‘David Taylor admits to receiving Roger Corbett’s phone call,’ Tregalles concluded at the morning briefing, ‘but he says he was busy and told Corbett he would call him back as soon as he was free. But then he forgot about it until later when he was closing up. He says he tried to call Corbett but couldn’t reach him. He claims he spent the rest of the evening either in the shop or upstairs in his flat. He lives alone; he made no phone calls, and he didn’t receive any, which means he can’t prove he was there, and I can’t prove he wasn’t.
‘I’m going to talk to Chadwell and Kevin Taylor next. All of the calls Corbett made that day were short, except for the one to Chadwell, so perhaps I can get more out of him.’
Ormside snorted. ‘Good luck!’ he said, remembering his brief interview with Chadwell. He pulled a bulky file from a drawer. ‘But before you go, we’d better have something on record about the call Barry Grant made to David Taylor, because it was never mentioned in the original investigation. Is Taylor coming in to make a statement?’
‘I don’t think that’s really necessary, do you, boss?’ Tregalles said with a questioning look in Paget’s direction. ‘I thought I’d just stick a note in the file.’
Paget agreed. ‘Just make sure it’s legible,’ he warned.
‘Better have it typed, then,’ Ormside muttered. ‘The way Tregalles writes, he should have been a doctor.’
Paget glanced at the time. ‘I’ll be in Mr Alcott’s office for the rest of the morning,’ he said, ‘and if anyone is looking for me, discourage them, because I do not want to be disturbed.’
Fiona looked strangely subdued as Paget approached her desk outside Alcott’s office. Normally, she was on her feet the moment he appeared, ready to bring him up to date on any new developments since she’d seen him last; pass on any messages she hadn’t been able to take care of herself, and offer her assistance and/or advice if he asked for it – and sometimes even if he didn’t ask for it.
‘Something wrong, Fiona?’ he asked.
The secretary lifted her head and he could see she’d been crying. ‘It’s Mrs Alcott,’ she said in a low voice. ‘She died last night. I tried to ring Mr Alcott this morning to find out how she was, but I couldn’t get him, so I phoned the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.’
Fiona took a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. ‘I knew something was wrong, because they usually say something over there when you ask, even though they aren’t supposed to unless you’re a relative. So I rang his daughter, Valerie. Her phone and mobile number are in Mr Alcott’s phone file,’ she explained, ‘and she told me that her mother had passed away just before midnight last night.’
The phone in Alcott’s office rang, and a corresponding light flashed on the secretary’s phone. She picked it up and said, ‘Superintendent Alcott’s office . . . Yes, he’s here . . . Yes, yes . . . all right, Sergeant, yes, I’ll . . .’
Paget put his hand out for the phone, but instead of giving it to him, Fiona put it down. ‘That was Sergeant Tregalles,’ she said, ‘and he sounded very excited. He said he has something to show you, and he’d like you to go back down there at once to see it for yourself.’
‘So much for my instructions that I wasn’t to be disturbed,’ Paget muttered. He turned to leave, but paused when he saw the question in Fiona’s eyes. ‘Was there something else?’ he asked.
‘It’s just that Valerie says her father’s now gone missing and . . . it’s probably silly,’ she said, ‘but the way he was talking the other day . . . you don’t think Mr Alcott would do anything . . . well, you know . . .?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
‘Paget placed his hand on Fiona’s shoulder and held her eyes with his own. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said firmly. ‘I suspect he just needs to be alone for a while. I’m sure he’ll turn up when he’s ready.’
Tregalles and Ormside were bent over Ormside’s desk, each with a magnifying glass in hand, studying a series of black and white photographs when Paget entered the room.
