Authors: Bill Kitson
Clara had found a bank of switches. She flicked them in turn, and the whole of the basement was bathed in light. ‘Bloody hell!’ Pearce exclaimed.
Around the walls were dozens of photos, all nudes, all in suggestive poses. There were only two subjects, Nash realized after close examination; the young girl whose image he had found in the desk, and the woman who resembled Dean Wilson.
‘The dirty bastard,’ Clara muttered.
‘I’m not so sure.’ Nash pointed to the images. ‘I’d say these were the two loves of his life. I’d agree if there were photos of dozens of girls, but there are only two who posed for him. And if I’m right’ – he stared at the young girl’s face again – ‘I’d say Neil
Ormondroyd had extremely good taste.’
‘Yes, but taking porno photos like this, it’s perverted,’ Clara objected.
‘I’d agree with that but for the expressions on their faces. They were obviously up for it, clearly madly in love with Ormondroyd. There’s no way they could have been coerced into allowing these to be taken, or have it happen when they were drugged or drunk.’
‘Mike,’ Pearce called, ‘look at this.’ The photo was of the blonde, taken in Ormondroyd’s study. As with the others, the pose was highly suggestive. ‘Check out the wall behind her.’
Nash grinned. ‘What wall?’ He looked closer. ‘Oh, well spotted, Viv.’ Behind the girl, a calendar showed the date quite clearly. ‘That settles it. This is definitely not Naomi. However, I’m still curious to find out who she is.’
‘Do you think she might be involved in Ormondroyd’s murder?’ Clara asked.
‘She could be, I suppose. But what I’m more interested in is Linda Wilson. If, as we suspect, these other photos are of her and she is involved in Ormondroyd’s death, why would she choose to resurface now, after all this time?’
When Nash reached the CID suite next morning, Pearce handed the DI a sheet of paper. ‘We were speculating about the younger girl in those photos. The one you thought looked like Naomi Macaulay. I did a bit of checking up. I think we can discount it being her mother.’
Nash glanced down at the paper. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘I did a search of the
Netherdale Gazette
online archive. I simply typed the surname Macaulay and a load of stuff came up. Most of it was business reports about Peter Macaulay, but I spotted this article among the rest.’
‘Good work, Viv.’ Nash started to read the feature, which described a charity gala held in Bishopton the previous summer, the proceeds of which were going to a famine relief project. The chair of the organizing committee was Mrs Muriel Macaulay.
Nash recalled something Jack Binns had said about the family. ‘They spend all week making money, and all day Sunday negotiating with God how best to take it with them when they go.’ Reading the article, it seemed that the desk sergeant’s cynical opinion could well be justified. The smugness of Muriel Macaulay’s expression seemed to back that up. One thing for certain, she bore no resemblance to the girl in the photo. To describe Muriel Macaulay as plain would have been tantamount to flattery.
‘We need to establish the girl’s identity if only to eliminate her from our enquiries. There is an obvious family likeness to the Macaulay family, so we need to check them out.’
‘Might that rule out Peter Macaulay as Ormondroyd’s killer?’ Pearce asked.
‘I never rule anyone out, Viv, but go and ask Jack about the Macaulay family. If anyone knows, he will. No, you can’t. I’ve just remembered, Jack’s on leave until Monday.’
‘In that case, I’ll give Tom Pratt a ring. He might give us some idea.’ Viv returned a while later. ‘OK, here’s all Tom can remember about the Macaulay dynasty. The family were farmers originally, but after the Second World War, Duncan Macaulay diversified and opened an agricultural merchants business. He struggled for a long time, but then he merged that company with one owned by Stephen Wilson. Wilson was a building contractor, and the new enterprise, Wilson Macaulay Industries, went from strength to strength.’
‘Strange combination,’ Nash said.
‘That’s what I thought, but Tom said they built milking parlours and the like, all sorts of farm buildings. Anyhow, Duncan Macaulay became a real entrepreneur, a risk taker, and by all accounts not above doing some very shady deals in the pursuit of wealth. Tom’s father once told him the reason Macaulay was a Methodist, not a Catholic, was he would have blocked the confessional for hours getting penance for his sins.’ Pearce grinned. ‘Duncan died young; suffered a heart attack, which surprised a lot of people, who weren’t aware he possessed one. His son Christopher took over the business alongside Stephen Wilson. A few years later, Stephen Wilson died and Christopher was left in sole control.’
‘Didn’t Stephen Wilson have any family to join the business?’
‘Tragically, his son died in an RTA and later his grandson had to leave the business to care for his children after their mother died.’
Nash nodded. ‘I get it. So this Stephen Wilson was Linda and Dean Wilson’s great-grandfather.’
‘That’s correct. Linda joined the business when she was old enough and was doing very well for herself. How well, nobody realized until she fled the country with a few million.’
