‘Oh?’
‘No. I was thinking about the danger to you and Annie. And to Raymond.’ She paused ‘When you — how do you say it — disturb a sleeping bear. It is not only this Keane you have to worry about. He has some very nasty new friends now. Men like the Croatian. If he is valuable to them, they will kill to keep him alive and free.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything less of them,’ said Banks.
‘Believe me, I know what they are capable of.’
‘Let’s be especially careful, then. Be patient. Wait for the right time. Don’t take unnecessary risks.’
Zelda glanced at her watch. ‘I must go. My train.’
Banks stood up and held out his hand to take her arm. ‘Come on, then. We’ll go back and pick up your suitcase and I’ll give you a lift to the station.’
‘Bugger me, it really is him,’ said Ronald Hadfield, staggering slightly as the mortuary assistant gently pulled back the sheet. Noticing that Ronald had turned ashen, Annie grabbed his elbow and led him out of the morgue. He eased himself out of her grip, firmly, but politely. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing. I think I had expected it all to be a big mistake. I can’t believe the miserable old bastard’s dead at last.’
Ronald Hadfield had behaved like a total arse so far, complaining about being dragged all the way back from Tokyo and missing important business meetings, then he had demanded to see the real body instead of a closed-circuit TV image or a photograph, insisting he could handle it. Annie had hoped for a moment that actually seeing his father’s corpse for real might suddenly make him more human, but apparently, it was not to be.
‘If you need a few minutes to recover,’ she said, ‘or require counselling—’
‘I could do with a fucking drink,’ Ronald said
They were certainly a foul-mouthed pair, the Hadfield siblings. Annie wondered if they had got it from their late father Laurence. Still, if Ronald Hadfield wanted to go around effing and blinding, who was she to complain? She’d done it often enough herself when things went tits up. ‘We’ll go over to The Unicorn,’ she said. ‘It’s never likely to make it into the tourist brochures, but they serve a decent measure.’
The Unicorn was quiet on a Tuesday afternoon, and they found a table far enough away from the bar to give them some privacy. Hadfield seemed uncomfortable in the grimy corner pub, being more at home perhaps in the clubs and bars of Hampstead or the City. He asked for a double brandy, which Annie bought for him, wondering how come she was always the one buying drinks for the filthy rich Hadfields these days, and sticking to Diet Coke herself.
‘I suppose you’re going to give me the third degree now?’ said Hadfield, after a bracing slurp of brandy.
‘Just a few questions, if that’s OK?’
‘You realise what a bloody big mess this will cause, don’t you?
‘What?’
‘Father’s death. He was a very important person, you know. The economies of several small countries depended on him. Not to mention that he was one of the main players in the Brexit think tank.’
That sounded like an oxymoron to Annie. ‘No doubt he left a detailed will,’ she said.
‘Hah! The will, yes. Are we going to have some sort of Agatha Christie reading, the family gathered together around a big table, the solicitor reading out the bequests?’
‘We don’t do that sort of thing any more.’ They never had, as far as Annie knew.
‘Just as well. He didn’t like me, Father. Do you know that? I could never do anything right in his eyes, never be as good as him. And he doted on my fucked-up junkie slut of a sister. Knowing him, he’s left everything to her to fritter away on toy-boys and cocaine. But you can bet it’ll be left to me to tidy up his business affairs.’
‘No doubt all this will be a big threat to future world order,’ Annie said, ‘but it’s really got nothing to do with what I wanted to talk to you about.’
Hadfield ignored the sarcasm. ‘I suppose you think I did it, don’t you?’
‘Did what?’
‘Killed him.’
‘As far as we know, your father’s death was an accident. There are just a few oddities that require explanation.’
‘Like why his body was found on a bloody moor miles from anywhere with no sign of a car to be seen?’
‘Something like that,’ said Annie.
Hadfield ran his hand through his hair. He was a large, jowly man, though not quite as overweight as his father had been. ‘When did it happen?’ he asked.
‘We don’t know for certain, but we think it was sometime last weekend. When did you last speak to him?’
‘I can’t remember exactly. We speak as little as possible, and then only when we have to. It must have been about a month ago. Young Roderick’s birthday. I’ll say that for him, he always remembered his grandchildren’s birthdays. Can’t fault him on that.’
‘You’re not in business together?’
‘Lord, no. It’s not a family business, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’m CFO of an international corporation. We just rape the environment. Father was basically a moneylender, though he’d have called himself an investment banker, financier and venture capitalist. As I said, there are small countries that depend on him for their economic stability. Not that he was averse to the occasional arms deal or hiring the odd band of mercenaries if some tinpot dictator got a bit bolshie.’
‘Where were you the weekend before last?
Hadfield smiled a rather nasty smile. ‘I was wondering when you’d get around to asking that,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I was in Geneva. There’s an important merger going on, and I had to oversee a number of important meetings. I flew on from there to Tokyo.’
‘I suppose there are plenty of people who can verify this?’
‘Naturally. Though they wouldn’t appreciate being pestered by the police.’
‘We’ll be gentle with them, if we have to check your alibi.’
‘I thought you said Father’s death was an accident?’
‘It looks like an accident. In my experience, though, it’s not that difficult to make murder look like an accident. That’s why we need to go over the inconsistencies very carefully. Someone could easily have transported the body up to the moor and dumped it down the gully. But killers usually make a mistake somewhere along the line. It may seem like just a little one, but it’s often enough.’
‘A proper little fucking Miss Marple, aren’t you?’
‘And here’s me thinking the sight of your father’s body would stop you behaving like a complete arse.’
He smiled the nasty smile again. ‘Are you supposed to talk like that to the bereaved son? Shouldn’t I report you?’
‘Do what you fucking well like,’ said Annie. ‘Just answer my questions first.’
Hadfield smirked and inclined his head ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And don’t call me ma’am.’
‘You’ve made your point.’
‘Did your father have any enemies?’
‘Hundreds, probably. Maybe thousands. He was a very unpleasant human being.’
‘Anyone recent? Anything personal? Someone who might want to do away with him?’
‘Again, probably hundreds. But if you asked me for their names, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t put it past an ousted government official or two to put what’s left of their life savings together and hire an assassin. Then there’s the hundreds of suckers who invested in his crackpot ventures over the years.’
‘This is not very helpful,’ Annie said.
Hadfield leaned forward and rapped on the table. ‘I can’t help that. What I’m saying is that my father made enemies quite easily. It’s unavoidable when you’re in the business he’s in. Whether any of them would actually go so far as to kill him, I can’t say. Even his enemies usually have some vested interest in his staying alive and thriving. Greed breeds greed, inspector. There’s always the hope of more. That’s what keeps even the most desperate losers going, and more than willing to throw good money after bad.’