‘Take a look at this, boss,’ Tregalles said as he straightened up and handed a magnifying glass to Paget. ‘These pictures were taken at the scene when Barry Grant is supposed to have killed himself. I just happened to take a look at them when I was putting the file away after adding in the note about Barry’s call to David Taylor, and that’s when I saw it. Take a look at the one on top, the close-up of the shotgun. Look at the end of the barrels. See the tiny steel fibres left when the barrels were sawn through? There is no way they would have been there if that gun was fired after the barrels were sawn off. They’d have been blown away. Those barrels were sawn off after Grant was shot.’
Paget bent over the picture. He didn’t see it at first, but suddenly there it was. Tregalles was right; and yet apparently no one had picked it up during the original investigation. Someone had slipped up badly back then. Very badly.
‘Well done, Tregalles,’ he said as he handed the photograph and magnifying glass back to the Sergeant. ‘So, it looks as if someone killed young Grant because he was perceived to be a weak link, and I suspect that Roger Corbett was killed for exactly the same reason.’
The town planning offices were not in the town hall itself, but in the annexe, a cube-like, flat-roofed structure behind the main building, only partly hidden from view by trees and shrubs planted for that very purpose. Built of breeze block and brick cladding – a cost-saving measure at the time – it needed to be hidden, Tregalles thought. He entered the building and approached a counter barring further progress.
‘I’m here to see John Chadwell,’ he told the girl behind the counter.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ the girl asked.
‘I spoke to him earlier,’ Tregalles said, holding up his warrant card.
The girl barely glanced at it before lifting a hinged part of the counter and motioning him through. A telephone rang on a desk behind her. She picked it up and cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Fourth one on the left,’ she whispered, pointing to the corridor behind her.
The door to the fourth office on the left was partly open. A burly man with greying hair stood hunched over his desk, head bent as he studied a blueprint. Tregalles pushed the door wider and said, ‘Mr Chadwell?’
The man raised his head. ‘And who are you?’ he demanded.
‘I’m the man you told you were too busy to see this morning,’ Tregalles said as he entered the office and pushed the door shut behind him. ‘Detective Sergeant Tregalles, investigating the murder of a friend of yours, Roger Corbett.’
Chadwell glowered. ‘You’ve got no right to come barging in here like this,’ he said. ‘How do you think it looks to my colleagues?’
‘Like a good citizen helping us with our enquiries,’ Tregalles told him. ‘Unless, of course, there is some reason why you don’t want to help us find the person who killed Roger Corbett, or you have something to hide . . .?’
Chadwell’s scowl deepened. ‘Of course I don’t have anything to hide,’ he snapped. ‘The reason I put you off when you rang this morning was because I’m busy and it upsets my schedule.’
‘I imagine Mr Corbett felt much the same when someone killed him and upset his schedule,’ Tregalles observed drily. ‘Which brings me to the question I came here to ask you, Mr Chadwell. Why did Roger Corbett ring you, first at the office and then at home, last Tuesday afternoon?’ He pulled out a chair and sat down.
Chadwell’s face was set as he took his own seat. ‘I don’t know,’ he growled. ‘I could barely understand the man. He was drunk and rambling.’
‘And yet you stayed on the line for more than six minutes,’ Tregalles told him. ‘There must have been some sort of exchange between the two of you?’ He took out his notebook. ‘And I see that you rang Kevin Taylor’s number immediately following your conversation with Corbett. What was that about?’
Chadwell sat back in his chair and eyed Tregalles dispassionately. ‘All right, then,’ he said, glancing at his watch to emphasize that his time was limited. ‘The wife took the call, but she couldn’t make any sense out of what Roger was on about, so she handed it on to me. As I said, he was drunk, and it took a few minutes for me to understand what he was talking about, but I gathered that he was convinced that he was suspected of having had something to do with that old case you’ve been working on, the robbery and killing of Kevin Taylor’s father. I told him that was absurd, but he kept on and on about it, and it became clear to me that the man was on the verge of a total breakdown if someone couldn’t sort him out.
