The Killing Club (18 page)

‘She’s doing pretty well, then.’

As they resumed eating their spaghetti, Swift’s phone rang. It was Ruth Hartwell, calling from the hospital. Being Ruth the first words she spoke were an apology for disturbing him at home at such a late hour.

She explained to him what her consultant’s current thinking was. ‘He’s advising me to stay in one more night,’ she said. ‘My blood pressure’s leapt up, which is hardly surprising in the circumstances. I’m inclined to be compliant about his recommendation but there are so many things worrying me.’

‘Just take your time, Mrs Hartwell.’

Ruth began by describing the visit made to her house by the man calling himself Mac the Knife, an account whose details were remarkably consistent with the story Craig had told.

‘I should have told you before,’ she apologized. ‘I buried my head in the sand and pretended that all the nastiness this man had brought with him would simply melt away. But, of course, it was a vain hope. He tracked me down when I was walking in the park and threatened me again regarding these photographs he wanted. He got out some scissors and got hold of my dog. That’s when I blacked out.’

Swift fumed silently at the contemplation of the cold cowardice of a man who would stalk a gentle woman like Ruth and make her life a misery.

‘Craig came to visit me this morning,’ she went on. ‘And Harriet arrived shortly afterwards.’ She stopped. Swift heard her let out a long sigh. ‘You’ve met them both,’ she said, ‘you can imagine that it was not a happy situation. Harriet’s gone off back to London in a huff and Craig’s … simply gone. I’m very concerned about them both. However, Harriet can look after herself rather better than he can. Can you do something to help?’

‘We’ll put out an alert for him,’ Swift said.

‘Yes, thank you.’ She sounded as though she had little hope of a good outcome for Craig – and Swift was in silent agreement.

‘Mrs Hartwell,’ he said. ‘Regarding the photographs you mentioned, the ones Christian’s solicitor gave you? Have you looked at them?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Did they throw any light on Christian’s death?’

A pause. ‘Not really. No.’

He allowed her time to elaborate, but she remained quiet. He knew that the issue of Charles Brunswick’s presence in one of the shots would have concerned her, but decided that if she didn’t want to talk about it, then neither would he, not until Cat had done her follow-up on the flame-haired surgeon. What he did tell her was that he was now in possession of photographs found in the kitchen of her house. He gave her a brief description of why and how this had come about. Many of his clients and witnesses would have blown a fuse on hearing how their house had been entered without permission. Threats of recrimination would have ensued. Maybe legal advice sought. He and his colleagues had been through all of this before. But Ruth Hartwell instantly appreciated that the police had been acting in her best interests. But she still made no mention of Brunswick’s appearance in the photographs.

Swift could hear the disquiet and fatigue in her voice. He was on the point of offering reassurances of how his team would be doing all they could to further the enquiry and find Craig, and then ending the call when she spoke once more.

‘In addition to the photographs, Christian’s solicitor also gave me a mobile phone which he had left in her keeping. He had asked her to give it to me in the event of his death.’

Swift felt prickles raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

‘I’m afraid I didn’t quite know what to do with it. I put it in a drawer in the kitchen. I’m very sorry. I know I should have told you about it. I should have told you everything,’ she added, sadly. ‘I’ve been rather stupid.’

‘No, you were in a state of great anxiety,’ Swift said. ‘It’s hard to act in a calm, impartial way when you’re both grieving and under threat. There’s no need to apologize.’

‘Did you find it?’ she asked. ‘The phone?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t realize you could take photographs with mobile phones,’ she said. ‘The son of the lady in the bed next to me visited this afternoon, and he was showing her pictures of her grandchild on his phone. And I had this thought that maybe the pictures Mac the Knife wants are on Christian’s phone.’

Swift closed his eyes briefly. ‘Can you remember exactly where you left it?’

‘It’s in the kitchen drawer just below the kettle. I keep all my little odds and ends in there. If you want to go back to the house to look for it, there’s a back door key underneath the watering can near the outside tap.’

Swift shook his head in quiet despair at Ruth’s security arrangements. ‘Right, Mrs Hartwell, thank you for that, we’ll get on to it right away.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m rather tired now, so you must excuse me. Good night.’

Swift slid his phone shut, and glanced toward Cat who had been listening and watching carefully.

‘So?’ she asked.

Swift related the salient features of Ruth’s lamentably delayed release of information.

‘Our Mrs Hartwell is a glorious mixture of shrewdness, insight and almost childlike innocence,’ Cat said.

