The town’s heraldic device of three axes decorated the mahogany panels covering the walls. A high-end artist had been hired to make these emblems. Typically, as with the Princess Diana memorial in London’s Hyde Park, there had been more reliance placed on the hype surrounding the artist’s name than on discovering if he had the skill required to carry out the work.
The council certainly hadn’t got their money’s worth, was Rafferty’s opinion as he studied the large room. The emblems had only been finished for two years, to his recollection, but already the red enamel the artist had used was flaking off the axes.
Rafferty scowled. There were any number of local craftsmen who could have done a better job and for a fraction of the price this hyped artist had cost, but their names didn’t carry the cachet that the council members seemed to consider their due.
The rest of the parlour followed the depressing and shoddy example of the flaking emblems. The carpet, another expensively commissioned item, this time from a fashionable Scottish weaver, was wearing thin in places, the red of the Essex axes in the weave already fading in the sunlight that flooded through the south-facing windows. The pity was that under the carpet was a glorious, golden parquet floor that Rafferty recalled from a previous, unofficial, visit to the parlour.
Idris Khan, his mayoral chain once more resting on his shoulders prior to attending another official function, bustled in to meet his visitor. And when questioned, he wasn’t long in emulating the self-justifying tones of Seward’s school bully accomplice, Nick Marshall.
Clearly, Khan had decided that the more prudent, stiff upper lip, British half of his racial inheritance would serve him best, for his words and demeanour were both more reserved than during their previous conversations.
‘In answer to your question, Inspector, and as I have already told you, I really have no idea who could have killed poor Sir Rufus. I saw no one enter his bedroom – I certainly didn’t. As I told you, my wife and I left the party early and—‘
Rafferty broke in. ‘Yes, but you came back, didn’t you, Mr Khan? A fact both you and your wife failed to reveal at your initial interviews.’
Idris Khan, now seated on his throne-like chair behind another enormous lump of mahogany, pursed his lips. Had he really expected to be able to conceal his late return to the party? Rafferty wondered. If they hadn’t discovered it from the security men, they would still have had the evidence from the security camera.
Perhaps he had thought his prominent position would preclude him from police suspicion and the investigation of his movements? It wouldn’t be the first time that a VIP had required disillusioning in this regard.
When Khan said nothing, Rafferty asked, ‘So what was it that made you return?’
Khan cleared his throat. ‘My wife had managed to forget her evening bag.’
‘Unusual for a woman to forget such an intimate item.’
‘I’m sure that’s true, for most women, but my wife doesn’t habitually carry a handbag. She only tends to use one when she accompanies me on official, mayoral functions.’
‘You found the bag?’
‘Indeed. It was in the main bathroom near the entrance, where she left it.’
‘Your wife didn’t return to the party?’
‘As I imagine you already know, Inspector, she remained outside in the corridor while I went and looked for the bag. I only expected to be a short while, which, I recall, was all that it took — a minute or so, as I’m sure the security guards can verify.’
As it happened, the security guards had proved to be as lax in observation and timing as they had proved to be in checking the invitations of the later arrivals. The security camera, of course, had better recall and made mock of Idris Khan’s claim that he had remained in the suite for only ‘a minute or two’.
When Rafferty challenged him on this, the mayor flushed up sufficiently to blend in nicely with the red décor of his parlour.
‘Very well, Inspector, since you are so insistent, I admit I may have been in the bathroom for slightly longer. I suffer from an unfortunate malady,’ he told Rafferty stiffly. ‘Something akin to Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I found I had to make urgent use of the facilities.’
Rafferty gave an understanding nod. ‘I see. And your GP will confirm this?’
Khan’s flush faded to leave a strange, waxen pallor on his light brown skin. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have not consulted my GP. It is a recent problem only and one I have been treating myself, with over-the-counter remedies.’
Rafferty nodded again and, with his previously perfectly correct English in retreat, the mayor burst out. ‘But surely you can’t be suspecting me of this murder? What for would I do this thing? I have no reason to want to kill Sir Seward, no reason at all.’
‘Then I’m sure this investigation will exonerate you,’ he told the mayor with a smoothness that was foreign to him.
But his words failed to reassure Idris Khan. The parallel furrows above his brown eyes deepened. From somewhere in his red mayoral robes, he found a set of beads which he proceeded to run through his fingers while staring with a fixed expression at Rafferty.