‘I’ll be honest with you, Sergeant, I didn’t know what to do about it. I mean I didn’t understand why Roger was calling me anyway. It’s not as if we’ve ever been close friends. I know one’s not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but quite frankly, Sergeant, I couldn’t stand the man. So I told him to phone his wife and have her come and take him home, but he said she was away somewhere. So, finally, I rang Kevin at his office, but they said he was out, so I tried his home but he wasn’t there either. Tried his mobile, but he must have had it switched off, because I didn’t get him.’
‘Why Kevin Taylor?’
‘Because Kevin’s always more or less looked out for Roger, though why he bothered I don’t know. As far as I was concerned, what Corbett needed was a good boot up the backside; sympathy just made him worse. Anyway, I couldn’t get Kevin, so I talked to Steph, and she persuaded me to go down there and get the man home. I wasn’t keen, but the wife was nagging me to go as well, so I went. Soft as they come, is Amy.’
‘To where, exactly?’
‘The Unicorn. That’s where he was calling from, but it turned out to be a waste of time, because Corbett wasn’t there when I got there. They told me he’d been in, but he’d been gone for some time.’
‘What time would that be?’ Tregalles asked.
Chadwell shrugged. ‘Five thirty or thereabouts,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you exactly.’
Tregalles consulted his notebook. ‘And yet your call to the Taylors ended at eighteen minutes past four. That’s a gap of an hour or more. Can you explain that?’
Clearly annoyed by the question, Chadwell said, ‘I had work to do. Work I had brought home to prepare for a council meeting that evening, and I didn’t see why I should just up and leave it and put myself out for a man who was drunk and wallowing in self-pity.’
‘I see.’ Tregalles closed his notebook and put it in his pocket. ‘And then what?’ he asked. ‘What did you do when you found that Mr Corbett had left the Unicorn?’
‘Went back home, of course,’ Chadwell told him. ‘Barely had time for dinner, such as it was, before I had to be back here in time for the weekly council meeting at seven.’
‘And your wife will confirm all this, I suppose?’ said Tregalles as he got to his feet.
Chadwell bridled. ‘Why do you need to talk to her?’ he demanded. ‘Isn’t my word good enough? It’s obvious you have the times of the phone calls, so what is there to verify?’
‘Verification is for your benefit as well as ours,’ Tregalles told him, ‘and I just have a couple of questions before I go. Would you mind telling me how tall you are, sir?’
The man frowned. ‘Five eleven,’ he said cautiously.
‘And what kind of car do you drive?’
‘A Jetta diesel, although I don’t see—’
‘Colour?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Chadwell snapped, ‘it’s black! Though God knows what that has to do with anything. Please close the door on your way out.’
‘Of course,’ Tregalles said amiably as he stood up. ‘And thank you for your cooperation, sir.’
Sitting in the car a few minutes later, with his jacket off and the doors open to allow what little breeze there was to flow through, Tregalles consulted his notebook, then punched in Chadwell’s home number. It rang five times before the answering machine cut in and a gentle voice with a distinct Welsh flavour asked him to leave a message.
No doubt that would be Amy Chadwell, Tregalles thought, recalling that, according to the information Paget had gleaned from his talk with Claire Hammond, Amy Chadwell hailed from Cardiff.
He didn’t leave a message. Instead, he rang the next number on his short list, and Stephanie Taylor answered. He identified himself, and as soon as he told her he would like to talk to her about Roger Corbett, she told him to come ahead. ‘Any time,’ she said. ‘I shall be here until at least three this afternoon. Although I’m not sure how much help I can be; my husband knew Roger much better than I did, but I’ll be happy to talk to you if you think it worthwhile.’
‘I do,’ Tregalles told her, ‘and I’ll be there shortly.’
Nice voice, Tregalles thought as he put the phone down and started the car. Intriguing and just a little bit sultry. He was looking forward to meeting Stephanie Taylor; even Molly had said she was a good-looking woman, and she’d practic-ally raved about the house and grounds.
