‘No problem.’ Suttle thanked him and returned to the cubicle. To his delight, Lizzie wanted to go home.
‘Say it again — ’ he bent to kiss her ‘- then I’ll believe it.’
That evening, for the first time in months, they felt good with each other. Houghton had offered Suttle a couple of days off to help Lizzie get over her little accident but Lizzie herself wouldn’t hear of it. She was embarrassed, and grateful to the small army of folk who’d fished her out, emptied her lungs, strapped her into the chopper and flown her away. Now she’d be grateful for a little time on her own with just the baby for company and the knowledge that Suttle would be back before nightfall.
‘That could be a problem.’ He was thinking about tomorrow’s meet in Bournemouth. ‘I’ll cancel.’
‘Don’t.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m a strong girl. Stronger than you think. Stick with the arrangements, but nothing silly, eh?’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. And you know something else?’ She beckoned him closer, kissed him on the lips and nodded towards the stairs. ‘I owe you.’
Nine
MONDAY, 18 APRIL 2011
Suttle was in his office at Middlemoor by eight o’clock next morning. Lizzie had insisted he leave early to beat the rush-hour traffic and had dismissed his offer to return at midday to sort her out a bit of lunch. She had a long list of apologetic phone calls to make. Mea culpa. My fault. Sitting beside the bed, Suttle had wondered whether the list of calls included Pendrick. Given the fact that he’d saved his wife’s life, he fancied the answer was liable to be yes. Lizzie was watching him carefully. In certain moods, like now, Jimmy Suttle was an open book.
‘Don’t worry,’ she’d said. ‘That man’s the reason I’m still here.’
‘How does that work?’
‘It’s complicated.’ She’d kissed him. ‘One day, if you’re good, I might tell you.’
Now, Suttle took a call from D/I Houghton. She had good news and bad. Preferably face to face.
Suttle went upstairs. Houghton had found a traffic cone from somewhere to keep her office door open when she was in the mood for callers. Now she asked Suttle to close it.
He took a seat in front of her desk. A large Manila envelope had his name on it.
‘I had Traffic on first thing,’ she said. ‘About Friday night.’
Suttle owned up at once. He’d been going way too fast. He’d had a couple of drinks. Next time he’d suss these Traffic numpties way earlier.
‘That’s not what bothers me.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No. I understand you’d just been to Modbury.’
‘That’s right.’
‘D/I Hamilton lives in Modbury.’
‘Right again, boss. We had dinner together. I needed to sort some stuff out.’
‘Constantine stuff?’
‘Partly.’
‘Private stuff?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded. The more Suttle saw of her, the more he liked her. It was rare to find someone so astute, so direct, so switched on, who applied that intelligence to the people around her. Suttle had never been quite clear about the phrase grown-up but fancied that it pretty much covered Carole Houghton.
‘D/I Hamilton is neediness on legs,’ she said. ‘You ought to be aware of that.’
‘I am, boss. Believe me.’
‘She has a talent for wrecking other people’s marriages. It may not be her fault but it happens nonetheless. She’s an attractive woman. She can talk a good war. But beware, Jimmy. This job’s tough enough as it is.’
‘Crime wise?’ Suttle was intrigued.
‘No.’ Houghton was reaching for the envelope. ‘Some days I think the bad guys are the least of our problems. Do we understand each other?’
‘We do, boss.’
Suttle took the envelope downstairs. It had come from the force intel department and contained Kinsey’s financial records. Grateful, once again, to have the office to himself Suttle sorted the information into separate piles on a neighbouring desk and began to go through it. Expecting a complicated web of accounts, he was surprised by its simplicity. On the business side, Kinsey had operated two accounts, one for Kittiwake and one for Kittiwake Oceanside. When it came to his personal life, he drew on a single account in his own name.
By mid-morning, after an initial trawl through all three piles, Suttle had enough information to map the shape of Kinsey’s growing business empire. Over the past few months the Kittiwake account had been largely dormant. All Kinsey’s energies had been spent on the development of a series of sites across north Cornwall. Most of these, as far as Suttle could judge, were no more than a wish list of locations that might, one day, host Kittiwake Oceanside gated retirement communities. Cheques drawn on the Oceanside business account had gone to a range of planning and landscape consultants, all of whom had featured in the business files Suttle had analysed earlier. Only one of the sites, Trezillion, showed any signs of happening, and this was reflected in payments to a Leeds-based firm of solicitors. A couple of these tied in with credit card payments to Flybe for return tickets to Leeds Bradford Airport.
Suttle had hung on to Kinsey’s business correspondence in the belief that it might feature in the file he was preparing for the Coroner. Cheque by cheque, he tied the payments to the paperwork. Planning permission for Trezillion was clearly a huge obstacle to the project going forward, but phrases in a couple of the letters to his legal adviser hinted that this problem might be far from insoluble. Hence, Suttle assumed, the £4.5K Kinsey had been prepared to blow on the design and printing of glossy brochures.
He was about to start on the personal bank records when his eye was caught by another large cheque. On 21 January 2011 Kinsey had paid £13,000 to a Mr Waheed Akhtar. The name alone was totally out of keeping with the rest of Kinsey’s disbursements. There was no matching invoice in his business records, and no correspondence that Suttle could find. Was this an Asian businessman Kinsey had tapped up for advice? Was he taking the Kittiwake concept abroad? Would elderly couples with a taste for year-round sunshine be spending their twilight years in Oceanside Dubai?
Suttle thought it was worth a note. He scribbled the details on his pad and reached for the pile of personal bank account statements. Most of this stuff was mundane — direct debits on power, water and council tax, card payments for anything from petrol to booze, plus a recent cheque for £607 to the Exeter Porsche dealer for a service. On top of that came regular expenditure that had to be connected to the rowing club. Repairs to the new quad after a collision with an estuary buoy. Hotel and ferry bills for a winter training camp on Lake Garda. Three-figure payments to Andy Poole for ‘miscellaneous services’.
Month by month, Suttle went backwards, looking for anomalies that might flag something interesting, but after a full year and a half he’d found nothing. Kinsey seemed to have lived his life exactly in step with everything the intel had already established. He kept himself to himself, didn’t go out much, and spent more than was probably wise on his precious rowing.
Only after he’d finished his initial trawl, making himself another mug of coffee in the squad kitchenette, did Suttle realise what he was missing. Where were the payments to the escort agency for his regular Thai girlies? And how come there was no trace of the money he’d spent on Tash Donovan?
Suttle took the coffee back to his desk. His task this time was to revisit all the personal stuff — bank accounts, credit card billings — and look for cash withdrawals. Within the hour he was satisfied that these couldn’t possibly have paid for Kinsey’s sex life. In terms of ready money, he appeared to live on surprisingly little. A hundred and ten pounds a week was his average spend. How many girlies could you buy for that?
A knock at the door brought Luke Golding into the office. The young D/C had some good news.