She hauled herself upright, saying, ‘You’re a man of the world, Inspector, so you probably recognise the types. I’m the bright sister who made a mess of things; Joan was the dumb one who made good. C’est la vie.’
‘Oh, I suspect you have your moments,’ I told her.
‘Moments,’ she agreed, nodding wistfully.
‘One more thing — when did you last see Joan?’
‘It’d be about six weeks ago. Met her for lunch in Leeds. But we talk on the phone every fortnight or so.’
‘And did she seem just the same as always?’
‘Yes, as far as I could tell.’
‘Does she work?’
‘Yes, as a nursing auxiliary at the local hospital. She moved there to be near the job. Perhaps that’s something you should ask her about, too.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’
‘She worked for York and Durham, like Derek. Pension plan, key to the executive toilets, the full package. Left in an unseemly hurry and was unemployed for a while, after their marriage collapsed. I’d have thought she could have wangled herself a transfer to another branch. Something happened, but I don’t know what.’
‘I see. Thanks. So when I’ve gone, presumably you’ll give her a sisterly ring and tell her I’m looking for her.’
‘Yes, presumably I will.’
‘In that case, maybe we could ring her now and make me an appointment, if you don’t mind?’
Joan worked shifts and wasn’t answering, so I rang her from the station the following morning and then hot-wheeled it over to Leeds. She was probably about five years older than her sister and a good six inches shorter. She had a round face compared with Dorothy’s long Virginia Woolf countenance, and dressed differently — mohair twinset against denim and Aran. As far as I knew they were full sisters, but it didn’t look as if they shared the same gene pool. Perhaps their mother had been susceptible to the odd smooth-talking insurance man, too. The permissive society didn’t really begin in the sixties, we just started talking about it then.
She had the upstairs flat in a rather swish maisonette. Rented furnished, I presumed, although her stamp was on the place: lots of artificial flowers and the dreaded Lladro. Her hand shook as she poured me a cup of tea.
‘Mmm, I needed that,’ I told her, taking a sip. When she was settled I asked her how well she knew Mr Goodrich.
‘Fairly well, I suppose,’ she replied.
‘I believe you held bridge evenings,’ I prompted.
‘Y-yes, that’s right. For a while.’
‘Was he any good?’
‘Quite good. Very competitive — he tried harder than we did. He liked to win.’
‘Did he bring his own partner?’ I asked. I’d heard about bridge evenings. Sometimes they didn’t even bring a pack of cards.
‘No. We always had a problem finding a fourth. The lady on the other side of us liked a game, but she had to go into a home. Alzheimer’s disease. Then Dorothy made the numbers up for a while, but it wasn’t really her thing. So eventually they fizzled out.’
‘And how many times did you go on holiday together?’
She’d put her cup down, then picked it up again to keep her fingers occupied. Now she placed it back on the table to avoid spilling the contents. I obviously knew a lot more than she expected.
‘Just the once, a Caribbean cruise.’
‘Mrs Eastwood, was Goodrich one of the reasons for the failure of your marriage?’
She shook her head defiantly. ‘No, not at all.’
I asked her all the routine stuff about when she’d last seen him, finishing off with a query about investments.
‘After the divorce,’ she said, ‘Derek had to buy my half of the house. Hartley offered to invest the money for me.’
‘And did you let him?’
She nodded and sniffed.
‘Have you lost your money?’
Another nod and sniff. ‘It’s looking like it. Well, twenty thousand pounds.’
‘In diamonds?’
‘Diamond. Singular.’
I asked her if she could tell me anything about his business acquaintances, but she had nothing to volunteer.
‘Have you ever heard of K. Tom Davis?’ I asked.
She looked up, startled. ‘Yes, but I never met him. He was behind the diamonds. It was his fault that it all went wrong. Hartley was duped just as much as anybody else.’
She couldn’t expand on her theory, so I invited her to ring me if she thought of anything else and left. I picked up a beef sandwich and a curd tart, carefully avoiding the spoonerism, at a local bakery and made my way back to Heckley. Waiting on my desk was a brown envelope, bursting at the seams. It contained a thick wad of coloured photocopies of the poster I’d done for the bullbars campaign. That was quick, for Traffic, I thought. I put a small pile on everybody’s desk and pinned a couple on notice boards. Then I went to the loo.
Nigel was washing his hands. ‘Hi, boss,’ he greeted me. ‘I’ve a message for you.’
There was the sound of a toilet flushing, and a huge PC came out of a cubicle, tucking his shirt flap into his waistband.
‘Hello, George,’ I said. ‘Successful?’
‘Grand, Mr Priest,’ he replied. ‘Like a flock o’ pigeons landin’ on a wet roof.’
Nigel’s gaze switched from the PC to me and back again, his jaw hanging slack, like a moose with a gumboil. He’s from Berkshire, and lies awake at night wondering if he’d be more at home in Ulan Bator.
‘What was it?’ I asked him.
‘What was what?’
‘The message.’
‘Oh, yes. Two things, actually. First of all the Dean brothers are in the court lists for Monday, so I may be out of circulation for a couple of days. And a chap called Davis just rang. Said you’d been chasing him. He left his number.’
‘Justin Davis?’
‘No, Tom something-or-other.’
‘K. Tom. Great.’
Walking back to the office Nigel said, ‘I’ve been wondering about inviting Heather — Professor Simms — out for dinner. She’s frightfully attractive, don’t you think?’
‘Our new pathologist? Mmm, yes, she is.’
‘She doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but I don’t suppose you know if she has a boyfriend or anything?’
We were back at Nigel’s desk and he tore the top page off his notepad and handed it to me. ‘No idea,’ I told him. ‘Met her for the first time myself on Monday. Just go for it, Nigel. She can only say no. Defeat is no disgrace, to quote Idi Amin’s chiropodist.’
Now he looked more puzzled than ever. ‘Just one thing,’ I confided, lowering my voice. ‘If she offers to cook for you, don’t touch the liver.’
K. Tom Davis’s wife answered the phone. ‘Hello, Mrs Davis,’ I said. ‘This is Inspector Priest. I have a message to ring your husband at this number.’
He was there, so I drove straight over to see him. The obligatory Range Rover stood in front of the garages and I wished I’d brought the bullbars leaflets with me, but as I walked past the car I was pleasantly surprised to see it didn’t have them fitted. I thumbed the bell-push and heard the first four bars of Canon in D from deep within. Or maybe it was the last four bars. Or any combination of bars in between.
This time we didn’t sit in the glorified greenhouse. I slithered about on a chesterfield that was as comfortable as a piano lid and they accompanied me on the matching easy chairs. More depressing hunting scenes adorned the walls — horses frozen in mid-leap against backgrounds straight out of How to Paint Trees.
K. Tom was a big man, impressive, but his beer gut was winning the weight war and his nose had dipped into too many whisky glasses. The gold cufflinks would have paid off my one and only creditor, leaving the sovereign rings — one on each hand — to put a new set of tyres on the cause of same debt.
‘I was scared,’ he explained, when I asked him the reason for his disappearance. ‘I read about Goodrich’s murder and I suppose I panicked. Thought I’d be next on the list, maybe. I told Ruth I was going to see Justin, but I booked into the Devonshire Hotel, in Wharfedale, for a couple of nights.’ At the mention of his wife’s name he broke off rolling the bottom of his tie and gestured towards her. ‘I rang her last night,’ he continued, ‘and she told me of your visit. It’s a terrible business, Inspector. If I can help in any way you have only to ask.’