‘As far as I know. I mean, I assumed it was work, but she may have been out dancing late. Where’s the harm in that?’
‘There isn’t any, as far as I can see. Is there a doctor or a student clinic on campus?’
‘Yes. A very good health centre. But they won’t tell you any-thing, of course. I know doctors are bound by confidentiality.’
‘Oh, they’ll tell me,’ Winsome said. ‘That sort of thing only happens on television.’
‘But patient confidentiality—’
‘Is all very well and good, sir. While the patient is alive. I’m afraid that all bets are off now.’
Stoller hung his head. ‘Of course.’
‘Ever heard of a Colin Fairfax?’
Stoller’s brow furrowed. ‘No. I can’t say as I have.’
‘He wasn’t a student?’
‘Certainly not in this department, or I’d remember.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Adrienne? Anyone else I should talk to?’
‘Neela would know far more about her other friends and her social life in general.’
‘I’ll talk to her. Thank you very much for your time, Professor. You’ve been most helpful.’
‘I have? It’s a pleasure. I... I mean... I’m only too glad to help. Poor Adrienne.’
Winsome scribbled a few more notes in her book, but all it really amounted to was that Adrienne had seemed a bit more tired and distant than usual this year, but that her work hadn’t suffered seriously yet because of it. That and the mysterious scholarship. She hoped Neela Mitchell would have a bit more useful information to tell her. Or Colin Fairfax, when they tracked him down.
For now, it was time to get back to the squad room and do a bit of work on the computer. The rest could wait until tomorrow morning.
5
‘Laurence Edward Hadfield,’ said Gerry as she and Annie hurried down to the police garage to sign out a car. ‘The cleaning lady’s waiting for us there. Her name is Adele Balter. She’s fifty-three years old, been cleaning for him for going on ten years now. Here, I pulled a picture of Hadfield from LinkedIn.’ Gerry passed her a thin file folder and Annie paused to examine it. An Internet image of Hadfield sat next to her father’s interpretation of Peter Darby’s crime-scene photograph. ‘Doesn’t it look like the same person?’
Annie agreed that it did.
Gerry drove, heading east out of town on the main dale road, and Annie relaxed in the passenger seat. It was Friday morning, and she was planning to attend an ex-colleague’s surprise fortieth birthday party in Ripon that evening. It promised to be quite a blowout, but with any luck, she would have a couple of days to recover. Weekends were notoriously slow in investigations, and unless there was an urgency or some sort of time factor involved in the case, most detectives tended to do what everyone did and take the weekend off. Either that or catch up with the paperwork.
‘Hadfield’s sixty-six years old,’ Gerry went on, from memory. ‘A banker by profession. Runs a private investment bank in the City. Or ran. He’s semi-retired, or whatever you call it when people like him hand most of the work over to others. He’s had his little hideaway in North Yorkshire for twenty years. It’s called Rivendell. He spends most of his time up there these days, but he still keeps a flat in Mayfair. Got his OBE eight years ago. Reputed to be extremely wealthy. No number, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, you certainly don’t get poor running a private investment bank,’ Annie commented.
‘Might make a few enemies as well,’ Gerry said.
‘Now, now. You know what the super said. Let’s not go seeing a murder where there’s no evidence of one. We don’t even know if he’s our man yet for certain.’
‘But it is all pretty dodgy, you must admit, guv. Reported missing around the same time we find an unidentified body of a male in his sixties dressed in an expensive business suit.’
‘Dodgy, yes. Murder, no. Not yet.’
Soon they had left the last housing estate behind and passed an area of allotments, dotted with ramshackle garden sheds, where in summer men worked their little strips of earth with their sleeves rolled up, or sat having a smoke and a chat beside the vegetable patch. Today, the allotments were deserted and bleak even in the winter sunlight. Ahead of them stretched The Leas, where the valley bottom widened and flattened and the river meandered through meadows made unseasonably green by the recent rains. Beyond, on the opposite side of the dale, they could see Lyndgarth high on the valley side, beside the ruins of Devraulx Abbey.
‘Well connected, by all accounts,’ Gerry went on. ‘Politicians, financiers, managing directors, that crowd. Even a rock star and a footballer or two. Liked mixing with celebrities, apparently. Generous with his charitable donations. Oxfam, Save the Children, War Child and so on. Or at least he was until the scandals hit.’
‘Any form?’
‘None. Brought up in front of the Financial Conduct Authority once. Suspicion of insider trading, I believe. Never got beyond a preliminary investigation. No charges. That’s it.’
Annie turned left at Fortford, by the Roman fort unearthed on the hill beside the village green, which still had its ancient stocks planted firmly at its centre. They had found a body there not so long ago, she remembered, and far worse had happened at St Mary’s, about half a mile out of the village, the previous winter. As they passed the church, Annie shuddered at the memory of the scene of the mass murder, bodies dead and wounded lying about the ancient country churchyard. Today it looked like any other innocent country church on a sunny day, except for the heaps of flowers by the lychgate. There were always flowers beside the lychgate now.
‘What about his family background?’
Gerry flipped a page in her folder. ‘Parents deceased. Twin sisters, three years younger than him. Wife died three years ago after a long struggle with cancer.’
‘Children?’
‘Uh-huh. Two. Son Ronald, age thirty-eight, following in father’s footsteps. Also works in the City. Lives in Hampstead with wife Olivia and two boys Rufus and Roderick, aged eight and ten.’
‘Poor sods,’ said Annie.
‘I know. I felt terrible when I lost my grandfather, even though we weren’t all that close.’
‘I mean their names. All the R’s. Wonder Olivia didn’t have to change hers to Regan or something.’
‘Oh, right. Yes. Well, with names like that they’d probably fit right in at Eton.’
‘Eton? Really.’
‘Oh, yes.’
Annie turned and flashed her a grin. ‘You said two children. Who’s the other?’
‘Daughter named Poppy.’
‘Good Lord.’
‘She’s the black sheep of the family,’ Gerry went on. ‘No banking for her. Went through a variety of jobs, played in a garage band for a while, tried acting but didn’t make the grade. There’s rumours of a couple of soft porn shoots. Hooked up with a bad-boy rocker, Nate Maddock — Mad Dog, they called him. Usual exploits. Drugs. Wrecked hotel rooms. Assault. Weapons charges.’
‘Weapons?’
‘Liked his guns, apparently, did Mad Dog.’
‘Liked?’
‘He’s dead. Two years back.’
‘Don’t tell me. Drug overdose?’
‘How on earth did you guess that?’
Annie looked over at Gerry and saw that she was grinning. ‘So what’s she up to these days, our Poppy?’
‘Nothing much. Gets an allowance from Daddy, makes the society pages occasionally, usually for getting photographed in some nightclub or other without her knickers. I get the impression she’s a sort of walking wardrobe malfunction. Got a supermodel for a girlfriend now. The latest accessory. All the rage. Nobody you’ll have heard of.’
‘Sounds like a barrel of laughs. I take it both offspring live in London?’