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But a model plane as a murder weapon?
Heck had never heard of such a thing.
Apparently a local flying club, the Doversgreen Aviators, had been using a meadow just behind Deadman’s Reach at the time. All the club members who’d been present that day had been interviewed since, and all had insisted that the stringent safety regulations built into their sport had been strictly observed. None would admit to having lost control of their model aircraft, or even to having owned any model matching the description given. Lansing, though he’d half drowned and had been kept in hospital for quite a few days afterwards, had later told the police that he’d thought the plane, which had struck his arm as he’d tried to evade it, leaving a massive bruise, had then gone spinning out of control and landed in the water alongside him. The riverbank had later been searched but no such model was recovered.
Like the incident at Rosewood Grange, this whole thing read like an ultra-freakish accident, but two such events in two weeks – happening to the same person?
Heck pondered these unsatisfying facts later that afternoon as he parked his Peugeot in a car park to the rear of the Ploughman’s Rest, booked himself in, and took a single heavy travel bag up to the room he’d been allocated, which was small, cosy, and neatly furnished, its lattice-paned, ivy-fringed window overlooking the green.
When he came back downstairs, he spotted Gail Honeyford in the snug. A smart suit jacket was draped over the back of her chair and a glass of what looked like iced lemonade sat on the table alongside her, but again she was tapping away on her laptop. He hadn’t seen much of her after they’d been introduced that afternoon. Vacating the office for the pub was not unusual in CID circles when there was someone new in the team who needed ‘breaking in’, but it wasn’t often the case that you fled to the pub to try and get some work done. Had she felt she was more likely to make progress with whatever she was doing if she didn’t have to keep updating the new guy?
Heck wandered towards her, hands tucked into his jeans pockets. She watched him from the corner of her eye, but her facial language remained neutral.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.
‘Suppose it’s a free country.’
‘Was when I last checked.’ She glanced at him fleetingly, unamused by the quip. He pulled up a chair. ‘That was supposed to be a joke, by the way.’
‘Hilarious.’ She got on with her work.
‘We’ve really started on the wrong foot, haven’t we? Can I get you a drink maybe?’
‘No thanks.’
‘DC Honeyford … you ever heard the phrase “work with me”? I’m trying to be friendly here.’
‘Yeah, I appreciate that, and look …’ She sat back, her expression softening – which suited her. On closer inspection, she was peaches-and-cream pretty with fetching hazel eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve come over a little brusque. But you aren’t going to be around here very long, so I don’t see the point in us developing a relationship. Professional or otherwise.’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we supposed to be forming a taskforce?’
‘That was the boss’s idea, not mine. I’ve already got this case covered.’
‘Okay, fine. In the meantime, you sure you don’t want that drink?’
‘I’m sure. Thanks.’
Heck strolled to the bar, where the landlord, a jovial, beefy-cheeked local man with a frenzy of ginger hair was happy to serve him a pint of Best. When Heck sat down again, DC Honeyford clucked with barely disguised annoyance.
‘Problem with the laptop?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Good; perhaps we can get on then. What’s the hypothesis?’
She glanced up. ‘Pardon?’
‘You’ve obviously done a lot of work on this, and I respect that massively. So what’s your main theory?’
‘If you must know, this is a murder – and it’s almost certainly connected to Lansing’s business affairs.’
‘You’re sure Lansing was the target, and not Dean Torbert?’
She glanced at him again, as if he was some kind of buffoon. ‘If it wasn’t Lansing, that model aeroplane attack was a hell of a coincidence.’
‘Coincidences sometimes happen.’
‘Torbert was a first-year university student. He hadn’t lived long enough to upset anyone that badly.’
‘How do we know he wasn’t the one with the grudge? Perhaps it was Torbert who tried to run Lansing off the road, and it all went horribly wrong.’
‘I’ve looked into that. They didn’t even know each other, let alone have a grudge.’
‘What’s the background on Torbert?’
She shrugged. ‘Spoilt little rich kid, boy racer … take your pick.’
‘How did he come to own a Porsche?’
‘Mummy and Daddy are both wealthy, and separated. Sounds like he bounced between them like a shuttlecock. They rivalled each other buying him expensive presents.’
‘A Porsche?’
‘Look – this is Surrey, stockbroker country.’
‘Where did Torbert actually live?’
DC Honeyford sighed, not remotely afraid to show how frustrated the persistent questions were making her. ‘With his mother. In a millionaire pad in Guildford.’
‘I’m not a native, but that’s nowhere near Reigate, is it?’
‘It’s not too far away, but I agree; it seems odd Torbert was over in that neck of the woods at such an early hour. No one knows what he was doing there. But it’s no crime to drive around the county, is it? I mean, he may have had a girl this way – or even a boy. Who knows?’
Heck mulled this over. If Dean Torbert had simply been another bored youth who got his kicks tearing up and down the country lanes in his latest souped-up toy, it reinforced the impression that his involvement in this incident was no more than a bit of tragic misfortune. In fact, it would have been odd from Torbert’s perspective if some kind of accident hadn’t occurred. As a uniformed bobby up in Manchester, where, as a rule, idle young men did not get high-powered cars for Christmas, Heck had still watched on numerous occasions as their mutilated corpses were cut from heaps of twisted wreckage after a night spent blistering the blacktop.
‘Torbert was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ DC Honeyford added, clearly hoping to bring the conversation to an end.
‘But overall, you still think this was murder?’
‘Of course it was. But whoever did it lured Lansing out into the oncoming traffic to try and make it look like an accident. Any speeding road user would have done the job. Look, DS Heckenburg …’ She seemed genuinely exasperated by his sudden appearance in her life, and had to take a second to compose herself. ‘This thing must be connected to Lansing’s professional life. He ran a chain of multi-million-pound companies. He’s worth a fortune, but his finances are a tangled web. I’ve been trying to penetrate them for the last three days.’
