. Short of murder, that is—in case you were wondering,” he added sardonically as he rose to usher them out.
A begrimed Isuzu Trooper loaded with building materials stood next to Prudence Bolen’s bright-red MG outside the front door of Brookside. Paget put his hand on the bonnet of the Isuzu as he passed and found it barely warm.
Laura Bolen answered the door, and standing in the hall behind her was Harry. “I’ll be off, then, Laura,” he said loudly. He looked at Laura as if expecting her to say something, but she remained silent. “Just popped in for a minute to see if Laura needed a hand with the arrangements for the funeral on Saturday,” he said by way of explanation. With a nod to the two detectives, he ran down the steps and got into the Trooper as Laura closed the door.
Paget introduced Tregalles. “Sorry to trouble you again, Mrs.
Bolen,” he said, “but we would like to ask you one or two more questions.”
Laura made no attempt to conceal a sigh of resignation. “In that case, I suppose you’d better come through,” she said. She turned and led the way across the entrance hall to a spacious living room overlooking the garden at the side of the house.
“Please sit down,” she said stiffly, gesturing to a leather sofa. She took a seat facing them and clasped her hands in front of her. Her cheek was still swollen, and the colour of the bruise could still be seen beneath her make-up. Her face was slightly flushed, and Paget couldn’t help wondering what Harry Bolen had been doing there in the middle of a day when there must be so much to do at work.
“I know we’ve been through all this before,” he began, “but sometimes people remember things later, so please bear with me when I ask you to go through everything once more, beginning with when your brother-in-law arrived after his flight back from Canada?”
The expression on Laura’s face said clearly that she thought it all a waste of time, but she made no comment. Perhaps she felt it was easier to comply than to argue the point. And perhaps it was a waste of time, thought Paget, for what she told them was essentially the same as she and Harry had told him Sunday morning.
“You said you stayed in the car while your brother-in-law went up to your husband’s room,” Tregalles observed. “Are you quite sure that’s correct, Mrs. Bolen?”
“Yes … ?” An unspoken question hung there in the answer, followed by a hesitation and what appeared to be the dawning of a recollection. “Oh, my goodness; I’d quite forgotten, Sergeant. I did leave the car. But on the other hand, it’s not something one is apt to remember, is it?”
A half-smile touched her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said apologetically, “but I did leave the car for a few minutes. It was a chilly night and … well, the fact of the matter is, I had to go to the loo. I knew there was one next to the conference rooms on the first floor, so I left
the car and went up the back stairs. I wasn’t gone long, and I came Straight down again and waited in the car for Harry.”
“Did you see anyone or the stairs or in the corridor?”
“Not a soul.”
“Have you thought of anything, no matter how trivial, that seems odd in retrospect?” asked Paget.
Laura Bolen shook her head. “I’m sorry, Chief Inspector,” she said with a helpless gesture, “and I have tried.”
“In that case, Mrs. Bolen, thank you for being so patient. I wonder if we might have a word with your daughter before we leave?”
“Prudence? I’m afraid she’s not in at the moment, but why would you wish to talk to her? She wasn’t even here at the time.”
Paget frowned. “I thought I saw her car in the drive when we arrived,” he said.
Laura Bolen’s lips tightened. “You did,” she said coldly. “But Prudence has taken my car into town. I’m having an antitheft device fitted, and she offered to take it in for me, and I don’t expect her back for some time. Not that she’ll be able to help you very much. As I said, she wasn’t even here when all this happened. She was in Bristol, where she’s attending university. I telephoned her there not long after you left on Sunday morning.” Laura sighed. “I didn’t relish having to break the news to her over the telephone, but on the other hand, it would have been better coming from me instead of from her friend.”
“Her friend … ?”
Laura clucked her tongue and shook her head in self-recrimination. “It was my fault,” she said. “I should have been more circumspect. Pru’s room-mate, Joan Lassiter, answered the phone. She said Pru had gone out early for a bike ride with some friends, but she promised to have her phone me as soon as Pru got back. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling Joan why I was calling, and she blurted it out as soon as Pru came in. Pru was devastated. She and her father were very close. She rang me back as soon as she came in, and then came home immediately. Well, late that afternoon, to be
more precise. She left straightaway, but she had trouble with her car as she was leaving Bristol, and had a terrible time finding someone to look at it—you know what it’s like trying to get service on a Sunday—so she didn’t arrive home until about five in the afternoon.”
“What was the trouble?” asked Tregalles.
“I think she said it was dirty petrol.”
“In that case, Mrs. Bolen,” said Paget as he rose to his feet, “thank you for your time and your patience. Please don’t get up; we can see ourselves out.”
As they made their way to the car, Paget said, “Get on to Bristol and ask them to have a word with this girl, Joan Lassiter. It’s not that I don’t believe her mother, but let’s make sure her story checks out and the girl was actually there. And ask them to find out what Lassiter knows about Malone. Find out if Prudence has talked to her about him. According to Harry, his brother was violently opposed to Prudence marrying Malone, which means they could have had a motive.”
“Right. But Mrs. Bolen was right about one thing,” Tregalles observed. “There is a public loo next to the convention rooms on the first floor of the Tudor. I saw it the other night.”
“That may be,” said Paget, “but if she knew about the back stairs, Harry must have known about them as well. In fact, didn’t Quint tell you that the Bolen Brothers built the place? So why did he go all the way round the front? Unless he wanted to be seen.”
John Bolen stood up and stretched his aching muscles. He had been hunched over the figures on his desk for what seemed like hours, and he would have liked nothing better than to dump the lot into the waste-paper basket and be done with it. But he owed it to his mother to make sure that everything was done properly, and he had promised himself he would do that, no matter how long it took.
The ringing of the telephone interrupted his thoughts. He sat down and picked it up. “John Bolen.”
“Oh, good! You haven’t gone, then.” The soft Scottish accent was unmistakable. It was Linda McRae, his fiancée, and she sounded out of breath.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, immediately concerned.
“Nothing, John. In fact, everything is just fine. Mother and Dad are down from Inverness, and they want to meet you. It’s a complete surprise. As I told you the other night, Dad didn’t think he could get away until next week, but he and Mum are here now. They can only stay for a few days, so I thought if we could all meet for dinner at Bridge House it would give them a chance to get to know you, and for you to get to know them. I took a chance and booked a table for seven o’clock; I hope that’s all right?”
John Bolen tilted back in his chair, lips compressed as he stared at the ceiling. No, it wasn’t all right; he had too much to do and so little time to do it. But what could he say? He had never met Linda’s parents, and although it had never been put into so many words, he knew the main reason for their visit was to take a look at this Englishman who had proposed to their daughter. He hadn’t expected them down until next week, but obviously things had changed.
“John? Are you there?”
“Sorry, Linda. I was just trying to think. I had intended going over to my mother’s to tidy up a few things before the funeral on Saturday, but I don’t think there is anything so pressing that it can’t wait. So I’ll see you there.”
“Seven o’clock.” Linda lowered her voice. “You’re not worried about meeting them, are you, John? You’ve no need; I know they’ll like you. Just let Dad talk about golf and fishing, and you’ll do just fine. As for Mum, she’s seen your picture and thinks you have a very nice face.”
John Bolen chuckled. “Then I’d better wash it for the occasion,” he said. “Love you, darling.”
“Love you, too—and don’t you dare be late!”