For a moment, Rafferty thought the mayor had pulled a rosary from his pocket, but then he realised his mistake. For whatever reason, Idris Khan was sufficiently rattled to need the comfort of worry beads.
But what reason would Idris Khan have to want Seward dead? Rafferty mused as he stared at Khan and his fretful fingers. He was some years older than Seward, so clearly had not been one of the dead man’s schoolboy victims. And his wife was some years Seward’s junior, so the same reasoning applied in reverse in her case.
Had Seward somehow damaged one or more of Khan’s many business interests? Or perhaps, given the dead man’s goatish tendencies where women were concerned, was it possible the mayor had a more personal reason for wanting Seward dead?
But if he did, it had been plain during their conversation, that he wasn’t about to reveal it to Rafferty. And in view of his insistence that it was his wife’s handbag rather than her cocaine tin for which they had returned to the party, it had become clear that a broaching of his back-scratching deal vis-à-vis keeping quiet about the superintendent’s attendance at the reception, wasn’t an option at present.
Disgruntled that his hopes had been so prematurely dashed, after a few more questions that only gained answers of a non-revelatory nature, Rafferty said, ‘I imagine I will need to speak to you again, sir. I’ll see myself out.’
As he made his way to the car park at the rear of the Town Hall, Rafferty found himself musing on the interview with Idris Khan. The security guards, Jake Arthur and Andy Watling, had at least been able to agree with the tape’s evidence — Mrs Khan hadn’t re-entered Seward’s suite. But, for whatever reason, Idris Khan had been in the suite for long enough to both retrieve his wife’s handbag and kill Seward. Neither act would have taken much time.
If he had killed Seward, it was unfortunate for him that Marcus Canthorpe had discovered his boss’s dead body no more than ten seconds after Khan and his wife had said goodnight to the security staff and begun to walk back down the corridor to the lift. They could hardly ignore the ensuing hubbub and return home. So, whether they had wanted to be or not, they were ushered back into Seward’s suite by the surely no longer bored security guards and, along with the guests who had elected to remain at the party to the bitter end, were eventually persuaded into an empty suite to await the arrival of Rafferty and the rest of the team.
When he reached his car and climbed in, Rafferty sat brooding. If Idris Khan continued to insist hat it had been his wife’s handbag rather than her tin of cocaine that had forced their return to Seward’s suite broaching the idea of some mutual discretion became impossible. It also meant that increasing Llewellyn’s suspicions by excluding him from the interview had been unnecessary.
As he turned out of the car park and drove back to the station to pick up Llewellyn so they could conduct the remainder of the day’s interviews, he wondered if his return would herald another inquisition.
Chapter Eleven
Bested in his hope of being able to come to discreet agreement with Idris Khan, later that day, Rafferty decided he ought to make a start on investigating one of the other possibilities in the case.
According to Marcus Canthorpe when Rafferty rang and questioned him on the subject, Seward’s solicitors, McCann, Doolittle and Steel, were near his Norfolk home rather than in London, as Rafferty had expected.
Canthorpe had put him straight when he had asked about it – ‘He only uses the McCann firm for personal stuff. All the business legal work is done by a City firm, as you’d expect.’
‘I see. So McCann, Doolittle and Steel would have written up Sir Rufus’s will?’
Canthorpe agreed. ‘He dealt with Philip Metcalfe, one of the partners.’
‘If you could let me have their address and phone number, it would be helpful.’
‘Of course.’ Canthorpe rattled off the details immediately without having to check them.
Luckily, when Llewellyn rang McCann, Doolittle and Steel to make an appointment, it was to find that Philip Metcalfe, the partner who dealt with Seward’s affairs, had had a cancellation for that very afternoon and if they could get themselves to the Norwich office around lunchtime, he would be free to see them.
After he had confided this information to Rafferty, Llewellyn, clearly still put out at being kept on the side lines, commented, ‘Unless, that is, this is yet another interview you would prefer to do solo?’
Rafferty, in the hope that he wouldn’t have to endure Llewellyn’s reserved and distant act during the long drive to Norwich, tried to jolly him along. ‘And why, my handsome Welsh dresser, would I want to do that when you’re being such stimulating company?’
