‘Can you translate that into layman’s language?’ Grace asked.
‘I can, Roy, but I’m not sure it’s going to be helpful in the way you need. This gentleman died of a classic heart attack. The left anterior descending artery is pretty much the worst coronary artery to have a blockage in — that’s the reason the more cynical members of the medical profession refer to it as the widow maker.’
‘Great,’ he replied flatly. ‘So a smart brief could argue that he had a heart condition that the torturers could not have known about, and that’s what killed him, right?’
‘I’m afraid so, Roy. He could have died at any moment — during any exertion like climbing a staircase, or,’ she smiled, ‘at the moment of orgasm.’
‘Yeah, well, when I peg it, I’d like to go that way,’ Glenn Branson said.
‘Wouldn’t we all?’ Nadiuska retorted. ‘The reality is that most of us with heart conditions will die in a hospital corridor, with a hungover medical student jumping up and down on our chest.’
Grace and Branson laughed.
She looked at her watch, then at the clock again and switched off her recorder. ‘This is as far as I can go today. Perhaps the fluid samples I’ve taken will indicate something more helpful, when we get the toxicology report back from the lab. But for now, I have to tell you that the apparent cause of death is heart attack induced by torture.’
‘Thanks, Nadiuska,’ Grace said.
She raised her gloved hands in the air. ‘I’m sorry, I know you need more than this, but let’s see what we get from the lab. Would you forgive me if I have to run? It’s my birthday actually, and my husband has arranged something for tonight.’
‘Your birthday? Your thirtieth?’
‘Ha! I wish — and thank you for the compliment.’
He grinned. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘Happy birthday, Nadiuska!’ was echoed by everyone else present.
Cleo turned to her husband and said quietly, ‘I’ll see you at home — I may be a little while.’ She pointed at the gash on Goff’s head. ‘I want to check something out.’ She gave him a strange look, as if she was trying to indicate something.
He frowned, then smiled, taking the hint. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’m not going back to the office. I’ll take Humphrey for a walk and get supper ready.’
‘We’ve got those nice cheeses we bought at the market last weekend, in the fridge. All hard ones, no soft ones.’ She patted her swollen belly by way of an explanation. ‘And there are those oatmeal biscuits you wanted to try in the cupboard.’
‘I’ll make up a platter. Anything you want me to get on the way home?’
‘No, we’re good.’
He lowered his mask and blew her a kiss.
Glenn Branson followed him into the changing room where they began disrobing by kicking off their boots. ‘Bummer,’ the DI said.
‘Archie Goff,’ Grace said, reflectively, ignoring the comment. ‘A proper crim, with a speciality in country houses. What’s he done to get himself tortured to death?’
‘Burgled the wrong person?’ Branson suggested.
Grace nodded. ‘Quite possibly. Something feels odd to me about where his body was dumped, doesn’t it to you? Outside Daniel Hegarty’s house.’
‘It seems to be stretching coincidence rather far.’
‘It does. We’re investigating the cold case of an art dealer who was hawking around a possibly rare Fragonard painting. We’ve now got a couple, the Kiplings, who brought what might be a rare Fragonard to the Antiques Roadshow. Someone burgled — or attempted a burglary — at their house soon after their appearance on the show. Now we have a dead burglar outside the house of a major art forger.’
Branson questioned, ‘We need to be sure we’re not making too big a leap here, despite the coincidence, don’t you think?’
Grace shook his head. ‘Put yourself in the crim’s mind. You’ve just tortured someone for burgling you or, more likely, your boss, and he’s died on you, which you weren’t expecting to happen. So now you have a problem on your hands — a corpse to dispose of. Let’s imagine it happened in Sussex, in the country — country houses are Archie Goff’s MO. You’ve got woodlands, forests, and you’ve got the sea. But no, you decide to ignore all of these options and drive your deceased tortured victim into a nice, middle-class residential area and dump him on a pavement where he was absolutely bound to be found.’
Branson nodded. ‘I get your point.’
Grace, fumbling with the bow at the back of his gown, said, ‘Whoever did this wanted the body to be found. It’s a message to someone. A very loud and clear message. Mess with me and this will be you.’
‘A message to Daniel Hegarty, is that what you’re saying?’
‘We’re on the same page.’
63
Sunday, 3 November
Sunday evenings were for flopping in front of the television, Daniel and Natalie Hegarty had long agreed, the way they agreed, comfortably, on most things. They lay back, large glasses of red wine in their hands, the bottle on the coffee table in front of them, Rocky and Rambo snuggled between them on the sofa, both watching, as attentively as their owners, the start of a new crime drama on catch-up.
It had been, by any stretch of the imagination — and the master forger’s imagination stretched a very long way — a different Sunday. Certainly, an unusual start to the day, finding a dead body outside your front garden gate. And he could tell, from his long involvement with the police — not all of it great — that this wasn’t just any Joe Schmo who’d pegged out on the pavement in front of their house.
Certainly not judging by the speed at which a CSI tent had been erected to shield the body from view, and the number of police vehicles that had rocked up during the following hours, the crime scene tape that had sealed off the pavement around the body, and then the fingertip search by officers that had gone on around where the body had lain, long after it had been bagged and removed.
But despite his questions, they’d remained tight-lipped, both to him and to the newspaper reporters who had turned up, about the dead man’s identity — he’d seen them take out his wallet and then his driving licence, so they knew, for sure, who he was.
In the absence of any information forthcoming from the police officers, the media had turned to him. The reporters from the Argus, the Brighton and Hove Independent, the Sussex Express, Radio Sussex and camera crews from BBC South and ITV News Meridian had relentlessly interviewed, recorded and filmed him. Always the publicity hound, Hegarty had relished the exposure, making sure to get his message across that his new art exhibition of Lowry, Picasso and Modigliani paintings — each dutifully signed by him — was opening next week.
But despite his bonhomie towards the media, after they had all drifted away he was left feeling increasingly uneasy. With his artist’s eye for detail, he’d observed the injury on the side of the dead man’s head carefully, noting it had been caused by something sharp. And he’d noticed the crushed fingers on both hands. Neither of these things had happened to him out on this quiet and pleasant street. They’d been done somewhere else.
He’d not conveyed this to his wife, and she seemed relaxed by the story he’d fed her. But then, he hadn’t given her the full low-down. All he had told her was that the police were doing their normal due diligence that they would do whenever a dead body was found, and it looked like the poor sod had dropped dead from a heart attack, or a stroke. Whatever.