“I can’t believe the amount of publicity this case is generating,” Gladys commented. She was occupied in trawling through her third newspaper of the day in the main hall. Another week had passed since they’d had their last get-together with George and he hadn’t suggested another. That wasn’t to say that relations were strained between them—far from it, in fact, as they greeted each other warmly whenever they met and made a point of sharing the brandy sessions on Wednesday and Saturday. He never invited them but it had just become a rite of passage that they would chat over the brandy as George continued his ritual of ensuring that they always without fail got a second round. But there was nonetheless a tiny, pipsqueaky elephant in the room with an uplifted trunk which grew imperceptibly as the days passed. Were they going to try to attend court or not? Both the women understood that this was a conversation they would inevitably have. Neither had sparked it off yet.
“Look at these pictures of the procession to the law courts yesterday.” Gladys spread the twin pages of the tabloid wide on to the table so that Cynthia had a clear view. “Some two hundred women apparently. Look at the placards—‘Free Helena’, ‘This isn’t justice’.”
Cynthia gave the paper a glance. “I’ve already read that one,” she said. “Try this.” She passed over another full pager showing a woman with bright purple hair being hauled away spread-eagled by four police officers, one with his helmet askew.
“Hm—I can see why George thought it would be difficult to find unbiased jurors. You’d either be in total sympathy with Helena or consider these demonstrators to be part of the great unwashed.”
There was a cough from above their bowed heads and they looked up to find George standing close to them. “I suggest we have another chat before lunch,” he said, once he was sure he had their full attention. “There’s been a development. Maybe in fifteen minutes?”
The two women agreed and spent the intervening period wondering individually and collectively what the “development” might be. When they were seated round the table in Cynthia’s kitchen, they found they wouldn’t have been able to guess it however long George might have given them. “I’ve been called as a witness at the trial,” he announced.
“A witness,” Cynthia echoed. Even the word summoned up tensions.
“Yes—for the defence.”
“Why?” Gladys asked. She realised the stupidity of the question as soon as it was out of her mouth. Nevertheless, George considered it carefully. “That was the first question I asked myself. I have some ideas. It’s clearly got to be in connection with one or more of the interventions we’ve made. Take your choice. All they tell me is where to present myself and the days to keep free, which are at the tail-end of the first week of the trial. It looks as though they expect the prosecution to take up the first two to three days.”
“Does this mean that we…?” Gladys stopped herself before she made what she might have considered another asinine enquiry.
Again, George considered before he replied. “I can’t guarantee you won’t be called as I don’t know what’s in the minds of the lawyers. But I don’t think it’s likely. I’m there because of my… er… background.”
“Well, that’s decided one thing for me.” Cynthia sounded as firm as she could. “I’m going to attend court.”
“And so am I,” Gladys chimed in. “We’ll need to make a plan.”
“Excellent,” George said. He decided he was sufficiently far ahead not to mention that he thought a plan had already been made. “That means I won’t have to drive!”
**
In his office just off the Strand in Central London Shafiq Narwaz was sitting round a small table with two of his small but highly trusted group of investigators. Madeleine Casado was a tall, slim woman with very short auburn hair and a predilection for long dangly earrings who had worked in the accounting and risk management areas of four banks before taking early retirement and going freelance. Angie Pickard was younger, studious-looking in wire-framed glasses with long blonde hair reaching down to her shoulders. She’d transformed herself into a lawyer specialising in tax law while bringing up her two children, who were now teenagers, and she was a specialist as well in disinterring facts and figures from government and other records.
“So George Skelton is on our list?” Shafiq was saying.
Casado nodded. She wasn’t a woman to waste words. Shafiq put another neat tick on his list. “What about Ms Ahmed’s testimony to the police that she was working at the time of the murder?”
“That’s true,” Pickard replied. She referred to her own notes. “The court record shows her as a member of the prosecuting team for the Kelmert case physically there for both the morning and afternoon sessions. The lunch break was one and a half hours, as she told you. We’ve tested out the journey to the Clapham house and back. It’s a short walk to the station from the court, seven minutes at normal walking speed. You would have to allow half an hour each way for the train. There’s a change of platform and train and that includes waiting time for trains to arrive. From the station in Clapham to the house took twelve minutes. So it would have been impossible by public transport to get to the house, kill Pennington, clean herself up and then get back.”
“What about a taxi?”
Pickard adjusted her glasses. “A taxi to the station would halve the time getting there. Taxis at the other end aren’t always there. You couldn’t rely on it. A taxi all the way should in theory reduce the time but by how much would depend on the traffic, which you couldn’t forecast in advance, and the expertise of the driver. Then the taxi driver would have had to wait outside the house, might have seen Pennington arrive, heard noises from inside and then taken back Helena in what would presumably have been an agitated state and a change of clothes for the return journey. The police made enquiries at the time. There were no responses from any driver.”