Nor was he disappointed with either when Stephanie Taylor greeted him at the door, then led him through the house to the terrace at the back. Molly had described it so well, he almost felt he’d been there before. As for the lady of the house herself, Tregalles found it hard to keep his eyes from lingering on her trim figure and long, suntanned legs.
‘I thought you might like some iced tea,’ she said as she picked up the jug. ‘I can offer you a cold beer if you’d rather, but I suppose that’s against the rules, isn’t it?’
‘Afraid so, Mrs Taylor,’ he said regretfully. ‘Iced tea will be fine, thank you.’ He nodded in the direction of what looked like a small desk, complete with laptop and phone beside Stephanie’s chair. ‘Do you actually work out here?’ he asked.
Stephanie smiled. ‘Oh, yes – at least on days like this I do. It’s on wheels, so we can use it anywhere out here.’ She moved the desk back and forth to demonstrate. ‘But I’m sure that’s not what you came to talk about, is it Sergeant? Something to do with poor Roger’s death, you said? I still find it hard to believe that anyone would murder Roger. Are you quite sure it wasn’t an accident?’
‘You’re the second one to ask me that question,’ he said, ‘but, yes, that is what the evidence is telling us.’
Stephanie shrugged as she shook her head. ‘I suppose you must be right,’ she said, ‘but I still find it hard to believe. Roger of all people!’
Tregalles set his glass aside. ‘I believe you received a phone call from John Chadwell after he’d received a call from Mr Corbett last Tuesday afternoon. Is that right, Mrs Taylor?’
‘That’s right. He wanted to talk to Kevin, but Kevin wasn’t here, so he told me that Roger had rung him from a pub in town, saying he was convinced that the police thought he had been involved in the robbery and the killing of Kevin’s father.’ Stephanie wrinkled her nose. ‘True to form, John said he’d told Roger not to be such a damned fool, and to get a taxi and go home and sleep it off. But after hanging up, he began to have second thoughts, so, as I said, he phoned here to talk to Kevin.’
Stephanie sipped her drink, then set it aside. ‘I reminded John that Lisa was away, so there would be no one at home, and said I thought someone should go down there and make sure that Roger got home safely. I didn’t want to go myself, because Roger could be a bit of a handful and quite belligerent when he was drunk, and I didn’t fancy trying to get him home on my own, so I persuaded John to go down there instead. He grumbled a bit, but finally agreed to go.
‘But Roger had left by the time he got there, so John assumed that Roger had taken his advice and taken a taxi home. Unfortunately, John was pressed for time himself. He said he had to be at a council meeting that evening, so he went home. At least that’s what he told Kevin when he rang later that night.’
‘Do you happen to remember what time it was when Mr Chadwell called you that afternoon?’ Tregalles asked.
‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ Stephanie said. ‘I’d been working in the garden, and I knew I had to be in by four if I was to get everything done before our guests arrived that evening, and John’s phone call came a few minutes after that. Say five to ten past four, Sergeant.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But then, I think you knew that already, didn’t you, Sergeant?’
‘You said your husband wasn’t home when Mr Chadwell rang,’ Tregalles said, ignoring the question, ‘and we know that he wasn’t in his office when Mr Corbett tried to reach him there, so can you tell me where he was, Mrs Taylor?’
‘In Ludlow,’ Stephanie said. ‘The firm has an office there, and Kevin spends quite a bit of his time there. And before you ask, I should tell you that he sometimes switches off his mobile if he doesn’t want to be disturbed, and he had it off that day.’
‘What time did he get home?’
‘Shortly after six,’ she said, ‘but—’
‘Did either of you go out again that evening?’
‘Not that evening, no, because we were having friends in, but I did go out about five to pick up some wine and one or two other things for our guests. I can give you their names if you wish?’
‘No need for that, I’m sure, Mrs Taylor,’ Tregalles said as he pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘But I will leave you my card, and you might ask your husband to call me at that number to confirm where he was last Tuesday afternoon.’