For a moment or two, Lady Fairfax seemed slightly bemused by Kate’s response, but then she smiled. ‘You’re Australian,’ she said.
‘Yeah, how did you guess, ma’am?’
‘My husband and I spent three years in Australia when Michael was military attaché at the high commission in Yarralumla in Canberra. It’s a lovely country.’
‘Canberra’s not so dinkum, but Queensland’s the place to live. Port Douglas just north of Cairns is real beaut.’
‘Is that where you’re from, my dear?’
‘Sure is, ma’am. It’s a great place with weather good enough for me to go skinny-dipping in the Coral Sea a lot of the year.’ Kate sighed. ‘But then I decided to come to the Old Country.’
‘It must’ve been idyllic,’ said Catherine Fairfax, seemingly unsure how to respond to Kate’s unembarrassed claims of nude bathing. She turned to me. ‘However, Chief Inspector, I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about this young lady’s home town.’
‘No, Lady Fairfax. It’s a rather delicate matter and concerns your grandson.’
‘Douglas? What’s he been up to now?’
‘You don’t sound surprised,’ I said.
‘He was always a difficult child, but we thought he’d be all right after deciding to follow his grandfather and his father into the army. It didn’t work out, though. At Sandhurst, he assaulted a sergeant. That’s the death wish to a military career, of course, and he was returned to his unit and discharged. But by that time Michael was already dead, thank God. Heaven knows what he’d’ve had to say about it.’
‘D’you know where your grandson is now, Lady Fairfax?’ asked Kate.
‘I’m afraid not, my dear, but his parents might be able to help you. I’ll give you their address.’ Catherine Fairfax struggled across to her escritoire and ferreted about for an address book. ‘There it is,’ she said, pointing to an entry.
Kate made a note of the Buckinghamshire address.
‘Might I ask why you’re interested in speaking to Douglas, Chief Inspector?’ asked Catherine Fairfax.
‘We think he might’ve stolen a pistol from a gun club in Germany.’ In fact, I was now satisfied that there was little doubt about it.
‘Oh dear!’ Forbes’s grandmother did not seem at all surprised by this revelation. ‘What on earth would he have done that for?’
‘We’re not sure, Lady Fairfax, but clearly it’s something we have to follow up.’ I decided not to tell her that her grandson was a front-runner for three murders, and might even have been implicated in a fourth, that of Lucien Carter.
‘Of course you must look into such things. There’s so much crime these days.’ Catherine Fairfax shook her head. ‘I don’t know what’ll become of Douglas,’ she said sadly.
I could’ve answered her question, but decided it was politic to say nothing.
It was about 15 miles from Pinner to Stoke Poges. Catherine Fairfax had told me that Philip Forbes was no longer a serving army officer, so there was a good chance of him being at home. Fortunately both he and his wife were there.
‘Colonel Forbes?’
‘Yes, but I don’t use the rank now that I’m retired. Don’t hold with that sort of nonsense.’ Forbes was dressed in a Paisley shirt and khaki linen trousers. His upper lip was adorned by a clipped and greying, guardee moustache and he wore heavy horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of New Scotland Yard, Mr Forbes,’ I said, ‘and this is Detective Inspector Ebdon.’
‘You’ve come to see me about Douglas, I take it, Chief Inspector.’
‘Yes, but—’
Forbes smiled. ‘My mother-in-law telephoned me just after you’d left her. It’s an old army habit to share intelligence, you know.’ He conducted us into his living room and indicated a middle-aged woman, clearly of the twinset-and-pearls class, who was seated in an armchair. ‘This is my wife Nancy, Douglas’s mother of course.’ He crossed the room and switched off the television. ‘Now then, tell me how I can help you.’
‘It’s a rather delicate matter, sir,’ I began, repeating the phrase I’d used to Lady Fairfax.
‘There’s no need to beat about the bush, Chief Inspector,’ said Forbes, inviting us to take a seat. ‘Both my wife and I know that Douglas has turned out to be a bad egg. What’s he done this time?’
‘We have reason to believe that he might have stolen an automatic pistol from a gun club in Germany, Mr Forbes,’ I said, thankful for Forbes’s refreshing and no-nonsense reaction. ‘In Essen, to be precise.’
‘So my mother-in-law told me. That sounds like par for the course as far as Douglas is concerned.’ Forbes brushed at his moustache and shook his head. ‘Let’s have it, then.’
I explained what we’d learned from our trip to Birmingham and told him of the report I’d received from the German police.