Shafiq nodded. “What about her allegation against Pennington?”
“I’ve been through the police records and the prosecution submission. She alleged rape at the time but as soon as it was challenged, she dropped it. What did she tell you?”
“That he pursued her and she pushed him off. Then he came on to her at the corporate event or party or whatever you want to call it. She saw no point in pursuing her allegations because she wouldn’t be believed.”
“It sounds like she’s toning down her original story. He denied ever meeting her—that could have been why she dropped it.”
Shafiq sighed. “Did you ever know a defendant to help their defence team?” He put a question mark under his line of ticks. “Now, Madeleine, are we getting anywhere with the law firm?”
“There’s no doubt Helena was put in charge of the written evidence against Kelmert,” replied Casado.
“She told me quite categorically she put the documents away in the safe and the next day they weren’t there.”
“The prosecution have the office manager from that time on their slate so that doesn’t bode well. I’ve been working on finding a contemporary who might be useful to us and I think I might have found someone. I’ll have to come back to you on that.”
“All right but give it priority please—we only have a week to go.” He turned back to Pickard. “What about the house in Brayfield Road?”
Pickard turned over a page. “Sarah Richardson bought the house forty-four years ago. It was four years before she married and she was called Sarah Hubbard then. She bought it outright for ten thousand pounds. There’s no record of a bank having a charge on the property.”
“So where did she get that money?”
“Not from her parents on the face of it—they both had low-paying jobs. And that’s not all. She bought four other houses in the period before she married. She married serious money. Her parents-in-law bought Hinkfield Hall—they were in retail. They passed it on well in time to avoid inheritance tax. Sarah expanded the property empire afterwards but passed the administration over to a specialist lettings agency three years ago.”
“What’s the latest medical report on her?”
“She’s out of danger but otherwise not good at the moment.”
“So we can rule out her coming to court?”
“At the moment you can rule her out from testifying from anywhere. Barring a Lazarus moment, I can’t see it happening. All I can do is stay up to date. I’m the long lost relative from Australia—that’s how I justify the calls.”
Shafiq annotated his list with two more question marks. “And what about Helena’s tenancy at the house?”
“In disclosure all we’ve seen is the reiteration of the names Iqbal and Ahmed, but the prosecution are going through the contents of the those files page by page before they pass them to us. You can’t rule out something more damaging coming out.”
A bigger question mark followed by two exclamation marks was added. Shafiq moved back to Casado. “Now how are we progressing with the bank?”
She consulted her notes. “It’s been run by Marcus Miller, the son-in-law, ever since Pennington’s death and Pennington was in charge for twenty-five years prior to that, so it’s been under very tight family control. The bank’s a well-known money manager but the cuckoo in the nest is the Reserve Account. Thanks to ex-Chief Superintendent Skelton the FCA are already in there and it looks like a Ponzi scheme. There have also been rumours about the bank handling dodgy money in the past and Reserve Account holders being suspect. Three account holders complained about sudden losses before Pennington’s death, including the footballer Cauley Mortimer, whom the prosecution are calling as a witness. I’ve been told by a source at the bank that one of the other complainants was a senior underworld figure who wondered if the bank ‘might be losing its touch’. There’s something else too.” She produced a copy of the picture of the golden lion from Sarah Richardson’s desk. “This picture was taken by George Skelton at the Richardson house in her study where the lion was on the desk at that time. We were alerted to this as a possible connection with Gonzalez and Co. Well, it is. My source has confirmed a small number of these were produced at Pennington’s behest to be given to valued customers and relationships. He handed them all out personally.”
“Go on,” instructed Shafiq. He put down his pen.
“Well, for Sarah to have one of these would put her in a very special category at Pennington’s bank.”
“As a Reserve Account holder?”
“You have to think so. The question for us is whether Sarah Richardson was a relationship or a valued client? And was the bank or another client of the bank the source of her money? It’s all speculation but the senior underworld figure could have been the Grouper.”
Shafiq drummed his fingers on the table. “See if you can catch up with the daughter—Maisie Hardwick her name is. She might have some idea when her mother was given the lion. She must be visiting the hospital too so she could give us more info on her condition. She’s seeing her with her own eyes. And Madeleine, that source of yours at the law firm could be critical. Is he prepared to testify?”
“I’m working on it.”
He checked his watch. “I must go and see Helena to keep her spirits up.”
“Take a look at the other picture of the base of the lion before you go,” Casado urged him.
Shafiq examined it and his eyes gleamed. “We could be on to something here.”