Design for Murder (19 page)

There was a short silence. ‘You’ve met her,’ Sharon
remarked, almost accusingly. ‘So what is she like?’

Eric nodded. ‘I met her in her office, to sign off the trust documents. She’s a handsome woman, but she does come across somewhat … predatory. But that’s not the point. She is what she is. But what’s been of concern to Linwood Forster is the affair she’s apparently been conducting of recent months with a certain George Khan.’

‘Who might he be?’ Sharon demanded.

Eric thought back over the conversation at Linwood Forster’s club. ‘According to Linwood Forster, George Khan is Iranian in origin, apparently, but became a naturalized British subject some years ago. He’s currently managing director and chairman of a company called Eastern Textiles Limited. Import-export according to the classifications but … it seems MI5 has been interested in Mr Khan for some time.’

Sharon’s eyes widened. ‘In what respect? What has this Khan guy been up to?’

‘Linwood Forster was discreet. Just came out with vague comments, nothing specific. But what it all amounts to, as far as I can make out, is that George Khan is suspected of having links with terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. Linwood Forster suggested there’s some evidence that his company has been acting as a front for money-laundering, providing financial support for proscribed organizations, that sort of thing.’

‘So why hasn’t he been arrested?’ Sharon demanded.

Eric shrugged. ‘Who knows? Probably not enough evidence. Or maybe the authorities have been playing a waiting game. I don’t know. Linwood Forster wasn’t specific, and I got the impression that even he thought that there was a certain amount of over-reaction in attitudes among his colleagues. Or maybe MI5 officers are biding
their time for bigger fish. I really have no idea. Linwood Forster was vague. But what it comes down to is that George Khan has been sleeping with Coleen Chivers with some regularity when she visits London. And up here, we get immigration briefs which occasionally include sensitive information. I pass most of those briefs to you for opinions to be drafted. And you’re a cousin of Coleen Chivers. Like it or not, that makes nervous civil servants even more nervous.’

‘But I’ve never even
met
her!’ Sharon insisted angrily.

‘As Linwood Forster said, that’s as may be. But there are those in the Home Office who would see this as an unnecessary security risk. So I’m advised: make less use of you.’

Sharon frowned grumpily. ‘So be it, then. I’ve plenty on my plate anyway. It’s just that it’s all so … irrational, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘I agree with you,’ Eric replied softly. ‘But clients—’

‘Have a right to choose who works for them,’ she concluded for him. She drained her glass, reached for the bottle determinedly. She filled her glass; her hand was shaking slightly. ‘Been quite a day, hasn’t it?’

‘Tonight will be better,’ he promised her.

‘I look forward to it.’ She sipped her wine and took a deep breath, calming herself, and then glanced at him curiously. ‘And you say Coleen Chivers came across as a bit of a
man-hunter
?’

Eric smiled. ‘I think she’s pretty direct in her attitudes.’

‘So did she come on to you when you met her at her office?’ Sharon asked mischievously.

Eric hesitated. ‘Let’s just say I got out of there as quickly as I could after she’d signed the papers. Which now make you a wealthy woman.’

‘Which is the reason why you’re interested in me,’ she challenged.

‘Well, it helps,’ he mocked her. ‘By the way, talking of the Chivers family, I got some more information from Linwood Forster, which helps clear up a little mystery.’

‘And what may that be?’

‘Hang on a moment.’ Eric rose from the settee and went through to the small third bedroom he used as an office at home. He opened his briefcase, riffled through the documents it contained, extracted a sheet and returned to sit beside Sharon once again. ‘You remember that letter you showed to me in the file, that seemed to have been left there after a certain amount of weeding had been done?’

Sharon frowned. ‘Of course I remember it, since it was I who drew your attention to it.’

‘Here it is,’ Eric said, showing her the letter. ‘Look at it again.’

‘I remember it well enough.’