‘Yes. You can’t help admiring her,’ Swift said. ‘And now I’m just wondering who will get to Christian Hartwell’s mobile phone first? And whether it will be of any interest.’

‘It’s either still nestling in Ruth’s kitchen drawer near to the kettle, or Mac the Knife has already got it, courtesy of the not so cunningly hidden back door key.’

‘Or Craig has it,’ Swift pointed out.

‘In which case he could be in some danger.’

Swift phoned in to the station and asked for an alert to be put out for Craig Titmus. And a further search to be made of Ruth Hartwell’s place.

‘Not Craig’s good day,’ Cat said. ‘Destined to be set on by Mac the Knife or the police.’ She reached for her glass of wine, took a sip and then fell silent, her features still and reflective.

Swift knew that Jeremy had stepped centre stage once more.

Cat looked across at him. ‘I need to see Jeremy before I go to London, face up to things and tell him it’s all over.’

‘Is there any way I can help?’ he said, knowing the question was pointless.

She sighed. ‘I don’t know, Ed, but thanks for asking.’

She replaced her fork beside the mainly untouched spaghetti on to her plate and took a sip of wine. ‘I think I can handle him,’ she remarked with a wry grin.

‘I’m sure of it,’ Swift agreed. ‘I’ve always regarded you as a force to be reckoned with.’

Her grin broke out again. ‘Hey, I’m not sure whether to be flattered or not. You make me sound somewhat intimidating.’

‘You can intimidate me any time you like, Cat,’ he told her, amazed to hear the unmistakable flirtation in his voice.

Craig was exhausted. It was an hour after midnight. He’d put as much distance between himself, the slag who’d tried to get one over on him at the pub, and the market town of Thirsk. He’d considered jumping on a late-night bus bound for Leeds, thinking he might be able to lose himself in a big city. He had money to survive on for quite some time before it would be necessary to get a job. But when the bus opened its doors and people crowded into it, he changed his mind. Someone in that throng might have seen him in the pub, maybe even in the car park with that thieving bitch. Panic had risen up inside him. He’d set off on foot down the road the bus had taken, simply walking, merely taking one step at a time without having any sense of purpose. He kept patting his pocket, ensuring that the wad of money was still there. The mobile was still in a front pocket of his jeans. He realized that if he was caught and searched it would look very bad when they found what he was carrying. But he needed the money, he simply couldn’t chuck that away. The phone was another matter. It was no use to him with a dead battery. Maybe he should just ditch it. Confusion and despair held him in their grip – together with an overwhelming desire to sleep.

Cat got the 12.05 train from Leeds. The announcement over the train intercom told her it would get her into King’s Cross at 14.20. Which gave her plenty of time to speak with Charles Brunswick, whose secretary had told her that he had a full operating list that day, but that he was usually willing to speak to visitors on urgent matters during the breaks in surgery. Cat had declined the secretary’s offer to pencil in an appointment. She didn’t want to give Brunswick time to get his thoughts together on what to say to her before they met.

She sat for a while, watching the outside world flash by, the vast, seemingly unending green fields of England. Cows, sheep and horses dotted the landscape like children’s toy farm animals. In between her reflections on the Hartwell case, thoughts of her meeting with Jeremy earlier on flashed into her mind.

The interchange between them had not upset her as much as she had feared, although she recognized that she could be blocking the emotion out, putting a stopper on a bottle which could blow its cork later. The main thing was that she had been able to state her feelings calmly and rationally. She had cut short Jeremy’s lavish apologies and self-recriminations and told him that woman-bashing was a total no-go area as far as she was concerned. Her work in the police had taught her that violence of an abusive one-way traffic kind was usually addictive. It was there in the perpetrator, it didn’t just go away.

He had gone rather quiet after that, perhaps because of the humiliation of being implicitly compared with what he would regard as mindless thugs, members of the lower orders who didn’t know how to control their wild emotions. And perhaps, also, because he sensed her utter refusal to continue their relationship. She might be able to forgive him, but she would never let him back into her life.

She had been lucky to bag a table seat on the crowded train and she took out her notebook, laid it on the table and listed the main points the team knew so far about Charles Brunswick. After that, she considered her approach when questioning him, something to keep her mind occupied, even though she knew from experience that an interview always took its own direction once you started, providing you had your background facts and theories firmly lodged in your memory.

She placed her notebook back in her bag and looked out of the window once more. After a time, she became aware that the woman sitting opposite kept taking furtive glances up from her laptop, her gaze irresistibly drawn to Cat’s split lip and her blackening eye.