‘Why d’you think he wanted this weapon? Allowing, of course, that it was in fact Douglas who stole it.’
‘At the moment, sir, we haven’t discovered a reason.’ It didn’t seem a good idea for me to accuse Forbes’s son of being a murderer; we didn’t have any direct proof. Yet.
But Forbes was ahead of me. ‘D’you think he might’ve murdered someone?’
‘I suppose it’s a possibility,’ I said cautiously.
‘Good God, man, what other reason does one have for going about stealing firearms?’
‘What can you tell me about your son, sir?’ asked Kate.
Forbes raised his eyebrows at Kate’s Australian accent, but didn’t comment on it. ‘As Lady Fairfax probably told you, Inspector, he got the sack from Sandhurst. The bloody young fool struck a directing staff NCO in front of several witnesses. In my day that would’ve merited a court martial, but instead he was discharged with ignominy. Sufficient punishment in itself, I suppose.’ He shook his head at the apparent leniency of the modern army.
‘What did he do after the army discharged him, Mr Forbes?’ I asked.
‘He spent a year or two hanging around in the West End of London doing God knows what, but I’m sure he got in with some bad hats. Then he went to Germany and spent a year or two there.’
‘Whereabouts in Germany?’ asked Kate, her interest suddenly aroused.
‘Hamburg, I believe. We know he got mixed up with some German girl over there, even talked about marrying her. But then he found out that she was taking part in pornographic films and he said that that was too much for him. I suppose he did have some standards, but I have to say they were damned difficult to find.’
‘D’you happen to know the name of this woman, sir?’ Kate asked.
‘I certainly can’t think of it offhand, Inspector.’ Forbes glanced at his wife. ‘Can you remember her name, my dear?’
‘It was Trudi Schmidt.’ Nancy Forbes had no problem immediately recalling the woman’s name.
‘Are you sure about that, Mrs Forbes?’ I asked.
‘Positive. On one of the rare occasions Douglas did drop in to see us, he showed us a photograph of her. She looked like a tart.’ Mrs Forbes was scathing in her dismissal of someone whom she would have loathed having as a daughter-in-law.
‘Is that name of some significance, Chief Inspector?’ asked Forbes, and paused to glance at his wife. ‘D’you think she had something to do with this swindle that was perpetrated on my mother-in-law?’
‘We’re considering every possibility, sir,’ I said, unwilling to divulge too much about our enquiries, ‘but until we can speak to your son we can’t rule it out. Do you know where we can find him?’ I wanted to avoid further discussion about the fraud.
‘The last we heard of him he was living in some sleazy bedsit in Pimlico, but we don’t keep in touch.’ Forbes paused. ‘Well, the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t bother to keep in touch with us.’
‘He doesn’t even send us a Christmas card,’ said Nancy Forbes sadly. It was obvious that her errant son’s behaviour affected her more than it did her husband. ‘To be honest, the only time we see him these days is when he wants money.’ That, and the revelation that her son might be in serious trouble, had almost reduced her to tears, but not quite. If she was anything like her mother she was of the stiff upper lip class.
‘And he doesn’t get any cash,’ said Forbes. ‘Not any more.’
‘Do you happen to have your son’s exact address, Mr Forbes?’ asked Kate.
Philip Forbes picked up a Filofax from a nearby table and jotted down the address on a blank page. Tearing it out, he handed it to Kate. ‘That’s the last address we had for him, Inspector. As I said, it’s in Pimlico, but that was a year ago. I somehow doubt you’ll find him still there.’
‘D’you know if your son owns a car, Mr Forbes?’ I asked.
‘Probably,’ said Forbes, ‘but I’ve no idea what it is.’
‘Do you really think he stole this gun, Mr Brock?’ asked Nancy Forbes.
‘Everything seems to point to it, Mrs Forbes,’ I said.
We thanked Douglas Forbes’s parents for their frankness and assistance and took our leave.
‘I’ll see you out, Chief Inspector,’ said Forbes, and accompanied us to the front door, making sure that he closed the sitting room door. ‘I didn’t mention it in front of my wife, but isn’t Trudi Schmidt one of the people who was murdered in Richmond in that camper-van fire?’
‘That’s correct, sir,’ I said.
Forbes nodded. ‘I read it in the newspaper, but fortunately my wife rarely watches the news on television and only ever scans the
Daily Mail
. But I quite understand that you can’t say any more. Sub judice and all that.’ He was clearly a man who joined up the dots very quickly and had probably concluded that we wanted his son for murder.