‘And Christopher Macaulay is still the boss?’
‘According to Tom, he’s officially semi-retired now and leaves the day-to-day running of the business to Peter, his son. However, Tom reckons when any big decisions have to be made, it’ll be Christopher that makes them, not Peter. Rumour is that Peter is terrified of his father, who has a reputation for being arrogant and quick-tempered.’
‘Does Christopher Macaulay have any other children?’
‘Tom reckons there was a daughter. He believes she’d be about seven years or so younger than Peter. However, as far as Tom is aware, she went to study at an American university and he reckons she stayed there.’
‘Does Tom know her name?’
Viv shook his head. ‘I asked him, and he said if he’d heard it, he can’t recall it. I can do some more digging if you like.’
‘No, you’ve done fine. If we need any more, we can resort to the computer later.’
Nash turned to Clara. ‘I wonder if that could be Peter Macaulay’s sister in the photo, but if that’s the case, and she’s been in the States for nearly twenty years, I think we can safely rule her out of any involvement in Ormondroyd’s murder. Which puts us firmly back to square one.’
Nash was eating the sandwich brought for him by Pearce when his phone rang. He nodded to the DC to answer it. Viv listened to the caller for a moment then thanked them. ‘SOCO have finished at Ormondroyd’s office. There’s very little to report, no sign of forced entry, only the expected fingerprints. But they’ve taken away his blotter for testing. They seem to think there is some writing on it hidden under the blood, so they’re going to try and decipher it. Apart from that, the office is clear for us.’
‘Right, we’ll collect Clara as soon as we’ve eaten and get across there.’
When they arrived at the solicitor’s premises, Mrs Lane met them by the reception desk. She looked forlorn, and a little bewildered, Nash thought. The cause of this was explained when she
spoke. ‘There are people ringing up, asking questions about the work Mr Ormondroyd was doing for them; questions that I’m unable to answer. Some of them are getting quite impatient. One or two were even rude. I simply don’t know what to do.’
‘Isn’t there anyone who could help? Someone qualified, I mean?’ Nash asked.
‘I don’t know of anyone.’
‘Have you thought of approaching the Law Society? They must have someone they appoint in cases such as this, a sort of locum. I can’t believe the same thing hasn’t happened before within small law practices.’
‘That’s a good idea, I never thought of that. I’ll phone them and ask for advice.’
‘Now, if you would give us the keys, we’ll get on with what we have to do.’
She held the bunch out. ‘Your forensic officer told me I hadn’t to go into Mr Ormondroyd’s office until after you were finished.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go in there again.’
The office looked much as Nash remembered it, with the notable absence of Ormondroyd’s body and the blotter from the desk. The work of the forensic officers had not caused too much upheaval, which was far from the case at every crime scene. As a precaution, they all donned plastic overshoes. He instructed Mironova and Pearce to start searching the filing cabinets. ‘I’ll set to work on the contents of the desk.’
Clara went to the left-hand side of the bank of cabinets. She drew a blank with the top drawer, but when she opened the second one, she immediately noticed a large gap between the suspension files. ‘It looks as if something has been removed from here,’ she told the others. ‘There’s a file missing; possibly two, judging by the size of the gap.’
‘Maybe it was one Ormondroyd was working on, or had given to Mrs Lane to type up a letter or a contract or something,’ Pearce suggested.
‘That’s probably it. I’ll go down and check with her.’
When she returned a few minutes later, Nash noticed
Mironova’s thoughtful expression. ‘No luck with Mrs Lane?’
‘No, she hasn’t got the file, but she did tell me which one she thinks it was. As soon as I told her it was between one for someone called Berry, and the file after it was labelled with the name Bowden, she said it could only be one file, a big one, and she certainly doesn’t have it. In fact she said she wasn’t aware that it had been out of the cabinet in the last eighteen months. There was no reason to remove it.’
‘Why’s that?’ Pearce asked.
‘Because it was a dead file. One there was no possibility of further action on.’
Nash waited patiently, aware that Clara was enjoying the suspense, savouring the announcement she was about to make. ‘The missing file is the one for Bishopton Investment Group. They were one of Ormondroyd’s
biggest
clients before they went bust.’
Nash groaned at her attempt at humour.
Clara continued, ‘What I can’t work out is why it’s gone missing. What relevance could a file concerning a company that went into liquidation three years ago have to do with Ormondroyd’s murder?’
‘Perhaps it isn’t connected. If Ormondroyd was so upset by what happened, perhaps he destroyed the file,’ Viv suggested.
‘He couldn’t do that, Viv. He wouldn’t be allowed to. We’ve searched Ormondroyd’s house, and the file certainly wasn’t there. I can’t see any sign of it in here, unless of course it’s been filed in the wrong place. However, let’s not jump to any hasty conclusions. Although it may be connected and may have been removed by the killer, we’ve no proof one way or another yet.’