Cat gave her a neutral smile, before putting on her dark glasses and resting her head back against the seat.

The train pulled in two minutes before time. There was a one-day strike in the Underground, so she joined the taxi queue and after a wait of twenty-five minutes was on her way to The Wentbridge.

Her driver apologized for taking a devious route. ‘It’s a long way round,’ he explained, ‘but we’ll get there quicker in the end. When the tube’s not working it’s hell on wheels around these parts.’

Cat noticed the
Evening Standard
headlines on the billboards as they drove down the back streets.

‘Tipper claims new victim,’ she read out loud, aiming to catch the attention of her driver. ‘Is this related to the recent drownings in the Regents Canal?’ The national news had picked up references to the drownings after a second body had been pulled out of the same stretch of the canal fairly soon after the first. Police are considering foul play, the reporters had written, still in cautious mode.

‘That’s right. This one’s number three. It looks like some nutter has taken a fancy to pushing down-and-out drunks into the drink. The police had the first two down as accidents, but now they’re talking serial killing.’

‘Have they got any leads?’

‘Well, they’re not for giving anything away for the moment. Which means they ain’t got any, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yup,’ Cat agreed.

The driver made a series of death-defying right turns and then the front of the hospital miraculously appeared ahead. It always surprised Cat how some of the central London hospitals appeared to simply nestle between the high-street shops, their entrances hardly more distinguishable from their retail neighbours. ‘Hey! Good route planning,’ she said.

‘Yep,’ her driver agreed. ‘Never mind your sat navs, it’s your memory gets you round this city.’

Cat gave him a generous tip and made her way up to the cardiothoracic department.

Charles Brunswick’s secretary was a young brunette: attractive, charming and warm.

Cat introduced herself, showing her warrant and reassuring the secretary that she was making routine enquiries and hoped Mr Brunswick could help her.

‘He’s due out of theatre in around fifteen minutes,’ the secretary said. ‘Would you like me to ring through and tell him you’re here.’

‘No need. I’ll just wait.’

The secretary observed Cat’s injuries for a few seconds, then jumped up from her desk and took her down the corridor to a small waiting room. ‘Do please make yourself comfortable here, Inspector Fallon. Can I get you a coffee?’

Cat smiled. ‘No, but thanks for the offer.’

After the secretary had left, Cat positioned herself beside the door, keeping an eye on the secretary’s room, alert to any sign of Brunswick’s arrival and possibly swift departure when he heard the news of the profession of his visitor.

After fifteen minutes Brunswick duly arrived in his secretary’s office, pausing at her desk. There was a short, hushed discussion, after which Brunswick strode forward, heading for the waiting room.

‘Inspector Fallon!’ he exclaimed, seizing her hand and pumping it warmly.

Bloody hell! He’s a bit of a stunner, was Cat’s instant female reaction as she ran her eyes over the rangy, muscular frame, noting the bright blue eyes lit with intelligence and charm, the chiselled bone structure, the fantastic crowning of flame curls. He was dressed in blood-stained theatre scrubs which in no way diminished his charisma – quite the opposite. Cat did not envy his wife; this guy must have armies of women drooling over him wherever he went.

‘Hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long,’ he said, gesturing her to sit down. ‘Just closing up on a heart transplant.’

As one does, thought Cat.

He smiled. ‘Technically, a transplant’s not a very difficult procedure,’ he elaborated, as though tuning in to her admiration of his prowess. ‘You’ve been in the wars,’ he commented, eyeing Cat’s facial injuries.

‘Yes, I have,’ she said.

‘Have you been checked out at A&E?’

‘Don’t seem to have found the time,’ she admitted.

He took another glance at the bruising on her face, this time as a professional. ‘I think you’ll mend quite satisfactorily without the aid of medics,’ he told her. He grinned, clearly up for a little pleasurable, flirtatious banter.

‘Mr Brunswick,’ Cat said, ‘when you spoke to DCI Swift a few days ago, you told him that you hadn’t seen Christian Hartwell recently.’

The grin faded.

Cat showed him the photograph of himself taken at the lap-dancing club.

‘Oh dear,’ he said.

‘We believe these photographs were taken by Christian Hartwell. And that they were taken very recently.’ She waited, wondering if he would try to make a denial which, of course, she could not at this point demolish with the presentation of clear factual evidence. They still didn’t know for sure if these images came from a camera Christian had used, or whether he had taken them.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘You’re quite right. They were taken a couple of weeks ago.’

‘By Christian Hartwell?’

