‘Right. Midday it is then, Mrs Godfrey. Thank you.’ She was hardly going to pick on his heavy sarcasm over the telephone but he felt all the better for it anyway.
He put the phone down still feeling angry with the woman. It was only two p.m. and already he’d dealt with Alice Sedgewick, her daughter and this creature who could barely manage to be civil. All he needed now was…’
Right on cue the phone rang and he was informed that Gregory Sedgewick was on the phone from Turkey.
The voice didn’t even sound distant.
‘Inspector Randall?’
Alex replied in the affirmative.
‘My father asked me to ring and speak to you about my mother’s involvement in this business.’ He managed to make the investigation sound both unnecessary and distasteful.
Alex decided to flush him out. ‘So what’s your problem?’
‘I don’t know really.’ Gregory Sedgewick sounded vague, rather weak. Nothing like his father. ‘I just think Dad thought if we – me and my sister – harassed you enough you’d drop the case, leave Mum out of it. She’s had enough to put up with, poor old thing.’
He sounded fond of his mother. More so than either Alice’s husband or her daughter. There was real affection in his voice. ‘She gets a bit upset, you know. Dad kind of bullies her – bamboozles her into doing all sorts of things.’ Randall’s ears pricked up. What sorts of things?
‘She’s not up to these sorts of games, you know.’
Alex felt his neck tense up. ‘We don’t play games, Mr Sedgewick. An investigation into the death of this child will proceed whatever your father wants.’
‘Yeah. I thought that.’ Gregory didn’t sound too bothered either way. ‘It’s just that the old man – you know? He’s used to controlling things.’
‘I see. Where do you live – just for the record?’
‘Bit south of Istanbul.’
‘Have you lived there long?’
‘Six years. I work in a bank here. I don’t come over to the UK much. Me and the old man, you know. He’s none too happy about his only son being gay. Doesn’t mind too much if his daughter’s as butch as they make them. It’s just me, you know. But Mum comes over here once a year. She stays for a week or two with me and Harry, my partner. We all get on pretty well, you know. She’s not a bad old stick. A bit under the pater’s thumb, if you know what I mean. If Dad said she was to put her hand in boiling water I have the awful feeling…’He stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Babbling too much. Promised Dad I would ring and so I have. Done my duty now.’
‘OK. Thanks for the call,’ Alex said, wondering why on earth Gregory had really rung and why, in all that ‘babble’ he had the feeling that Gregory had said something of significance, pointed him in a new direction.
However he had no time to ponder all this now. He picked up the phone and asked if PC Roberts was in the station. When he got hold of him he made his invitation.
‘Fancy a trip to Spain, Roberts?’
NINE
Saturday
Gethin Roberts was feeling disgruntled.
It wasn’t anything like he’d imagined. Having told Flora, his girlfriend, that he was off to Spain for the weekend on a trip (top secret) connected with the current investigation, and watching her eyes grow satisfyingly round, he was now sitting on a lumpy bed in a dingy room in a scabby pension that was more like a block of council flats. To cap it all it wasn’t even quiet. It was on a main road, right on a traffic island and there was no swimming pool, let alone the imagined bathing beauties, strutting their stuff in skimpy bikinis. And it wasn’t even hot. The girls around were all muffled up in coats, boots, scarves and woolly hats. They’d been held up for hours at the airport because of ice and fog and then, to top it all, when they had landed, his suitcase had burst open on the carousel, scattering hastily and carelessly packed clothes and he was sure people were making jibes about his dingy underwear in whispered Spanish. Not a good experience. PC Roberts decided there and then that next time he flew he would put a band around his suitcase. He and the inspector had had a very late and indigestible dinner of some tough meat and a bottle of Spanish wine between them. The wine had been the only thing that had lived up to expectations. Then Randall had told him the Godfrey’s house was four hours drive away and they would have to make an early start.
Roberts was wondering what he had given his weekend up for, but then he remembered Flora’s wide-eyed excitement and pride. He could embellish the drama. He bit his tongue and commented only that it wasn’t quite how he’d expected it.
Randall looked at him kindly. ‘Nothing ever is, Sonny Jim,’ he said, resting his hand for a moment on the young constable’s shoulder.
There was only one way to describe chez Godfrey. Opulent. In a hired Seat Ibiza they drove up a winding road that was in places single track, meeting farmers on the way herding goats. The tinkle of bells would always remind them both of this expedition and recall their mixed feelings.
Near the end of the road they were faced with huge gates and a plaque announcing El Hacienda . Very unoriginal. Randall glanced at Roberts whose mouth had dropped open as he took in the pink palace. ‘In your dreams, Roberts,’ he said kindly. ‘Or else a bit of luck with the lottery.’
Gethin Roberts managed a half-hearted smile. ‘First I’ll have to do it, as they say.’
‘Quite,’ Alex said drily.
There was an electronic voice receiver in the wall. Randall climbed out of the car, pressed the button and announced their arrival.
He got the same bored voice that he’d met on the telephone and the gates swung open, lazily, as though they too had got the message, mañana .
They circled round the front of the house which had the most amazing views right over mountains and valleys, rooftops and a small forest, all the way down to the sea, sparkling far off in the distance. Roberts’s mouth dropped open even wider. He was already practising the story he would relate to Flora, his ‘intended’, as his family called her. To him the word sounded just a bit sinister. But then he was a policeman.
‘Sir,’ he said urgently.
A woman was descending a curved flight of steps – carefully – as she was wearing skyscraper heels and a floating dress of many colours even though it was decidedly chilly up here with an almost arctic breeze. Even from this distance they could both see that she was wearing lashings of make-up. Thick, dark, greasy brown foundation and a lot of black around her eyes. Curiously, instead of making her appear youthful, this made her look like a very old woman. Something like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane . An ancient parody of herself. Yet judging from her figure and strong, shapely legs, neither man would have put her at much over forty.
‘Inspector Randall, I presume, and his sidekick?’ She had impossibly white teeth, and close up a face stretched taut, probably by a plastic surgeon. She was dangling a pink cigarette from her fingers. She was, both men decided, again mirroring each other’s thoughts, theatrical.
Randall introduced themselves.
‘Oh cut the formalities and come in,’ she said with a weary sigh. ‘I’d guessed who you are. We don’t get many visitors this far out. And it’s freezing out here.’
She scanned the beautiful view with something approaching loathing. Then turning around as she ascended the steps again, she said, ‘I absolutely don’t have a clue what you hope to achieve by coming here. Still, I suppose it’s a bit more entertaining for me than the usual Saturday morning cocktail party. And you’ve got a free weekend in the Costa del Sol. Though where the bloody sol is I don’t know. It appears to have buggered off for the entire winter.’ Again they both got the impression that however beautiful El Hacienda was Mrs Godfrey disliked it. No. Hated it.