Authors: Minette Walters
John
Chapter Eight
Saturday, 25 June, Romsey Road Police Station, Winchester – 12.30 p.m.
DI
MADDOCKS AND
his team had put together a substantial amount of information about Jane Kingsley in the short time they’d had, but had discovered nothing
about Meg Harris or her parents. ‘At the time of Miss Kingsley’s car crash, a couple of PCs went out to talk to her parents,’ he told Cheever. ‘The stepmother, Mrs Elizabeth
Kingsley, was tipsy and offered some vitriolic comments about Leo and Meg: They were both bastards but Meg was a snake in the grass and had set out to steal Jane’s boyfriends since they were
at Oxford together.’ He looked up. ‘BT can’t help us. At a rough estimate, Wiltshire has over five thousand families called Harris living in it. If we had the father’s
initial it might help, or a profession even, but you say Sir Anthony doesn’t know what her father was called.’
‘No,’ said Frank Cheever with rather more cynicism than was his wont. ‘Despite his enthusiasm for her as an alternative daughter-in-law, he seems to know remarkably
little about her.’
Maddocks eyed him curiously. Well, well, well, he thought, times they are a-changing. ‘I’ve put two of our guys on to tracing Meg’s next-of-kin through the
university,’ he went on, ‘but then there’s the other problem that Harris may not be her maiden name. I still say our quickest route is via the flat in Hammersmith, so Fraser and I
are going up there this afternoon.’
‘Understood. What about Jane Kingsley?’
‘OK, first the Landy murder.’ He pointed to some papers on the Superintendent’s desk. ‘That’s as much as we’ve managed to get hold of on the case.
It seems pretty comprehensive and there’s a phone number you can call for an up-date. I guess you missed the Kingsley connection because she was calling herself Jane Landy in those days.
Anyway, within weeks of her discharge from hospital following her treatment for depression, she negotiated an extremely favourable sale of his gallery and invested the lot in a photographic studio
in Pimlico. She bought it out, lock, stock and barrel – premises, equipment and good-will. Until then, she’d been working part-time as a stand-in photographer when regulars didn’t
show.’ His voice took on a note of reluctant admiration. ‘She appears to have turned it into a success. Under the old management it was a run-of-the-mill enterprise, dealing in
portraits of the local big-wigs’ families, friends and pets. Under Miss Kingsley’s management it’s become a favoured studio for promotional work – actors, pop stars, fashion
models, magazines. She’s earned quite a name for herself in the trade.’
‘Who’s running it at the moment?’
Maddocks consulted his notes. ‘A chap called Dean Jarrett. He’s been with her from the beginning. She recruited him through an ad in the newspapers, asking for samples of
work with a view to employment. She had over one thousand applications, interviewed fifty and selected one. The word amongst the professionals is he’s brilliant and devoted. I got Mandy Barry
to phone through and ask whether appointments and bookings were being honoured with Miss Kingsley in hospital, and the receptionist, one Angelica, was bullish and convincing about the
studio’s continued commitment. Loyalty to the boss was deeply felt and not feigned, according to Mandy.’
Cheever nodded. ‘What else?’
‘The house in Richmond was bought by Landy in eighty-one with an endowment mortgage of thirty thousand. On his death, the endowment paid off the mortgage and the house became
Miss Kingsley’s. She has shown no inclination to sell it. She gets on well with Colonel and Mrs Clancey who live next door and is well regarded by other people in the road. She lives quietly
and unostentatiously and, bar the odd appearance of her father’s Rolls-Royce, does not draw attention to herself. Interestingly, nobody referred to Landy at the time of Miss Kingsley’s
traffic accident, although some of them must have remembered him, but they were very ready to talk about Leo Wallader. The general view is that no one liked him very much and that he behaved badly,
but Richmond police were left with the impression that her neighbours were more put out about missing a wedding at Hellingdon Hall than they were about Leo’s shenanigans.’
‘What about other boyfriends between Landy and Wallader?’
‘Only what we’ve gleaned from the gossip columnists. There’ve been two or three, but nothing lasting more than six months. Mind you, Wallader didn’t make six
months either. She met him in February and he was dead by June. Bit of a whirlwind romance, considering the marriage was scheduled for July.’
‘What was the attraction?’
Maddocks shrugged. ‘No idea, but Colonel Clancey said it was very clear to him and his wife that Jane was having cold feet about the wedding even if it was Leo who called it
off. Claims he can’t understand why she would want to top herself when he left.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘Only the obvious – that she killed them herself or witnessed the killing and then suffered a similar breakdown to the one she had at the time of Landy’s death.
