‘I take it from this that your father made a new will, perhaps quite recently, is that so?’
Bella Fairbrother shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But it wouldn’t have occurred to me that he hadn’t left an up-to-date will clearly representing his wishes. My father would never have put himself in a position where he died intestate. Not with the bank at stake. Not to mention his personal wealth. My father lived and breathed money, DI Vogel. It was his every reason for being. And everything he did in his life was motivated either by financial gain or to protect the interests of Fairbrother’s bank, which, when you think about it, amount to one and the same thing. Even to marrying, when he was a very young man, a woman who came from the right sort of breeding stock to produce the right sort of children to take control of the bank when the time came. Unfortunately for my father that didn’t go quite according to plan. His second child was a girl, me, therefore, however clever and able I proved myself to be, I would never be good enough because I was the wrong gender. And he had yet to learn that his only son was a wastrel quite incapable of running any sort of business, when his eye was taken by a woman little better than a common whore, albeit doubtless excellent at her job, and he ditched my mother without a backward glance.’
Vogel was having a blinking fit again. He was never comfortable with overt talk of sexual matters, particularly when a woman was doing the talking. He glanced away, hoping Bella Fairbrother would not notice his discomfiture. He was almost sure she didn’t. She was frowning slightly as she continued her reverie. Her body language indicated that she was wound up like a spring. Vogel had learned to be cautious to the point of cynicism concerning anyone involved, however remotely, in a murder investigation. But he would have bet six month’s salary that this part, at least, of what Bella was saying was the truth. And that telling the story caused her genuine pain.
‘My mother’s father was a stockbroker and she had a degree in economics which she never used because my father would not countenance even the possibility of allowing his wife to work,’ Bella continued. ‘Her position on the board was merely token, as such appointments have always had been with all the Fairbrother women. Until me. I was never prepared to be merely the token Fairbrother woman on the board, and that is primarily what caused the rift between my father and me. That, and my tendency to question his leadership. Now I have reason to believe that the board might turn to me to take, at the very least, shall we say, a prominent position again at Fairbrothers. It’s already been indicated that most of them feel they need me back on the board because I know more than anyone else about my father’s affairs and his way of running things.’
Bella stopped talking at last. Vogel, thankfully had stopped blinking.
‘So what made you drive straight down here, Miss Fairbrother? I mean, you knew that your father was dead and that there were probably going to be serious repercussions concerning the future of the bank, something that is clearly very dear to your heart. Also, presumably, with so much at stake, you need to see his will as soon as possible. Wouldn’t it have been more constructive for you to stay on in London?’
‘Look, Mr Vogel, I spoke yesterday to Peter Prentis, the solicitor who has handled my father’s affairs for years and who informed me of my father’s illness. He told me that he was no longer in possession of the will my father had drawn up with him about a year previously, soon after we became estranged. At around the same time my father arranged to have almost all of the business and personal files, until then mostly archived with Peter Prentis, removed and transported to Somerset.
‘It also seems that my father then appointed a solicitor here in Somerset, in Taunton, with whom he conducted a lot of private business. Peter Prentis told me he’d had very little contact with my father in the year or so preceding his death, and that the last time had been the telephone conversation in which he had told Prentis of his illness, and asked him to pass on the information to me. Clearly, I needed to see this Taunton solicitor, Mr Vogel, as a matter of urgency, to find out what I can of my father’s dealings with him. And I have an appointment this afternoon. Also, I have to find those files. Some may be lodged with this solicitor, of course, but I believe that the majority of my father’s papers, including those removed from Peter Prentis’ office, may be in a specially strengthened storeroom which my father constructed in the basement of Blackdown Manor. I am also hoping, although it may be just a vain hope, that some of the valuable family paintings, and perhaps some other pieces, may be there and have survived the fire. And that’s why I wanted to see you every bit as much as you wanted to see me, Mr Vogel. I really need to be allowed access to the manor very soon, to gain entry to what’s left of the storeroom, see the damage for myself, and evaluate what may be salvaged. I understand only you can give permission?’
‘Me and the fire service,’ said Vogel. ‘We will do our best to assist, but safety is the first priority, and preserving the authenticity of the crime scene a close second.’
‘I see.’
Bella Fairbrother looked as if she were about to argue, but didn’t. This is a woman used to getting her own way, thought Vogel
‘Is it really that urgent, Miss Fairbrother?’ asked Vogel.
‘Almost certainly, detective inspector,’ responded Bella Fairbrother. ‘Almost certainly.’
Vogel left Saslow to take the necessary formal statement from Bella. But when he heard her leaving the police station he made his way to an appropriately positioned window to watch. She had managed to find a parking space almost directly outside, and she drove away with a squeal of wheels, accelerating quickly along Victoria Street. She was clearly one of those who did not really consider that speed limits applied to her. Even right outside a police station. And probably not many other limits, either.
Vogel was thoughtful. He took what he considered to be a healthily cynical attitude to anything involving big business and big money. Miss Bella Fairbrother did not seem unduly concerned about preserving her father’s reputation. But he suspected that her mission to save Fairbrother International might also involve a considerable intent to save her own skin. After all, she had been deputy chairman of Fairbrother’s until little more than a year ago. Sir John Fairbrother may have been a maverick, but Bella herself had admitted that she’d worked more closely with him than anyone else.
Vogel suspected that Sir John’s death, and the fire which had brought it about, along with the destruction of Blackdown Manor, were all attributable to an intrigue reaching deep into the darker extremes of international finance. And it was surely impossible to believe that his daughter had not been complicit to some degree.
Thirteen
Police Sergeant Leon Knott was one of the safer neighbourhood team covering Brentford. When the call came in he was on patrol with PC Neil Faraday.
A body had been discovered in the lock at the Thames end of the Grand Union Canal.
Knott and Faraday were in their squad car heading back to Chiswick police station along the Great West Road. Faraday was driving. He turned the squad car around at the first opportunity and headed back into Brentford.
The town sits alongside the River Thames, opposite Kew Gardens, where the Grand Union and the River Brent merge and flow into London’s principal waterway. Brentford Dock, now the site of a 1970s housing development, once provided a gateway to the rest of England for international trading vessels which chugged up the Thames and transferred their goods onto canal barges there. The dock, eighteen miles from the coast, was Britain’s furthest inland shipping port, and its location had been chosen because of the huge 28 feet rise and fall of the Thames just outside. Once the canal barges had been loaded, they would enter the Grand Union, the backbone of Britain’s canal system, via the lower part of the River Brent, and a large tidal lock known as Thames Lock.