Gold’s only response was a disbelieving shake of his head. ‘Utter rubbish,’ snapped Harcourt-Boles. ‘Worthless conjecture and supposition that would be laughed out of court the moment it was presented. Evidence, Inspector, evidence! Where is your evidence?’
‘Right here.’ He reached into a briefcase he had brought with him and took out a folder, opening it to reveal several large photographs. ‘Do you recognise these?’
Gold flicked through the pictures with interest. ‘Well, of course I do. That’s a copy of my autobiography, one of my albums, the magazine for which I write a column…’
‘They were all found in the flat where Niratpattanasai was killed,’ said Meadows. ‘It seems that he was quite keen on you.’
‘And that is evidence of my client’s guilt how, exactly?’ objected the solicitor. ‘They could have been bought from any branch of WH Smith in the country by the real killer and planted at the flat.’
‘And why would someone do that?’ asked Brownlow.
‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ said Gold impatiently. ‘Som was indeed working in collusion with someone else on the plane — almost certainly another first class passenger. They knew I was on the plane, perhaps even saw me talking with Som at Heathrow, and realised they could not only eliminate the loose link in their vendetta against Desmond Perch, but also implicate me as Som’s killer in the process.’
Meadows reached into the briefcase and took out a plastic evidence bag. ‘Then how do you explain… this?’ With a victorious flourish, she placed it on the table between the two men. ‘It was also found in the flat — and it has fingerprints on it. Mali Kanthachai’s — and yours!’
Gold stared at the plastic-sheathed champagne glass for a long moment… then, to the consternation of the officers, began to laugh. ‘So that’s what happened to it,’ he finally said. ‘I’d wondered where it went.’
Brownlow was anything but amused. ‘This places you at the scene of the crime, Mr Gold. I’d suggest that you start taking this very seriously.’
‘Oh, I am, Detective Inspector,’ he replied. ‘But before you haul me off to the Old Bailey for trial, may I point something out to you?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Would you be so kind as to turn the glass so you can see its base? Don’t worry, I won’t touch it. I wouldn’t want to be accused of tampering with your evidence.’
Warily, Brownlow did so. ‘Now,’ Gold went on, ‘you’ll notice a glassmaker’s mark beneath the bottom of the stem. It’s a stylised pheasant — specifically a Siamese fireback. Which is…’ He paused, as if waiting for an answer to a quiz question. ‘Surely one of you must have played a pub trivia game at some point? No? Well, I’ll enlighten you — it’s the national bird of Thailand. And you’ll find that glasses exactly like this are used in the first class section of Air Thailand flights. May I ask if this glass matched any of the others in the flat?’
‘We… haven’t checked,’ Brownlow reluctantly admitted.
‘Might I suggest that you do? I saw the logo often enough through the bottom of my glass during the flight. The last time was when Mali served me a drink shortly before she discovered Perch’s body. When she screamed, I left my suite to see what had happened, as did several of the other passengers. When I went back, the glass had gone. I didn’t give it much thought, for self-evident reasons. I assumed that one of the girls had cleared it up in preparation for landing. But it’s obvious what happened to it.’
Meadows eyed him. ‘Which is what?’
‘The real killer, Som’s collaborator, took it. An opportunistic move in the confusion after the body was found, but they thought it would be enough to throw the police off the trail. Successfully, as it turns out.’
Brownlow regarded Gold for a long moment, assessing him. At last, he looked up at Meadows. ‘Check with the lab — see if the glasses that were taken off the plane match this one. And talk to whoever checked the first class luggage at Heathrow and see if they remember seeing a champagne glass in anyone’s bag.’ She hesitated; he snapped, ‘Now, Meadows!’
‘Yes, sir.’ With an almost disappointed look back at Gold, she left the room.
Harcourt-Boles stood beside his client and put both his fat hands on the edge of the table, leaning towards the remaining detective. ‘Now, Inspector,’ he rumbled, ‘are you going to release my client?’
‘And poor Mali as well,’ added Gold. ‘She must be absolutely distraught. Not only did she discover the first body, but to wrongfully arrested for a second crime… Do you know who’s representing her, Julian?’
Harcourt-Boles shook his head. ‘Some duty solicitor. I don’t know who.’
‘Would you make yourself available to her? I’ll meet the costs.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll see to it. Now, Inspector Brownlow, do you have any further evidence against Mr Gold? By which I mean the non-circumstantial kind, of course. Fingerprints at the murder scene, DNA traces, eyewitness accounts, anything at all?’
‘Not at this stage,’ Brownlow was forced to admit.
‘Then I insist that you release him immediately. And prepare yourself for a suit of wrongful arrest, while you’re about it.’
Gold waved a hand. ‘No need for that, Julian. They’re just doing their job, after all. But yes, I would like to get out of here. I feel naked without my cravat. And my shoelaces.’ He tugged at his collar, from where his silk neckcloth had been removed when he was searched on arrival.
‘Let’s wait until DC Meadows reports back, shall we?’ said Brownlow.
She returned fifteen minutes later, looking flustered. ‘The glass does match the ones on the plane, sir,’ she said. ‘And there weren’t any others like it in the flat. Collins thinks she remembers seeing a champagne glass in someone’s luggage, but she’s not sure whose.’
‘It narrows down the possibilities, though,’ Brownlow mused. ‘She only checked half the passengers.’
‘And I can narrow it down still more.’ The two police officers looked at Gold in surprise. He was smiling, but there was no smugness to it; more a helpful sincerity. ‘Detective Constable Meadows, you said earlier that you did a Lexis search to find stories in Perch’s newspaper about me. I believe that if you do another search with a slight change of parameters, you’ll find the real killer…’
William Jarnow brought the tumbler of whisky to his lips, but stopped slightly short, his eyes fixed — as they had been so often that day — on the tabloid newspaper on the table. Three pictures took up most of the front page; largest was a portrait of the paper’s late editor, Desmond Perch, with smaller insets of an Air Thailand A380 airliner and Leviticus Gold. In contrast to the solemn gravitas of the main image, the celebrity, caught by the paparazzi, had a drunken smirk.
The liquid inside the glass rippled as his hand suddenly began to shake. He had still not quite got over the shock of what he had done — what he’d had to do, he reminded himself forcefully. The look of uncomprehending fear and pain — as much from the betrayal as physical — on Som’s face as he had pulled the belt tightly around her neck was burned into his mind. But he’d had to do it, he’d had to do it…
Weakness! That was what Som — Kanya, as she called herself — represented. Weakness on the young Thai’s part, for crying and quivering with guilt at what she had done when Jarnow came to the flat. And the weakness of Jarnow himself, his hidden fascination with the idea of a man who looked and acted like a beautiful, exotic woman turning first into desire and then full-blown lust when presented with kathoey in the flesh. He had never thought of himself as gay, but this wasn’t the same thing at all, was it? But once released, he had been unable to put the genie back in the bottle, no matter how hard he tried. On every successive business trip to Thailand, he had always ended up seeking out Kanya, however often he told himself that this time he would control his urges.