She’s pretty damn weird, that’s for sure. I mean, according to what we’ve found out, her favourite backgrounds for photographic shoots are cemeteries, derelict factories and
grafittied subway walls.’ He took a folded page that had been ripped out of a magazine from his pocket. ‘If you’re interested, that’s her most famous photograph to date.
It’s that black supermodel standing in front of a filthy tiled wall with every obscenity you can imagine scrawled all over it.’
Cheever spread the sheet on his desk and examined it. ‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘She’s quite an artist.’
‘Well, I think it sucks, sir. Why put a beautiful woman against crap like that?’
‘Where would you have put her, Gareth?’ asked the other man tartly. ‘On a bed?’
‘Why not? Somewhere a bit more glamorous, anyway.’
The Superintendent frowned. ‘It’s a statement. I think it’s saying that real beauty is incorruptible, never mind how profane or ugly the setting.’ He pinched
the end of his nose. ‘Which is interesting, don’t you think, in view of the ugliness of Landy’s death? I wonder when she started using backgrounds like this in her work.
There’s something rather moving about the triumph of fragile human perfection over a wasteland of mindless filth.’
Maddocks decided the old man was going ga-ga. It was only a creased fashion photograph, not the
Mona Lisa
.
Hellingdon Hall, Near Fordingbridge, Hampshire – 12.30 p.m.
Miles Kingsley shook his mother angrily then pushed her back on to the sofa. ‘I don’t believe it. My God, you’re such a stupid cow. Why can’t you keep your
bloody great mouth shut? Who else have you told?’ He glared across at his brother, who was skulking at the far end of the drawing room, feigning an interest in the leather-bound books his
father had bought by the yard when they’d first moved into the Hall. ‘Your neck’s on the line, too, you little shit, so I suggest you wipe that smirk off your face before I slap
it off.’
‘Sod off, Miles,’ said Fergus. ‘If I had any sense I’d never have listened to you in the first place.’ He kicked a Chippendale chair. ‘It was your
idea, for Christ’s sake. Foolproof, you said. What can possibly go wrong?’
‘Nothing
has
gone wrong. You’ll see. Just a little more time, and we’ll be free and clear with a sodding fortune.’
‘That’s what you said last time.’
Romsey Road Police Station, Winchester – 12.45 p.m.
Frank read the documents on his desk relating to the Landy murder, then dialled the contact number Maddocks had given him. DCI Andrews had been involved from the outset.
‘The case was effectively closed at the end of ’eighty-five,’ he said down the wire from Scotland Yard, ‘when Jason Phelps was put away for the Docherty
murders. Remember him? Clubbed an entire family to death for twenty grand on the instructions of Docherty’s nephew. They both got four life sentences. We tried to persuade Phelps to confess
to the Landy killing because it was a carbon copy of the Docherty murders, but we never got a result. There was no question he did it, though, and if we could have got him to spill the works,
we’d have nailed Kingsley.
He
was the one we wanted.’
‘Tell me about the daughter,’ prompted Frank. ‘What was she like?’
‘I rather took to her, as a matter of fact. She was a good kid, deeply shocked, of course, and suffered a nervous breakdown afterwards. She kept saying it was all her fault but
we never believed she had anything to do with it. Meredith put it to her that she was afraid her father was responsible but she said no. A day or two later she lost her baby.’
‘Did she ever suggest who might have done it?’
‘An unknown artist whose work Landy had rejected. She said he could be very cruel in what he said and she was insistent that he’d told her a few days before the murder
that he was being watched by some creep who’d come to the gallery. She didn’t think anything of it at the time, because he treated it as a joke, but it certainly preyed on her mind
afterwards. We checked it out, but there was no substance to it and we took the view that, if the watcher existed at all, it was as likely to be Kingsley’s contract killer as an embittered
artist.’
Cheever pondered for a moment. ‘Still, it’s something of a minefield. The only contact I’ve had with Kingsley was years ago when he beat his future brother-in-law
to a pulp to warn him off the wedding. Now you’re telling me he pulped his son-in-law
afterwards
? Why didn’t he do it before?’
