Potting lowered his window, reached out his arm and pressed the button with a bell symbol. Almost instantly, a stern voice with a heavy London accent said a curt, ‘Identify yourself.’
‘Police,’ Potting replied. ‘We would like to speak to Mr Piper.’
‘You have no appointment,’ came the blunt reply.
‘Correct but we would like a few minutes of Mr Piper’s time.’
‘For what purpose? Mr Piper doesn’t see visitors without an appointment.’
‘It is in connection with a murder enquiry we are conducting. If this isn’t a convenient moment for Mr Piper, then we can make an appointment for him to come in and talk to us at Sussex Police Headquarters in Lewes,’ Potting said. ‘If that doesn’t suit him we can return with a search warrant.’
A moment’s silence, then, ‘Wait please.’
Velvet Wilde looked at Potting and, her voice lowered, asked, ‘A search warrant? Would we get one for this?’
‘Probably not.’ He grinned, lowering his voice too. ‘But whoever that wanker is doesn’t know that.’
‘You’re terrible!’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘After you’ve been doing this job as long as I have, you’ll learn.’
She thumped him playfully. ‘Always keen to share your wisdom, aren’t you?’
‘I’m taking that as a compliment.’
After a few minutes, during which the two detectives became increasingly convinced they’d been cut off, the gates suddenly began opening, and the same voice came back through the speaker. ‘Hold up your warrant cards.’
Potting held his up to the panel’s camera. ‘Detective Sergeant Potting,’ he said. Then he took Wilde’s and showed that, too. ‘And Detective Constable Wilde, both from the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’
There was an abrupt, ‘Mr Piper will see you now for fifteen minutes.’
‘Very gracious of him,’ Potting responded, and without waiting for a reply, drove on through.
They headed, for a good quarter of a mile, along a straight avenue lined on both sides with tall trees, until a huge, elegant, Tudor mansion appeared ahead. Beyond were acres of immaculately mown lawn, and a lake with what looked like Grecian statues on an island in the middle.
Velvet Wilde murmured, ‘Where did it all go wrong for poor Mr Piper?’
Potting nodded. ‘Yeah, my heart’s bleeding for him having to live in this shithole.’
‘Mine too.’
‘I mean, why would anyone want to live here, with all the bills, when they could be in a nice council flat in Brighton, with everything paid for and drug dealers on the floor above and below?’
‘Beats me.’
A moment later Potting’s tone changed abruptly as he nodded at the rear-view mirror. ‘Hello, we’ve got an escort.’
Wilde glanced in her wing mirror and saw, just a short distance behind them, the menacing grille of a black Mercedes G Wagon. ‘Thoughtful of them to provide security for us,’ she said.
Potting carried on, pulling up outside the portico, and switched off the engine. The Mercedes had stopped, effectively blocking the exit to the driveway, as if signalling they could forget thinking about making a run for it if they weren’t who they said they were.
Turning to Wilde, he said, ‘If you lived with your partner in a pad like this, would you want to have all this security stuff?’
‘I think I would,’ she replied. ‘Because if I’d made the kind of money that could buy this place, I’m unlikely to have made it honestly. So I’d always be looking over my shoulder.’
Potting smiled. ‘My thoughts exactly.’
46
Thursday, 24 October
The two detectives walked up the steps to the grand, white front door, noticing the pair of CCTV cameras on either side of it. Before they’d even reached the door it swung open and a surly man, the height and width of a double fridge, filled most of the space inside the frame.
He was dressed all in black, with a mandarin-collared suit jacket, wet-look black hair and a coiled earpiece. It sometimes seemed to Norman Potting that there was a secret organization that cloned door heavies. All these types looked the same and dressed the same. And all had attended the same charm school.
‘Your ID?’ he asked in a way that particularly annoyed Potting.
The detectives displayed their warrant cards and received just the faintest reluctant nod in response. Both of them noticed, standing a few yards behind him, another security guard who must be his identical twin, both of them wearing gold bracelets and rings.
‘Mr Piper will see you for fifteen minutes. Exactly and no more,’ he said.
Potting moved confrontationally up to the guard until they were just inches apart and retorted, jabbing a finger at him, ‘Mr Piper will see us for however long we decide, not you or him. Understood?’
The man spun on his booted heels without replying and led them along a corridor hung on both sides with, even to Norman Potting’s untrained eye, clearly old and fine paintings. Velvet Wilde trailed behind, looking enraptured at them, aware of the footsteps of the man’s twin close behind her. ‘This is incredible!’ she said when she caught up with Potting. Then for his ears only she added, ‘When I went to that art expert’s house, George Astone, last month, I thought I’d seen something amazing, but it’s got nothing on this. I’m not an expert but I do know a little bit about art, and there is serious stuff here.’
Their escort stopped in front of a pair of oak-panelled double doors, rapped then swung round to face the detectives, giving Potting a particularly hostile look. ‘Enter please.’ He opened the doors.
There were offices and there were offices, Potting thought. And the room he now entered eclipsed pretty much any he had ever seen. It was a simply vast gallery beneath a domed stuccoed ceiling. The walls were lined with large, magnificent ancestral-style portraits of men in military uniforms, and there was a railed minstrels’ gallery running all the way around the room, with further paintings above that.
In the centre of the room was an enormous antique desk on a circular Persian rug. Potting recognized the man seated at it from having googled him earlier, and his uncanny resemblance to Clive Owen was even stronger in the flesh. A Dalmatian sat each side of the desk, both dogs so motionless Potting thought at first they must be statues, until getting closer he saw they were moving, their eyes watching him. The room smelled of old, polished wood and a faintly musky aroma that he guessed came from the two diffusers on the desk.
Piper’s mouth extended into the hint of a smile, but the rest of his face did not move. ‘Officers,’ he said. ‘How may I be of assistance?’ His voice was sharp, bordering on acidic, and he made no attempt to stand up. His grey eyes held a toxic gaze.
Both Potting and Wilde were disconcerted by the complete lack of movement of his facial muscles. And there was something else about his face, which neither of them could immediately put a finger on, that was equally disturbing. As Piper’s lips formed the words, it felt to Potting almost like he was looking at a hologram rather than an actual human being.
‘We appreciate you are a busy man,’ the DS said. ‘We would just like to ask you a few questions. I’m Detective Sergeant Potting and my colleague is Detective Constable Wilde from Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’
Piper raised an arm and indicated to the two tall-backed chairs in front of the desk. ‘Have a seat. Can I offer you tea or coffee? Or would that involve you in hours of paperwork afterwards, since you people are not permitted to accept gifts?’ It was impossible to tell whether he was being humorous or not.