‘Well, when I collected these file documents from the former solicitor to the Chivers Trust, Mr Strudmore, he gossiped to me about this letter, and his view of what had happened. I didn’t actually read it until you showed it to me later. Strudmore had mentioned he’d even checked local
papers in Scotland and found a prison sentence was involved. I’ve made no further enquiry about it all because it was irrelevant to the Chivers Trust itself, but in talking to Linwood Forster at his club, he was able to fill me in with most of the details. He confirmed that your grandfather did indeed have some involvement with security matters in Scotland.’

‘He was a
spook
!’ Sharon laughed, put down her glass, and clapped her hands.

Eric smiled. ‘Well, part-time, anyway. It now seems that part of your family fortune, as built up by grandfather George, was due to investment by the government: they put money into his firms, and in return he used his business as cover to provide them with information.’

‘The dirty dog!’ Sharon exclaimed. ‘What kind of information?’

‘Linwood Forster was prepared to talk about it because it was all so long ago, and so irrelevant these days. It was all in connection with Polaris and the siting of nuclear deterrents at Holy Loch. You know, the government’s insistence on having a British, independent deterrent.’

‘Which we now know was never British, never independent of the Americans, and not really a deterrent anyway.’

‘And based on a nuclear submarine, located near Glasgow, of all places!’ Eric nodded emphatically. ‘Anyway, there was a considerable amount of resistance to the project: local demonstrations, attempts to infiltrate the base,
near-rioting
, that sort of thing. Your grandfather was one of those people who were instrumental in keeping an eye on things. In his case, not least by maintaining connections with a small Marxist group which included a young woman called Sally Chalmers.’

Sharon twisted her head to stare at Eric. ‘You’re not going to tell me….’

Eric shrugged. ‘According to Linwood Forster, Sally Chalmers and your grandfather became an item.’

‘I don’t believe it. He must have been fifty! And she would have been….’

‘Twenty-two,’ Eric confirmed. ‘But he was wealthy, a charming man, one would guess, lent assistance to the group in apparent sincerity, gained their confidence, and at some stage he and Miss Chalmers became lovers. Then, from the inevitable pillow talk….’

‘He betrayed her! The wicked old bastard!’

‘He got information from her, passed it on to the appropriate quarters, and she was put on trial, along with some of her group. She served a prison term. This letter … well, the rest of the correspondence had been weeded out of the file, but my guess, and Strudmore’s incidentally, who claims to have seen some of the letters, my guess is that Sally Chalmers at some stage later got in touch with your grandmother—’

‘Flora.’

‘Yes. Probably asked her for some kind of compensation, threatened to expose your grandfather … but Flora Chivers was a tough old lady, it would seem. She would have nothing to do with it. This letter we have here, it seems to have been the end of the business.’

Sharon read the letter again, silently. At last she asked, ‘So what happened to this Sally Chalmers?’

Eric shrugged. ‘Linwood Forster didn’t know. She faded into the background, got on with her life I suppose. But there’s the answer to the little mystery surrounding George Chivers and what he was up to in Scotland in the late sixties and seventies.’

Musing, Sharon murmured, ‘You know, it’s maybe not a nice thing to say, but I’m beginning to feel glad that I never knew my grandfather. Doesn’t sound to me as though I’d have liked him. A
spook
, for God’s sake!’ She shook herself, like a dog throwing off water. ‘And a betraying bastard. Don’t want to think about it. Right, I’ll go stack the dishes.’

‘No, leave it,’ Eric insisted. ‘I’ll see to it, after we’ve had a brandy. I don’t want you getting too tired. We’ve an active night ahead of us.’

‘Promises, promises….’

Eric rose and poured out two brandies, returned to the settee and they sat there for a half hour, chatting inconsequentially. Finally, when the drinks were finished he went out to the kitchen and stacked the dishwasher. He was becoming quite domesticated, he thought wryly. From the other room he heard voices and music: Sharon had switched on the television.

He finished stacking, ran his hands under the tap, picked up a towel and wandered back to the sitting room. Sharon was standing in front of the television set. She reached down and switched it off. When she turned to face him her eyes were wide, her features pale.

‘What’s the matter?’ Eric asked, concerned.