‘Looks like Douglas Forbes is our man, guv,’ said Kate, on the way back to Curtis Green.
‘Maybe,’ I said cautiously. ‘It’s one thing to have our suspicions, but I’ve a nasty feeling that we’re going to have one hell of a job finding him.’
‘D’you think his involvement with Trudi Schmidt has any relevance?’ asked Kate, braking sharply to avoid a cyclist who seemed to think that traffic lights didn’t apply to him. ‘Could it have anything to do with the fact that she was a porn actress?’
‘In what way, Kate?’
‘An act of revenge for betraying him by having it off with other blokes on film.’
I laughed. ‘I doubt it, but that wouldn’t explain why Eberhardt and Adekunle were killed, unless Eberhardt was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And certainly wouldn’t be a motive for Lucien Carter’s murder. In fact I’d go further. I wouldn’t mind betting that Forbes was the unidentified sexual athlete that Dave and I saw on the DVD when we went to Essen.’
I left it until the following morning to make a start on tracking down Douglas Forbes. But from what his parents had said, it wasn’t going to be an easy task. And so it proved.
The address that Philip Forbes had given us for his son turned out not to be the sleazy bedsit he’d suggested it was, but a good quality flat in a Georgian three-storied townhouse.
I pressed the bell-push and waited.
‘Looks like he’s done a runner, guv,’ said Dave.
‘If he was ever here in the first place,’ I said, hoping that Dave would be wrong.
I pressed the bell-push a couple more times. We were just about to give up and make enquiries at other apartments in the house when the intercom buzzer sounded.
‘Who is it?’
‘The police,’ I said.
‘Oh God! You’d better come on up, then. It’s one flight up. Door on the right.’
We ascended the stairs to the first floor. The door to the apartment was opened by a twenty-something languid blonde who looked as though we’d roused her from a deep sleep. She raised her left arm high on the edge of the door for support so that her black silk wrap parted to reveal a matching camisole and shorts.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, running a hand through her untidy hair and yawning.
‘Five past eleven,’ I said.
‘In the morning,’ added Dave.
‘Good God, is that all?’
‘We’re police officers,’ I announced again.
‘So you said. What’s happened now? Has someone stolen my bloody car?’
Oh, not again,
I thought.
What is it about the police and the public’s precious motor cars?
‘We’re looking for Douglas Forbes,’ said Dave.
‘You and me both, darling. He owes me two hundred quid,’ said the blonde, casting a lingering eye over Dave. ‘You’d better come in. I’m just about to make some coffee.’
Uninvited, Dave and I sat down in a couple of armchairs that I suspected had been chosen for their style rather than their comfort. The blonde stationed herself behind a counter that separated the kitchenette from the seating area and fiddled about with an electric kettle and a cafetière. Eventually she poured coffee into three bone-china mugs and handed them round before sitting down opposite us.
‘Are you Mrs Forbes, by any chance?’ I asked, sipping at the coffee that I was pleased to note was excellent.
‘Not bloody likely, darlings. I’m Lavinia Crosby.’ Her cultured, drawling voice matched what I’d always thought to be an upper-crust sort of first name. ‘I haven’t seen Dougie for over two months now, maybe longer.’
‘Were you two an item?’ asked Dave, employing modern day parlance to describe living together.
‘We were shacked up for a year, but it seemed like ten. Are you from the local cop shop?’
‘No, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Brock of New Scotland Yard and this is Detective Sergeant Poole.’
‘Oh, the big guns. Sounds as though Dougie’s in some sort of deep mire.’
‘We shan’t know until we talk to him, Miss Crosby,’ I said.
‘It’s
Mrs
Crosby, actually.’ Lavinia drew out the last word with an affected drawl. ‘Not that it matters a damn. Bertie buggered off a couple of years ago. Not set eyes on the ratbag from that day to this. He went to live in Switzerland I think. Or was it Austria?’ She glanced at her elegant Baume & Mercier wristwatch. ‘I’m glad you woke me up, actually. I’m supposed to be meeting a guy for lunch.’
‘Have you
any
idea where Douglas Forbes is, Mrs Crosby?’ I asked, tiring of her irrelevant responses.
‘Not a clue, darling,’ said Lavinia. ‘Dougie lived here for about a year, as I said, most of the time living on my money before he buggered off. Daddy didn’t approve of him, but then Daddy doesn’t approve of any of the guys I shack up with. Probably because he doesn’t like the way I spend the allowance he gives me.’ She shrugged at what she clearly thought to be gross parsimony on her father’s part.