‘Another piece of information I gleaned from Mrs Lane that you might find interesting is who was also a client of Ormondroyd.’ Clara was still enjoying herself.
‘Go on then, surprise me.’
‘Wilson Macaulay Industries!’
‘Now that is interesting. So why not now?’
‘It had cost them a lot of money to repay the people
cheated when B.I.G. went bust, and for some reason they held Ormondroyd responsible. They took all their business, both commercial and personal, elsewhere.’
Nash returned to his search of the desk, and in the bottom left-hand drawer found a brown envelope with a photo inside it. ‘This looks familiar.’ He held it up for the others to see.
‘That’s the girl you said looked like Naomi Macaulay,’ Clara said. ‘Although this one is far less explicit than those at the house.’
The young girl was clad in a white blouse and pleated skirt. Although it looked as if her clothing formed part of a uniform, there was nothing that would identify her school. Her pose, smiling for the cameraman, bore only the slightest hint of familiarity. ‘I wonder who she is and where she is now,’ Nash mused, not realizing he’d voiced his thoughts aloud.
Mironova winked at Pearce. ‘Is that because of her connection to Ormondroyd, or because you fancy her?’
‘Certainly not, although I admit it would be interesting to see what she turned out like. I was thinking that the likeness to Naomi is even more pronounced in this photo. Maybe that’s because she’s not striking a pose.’
‘And because she’s fully clothed,’ Clara pointed out, ‘and therefore less likely to distract you.’
Nash stared at her coldly. ‘Speculation is idle, until we discover who she is. And that’s not what we’re here for.’
He returned to his task, but there was little else of interest until he came across a folder which, when he opened it, proved to contain financial information regarding the business and Ormondroyd’s private affairs. He began looking through the sizeable mound of paperwork. It consisted of bills, all neatly appended with the date of payments, invoices to clients, sundry petty cash receipts, mortgage and bank statements. ‘It looks as if Ormondroyd took out a hefty mortgage soon after the Bishopton Investment trouble. I guess that was because the firm was facing big losses, from what I can judge by the accounts.’
He continued looking through the papers, but stopped
suddenly. Clara, who had finished the first of the cabinets, glanced across as she moved to the next set of drawers. She stopped, seeing the puzzled expression on his face. ‘Found something, Mike?’
‘I’m not certain,’ he replied, his voice thoughtful. ‘I’d say Ormondroyd was an extremely neat and tidy person, wouldn’t you? A bit like my mother’s favourite expression, “a place for everything and everything in its place,” she used to say.’
‘I’d go further than that,’ Clara agreed. ‘I’d say it was almost an obsession with him. Why do you ask?’
‘I find it curious that he has some of his credit card statements in this folder, and the others in his desk at home. You remember; the ones you were looking at?’
‘I see what you mean. It does seem out of character.’
‘Perhaps they were from different years,’ Pearce suggested.
Clara walked across and glanced at the statements. ‘No, that isn’t it. Some of these are from around the same time as the ones in his study. So why separate them?’
She began turning the statements over, examining them one by one. As she was looking at them, Nash’s mobile rang. He identified himself and listened to the caller, eventually saying, ‘Thanks for that, will you email the exact details to me?’
He ended the call. ‘That was forensics. They’ve got a result from the writing on the blotter. Apparently there was one word, written several times, and below it a short phrase. The word was the name “Sam” and the phrase was, “Must find Sam”, although who Sam is, and why Ormondroyd was trying to find him, I’ve no idea.’
‘Perhaps this bloke Sam is the killer,’ Viv suggested. ‘Maybe he found Ormondroyd before Ormondroyd could find him.’
‘Nip down and ask Mrs Lane if she knows who Sam is, or if the name means anything to her. She might have heard Ormondroyd talking about him.’
Pearce was away several minutes. ‘She was on the phone to the Law Society,’ he explained. ‘They’re going to appoint someone to supervise the winding-up of the business. She doesn’t know of
anyone called Sam, and certainly never heard Ormondroyd refer to him. She can think of no reason why he would have the name scrawled on his pad.’
Mironova returned to her study of the credit card statements. ‘I don’t know if this means anything,’ she told Nash, ‘but I have spotted one difference between these statements and the ones at his house.’
‘What’s that?’
‘All these have had the whole balance paid off, whereas the ones at his house were obviously covering times when cash flow was at its worst, because he only paid off the minimum amount. I guess he wouldn’t want to leave them here, in case Mrs Lane or a client caught sight of them, and jumped to the worst possible conclusion.’
‘That sounds logical, and I suppose that means it’s another dead end. Back to work, then.’
As Clara reached the final statement, the one covering the previous month’s transactions, she noticed another sheet of paper. She turned it over, and found it was an invoice. ‘I wonder what this is about?’