Clearly Llewellyn thought this comment undeserving of a reply. The journey to Norwich was conducted in the frosty silence Rafferty had predicted.
The name of McCann, Doolittle and Steel might have sounded as dusty and Dickensian as Jarndyce and Jarndyce, but the solicitors’ business premises were modern; a three-storey office building on the northern side of Norwich, that could have been erected no earlier than the 1970s.
Inside, it was sleek and streamlined and like no solicitor’s offices that Rafferty had ever seen. Starved of congenial conversation during the frosty drive, he remarked on it to the middle-aged receptionist while they awaited Philip Metcalfe’s secretary.
She smiled. ‘I know what you mean, Inspector. I still miss the old building, even though it had four flights of stairs and the once-elegant rooms were partitioned off into cramped offices that meant you had to breathe in as you squeezed past a colleague. But even with all its drawbacks as a business premises, it was a beautiful building, Georgian and still with all its original features. For all its mod cons, this place is a bit soulless by comparison.’
Rafferty nodded. He, too, found the streamlined modern building pretty soulless, but then he felt this way about the majority of modern buildings: their architects had made no provision for the human being’s need for beauty, for food for the spirit. Me and Prince Charles? he murmured to himself. We’re Blood Brothers. ‘Still, I suppose it’s more comfortable here?’
‘Yes. And it’s certainly warmer, though the old place, being in the centre of Norwich, was much handier for the shops.’ She nodded over Rafferty’s shoulder. ‘There’s Claire, Mr Metcalfe’s secretary, come to take you up.’
Rafferty thanked the receptionist. He and Llewellyn followed Claire into the lift and they were whisked up to the second floor. In no time at all they were seated in Metcalfe’s large, expensively appointed, and book-lined office.
Seward’s personal solicitor, from his gelled hair to his beautifully manicured nails, looked as sleek as the firm’s black marble reception desk. Still, he was pleasant enough and proved helpful. He had even got his secretary to retrieve Seward’s will from storage in the two hours that had elapsed between Llewellyn’s telephone call and their arrival; a veritable feat of efficiency for a solicitor, in Rafferty’s experience of the breed.
‘Not that I really need the document itself,.’ Metcalfe told them with a wry smile. ‘I pretty much know the details by heart.’
‘Really?’ Rafferty was curious. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I rewrote the wretched thing for Sir Rufus every few weeks. He liked to play the will game.’
‘The will game?’ Rafferty repeated. And although his repetition of Philip Metcalfe’s phrase sounded suitably puzzled, he had already guessed what form this ‘will game’ might take before the solicitor responded.
‘The “who will I disinherit this week?”, game was one of Sir Rufus’s more frequently indulged hobbies,’ Metcalfe told them with another wry smile that revealed teeth as gleaming and perfect as an American movie star’s. ‘Though I shouldn’t complain. Keeping up with all Sir Rufus Seward’s rewritten wills was what might be called a nice little earner. I must admit that I have reason to regret that his death brings this nice little earner to an end.’
‘So you’re saying that his heirs were disinherited regularly?’
‘Oh yes.’ Metcalfe nodded. ‘I think I can agree with that statement.’
Rafferty found himself nodding in response. It was a possibility he remembered thinking likely himself. What curious ways the wealthy found to amuse themselves. ‘I shall need details of his heirs,’ he told the solicitor, ‘and whether they’re currently in or out as well as a copy of the will itself.’
‘Certainly.’ Metcalfe pressed the intercom that presumably went through to his secretary’s office and asked Claire to come in. She appeared almost immediately and took the will off for photocopying.
‘Perhaps, while we wait, Mr Metcalfe, you could give us the gist of the latest will and who’s in and who’s out?’
‘Of course.’ Philip Metcalfe leaned back in his black leather executive chair, closed his eyes and quoted from memory as Llewellyn took notes: ‘To each of my three ex-wives, photographs of the luxurious foreign residences I’ve acquired since they left me and which they will never have the pleasure of visiting; to my sister, Jennifer, the Caribbean house and three million pounds; to my nephew, Garth, three million pounds and the apartment in New York; to my nephew, Jason, three million pounds and the villa in Rome; to my nephew, Rufus Junior, a photo of my Norfolk estate and an unmarked calendar for the current year.’