‘Who would stand to gain most from his death?’ Heck asked.
‘Why are you even interested? I thought you were only here to see if this was part of a series?’
Heck shrugged. ‘If you can prove to me that it isn’t, I’ll happily go home. Then I won’t have to stand here looking over your shoulder.’
‘You won’t be looking over my shoulder anyway!’ she replied, her cheeks colouring. ‘I can assure you of that!’
‘Ahhh, so that’s it. You’re worried I’m going to steal your thunder.’
‘No, of course I’m—’ She paused, regarding him for a long time. Then, with slow, careful deliberation, she closed her laptop. ‘Yes, if you want the truth. That’s exactly what it is. Listen, DS Heckenburg …’
‘Call me “Heck”. All my friends do.’
‘DS Heckenburg. I made CID in three years by showing nous and initiative. That’s what I do. That’s my thing. If I get a sniff of something, I chase it down. I work hard. I don’t give up on it. The fact is, I wasn’t at all happy when I heard the coroner’s verdict on the Lansing case. But no one would listen to me. In fact, they said I was barmy.’
‘That’s because the gaffers don’t like unsolved murders. Doesn’t look good on the crime stats.’
She waved a hand, uninterested in his opinion. ‘Will Royton only okayed me to look at this again because he’s a decent bloke.’
‘Not because he trusts your judgement?’
‘Er … maybe a bit of that, but I had to badger him for two or three days before he was persuaded. Course, the truth is he’s not even persuaded now. That’s why I think he’s happy to see you here. He hopes you’ll swan in, some big shot from the Smoke, and wrap this whole thing up in a single day. Then I can get back to my routine duties and there’ll be no more discussion. Well sorry, but that isn’t going to happen.’
Heck sipped at his pint. ‘Sounds to me like you want Harold Lansing to have been murdered?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Neither did I. I mean you want your instinct to have been proved right.’
‘And that’s somehow incorrect of me?’
‘Not at all. Look.’ Heck put his drink down. ‘I’m here for a similar reason. Another officer looked at this case and felt the same way as you. You’ve been very honest, Gail, so I’ll be honest too – I can call you “Gail”? Feels less formal than DC Honeyford.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’m only actually in Surrey as a favour to my guv’nor, who’s doing a favour for someone else. As soon as it becomes evident there’s nothing in this case for SCU, I’ll head home. I promise you. You’ll have a clear run at it without any interference from the Yard. But for the moment it can only help if we work on this together. You’ve already gone out on a limb. I appreciate you’re an independent-minded detective, but you must have felt pretty alone on this so far.’
She watched him warily. ‘Just so long as you know I’m not your gofer.’
‘Course not.’
‘I know you work for a specialist outfit and all that, but I’m good at my job too.’
‘I totally believe that.’
‘I’m not going to be bossed around or made to feel like an office junior.’
Heck displayed empty palms. ‘Not my style at all.’
‘Someone else surrendering to your charms, Gail?’ came a gruff but amused voice.
A man had approached them, unnoticed. He was tall, with a big, angular frame, clad in a rumpled brown suit and an open-necked green shirt. He had longish, sandy hair, pale blue eyes, and gruesomely pockmarked cheeks – as if he’d ploughed his fingernails through rampant acne while still a juvenile. He’d wandered over uninvited and now stood so close that Heck could smell his rank combination of cigarette smoke and cologne.
‘What do you want, Ron?’ Gail asked in a patient tone.
‘Me?’ He feigned hurt. ‘Nothing … just a quick pleasantry.’
‘That’d be a first.’
He chortled. ‘Still wasting your time chasing ghosts at Rosewood Grange?’
Gail flicked her gaze to Heck. ‘This is DS Pavey. Street Thefts.’
Heck glanced up at him. ‘How are you?’ he said, nodding.
‘And who’s this?’ Pavey asked her, not bothering to respond to or even acknowledge Heck’s question.
‘This is DS Heckenburg. Serial Crimes, New Scotland Yard.’
Pavey gave a low whistle, and finally deigned to look round at Heck. ‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’
‘Up to you, I guess,’ Heck replied.
Pavey turned back to Gail; evidently that question had been addressed to her too. ‘You two working on something?’
‘What’s it to you, Ron?’ she wondered.
Pavey smiled to himself before sauntering away to the bar. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, DS Heckenburg.’
‘Dare I ask?’ Heck said, watching him rejoin a group of several other suited men, presumably fellow detectives gathering for an end-of-shift drink.
Gail sipped her lemonade, though she’d flushed a noticeable shade of pink. The ice maiden wasn’t perhaps as cool as she’d have him believe. ‘Do you really need to?’ she said.
‘Idiot from the past, eh?’
‘Not long enough in the past. Don’t worry about it. He’s gone.’
But several times over the next fifteen minutes, Heck caught DS Pavey stealing irritable peeks in their direction. From the expression on his ugly, notched face, it didn’t look as if he’d gone very far.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_f70d5f82-b338-527a-8c8d-e0cf0421269c)
‘So who arranged Lansing’s funeral?’ Heck asked.
‘His former girlfriend,’ Gail replied as she gunned her canary-yellow Fiat Punto along the twisting Surrey lanes. ‘Monica Chatreaux.’
Heck glanced up from the paperwork littered across his lap. ‘As in Monica Chatreaux the supermodel?’
‘Correct.’
Heck mused on this. He was seated in the front passenger seat. Beyond the windows, woods and farmland skimmed past in sunny shimmers of green and gold.
‘And was she really his former girlfriend … or just his friend?’
‘Girlfriend apparently.’
‘So he wasn’t gay?’
