Sixteen

After Rex had spoken to Phoebe he rang Pete Lauper, the detective chief inspector he and Alistair had spoken to the previous evening at Ramsay Garden. He told him Pruitt’s assailant was one Dan Sutter.

“And how do you know that?” DCI Lauper demanded. “You had no idea who the man was yesterday.”

“I’ve just come from the hospital.”

“You spoke with Richard Pruitt?” The detective sounded put out in the extreme. An irascible man with a permanent scowl, Rex had no difficulty picturing him at this moment. “And how did you manage that?”

“I, ehm, a nurse let me in for five minutes.”

“Mr. Graves, you should have let me question him first. I understand you have an interest in solving murders in your free time, but this is my job. I was told Richard Pruitt was in no condition to receive visitors.”

“He’s still very weak. I was only permitted a visit as a special favour. I don’t want to get the nurse in any trouble.”

“Well, where is this Dan Sutter now?” the detective further demanded while Rex looked about him at the cars parked in long rows under the lights. “We only got an indistinct glimpse on the CCTV video camera of the man entering and leaving the Ramsay Garden tower,” he griped.

“He lives in a hostel near the railway station.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“He has a prior conviction for breaking into a house with a knife and served ten years at HMP Shotts. That’s as much as I know.” For now, Rex added to himself, his intention being to find out more.

“Well, thank you for that information,” Lauper said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “But I will conduct the search from now on, is that understood?”

“Understood.” Rex bid him a civil goodbye and drove back to Morningside, mulling over his phone conversation with the apoplectic detective and also with Phoebe.

She had refused to tell him what the clue was in her father’s murder, saying he would just have to “wait and see,” as though it were some kind of game she was organizing for his amusement. He sighed. Now he would have to tell his fiancée that her trip to Edinburgh this weekend was postponed.

After dinner he went up to his rooms and worked through the files he had procured that day on the felons whom Judge Murgatroyd had convicted, making a list of possible suspects in his alleged murder. He excluded lifers and those too old to have accomplished the climbing feat required to get into Phoebe’s house. For now he worked on the assumption that, if this was a crime of revenge, the perpetrator most likely would have wanted to exact the revenge himself.

The list turned out to be predictably long, comprising the worst of criminals, along with the Parliament House bomber, who had been released in time to murder the judge.

The whereabouts of each and every one would have to be looked into, unless Phoebe’s latest clue panned out, a task he would relegate to his young friend Thaddeus. The well-connected techno whizz had assisted him in several private cases in return for Rex’s influence in helping him secure a position at a prestigious law firm in London.

Rex next scoured the Web for any details he could find about the Showers family and was chagrined to find that April had been an only child. How her parents must have mourned her, especially as her body had been unceremoniously discarded in a back alley and the man charged with her murder had gone free. Mr. and Mrs. Showers would have had even more motive to do Pruitt harm than Dan Sutter had, Rex mused.

Presumably, Sutter had not appreciated the fact that Pruitt had put a detective on his tail and he had to keep looking over his shoulder after ten years spent inside a maximum security prison.

Rex sat back in his chair, cradling the back of his head in his hands. Perhaps he should leave the Pruitt/Sutter case to DCI Lauper, after all, and concentrate on the Murgatroyd investigation. The only reason he had contacted Pruitt in the first place was for information on the stamp he had given the judge, a stamp of no apparent value or significance. Certainly, Christopher Penn had not honed in on it when appraising the album. He hoped Phoebe had a more promising lead.