She half turned her head, gesturing towards the television set. ‘The first item … it was about the woman murdered at Tynemouth. They say the body has been identified.’

Eric walked forward and took her in his arms. ‘So what’s the problem?’

She was shaking. ‘The body … the dead woman….’ She raised her shocked face to his. ‘It’s been identified as my cousin.’

‘What?’ Eric said, astonished.

‘That’s right. Coleen Chivers.’

The briefing room was packed: additional officers had been drafted in to expand DCI Spate’s team, now that the issues had changed with the receipt of forensic information from the Midlands. The surveillance of Raymond Conroy, and the loss of contact with him, had now metamorphosed into the hunt for a murderer.

Normally on such occasions there would have been a buzz of anticipation, a chattering, murmuring, discussions going on all around the room, but this was different: the room was virtually silent, even down to the rustling of paper. It was as though all the officers in the room were waiting for something dire to occur, holding their breaths for the next bit of bad news. Assistant Chief Constable Jim Charteris was not present, but Charlie Spate was keenly aware of his brooding presence outside the room. He’d be ensconced in his office, but Charlie knew what the man would have on his mind.

Charlie looked down at the file in his hands. A similar file had been passed to each officer in the room. It contained photographs of the dead woman, the crime scene, some close-ups of the marks on the corpse, a list of names with brief notes attached.

‘Right. Listen up.’

Charlie looked around the assembled officers and caught Elaine Start’s glance. Her mouth was twisted in distaste: he knew she was offended by his use of the Americanism. His eyes slipped away from her, challenging others in the room.

‘Let’s take a look at these photographs first,’ he announced. ‘Some of them cover the work undertaken by officers in the Midlands. They relate to the killings of three women, the Zodiac killings, and there’s a few shots of the
location – now confirmed by forensics – where they died. The details have not yet been made public knowledge, because the results came in only this morning, but the location, this cellar shown in the photographs, is now positively linked to Raymond Conroy by DNA evidence. We’re now certain – not that we ever doubted it much – that Conroy really is the Zodiac Killer. These photographs are for your information and background only. In themselves they give us a reason for looking for Raymond Conroy, but as far as we’re concerned we need to focus on what’s happened up here on our patch. The murder of Coleen Chivers. You’ll all probably know the location where Dickens and Riley found the body. Tynemouth Priory. A car was seen driving away from the location minutes before the body was discovered. No description available, but we can surmise it may well have contained the killer. The arrival of the squad car may well have disturbed Conroy so he was unable to complete his work.’

He held up one of the photographs and waved it. ‘Pay particular attention to this shot of the woman’s breasts. Note the marks across the flesh, a sharp instrument, maybe a knife, more likely a scalpel. Forensic will confirm in more detail later. But check them out against the marks shown on the other dead women. The marks tell us who we’ll be looking for. The guy the newspapers have labelled the Zodiac Killer.’

He paused, letting his glance travel around the silent officers. ‘We all know what that means. Ever since the collapse of the hearing after which Raymond Conroy was released we’ve had the man under surveillance, until he slipped out of sight. We are now aware that there is confirmation from forensic evidence that Conroy was indeed involved in the murder of the three women in the
Midlands, in spite of what Mr Justice Abernethy might have concluded after the lawyers had got their teeth into the existing evidence at the time. But now this has happened: the murder of Coleen Chivers. So you know what I’m about to say: it’s absolutely essential that we trace Raymond Conroy, whom we believe has gone to ground somewhere up here in the north-east, essential we find him, bring him in for questioning. The case against him over the Midlands murders has collapsed, of course, but we need to talk to him again now, and urgently. Not for what he did in the Midlands, but for what he’s probably done up here.’

He almost added it was a matter of pride, but refrained from doing so. The room remained silent. He had expected that someone would have raised some doubt, querying whether they were correct in merely assuming the Tynemouth Priory killing had been done by Conroy, irrespective of what had occurred in the Midlands, but no one spoke, though he observed that there was a frown on DS Elaine Start’s brow as she stared at the photograph referred to.