‘Yep. He used to carry his camera around with him if he thought there was going to be something of interest to point his lens at.’

‘They let him take snaps at a lap-dancing club?’ Cat asked.

‘Oh, he never bothered about the restrictions of taking snaps, and he never seemed to get caught out.’

‘And what were the circumstances that evening you went to this particular lap-dancing club?’

‘Chris and I got together with a few pals and went out on the town. We had supper at J. Sheekey, then went on to the club for a few drinks … and entertainment.’

‘A boys’ night out?

‘Yeah.’

‘Nothing wrong in that,’ Cat said.

‘I’m beginning to think I’m getting rather too old for that kind of thing,’ Brunswick admitted, looking boyishly sheepish and totally beguiling.

Except Cat wasn’t for being beguiled. She recognized the power of Brunswick’s charm, but it cut no ice with her. ‘Why did you lie about not having seen Chris recently?’

He considered. ‘I didn’t want to get involved.’

‘You didn’t want to get involved with a murder investigation … is that what you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Brunswick, but I’m afraid you are involved. But thanks for not lying this time.’ She gave him a brief glance of reassurance.

‘I’ve got a big interview coming up for a key post,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t want anything rocking the boat.’

‘Director of Surgery,’ Cat said. ‘We know about that.’

Brunswick registered faint surprise, but said nothing.

Cat was hoping to get him on the back foot, make him wonder if they’d got the information from his wife, or from police investigations. And if the latter, then how much more did they know?

‘Were you and Chris on friendly terms?’ she asked.

‘Sure.’

‘When DCI Swift spoke with your wife she told him that the two of you didn’t see eye to eye. She said that Christian was very laid back and all for letting things take their course, but you liked to be more proactive.’

‘That was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘We got along OK recently. We haven’t met up much but he’s always been good as a drinking pal when he come up to town. In fact, I guess I’ve seen him a lot more than Harriet in recent years.’

‘And you saw Chris two weeks ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just the one evening?’

‘Yes. And before you ask, he was on good form and seemed his usual relaxed self.’

‘Tell me what happened at In Salah.’

The abrupt introduction of the subject brought a startled look to his face. ‘It was a very long time ago,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’ His tone was now noticeably guarded.

‘The circumstances surrounding the murder of one of your friends in a remote part of the desert.’

Brunswick sighed. ‘He wasn’t really a friend, just a fellow student on a field trip. Harriet has already told DCI Swift about the circumstances.’

‘Yes. Now I’d like
you
to tell me.’

Brunswick looked at his watch.

‘You can always do it at the local police station, if you’d prefer.’

‘OK.’ He began to tell the story which began with the appearance of an irate Arab. Cat had read Swift’s transcript of the information Harriet had offered several times and she had it almost off by heart.

She was interested to note that Charles Brunswick’s account matched that of his wife very closely.

‘I had no alibi,’ Charles said, as he reached his conclusion. ‘I was eventually charged with Hugh’s murder but then the police decided to drop the charges.’

‘And no one else was ever charged?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’ He sliced a brilliant blue glance at Cat. ‘You can see why I didn’t want all this raked up. The press would love it. My interview board would not.’

‘I appreciate that.’

The blue eyes were still fixed on her.

‘I’m not going to give anything to the press … not at this stage,’ Cat told him. She folded up her notebook and got to her feet.

His lips parted slightly. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘For now.’

She half expected a cheeky grin to break out on his face. Maybe a little quip along the lines of whether he should surrender his passport to the police and on no account leave the country.

Instead, Brunswick looked both solemn and relieved.

Which made Cat pretty certain he had not been entirely generous with the whole truth.

On leaving the hospital, she phoned back to her station in Yorkshire and asked for the address of the nearest police station from where she was now standing. On arriving there five minutes later, she showed the constable on the desk her warrant card and introduced herself as Inspector Cat Fallon.

‘What can I do for you, ma’am?’ the constable asked, staring at her colourful face with the blend of curiosity and concern Cat was becoming accustomed to.

She told him she was on the investigation team of a murder in the north-west Bradford division.

‘Ooh,’ the constable said, forming his mouth into a round O. ‘The land of windswept moors and curries.’

Cat smiled. ‘Indeed. We have excellent facilities up north.’ She leaned forward slightly. ‘Can you tell me which nick is dealing with the case of the drunks being pushed into the drink … as my cabbie referred to it?’

‘Most certainly can, ma’am.’ He scribbled a name, address and contact number on his pad, tore off the sheet and gave it to her, his eyes lit up with a curiosity and excitement he did not give voice to.