‘That was his daughter’s argument. She claimed Kingsley had done his best to get rid of Landy three years previously by having him sacked from his job, but had long since
accepted defeat on the matter. Our view was that the pregnancy changed things. She admitted that she and Landy had been going through a rocky patch but that the baby had brought them together
again, and we didn’t think it was coincidence that the wretched man was murdered a week after she told her parents she was expecting. We guessed Kingsley was relying on the marriage failing
and when he was presented with evidence that it wasn’t, he signed Landy’s death warrant.’
Cheever tapped one of the pieces of paper in front of him. ‘According to the memo you faxed through, you and Meredith believed Kingsley adored his daughter. But we’re
talking about something much sicker than adoration, surely? I could understand it if Landy had been treating her badly and Kingsley wanted him punished, but from what you’ve said he acted out
of jealous rage. There’d have to be a pretty powerful sexual motive behind actions like that.’
‘In a nutshell, that’s what we thought it was all about. Look, the man was very highly sexed, he was visiting the Shepherd’s Market prostitute every week. The
second marriage was a disaster because the poor creature he settled on wasn’t a patch on the first wife and took to the bottle within a couple of years. Her sons never matched up to the first
wife’s daughter who, to make matters worse, is the spitting image of her dead mother. There’s no evidence that Kingsley abused the child, but they lived alone together for five years
before he married again, and we estimated the chances were high that he did. We had his psychological profile drawn up based on what was known of him, and it was very revealing. There was a heavy
emphasis on his need to control through ruthless manipulation of people and events, and it was thought very unlikely that his daughter could have escaped unscathed.’
‘Did you suggest it to her?’
‘Yes’ – a hesitation – ‘more’s the pity. We gave her the profile to read, and the next thing we knew, she was under the care of a psychiatrist
with severe anorexia and suicidal depression. We felt rather bad about it, to be honest.’
‘Mind you,’ murmured Frank thoughtfully, ‘it’s a typical reaction of an abused child who’s suddenly forced to come to terms with a buried
past.’
43a Shoebury Terrace, Hammersmith, London – 3.30 p.m.
Later that afternoon, Maddocks and Fraser entered Meg Harris’s flat in Hammersmith. They were met at the door by two Metropolitan policemen and a locksmith, but dispensed
with the services of the latter in favour of the spare key which a stout middle-aged neighbour produced when she saw the congregation through her window and issued forth to quiz them about what
they were doing. ‘But Meg’s in France,’ she said, countering their sympathetic assertion that they had reason to believe Miss Harris was dead. ‘I saw her off.’ She
wrung her hands in distress. ‘I’ve been looking after her cat.’
The men nodded gravely. ‘Can you remember when she left?’ asked Maddocks.
‘Oh, lord, now you’re asking me. Two weeks ago or thereabouts. The Monday, maybe.’
Fraser consulted his diary. ‘Monday, June the thirteenth?’ he asked her.
‘That sounds about right, but I couldn’t say for certain.’
‘Have you heard from her since?’
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but I wouldn’t expect to.’ She looked put out. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead. Was it a car accident?’
DI Maddocks avoided a direct answer. ‘We’ve very few details at the moment, Mrs – er . . . ?’
‘Helms,’ said the woman helpfully.
‘Mrs Helms. Do you know anything about Miss Harris’s boyfriend?’
‘You mean Leo. He’s hardly a boyfriend, too old to be a boyfriend, Meg said. She always called him her partner.’
‘Did he live here?’
‘On and off. I think he’s married and only comes to Meg when his wife’s away.’ She caught up with Maddocks’s use of the past tense. ‘Did?’
she asked him. ‘Is Leo dead too?’
He nodded. ‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Helms. Would you have a contact address or telephone number for Miss Harris’s parents, by any chance? We’d very much like to
talk to them.’
She shook her head. ‘She gave me the vet’s number last year in case the cat fell ill, but that’s all. As far as I remember her family lives in Wiltshire somewhere.
She used to go down there two or three times a year for a long weekend. But how awful!’ She looked shocked. ‘You mean she’s dead and her parents don’t even know?’
‘I’m sure we’ll find something in the flat to help us.’ Maddocks thanked her for the key and led the way down the stone steps to the basement flat, which was
marked 43a and had terracotta pots, alive with busy Lizzies, cluttered about the doorway. He inserted the key into the lock and pondered the elusive nature of Meg’s family. Even Sir Anthony
Wallader, who claimed to know something about the Harrises, had no idea which part of Wiltshire they came from or what Meg’s father did by way of a job. ‘You’ll have to ask Jinx
Kingsley,’ he told them. ‘She’s the only one left who knows.’